Forum Post: Progress vs. Growth - The Next Steps
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 20, 2011, 2:34 a.m. EST by Stucco
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At the outset, watching OWS grow and spread to new cities around the country and the world was exciting. For a movement establishing its foothold in the worldwide consciousness, we really couldn't have asked for more. As with any movement, however, after a while simply growing and occupying space isn't enough. In the days of Martin Luther King Jr., chants, marches, occupations, and eloquent speeches had the power to infiltrate the minds of people around the world -- but then again, they didn't have to compete with a 24-hour news cycle culture.
OWS has its ideals, and has stated them proudly with its Declaration of such. It's intended course of action remains far more vague, and for the majority of the 99% that doesn't live within proximity of one of the larger hubs where the excitement and camaraderie bubble over, it's easy to become disillusioned with the movement as a whole. What are they doing? Daily streams of police beatings and pepper spraying don't translate to progress for those offering their support from afar. If anything, it looks like a daily routine (albeit a rather painful one). That said, OWS will continue to grow, but it has reached a critical mass where genuine action can be affected within the playing field where true change can occur. The political and corporate machines own the field, but there are places where OWS can have their voice heard. We need to stop being a passive force in the movement we started and we need to take action and create our own voice within the media sphere.
Everyday a story about OWS comes up, but representatives of the movement are never on-hand to argue the points of its constituents. Instead, whatever anchor is present offers up their considerate or glib two cents and moves on. Who's to say that OWS can't elect a collection of people to speak on its behalf based on previously agreed upon talking points? Or, with the sheer number of people now involved, the amount of professional talent we must have in our ranks from the areas of PR and marketing - why don't we bring their experience to bear and help launch OWS beyond our initial phase of pulling ourselves from the primordial soup of humanistic outrage?
If we can better articulate our message and goals and help to show the country we're not just a leftist body but rather one fighting for the common rights of all Americans within the 99%, then we can begin to combat the misinformation spread about OWS. We might not like to admit it, but there's a large population in this country not actively looking to refute the lies they're fed about our intentions.
This all seems incredibly anxious to me. The OWS movement is barely two months old. It's barely beyond conception. Certainly not out of the womb. And if we are to extend the birthing metaphor, in that sense OWS hasn't even been born yet. Hardly a time to pick its college major when it hasn't even learned to crawl, let alone walk.
To further continue the birthing metaphor, with perhaps disturbing imagery...
The problem with letting the media or political machine define OWS--which is what happens when movements don't establish their own media presence nowadays--is that it can die before it escapes the womb. Whether that's a still-birth or an abortion, that's for metaphor critics to decide. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's at risk. And in today's media climate, two months is not a short period of time...it's an eternity. We don't get to choose how OWS progress is perceived if we're not helping to influence the perceptions, and right now we're not. Contrary to popular thought, simply existing and growing is not an action that conveys who and what we are. The protests and consequent police reprisals don't either, that just establishes that we're clashing with the law over one matter or another. The average American has no idea what those matters are, because the biggest shortcoming of OWS despite 2 months of media coverage is its lack of self-definition in the public arena. Even our website is painfully vague.
So no, this isn't moving too fast. If anything, this is something we should have done much sooner.
Movements can't do anything that either their critics or their supporters think they should or shouldn't do. That's not in the nature of movements. Movements are not organizations. They are not succeptable to changes in leadership or policy in the same way that organizations are. So a movement cannot, by its very nature, respond in any meaningful way to its critics, its supporters, to anybody trying to take it over or anybody trying to destroy it. All a movement can do is move, grow or die. If you want something to do something else you need an organization with a defined structure, not a movement.
"Movements can't do anything that either their critics or their supporters think they should or shouldn't do." By this definition, movements can do nothing but exist and then die, which is lunacy. Movements unto themselves may not be organizations, but they are made up of them. Propelled by them. OWS, whether we choose to believe it or not, IS an organization. We have an assembly that makes decisions. That is an organization. What OWS seeks or promotes is the movement. So yes, OWS can move in specific directions with strategic intent.
It's not lunacy that movements can't do anything but move, grow or die. You are applying a category that might well be applied to a formal organization, but is meaningless with regard to a social movement. Social movements are not rational or irrational. They exist outside the framework of rationality altogether. And movements are not necessarily made up of organizations. They usually are, but not in this case. In fact, if you've ever been to a GA you'd see that OWS is pretty much hostile to anything that smacks of an organizational input. Even people who come to OWS from a particular organization are obliged to present themselves as individuals rather than as representatives of a particular organization and the more they appear to be spouting the official line of any organization the less seriously they are taken.
Except OWS is the organization - whether its constituents like to think so or not. The movement is the cause, whose ideology varies slightly from one member to the next. Even if the GA rejects the notion of organization, by even having an assembly, they're negating their own objections. And I didn't say movements having no option but to move, grow or die was lunacy, I pointed out that your assertion that movements can't behave according or contrary to what their critics or supporters desire was paradoxical (though I used the word lunacy). Because in that definition of movements you allow it no room to go any direction, because in so doing it would have to act according to the likes or dislikes of either its opponents or supporters. Maybe you chose the wrong wording and thus I'm running into a paradoxical wall that you didn't intend, but as stated, you give movements no choice but life and death with nothing in between.
Furthermore, social movements exist outside of rationality? So equal rights has no rational basis? The actions of MLK or suffragists had no rational bearing on the intentions of their respective movements? Of course movements adhere to rationality, to say otherwise is to imply that they spring forth from undirected chaos with no conceivable link between what they represent and the actions that brought them into being.
Movements are ameoba like in that they go in a direction which is the sum total of all the various directions that all of its activists wish it to go in, weighted of course for their relative level of activism. But since any movement worthy of the name has participants too numerous to meaningfully count, it's impossible to predict that direction or to have any meaningful control over it. Regarding the GA, its decision making mechanism is so sluggish that I would defy anyone the possiblity of having much meaningful influence over it as an individual. I don't think you can apply terms of rationality meaningfully to movements precisely because of their amorphous nature. They're really not responding either rationally or irrationally. They are just there, to grow, die or move, depending on the enthusiasm of their participants. Of course all individuals within any given social movement behave either rationally or irrationally, but it doesn't follow that the way a movement acts in toto can be meaningfully understood as either rational or irrational. Organizations too can act rationally or irrationally, a fact that no doubt had something to do with the Court deciding that corporations, as organizations, were the functional equivalent of people.
"Movements are ameoba like in that they go in a direction which is the sum total of all the various directions that all of its activists wish it to go in, weighted of course for their relative level of activism." Right there, you just contradicted your earlier statement that: "Movements can't do anything that either their critics or their supporters think they should or shouldn't do." Had you stopped with that correction though, I would've been in agreement with you. But I'm sorry, if the Civil Rights movement taught us anything, it's that movements, no matter how large, can be very easily influenced by a singular entity. It just has to be the right one at the right time with the right words. They stir the hearts and minds of the activists and usher them towards a new activity with boundless enthusiasm.
As to the GA, no matter how sluggish, the fact is that they're still an organized entity. OWS is the organization, and the tenets of the 99% the movement. And again, of course movements respond rationally, you just have to know what to look for. And again you contradict yourself, as you earlier stated that movements progress in accordance with the actions of the activists propelling them and then you state that they act rationally or irrationally - but you then attempt to say that movements don't then follow the obvious logical pattern of being rational or irrational in motion according to how their activists behave. The contradictions in your argument are becoming counterproductive.
Ah well, as Walt Whitman said, I contradict myself, well then I contradict myself (I think Lenin said the same thing at one point or another). So, what's your point? Into some Jesuitical logic chopping? I don't know how old you are, but I'm 68 years old and I was as active in the civil rights movement as I am today in OWS, which is to say in a kind of middling part time way. Back then MLK was by no means the hero of the movement that he was later portrayed after his death. There is nothing that helps somebodies PR more than death, especially by assasination. In SNCC they especially had little respect for King and they used to refer to him as "de lawd." Same went for the most part for CORE chapters in the north. So I'm not sure exactly what your point is with regard to the civil rights movement since you eluded to it rather than stating it directly, but if it was what I suspect and a reference to King's supposedly singular influence, that's not how I remember it.
Regarding the rationality or irrationality of social movements the point is there are so many actors involved and so little formal organization that even if theoretically you can say that a movement is acting rationally or irrationally one way or another, in a practical sense, precisely because there are so many actors involved and so little formal organization, it's really impossible to tell exactly how a movement is likely to respond at any given moment or for that matter how the general public is likely to respond to it. For example, when the 700 people were arrested on the bridge I thought that was a big mistake that would not go over well at all with the general public. I was very pleasantly surprized to find out that was not the case. But that's my point. How the public is likely to react to something is not easily predicted and social movements in that sense are like the general public and the larger they are the more like the general public they are. There behavior in general is not especially predictable, which is what I meant by suggesting that it was outside the bounds of rational categories.
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