Forum Post: Stay leaderless. Bedevil the media. And ignore history.
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 16, 2011, 12:17 p.m. EST by precipice
(220)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Stay leaderless and anonymous. It appeared at first that not having a leader, a single face people could relate to, would be your fatal flaw. Now it seems to be the mark of your collective genius. The media would pounce on a leader, or leaders, and reduce your entire movement to a life story, a personality. Now they have nothing to grasp but your ideas, and your outrage. Then, too, leaders can be flattered, rewarded, ego-gratified and tamed. Once someone who speaks for you appears (gulp) on the cover of a national magazine, you’re done for.
Don’t give them any kind of story. They’re waiting for it. They’re waiting for the guy who throws the rock, the girl who overdoses, the person who dies suddenly, mysteriously while camping out. Stay controlled. If the unfortunate or tragic thing happens, move on quickly with something dramatic and serious.
Be inclusive. Protest the government’s indifference to the physical and mental health problems and the often-vulnerable financial circumstances of returning veterans. Cry out against the callousness toward the first responders to the Twin Towers on 9/11. Embrace everyone hurt by the greedheads and their political enablers.
Keep your nature mercurial. Drop leaflets off the top of Trump Tower. March (I love you for wanting to do this) on the millionaires’ (billionaires is more like it) homes. Have some real people with real stories—perhaps their faces covered with black hoods as though they were in government custody; you get the idea—tell their heartbreaking tales of losing their homes, their jobs, their uninsured loved ones to illness. Go faster than the nanosecond news cycle. You will drive the News Brain insane.
Come up with a slogan a day. Something like (forgive my forwardness) “No representation without taxation.” Increase and diversify the velocity of your messages to a maddening pace.
Make the cameras come to you. Stay away from the talk shows, the TV studios. The other night I watched one of your protesters appear on the Charlie Rose Show with two famous economists and a prominent Harvard professor of public policy. It took only a few minutes before the three establishment figures, for all their obvious good will toward your movement, seized control of the conversation and started talking past your young man as if he wasn’t there. Before my very eyes, the status quo you are trying to change erased your attempts to change it. Come on, people. Charlie’s show is owned by Mayor Bloomberg, for heaven’s sake. Bloomberg has fought tooth and nail against the banking regulations you are calling for and has spoken out stridently against raising taxes on the wealthy. It's his cops who mace and pepper spray you and chase you down every time you demonstrate outside the park. Be savvy. We live in strange times.
For every unflattering image of you that they capture, put out a dozen meaningful ones on YouTube and other social media. You are what the Internet was made for. Make it the enemy of the mainstream camera.
Keep the celebrities away. I’ve never known one who was able to resist an invitation to the summer homes of the bankers you so rightly want to hold to account. And when it comes to taxes, Hollywood is closer to your enemies than to you. Hollywood loves to tell stories about social injustice and economic inequality. But it loves money more. There is a Bono for aid to Africa. There is no Bono for higher taxes on the wealthy.
More, more, more street theater! Menacing figures strangling ordinary people with the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Groups of people, stained with something that looks like blood, sitting in the middle of Park Avenue with their hands raised to the sky like beggars, crying “Insure us! Insure us!” Pregnant women marching on the banks with placards reading “Let Our Children Go… To College.” They want to reduce you to unflattering stories; instead, you overwhelm them with unforgettable pantomimes. That way you keep your message concrete and universal, and make conveying it an original experience all at once.
Daily memos to the nation, simply, rationally, eloquently describing the conditions you abhor, and outlining the solutions you advocate. This will nicely counterbalance the spectacle of street theater.
some very good ideas. remaining leaderless is very hard for the media to handle, no one to attack.
"We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world... and ideas are bulletproof. " - V for Vendetta
Great ideas here. I like the idea of being leaderless and remaining so. We all know what we stand for and what we're about. We don't need a primary "spokesperson" for them to attack and reduce the movement to that one individual. The whole point, I believe, is that we are the 99%. We are bringing visibility and exposure to the fact that we are individuals (with lives and families) that have become practically invisible to to the tune of this 1%. Our country should not revolve completely around them. All of us matter, all of us count.
And I think we'll change and influence a whole lot of things in the days to come.
All we are trying to do is bring back balance to how our country runs. That is evident. This has been lost to corporate and political greed. We are calling attention to the major problems that affect us and are coming up with our own solutions as we go along. I like that fact that we are not "endorsing" a particular political candidate, party or religious figure either. OWS is much bigger than that.
Thanks for clearing some things up.
the directions go on too long
a mark of the new generation's ADHD attention span?
I tried to teach D&D to an ADHD
very frustrating
lol, sounds like good times.
a necessity to recognize human limitations of comprehension load
This was copied from the Daily Beast. it is a good article.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/14/how-occupy-wall-street-can-avoid-cooptation.html
Well said. However, many more people will come to your side when you are proactive (for “new” Business & Government solutions), instead of reactive (against “old” Business & Government solutions), which is why what we most immediately need is a comprehensive “new” strategy that implements all our various socioeconomic demands at the same time, regardless of party, and although I'm all in favor of taking down today's ineffective and inefficient Top 10% Management System of Business & Government, there's only one way to do it – by fighting bankers as bankers ourselves; that is, using a Focused Direct Democracy organized according to our current Occupations & Generations. Consequently, I have posted a 1-page Summary of the Strategically Weighted Policies, Organizational Operating Structures, and Tactical Investment Procedures necessary to do this at:
http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/on_strategic_legal_policy_organizational_operational_structures_tactical_investment_procedures
Join
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/StrategicInternationalSystems/
because we need 100,000 “support clicks” at AmericansElect.org to support a Presidential Candidate -- such as any given political opportunist you'd like to draft -- in support of the above bank-focused platform.
Most importantly, remember, as cited in the first link, that as Bank Owner-Voters in your 1 of 48 "new" Business Investment Groups (or "new" Congressional Committees) you become the "new" Congress replacing the "old" Congress according to your current Occupation & Generation, called a Focused Direct Democracy.
Therefore, any Candidate (or Leader) therein, regardless of party, is a straw man, a puppet; it's the STRATEGY – the sequence of steps – that the people organize themselves under, in Military Internet Formation of their Individual Purchasing & Group Investment Power, that's important. In this, sequence is key.
Why? Because there are Natural Social Laws – in mathematical sequence – that are just like Natural Physical Laws, such as the Law of Gravity. You must follow those Natural Social Laws or the result will be Injustice, War, etc.
The FIRST step in Natural Social Law is to CONTROL the Banks as Bank Owner-Voters. If you do not, you will inevitably be UNJUSTLY EXPLOITED by the Top 10% Management Group of Business & Government who have a Legitimate Profit Motive, just like you, to do so.
Consequently, you have no choice but to become Candidates (or Leaders) yourselves as Bank Owner-Voters according to your current Occupation & Generation.
So please JOIN the 2nd link so we can make our support clicks at AmericansElect.org when called for, at exactly the right time, by an e-mail from that group, in support of the above the bank-focused platform. If so, then you will see and feel how your goals can be accomplished within the above strategy as a “new” Candidate (or Leader) of your current Occupation & Generation.
Many, many good suggestions here!
I particularly like : "Have some real people with real stories—perhaps their faces covered with black hoods as though they were in government custody; you get the idea—tell their heartbreaking tales of losing their homes, their jobs, their uninsured loved ones to illness. "
GIVE ORDINARY AMERICANS A VOICE : that will touch the hearts of the American public more than any Harvard professor ever can. OWS is THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE - a truly amazing phenomenon in this age of Dem-and-Repug frauds. You guys are CHANGING THE CULTURE, do you realize that???
Spot on!
I agree. it's not that we're without a leader. its that everyone is encouraged to be their own leader. we need the people to take responsibility for themselves and their country