Occupy Wall Street’s Day of Action: the 1% Strikes Back

Michael Drew in reply to James Hanley says:

“a large portion” is vague.  20% could be a large portion. In fact, I would say it would be if we are talking about support for what happened this week in NYC.  But at the same time that 20% would be a large number to support such actions, given the actions, a plurality could simultaneously oppose them.  So it’s not clear hat you’re claiming here (again, about things about which there is a fact of the matter without citing anything).

It’s still less clear what you are suggesting is the case about public reaction to cities’ responses to OWS, since you say that a large number approve of “this response.”  The subject of the post and in this thread is the specific response in New York this week.  Are you saying you already have a poll on that?  That would be remarkable.

More likely, you are referring to some polling you have seen about police response generally to OWS across the country, prior to this week (if you are referring to any real polling).  It’s very relevant what the phrasing was of any survey questions that were asked in whatever polls you would refer to to substantiate your claim here.  If the question was “Do you support cities’ right to disperse protesters in order to maintain order and safety?”, the results you are likely to get are going to be of one kind.  If it is, “Do you support the actions the NYPD took Nov. 15-18th?” followed by an accurate description (highly unlikely), the results are likely to be something rather different.

Lastly, are you so sure that you are strategically in tune with OWS enough to be able to say what hey do and don’t need to face up to?  What about OWS has suggested that they have chosen tactics meant to win a popularity contest in the heartland, or even to try to engender broad sympathy for the group itself?  It seems to me that fro the beginning they have been seeking to be maximally obnoxious to the end of increasing attention to a group of issues that middle-class Americans are strongly (in the 60% range) aligned with them on.  Even while the popularity of the group has fallen, peoples’ views of the issues themselves have remained roughly steady, while the media discussion has swung strongly toward those issues from concerns over spending and debt.

“Fac[ing] up to” the reality you assert exists amount to other than abandoning the approach that has had precisely the effect OWS has intended their methods to have, and what reason from their perspective is there for them to do that?

Will Wilkinson and Julian Sanchez have similarly had enough and are crying Uncle.  ‘You’ve made your point, now de-escalate and come back to the democratic bargaining table (where we are more confident we can defeat you with what we regard as our hyper-rational dismissals of your concerns),’ or even, ‘Please  decamp to your assigned partisan corner and limit your democratic participation to the parameters that have traditionally applied to these types of debates in the two-party system.  In other words, ‘Please just let things go back to how they were before you so profoundly changed the facts on the ground.  We liked it better that way.’

But why would they do that?  To please The Economist’s WW? The movement from the start was a statement about the demonstrated insufficiency of those arrangements to address the issues the movement was concerned with. Matthew Yglesias says, “You Can’t Abandon Electoral Politics,” but, though some activists no doubt has done this, the movement as a whole certainly has not foresworn electoral politics as an object upon which to try to exert its influence.  But how is this advanced by lowering the pressure of elected officials by discontinuing the high-visibility, confrontational approach that has made the movement something worth discussion in the first place?

We should think it will because the public narrowly supports the police’s efforts to take back the streets and and public spaces?  I don’t see a great public outcry on that question, I just see at most a divided response to a question that was put to them.  On the other hand, I do see robust public support for the issues OWS is making a nuisance of themselves over.  If that was not the case, it would not matter what they did – certainly brash tactics would not help to popularize an unpopular program.  But that’s not the situation.  They have a popular agenda that they are bringing visibility to, which is raising the pressure on politicians to come up with a response.  The group’s popularity is suffering as a result, but not the agenda’s.  I don’t see how now changing to a strategy of deescalation and civil engagement on the terms that pre-existed the movement will serve to keep the pressure on policy makers. And keeping pressure on policy makers is how you advance a policy agenda by participating in democracy (as if gathering in public spaces and marching in the streets, even to the point of occupying the public spaces indefinitely to force authorities to choose to use force to disperse your expressive gathering in the legitimate though elective end of reclaiming the space for public use and maintenance was not also already a quintessential way to participate in democracy).

It’s remarkable to see how quickly some libertarians suddenly about face and assert the legitimacy and supposedly representative nature of our democratic institutions when the real alternative to those institutions – unmediated democracy itself – pokes its nose under the tent.  Suddenly our creaky institutional infrastructure becomes the only legitimate vein for expression of democratic impulses, as if the people relinquished the prerogative to take more direct democratic action when the representative institutions were established.  Remarkable indeed.Report