‘Just being here is enough’

Yes­ter­day at Occupy DC we were treated to a teach-​​in by Pro­fes­sor Lawrence Lessig. His call was, above all, for unity; he said that all that set the Occupy move­ment apart was its abil­ity stay united. He said that unity should extend to all com­ers, includ­ing Tea Partiers whose own move­ment seems on the verge of peter­ing out; that our com­mon ground is the com­mon crisis.

But the com­mon cri­sis he meant wasn’t the cri­sis that some of us had in mind. It was not the cri­sis of cap­i­tal­ism. Instead Lessig meant for us to con­verge on the cri­sis of con­fi­dence — the faith that so many of us have lost in the abil­ity of our gov­ern­ments to hear the voice of the people.

No mat­ter what each of us want to see out of gov­ern­ment, Lessig said, Occupy is not the time or place or move­ment for pol­icy pro­pos­als. These fights are impor­tant, but the fact that pol­icy has become so unre­spon­sive is a symp­tom of a deeper fault in the struc­ture of gov­ern­ment — and fix­ing a favored pol­icy will not solve that deep problem.

What we can all agree on, lib­eral and con­ser­v­a­tive alike, is the need for a gov­ern­ment that will hear us cry. A gov­ern­ment that will feel our pain. A gov­ern­ment of, after all, the peo­ple, whose flesh is our flesh and whose blood is our blood.

We ask for a gov­ern­ment based on the prin­ci­ple of equal­ity among men — that one vote be one voice, and that all voices be heard equally.

Occupy, here, in its bones, feels that need. When the Gen­eral Assem­bly con­venes each day, it hears every voice. To my mind there is noth­ing that strikes more true at our cri­sis of con­fi­dence than the pres­ence here of a gov­ern­ment that works. In micro­cosm, Occupy is just that. Occupy hears every voice, weights nobody’s by the size of their bank account, and pro­ceeds in action only with the con­sent of the whole group.

If you are present, the voice of Occupy is your voice. Its flesh is your flesh, its blood your blood. Peo­ple won­der what the move­ment demands, what its goals are. I won­dered too before I went.

Now I know: Just being here is enough.

19 October 2011 – 9:24 am | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Politics | Comments (263)