Collective Conscious

From Jose Saramago’s See­ing:

The most com­mon occur­rence in this world of ours, in these days of stum­bling blindly, is to come across men and women mature in years and ripe in pros­per­ity, who, at eigh­teen, were not just beam­ing bea­cons of style, but also, and per­haps above all, bold rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies deter­mined to bring down the sys­tem sup­ported by their par­ents and to replace it, at last, with a fra­ter­nal par­adise, but who are now equally and firmly attached to con­vic­tions and prac­tices which, hav­ing warmed up and flexed their mus­cles on any of the avail­able ver­sions of mod­er­ate con­ser­vatism, become, in time, pure ego­tism of the most obscene and reac­tionary kind. Put less respect­fully, these men and these women, stand­ing before the mir­ror of their life, spit every day in the face of what they were with the spu­tum of what they are. The fact that a politi­cian belong­ing to the party on the right, a man in his for­ties, who has spent his whole life under the para­sol of a tra­di­tion cooled by the air-​​conditioning of the stock exchange and lulled by the steamy zephyr of the mar­kets, should have been open to the rev­e­la­tion, or, indeed, man­i­fest cer­tainty, that there was some deeper mean­ing behind the gen­tle rebel­lion in the city he had been appointed to admin­is­ter, is some­thing that is both wor­thy of record and deserv­ing of our grat­i­tude, so unac­cus­tomed have we become to such sin­gu­lar phenomena.

What hap­pens when these same twen­tysome­things have no pros­per­ity in hand? Can we hope that their rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vor will hold up not for just in an out­burst against the sys­tem, but for the long slog that might even­tu­ally cre­ate mean­ing­ful change?

Notes From an Occu­pa­tion:

It’s fun, low-​​key, and also pro­found. It needs peo­ple join­ing, stop­ping by, empha­siz­ing our right to be there, and prov­ing that Wall Street is a pop­u­lar pos­ses­sion. You can sit and chat with peo­ple. The main group has formed com­mit­tees and holds a twice-​​daily Gen­eral Assem­bly, to judge what it is they are all there to say, and also to do the prac­ti­cal work of keep­ing the protest together and at peace with the police.

Back at Zuc­cotti Park:

Across the plaza, the Gen­eral Assem­bly was still going on. Rus­sell Sim­mons briefly addressed the crowd , fol­lowed by a woman who knew how to cro­chet and pro­posed start­ing a group to make hats, scarves, and gloves. It was, she said, going to get cold soon. It was already rain­ing, and I left. On the train home, I opened the book I’d brought with me and found in it the words for what it was I’d felt in the park: “The present win­ter is worth an age if rightly employed.”

Occu­pied Wall Street: Some Tac­ti­cal Thoughts

It seems to me that the tac­tic of an occu­pa­tion has two main goals, nei­ther of which the Zuc­cotti Park encamp­ment is achiev­ing. The first would be some sort of sab­o­tage or inter­fer­ence that halts busi­ness as usual. When you hear “occupy Wall Street,” you don’t think Soviet tanks rolling into Prague, but there’s a sug­ges­tion of inter­rup­tion. We want to occupy Wall Street because we want to make them stop what they’re doing. Camp­ing in a park out­side their office isn’t how you make them stop, it’s how you ask them to prom if you’re creepy about it*. It’s not like we’re even cost­ing any CEO his beauty sleep “HeyHeyLBJ”-style. They all go home at night. When you walk to the encamp­ment, it’s hard to real­ize anything’s hap­pen­ing until you get up and inside. It is painfully clear that the peo­ple who work there could not give a fuck. Wall Street’s crisis-​​business goes on as usual, under “occu­pa­tion” or not.

The Sound and the Fury: A Cri­tique of Occupy Wall Street

So, once again, is this going any­where? We’re not sure. If they can get some demands together (which some pro­tes­tors are actively oppos­ing), sev­eral big unions will pledge sup­port. An increase in age and class diver­sity would do them well. In addi­tion, the media black­out has swept the actions under the rug, but Saturday’s bla­tant police bru­tal­ity has made head­lines. There are some really com­mit­ted peo­ple there and hope­fully they can get some orga­ni­za­tion going. Right now they have the sound and the fury; they just need some­thing to sig­nify. We’ll be back out there with them, but prob­a­bly not until next week­end. After all, we have to work.