This is History by Alexis


The reason why the Occupy Wall Street movement is already a success is simple. If you can look beyond the big to-do being made about the movement's lack of direction and leadership, and instead consider the action of the movement as a whole, it becomes quite obvious that they have already accomplished their number one goal: to begin the discussion about the elephant in the room. Although the many participants of various demonstrations have quite different personal objectives, such as ending corporatocracy, auditing the Federal Reserve, and taxing the rich, they all agree that enough is enough.

The nearsighted and narrow-minded Bill O'Reilly, of FOX news lays it out there, "These demonstrators come from a variety of places. Some are hardcore communists, some are socialists, and some are just confused and/or looking for some action. Most of these people don't know the big picture, they're just out there protesting whatever beef they may have." What Bill O'Reilly fails to see, but New Jersey governor Chris Christie understands clearly, is that the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement have something in common that is at the core of both political movements: Our "government is dysfunctional."

Occupy Wall Street is about exercising the inalienable right of free speech, the right to peaceful assembly, and the right to petition without fear of punishment or reprisals. The persistence of the Occupy Wall Street movement into its second month of occupation, the spread of the movement to most major cities and many smaller cities across America, and the sudden response to the Occupy movement being reflected in over 80 countries worldwide, should be waking up the establishment.

Once an idea has come into existence, good or bad, it can live on forever. An idea can be given away but it is impossible to take away an idea. Jeffrey Tucker, in the presentation, "How to Reject the Statist Quo," argues that the best way to bring about social change on the behalf of liberty, is accomplished in the "realm of ideas." Ideas, according to the Austrian Economist, Ludwig von Mises, are, "effective," and it is, "not mythical or material productive forces, but reason and ideas, that determine the course of human affairs."  

Because the "Occupy" movement is truly organic in nature, the lack of leadership and a defined agenda has left this extraordinary movement exposed to a hijacking by politicos and Nobel Prize seeking economists alike. There is no consistent message among the demonstrators because there does not need to be. This is not a particular group of individuals representing a particular set of ideals, but a conglomerate of interests, all seeking to be heard. It is simply, but tellingly, the desire to be heard that unites this wide spectrum of political and philosophical ideologies.  

If I were the establishment I would be shaking in my boots, because the conversation has begun and the ideas are evolving. Change is inevitable.

-Tasunke Witko