To me, the reasons are simple.
What we are dealing with on the opposite side of the ideological battle lines are people who got what they have by being aggressive and assertive. To them, passivity is no more than an invitation to be exploited. The one percent did not get to be the one percent by sitting back and waiting for someone to agree that they should wealthier than God. They got their wealth and their power by pursuing it with zeal, dedication and sometimes ruthlessness. Not only do they not understand passivity, they disdain it, in many cases seeing it in the same contempt that that the 99% see their greed and avarice. These are, in large part, the people who see themselves as 21 st Century warriors locked in battles with their enemies (competitors) in a war where victory belongs to the last man standing.
Of course, this is a generalization, just as it is to say that all wealthy people are greedy and that no one who makes eight or nine figures per year could possibly be part of the Occupy cause. There are always exceptions. But generalizations are generalizations because they are more prevalent than the exceptions and therefore more widely true.
The Occupy Movement can indeed survive -- and succeed. But it will have to change its tactics and its approach to do so. It faces a turning point at this time, and depending on which way it turns, it will erect a new signpost for the future; either it will read "we submit" or "we win."
The first thing that needs to happen -- as happened in Mobile and some other sites around the country -- is to get out of the parks and squares and into the street. Get into the halls of government, into the citadels of business and finance, into the sight lines and earshots of those who need to understand that the movement is real and is not going away.
Secondly, it must relinquish the naivete of absolute anarchy in favor of a more realistic approach. As one philosophy professor I had defined anarchy, it is not the absence of leaders, but the natural emergence of natural leaders. In other words, the anarchy he defined is one where leaders become leaders by their demonstrated worthiness and responsibility to those who allow them to lead, not by election but by consensus. There are leaders within the movement, and good ones, who can set the course for the future. But as long as the movement refuses to acknowledge that leaders are needed, there will be no course set and no course followed. The ship of change will simply wander through one current to the next and aimlessly float wherever those currents take them. If that is true, why should anyone in power pay attention to it? After all, the philosophy of the Soviet Union in dealing diplomatically with the US during the Cold War was to simply wait for the next election. If they couldn't deal favorably with one administration, there would be another come along in no more than eight years, so all they had to do was sit back and keep an eye on the electoral mood to see how to get what they wanted. The same holds true of the one percent. As long as they don't have to confront an organized, focused opposition, they have only to wait until it all blows over.
Thirdly, the activism has to be real and it has to hit where the one percent feels it most. One of the pivotal events in the Civil Rights Movement was the Montgomery (AL) Bus Boycott, now recognized as the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. The boycott lasted 381 days and nearly crippled the Montgomery transit system. It set the tone for hundreds of boycotts around the country, each focused on getting the message home: "If you want what we have, you give us what we want." Even though a large portion of WalMart shoppers agree in principle with the right of the employees to organize and deplore the oppressive management of the company, the corporation still succeeds in its anti-union strategy because those same customers still shop there. As long as WalMart makes money, it has not concern over morality or ethics and why should it? If people truly believed in what they were saying, they'd put it into action, right?
So, if the Occupy Movement wants to create a new economic structure or to level the playing field of the one we have, it needs to put its actions where its thoughts are. I wonder how many Occupiers absentmindedly stop in a Starbucks for their coffee on the way to the protest? How many buy their clothes from national chain stores or run out to buy the latest techno-gadget or download the latest app for their smart phones?
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