The promotional material for this fall’s “Occupy Wall Street” protests in New York City appeared more like the lead up to a blockbuster movie than a mass demonstration. A poster for the event created by Adbusters, one of the organizations that called for the protest, shows a woman dancing atop Wall Street’s iconic bronze bull as a mass of hooded and masked protesters stands behind a gassy haze. There’s a great deal of hype that’s gone into the movement.
As I watch the protests in New York unfold, I’m reminded of the fervor Wisconsinites saw earlier this year, when hundreds of thousands protested against Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to eliminate collective bargaining rights. Wisconsin didn’t see cinematic posters or a preset start date, just a genuinely concerned reaction from the state’s middle class.
But unlike the Wisconsin protests, a truly grassroots reaction to a disturbing piece of legislation that still is at least electorally active, Occupy Wall Street will fizzle away into historical irrelevancy, similar to also-astroturfed Tea Party protests that began with President Barack Obama’s inauguration.
In Wisconsin, we witnessed a completely unique situation – possibly the closest thing to a peaceful political revolt we’ll ever see in the Midwest. The movement grew over time, reaching a swell when elected representatives fled the state and endorsed the protesters. This allowed the movement to remain peaceful and avoid police brutality, and cast Republicans as the villains in an unprecedented political drama.
But we’ll likely never see that same kind of political endorsement or upper hand with the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Arab nations, where protests are inevitably compared to American ones, activists had been chipping away at governments in Tunisia and Egypt for decades. The protests that brought them to their demise were the culmination of 40 years of repression, only this time broadcast on a worldwide basis to apply political pressure to figures like Hosni Mubarak.
Although you’ll see people from across the world call for pizza deliveries – this time maybe from John’s Pizzeria instead of Ian’s – in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, you’ll rarely see major political figures like Barack Obama endorse the protests. They’ve already tried to reform Wall Street practices and failed. In this case, those pushing for changes on Wall Street truly have the only option of electing representatives who will be tough on the financial sector.
Many are skeptical of this approach and say politicians never carry out the change they promise. This is true, but it is also the harsh reality of all revolutions – electoral or not. A successful non-electoral political movement is rare. Luckily for progressive Wisconsinites, the movement has been condensed enough to allow current and possibly future success on an electoral scale. The broad and unfocused Occupy Wall Street movement, however, will not achieve this, even though it takes some inspiration from what happened at the Capitol.
The causes of Occupy Wall Street are, for the most part, noble. Nobody wants to see the U.S. plunge into an oligarchy characterized by unprecedented income inequality. But given the highly-established political system in which we live, combined with many Americans’ lack of understanding of what income inequality even looks like, it’s hard to believe the American people as a whole will want to embrace a populist or, dare I say, socialist agenda until the inequality, the poverty and the crime smacks us directly in the face.
This was the phenomenon in Brazil, a country similar in some regards to the U.S. President Lula da Silva ran for office several times on a labor party ticket before eventually taking office to become the nation’s most popular figure in 2002. During Lula’s term, income inequality in Brazil decreased dramatically, along with crime. Most impressively, his two terms in office came after decades of rule by oligarchs and, before them, a military dictatorship.
We don’t have the same kind of problems Brazil had, but Wall Street oligarchs will, unfortunately, continue to dominate political scene. Wall Street’s enemies, trade unions and political progressives, cannot do much to change that. But as we’ve seen in Wisconsin, some movements can be successful when they take preventative and electoral action to preserve the middle class. Occupy Wall Street won’t do anything on that scale. It will only embarrass liberals, just as the Tea Party has embarrassed conservatives.
Ryan Rainey ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism and Latin American studies.
UPDATE: In a Washington Post story released after this column, Russ Feingold said he endorses the Occupy Wall Street movement. His name has been removed from the online copy of the column to reflect this.
