HURRY, HARD HATS:

Occupational Hazards (Hendrik Hertzberg, November 7, 2011, New Yorker)

Winter is coming. The strategy of static outdoor encampments is straining the patience even of sympathetic mayors in cities like Oakland, where last week riot police stormed the site and a Marine veteran was left in critical condition. If the weather and the cops pare the numbers in the camps, it's far from unimaginable that ideologues in the mold of the Old New Left--people for whom the problem is "capitalism" per se, as opposed to a political economy rigged to benefit the rich at the expense of the rest--could end up dominant. As it is, the Occupiers' brand of romantic participatory democracy can too easily render their decision-making vulnerable to a truculent few. In the most notorious example, Representative John Lewis, the revered civil-rights hero, was prevented from speaking at Occupy Atlanta--not because the crowd didn't want to hear from him (the great majority did, as they signalled, in the movement's semaphore language, with raised hands and wiggling fingers) but because one man clenched his fists and crossed his forearms, thereby exercising a consensus-breaking "block." A vegan filibuster, you might say. The pollsters tell us that Americans like O.W.S.'s essential message. They like the Occupiers, too--not as much as they like the message, but more than they like the Tea Party. But if the pressures of hypothermia, frustration, and correcter-than-thou one-upmanship converge to push them toward more provocative, less mellow forms of civil disobedience--"occupying" a nice warm state capitol building, for example--the messengers will mess up the message. And the public will cross its fists.

Posted by oj at November 4, 2011 6:20 AM
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