Yes, #occupywallst and Occupy Wall Street...two separate but related entities. This week, in my course Self & Society in Virtual Contexts, my students are reading and contributing to the discussion on the theme: Negotiating Identities, Online and Off; my students in a course (unfortunately) called Strategic Presentation Methods are reading about the potential efficacy of web-based/facilitated social movements (crudely, Wired magazine and Dave Karpf stand on one side; Malcolm Gladwell and Micah White on the other).
The sentiments criticized in the Occupy Wall Street movement are old; they are peculiar to late capitalism. I detailed the trend in a slew of recent documentaries to try to shed light on the effects of corporate culture on American citizens' lived realities, and many of these were Oscar contenders. These complaints aren't new, nor are they radical.
But perhaps in order to get anything done, something radical needs to happen. Something as radical as taking over a private park, open to the public, in lower Manhattan, and amassing a group of people so large it is impossible to ignore them. Social media and digital technologies in general have allowed the movement to find allies in the employed, the geographically dispersed, and those that have stepped out ofZuccotti Liberty Park -- that has been a nice complement to the movement. But that can't be all.
How often do you hear the words "corporate greed/malfeasance/irresponsibility" in the news? Consuming information through media -- especially digital media -- allows one to easily ignore whatever one wants to easily ignore. Unless one is glued to television or radio news, one consumes news a la carte. With digital technologies, certain users can be unknowingly kept from information with filter bubbles.
And so, Occupy Wall Street.
One of my closest friends is currently mired in a project at work. Quite apart from the quality or quantity of coverage on the protests, he was too busy to be informed. And even when he tried to find a point of entry into understanding the movement's motives, he felt detached. "Can I follow someone on Twitter? Who are these people?" he asked. I found it difficult to make it personal. The movement is a collective. They hold public assemblies nightly to discuss their priorities, their grievances, their demands. No one person -- not even Naomi Klein -- is a spokesperson for the movement. It is leaderless but informed (new CNN host Erin Burnett looks like a fool when she makes attacks on the protestors' choice of leisure activities and thinks she can bring them down with one fact not presented with proper context; SNL alum Victoria Jackson had one fact in her arsenal too -- the President of GE has donated to Obama's campaign -- she apparently forgot Occupy Wall Street is not an Obama rally.).
All of this is to say that an unfortunate fact of the movement is that it doesn't translate well or easily to those only passively observing. The true value of the campaign is feeling like you're a part of it -- talking to other people about the problems. Like our psychologists have been encouraging us, it's best to talk about our ills, and it seems we have a lot to say about globalized capitalism. The #occupywallst movement (i.e. the online component) has been beneficial only to those who have engaged in it, have felt like they are taking part in a conversation, where repressed feelings are finally coming out into the cyber-air. Sadly, the originalZuccotti Liberty Park location of Occupy Wall Street might be gone tomorrow, and we will have lost a symbolic physical space for an airing of our feelings, of our grievances.
Online, the 99% groups, tumblrs and memes have been effective in creating a place to mull over the issues and contribute to the conversation. Responses to groups calling themselves the 53% (the % of Americans who pay taxes) have been incredibly constructive and useful -- powerful. It's all fine and dandy to be flaunting your Protestant work ethic, but wouldn't you rather all work be put to better ends than it is in a corporate culture?
And it will take much effort to find new physical spaces and to encourage digital ones to continue this therapeutic experience. It's been good for us.
Matt Taibi in Rolling Stone has an attractive plan of action, but wouldn't it be more exciting to work it out together?
Tomorrow we find out if we have a new geography.
photo credit: christina dunbar-hester
photo credit: Mat McDermott
The sentiments criticized in the Occupy Wall Street movement are old; they are peculiar to late capitalism. I detailed the trend in a slew of recent documentaries to try to shed light on the effects of corporate culture on American citizens' lived realities, and many of these were Oscar contenders. These complaints aren't new, nor are they radical.
But perhaps in order to get anything done, something radical needs to happen. Something as radical as taking over a private park, open to the public, in lower Manhattan, and amassing a group of people so large it is impossible to ignore them. Social media and digital technologies in general have allowed the movement to find allies in the employed, the geographically dispersed, and those that have stepped out of
How often do you hear the words "corporate greed/malfeasance/irresponsibility" in the news? Consuming information through media -- especially digital media -- allows one to easily ignore whatever one wants to easily ignore. Unless one is glued to television or radio news, one consumes news a la carte. With digital technologies, certain users can be unknowingly kept from information with filter bubbles.
And so, Occupy Wall Street.
One of my closest friends is currently mired in a project at work. Quite apart from the quality or quantity of coverage on the protests, he was too busy to be informed. And even when he tried to find a point of entry into understanding the movement's motives, he felt detached. "Can I follow someone on Twitter? Who are these people?" he asked. I found it difficult to make it personal. The movement is a collective. They hold public assemblies nightly to discuss their priorities, their grievances, their demands. No one person -- not even Naomi Klein -- is a spokesperson for the movement. It is leaderless but informed (new CNN host Erin Burnett looks like a fool when she makes attacks on the protestors' choice of leisure activities and thinks she can bring them down with one fact not presented with proper context; SNL alum Victoria Jackson had one fact in her arsenal too -- the President of GE has donated to Obama's campaign -- she apparently forgot Occupy Wall Street is not an Obama rally.).
All of this is to say that an unfortunate fact of the movement is that it doesn't translate well or easily to those only passively observing. The true value of the campaign is feeling like you're a part of it -- talking to other people about the problems. Like our psychologists have been encouraging us, it's best to talk about our ills, and it seems we have a lot to say about globalized capitalism. The #occupywallst movement (i.e. the online component) has been beneficial only to those who have engaged in it, have felt like they are taking part in a conversation, where repressed feelings are finally coming out into the cyber-air. Sadly, the original
Online, the 99% groups, tumblrs and memes have been effective in creating a place to mull over the issues and contribute to the conversation. Responses to groups calling themselves the 53% (the % of Americans who pay taxes) have been incredibly constructive and useful -- powerful. It's all fine and dandy to be flaunting your Protestant work ethic, but wouldn't you rather all work be put to better ends than it is in a corporate culture?
And it will take much effort to find new physical spaces and to encourage digital ones to continue this therapeutic experience. It's been good for us.
Matt Taibi in Rolling Stone has an attractive plan of action, but wouldn't it be more exciting to work it out together?
Tomorrow we find out if we have a new geography.
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