There's no easy way to define Occupy Wall Street. That's part of what's made it hard for the media – and those involved in the protests – to wrap their arms around the movement.
Many people have questioned the movement's legitimacy, since it has no clear leadership, nor a clear list of demands or solutions to the economic inequalities it rails against.
It also raises endgame questions.
What would it actually take to say, yes, this movement of protest, spurred by a large group of people across the country and world, was a successful movement? Or is it too early to even assess what impact it may have had?
Would success need to come in the form of large reforms being passed regarding jobs, unemployment and economic policies that affect Wall Street – or even of President Obama losing re-election? Would it be adjustment of our current government model to one that more accurately reflects what protesters want?
Jeffrey D. Sachs, an expert in economics, visited the Occupy Wall Street crowd in New York's Zuccotti Park early in October and suggested that success could come in the form of a change in what groups politicians look to for influence (hint: not the 1% that can shell out money for dinners with the politicians). He also said the protesters needed to elect a government that will represent the 99%.
"What are we going to do when we get it? We are going to re-establish government for the people. The people need help and the government is there to help. So with all that income of the 1%, there's some pretty good things to do."
Sachs suggests that the 99% could make a lot of changes with the money of the 1% – including spreading the wealth to close the financial equality gap, while taxing the rich in order to use the money to fix our struggling economy as well as bringing our troops home.
Some have suggested you wouldn't need a re-established government or new policies as a whole to be a success – just a defeat for Obama.
Jonah Goldberg, an American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow, wrote for the National Review about the Occupy Wall Street movement's potential to have political success like the tea party:
"There's only one way the Occupy Wall Street movement can become like the tea parties, and that’s for Barack Obama to lose in 2012. Why? Because Obama is the most divisive figure in American politics today. ...
If Occupy Wall Street is a sincere, organic, grassroots movement for radical change and overturning the status quo, it can’t be 100 percent behind the guy who’s been running the country for the last three years.
Moreover, Democrats had near total control of the government for Obama’s first two years. Together, Obama and congressional Democrats already got their Wall Street and student-loan reforms, their health-care overhaul, and a huge stimulus. And yet Occupy Wall Street is still furious with the political status quo. Does anyone believe Obama can both run on his record and co-opt the Occupy Wall Streeters?"
Joseph Lazzaro, the U.S. editor at the International Business Times, notes that while some on the right may believe unseating Obama is the key to ending the movement, it won't end what jump-started the movement.
"Tea party supporters, and other conservatives, argue that if only President Barack Obama is defeated, or more Republicans are elected to Congress (and more Democrats voted out of Congress) or more unions are broken up, that will be the end of Occupy Wall Street, and the nation's economic and social problems.
In sum, the U.S.'s economic and social problems are there, Occupy Wall Street headlines or not."
NPR dedicated a segment to asking people what they felt would spell success for the movement. One listener suggested it would come in the form of presenting the movement's own political candidates and a voting bloc. Another suggested success was simply about raising greater awareness and continuing the path the movement is on. Others suggested that it meant specific reform in campaign finance laws and bankruptcy regulations.
So, you've got passing reform, ousting the leader of our country, and engagement in the political process as options. But is a defined, significant goal like that the only way to measure success? Does it depend on whether the Occupy protesters can literally weather the cold fronts that are upon them? Or is it possible you could already call the movement a winner because it has invigorated a group of people, who may not have been politically active before, to stand up and say they are unhappy with the status quo?
Don McNay, the author of "Wealth Without Wall Street: A Main Street Guide to Making Money" wrote for the Huffington Post that the movement has allowed that group and the silent majority that supports it to have a wider voice in the public discourse.
"The days of clamping down free speech with violence are over. The average citizen, using social media, has too many ways to communicate, organize and stand up to oppression.
I think it will be difficult for the Occupy movement to maintain its outdoor protests through the cold winter months, but I expect the seeds of their protest to have an impact for years.
Already, they have had an immediate victory."
While we may not know, or be able to really put into words, what a finish line looks like for the Occupy movement, there are a few things that can give us some insight on how its ideas are entering the national dialogue. Google took the time to dedicate a blog post to looking at what search terms might tell us about the movement's impact.
"Search interest for (Occupy Wall Street) jumped ahead of the (tea party) on September 24, and hasn’t looked back. In a historical context, when viewing the snapshot of their nascent birth, we can see the peak of (Occupy Wall Street) has slightly more interest in American than searches for the (tea party) did during the groups peak in 2009."
So what would success for the movement look like to you? Do you think there is a finish line in sight? Let us know your thoughts below.
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Success for the Occupy movement to me would be when the courts no longer consider corporations a 'person'.
identify a viable candidate for every race in 2012
Isn't that going a litte bit far? I mean, Texas is a nice place, Rick Perry notwithstanding. I'm here in San Antonio and would really not like to be nuked. How about we just decide to nuke Houston? That place is the pit of hell, anyway.
Houston's not that bad. If i had a place in Texas to nuke it would probably be Waco, nothing good comes from Waco.
"Yea really, a place where no one has to work and the government provides everything for everyone" Not this, how about a place where everyone works cuz the government provides them with a job that supports the lifestyle our greedy 1% created. There will always be a private secor that will benefit from the spending of the government sector. In the end both sides win and the money stays within THE USA.
You're socialist Utopia is rediculus...How about you get a job, stop depending on the 99% who don't agree or care about your anarchist movement that feed you parasites
"I hate everyone"
I'm sure we all feel like that sometimes but the truth is the only way to move forward is find some common ground people. Tea Party or OWS, you both want change and resorted to radical measures to try and achive that change get over the things that make you different and focus and what makes you the same. Once we come together then i believe we can change our country for the better.
Thats my two cents, negitive commentary, since your coming anyways try and be original for a change. :-p
I think you would be hardpressed to find people who don't "agree" with OWS. Yeah, there's unemployment, yes there is student debt, etc etc and these things are bad. Clearly, we're all on the same page about what the problems are. How they will be ameliorated, however, is an entirely different issues entirely. I have trouble respecting a group who quotes Wikipedia in their agenda/manifesto instead of searching the Library of Congress online for the laws they reference. The second part of success in any group is how they represent themselves and how they express their grievances AND what their solutions are. From what I can tell, OWS is a far cry from being taken seriously at any point in the future.
They are being taken seriously enough for you to start out by first showing YOUR support for their cause. Their cause is your cause and if others have your apparent understanding of that, then they are being taken quite seriously enough.
Good article.
I think the success of this would be similar to the success of a business's marketing efforts. Therefore even if effective would be hard to measure.
Success for OWS – "A warm cup of coffee, expunged arrest record, and elimination of that pesky rash."
Another Tea Partying right-wing nutjob spewing his never ending hate here on this tread!
Many of these 1% are stealing from you and from me. Before you get all whacked out and accuse me of being a socialist please listen:
From WWII to 2000 the stock market averaged 8% returns. Now the fatcats are taking the profits from these companies that used to go to the shareholders and boost the stock prices. If you have a 401k, you won't see 8% again over the long term, and you can thank the 1%. They are stealing from you and from me – legally but it amounts to the same.
You don't need to pay a man 30M to run a company. I'm sure he can do the same job for 12M. If he doesn't want that job, there will be a line around the corner with qualified replacements. That 18M should have gone to the value of the company. Until we wake up and realize we're all getting screwed out of our 401ks, nothing will change.
This is happening across the board (privately owned companies excluded). Until the shareholders revolt and start firing people, the fatcats will continue to steal from you and from me. Shareholders should be the main priority of these people, not their own pockets.
For me I would of wanted the OCCUPY Movement to deal with these issues as they are issues that effect all people together in our great land.These issues are hurting us all :::::
Put an End to Money lobbying and any caught doing it is arrested for taking bribes
End the large money donations to any political processes.cap all donations to $500 or to $100 and no more ever.
End All The Corruption
Put a Watchdog on Wall Street to monitor for fraud and for other money crimes against our laws
What will it take to accomplish this goal ? Protests,Strikes, or Candidates is a good question.If Candidates then there must be balance to this not just let one group in on the struggle.Our country is a melting pot of beliefs and it is only fair to have two types of Candidates to go after Wall St. and to end the money marriage of washington.OCCUPY will have to field both a "Conservative" type Candidate and a more "Liberal" type Candidate who both feel that the above issues I listed are a root evil of our society in these hard times.
And in the end we must put the blame of our problems not just on Wall Street but on the Whole of Washington meaning both the main parties as they are both on the take !!!
Thank you jordan, you pretty well covered it. I just want to add that we also need to cut the excessive and unnecessary military spending in Washington which has now become a cancer on the national treasury!!!
The wealthy 1% that control Fox News (if you can call it news?) are terrified by the Occupy movement and are aggressively attempting to discredit and destroy it. They see it as a direct threat to their ability to control world governments for their personal financial benefit. Just like the Military Industrial Complex who profiting profusely from the continuation of the Viet Nam War, the current monetary powers (banks, insurance, pharmaceutical, & oil companies) are trying to discredit the Occupy movement by labeling the demonstrators as a bunch of “dirty socialist hippies”. If you visit a 99% demonstration for yourself, you will see that alongside these outspoken college kids (America’s children), who clearly see their rapidly diminishing futures, are upstanding American citizens who have had their homes foreclosed on or are upside-down in their mortgages as a result of unchecked banking practices. There are mothers and fathers who must work multiple jobs simply to feed their family and others who have been bankrupted by spiraling medical costs and prohibitively expensive health insurance. All you have to do is take a look at the megalomaniacal Rupert Murdocks who control conservative media, or the greedy oil billionaire Koch brothers who finance the Tea Party movement, and the truth begins to reveal itself. Don’t listen to the spinners and the pundits who line their pockets with multinational corporate spoils. Look past their evil propaganda and take the time to learn about what is really going on.
what a naive confused tool you are....you've got to be getting paid to sound soooo foolish......
I couldn't have said it better. Its all about greed – at any cost.
Tool does not begin to describe you soothsayer. Put down the Kool-Aid child and go inside it is cold outside
HAHA Fox News isn't intimidated by the occupy movement. Only people participating in the "movement," people who agree with all of the liberal ideals being promoted, and the Liberal media are paying attention to this. This isn't going to elicit any change because the "movement" has absolutely no credibility or direction. It's just a bunch of hippies squatting in parks, and that definitely isn't something that is going to force Wall Street to change ANY of its business practices.
blah, blah, blah – is it getting cold out yet!
Why do those idiots in OWS think they even remotely represent the 99%?
well said
More success for OWS would be seeing the viewership for Fox news being so much larger than CNN and all the other major networks combines. But I would be happy to give out hankies for all the liberals to cry on. Cry me a river you liberal losers!
ironwill is blind to who is really running this country.
I fear big government. But I fear corporate government 100 times more.
Didn't we already fight a war 235 years ago to free ourselves from the rule of the wealthy elite?
Exactly, anybody who doesn't support the cause that is against corruption and the buying of our govt is either ignorant of the movement, or it goes against all their networking and shady business practices....
carruth, Dmoneyx2, ironwill, oij oij and onegood1..you all seem to be more interested in attacking by namecalling anyone like soothsayer who tells the truth about what's happening economically in America. If you had some valid defense to what is being said you should offer that instead. Your postings are the work of someone who has no truthful defense so you must reduce your responses to namecalling only. The more you do the stronger the case you make for OWS. Please continue.
legitimate: all I've got to say is when you need to pay people $10 per hr to protest and $600 per week for organizers is not real heart felt.....that's without counting all the support from ACORN and MOVE-ON to enhance their agendas....real power to the people movement...NOT
None of that is true. Those are all lies made up by Fox News to make this movement look fake. Grow up.
I I would like to think that most of the occupiers would be satisfied with incremental policy changes on a trajectory toward a more just and equitable society. However, I have a loved one involved in the movement who is young, idealistic and I fear very uninformed historically that feels nothing short of deconstruction/reconstruction is the ultimate goal. We shall see.
Success will be defined first by the immediate impact: interest, elections, and reform are all goals. Any movement needs to generate interest and coverage in some media form. Any group is going to find particular champions for their cause, and any group again will seek to have these champions deliver on promises of reform. Interest could be higher and media coverage could be more positive and more widespread, so OWS still has a ways to go on that front. As a group, they are not as organized as they will need to be to put forward candidates. This may not be to their detriment since people who do agree with them may still run and find allies within the larger movement. Where the movement is doing well is trying to come up with a list of demands, or rather a list of potential reforms that everyone can agree on. Despite being decentralized, the movement is suited to generating commonly accepted ideas...so long as interest is high enough so everyone participates.
Short version: Interest will become ideas for reform, ideas for reform will become candidates and then we will see if it lasts. Like past reforms these will degrade over time. In the long term there will be calls to change and weaken anything that is enacted; it will be the long term movements goal to ensure that doesn't happen.
Success would be having the Tea Party join them at the protest, all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya".