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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OWS will be a success when the ignorant majority of this country get a better education and understand what a load of crap the American dream has become
If you don't know where you're going, you can declare successful arrival there any time and any place you want.
What branch of Al Qaeda do you serve?
Thank you, NOT MY CHAIR. You said it all!!!
Thanks for showing us what a bunch of arrogant, condescending jerks the OWS people really are.
A movement it certainly is, that it lacks a leaders & a clear sense of direction is also true.
For now it is a manifestation of discontent with where this country is going and with a system which appears unsustainable.
Would this movement coalesce with time and move passionately forward remains to be see.
Our mainstream media is clearly keeping its hand off.
Talk Radio is corporate rhetoric and class warfare. They pay Rush Limbaugh millions to attack the unions and the Democrats
You mean the little sissy girls that can't keep their own jobs and the thugs that support them?
Go occupy some jobs
http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/bring-it/
Nobody here gets it. The author of the article does not get it. And those who claim that the OWS protestors and the Occupy movement in general are a bunch of homeless, jobless losers has simply *NOT* been paying attention.
The end-game is three-fold.
1) To get money out of politics. Lobbying with money and corporate campaign financing is bribery, pure & simple. Money DOES NOT equal free speech and corporations are *NOT* people. As soon as money is *OUT* of politics, that is when politicians will actually work FOR the people instead of the corporations and the crony elite. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.
2) End corporate subsidies, eliminate tax loop-holes and simplifying the tax code to require corporations and those in the top 1% to pay their fare share. These people/corporations are NOT creating jobs. They have no intent to create jobs because it cuts into the bottom line and undermine's the shareholder's stake in corporations. On top of that, they are sitting on BILLIONS of dollars in bank accounts. Remember, corporations are LEGALLY REQUIRED to make as much profit as possible. If we do not intervene, they won't change.
3) Make the endless redistribution of jobs to over-seas markets hurt corporations. If they want to farm manufacturing off to China, India or wherever, they should be TAXED to do so - leveling the cost difference in exporting jobs.
Why? It's for the wellbeing of the economy. The less money we, the 99%, have to spend on goods & services provided by the top 1%, the, the less the top 1% will be able to make.
No jobs = no money = no spending = total economic collapse
It's that simple.
If there were no Unions, the jobs would still be here in the United States.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Extremely well said!
Extremely well said! CarbonCopy.
When you realize the hand that is feeing you is holding you down with its other hand, it is indeed time to bite, and rip it from the arm that uses it.
CarbonCopy gets it. Great post. If the OWS movement could focus on this message, and have the 99 percent rally around it, we might have something here. There should be OWS representatives on the ballet, so we can actually vote for people that champion the cause. Or consider libertarian types like Ron Paul for radical change. Overhaul Congress and the Senate, and you will see change..... The voters have the power, but unfortunately America is truly an ignorant country. A lot of this is our own uninformed fault. The media manipulates us all in devious ways
Ok. I think Item #1 is a great ideal, although no idea how you make this happen? Money has driven politics before politics technically existed (often the new king would only be crowned if he paid the lords of the realm enough). I hope you plan to vote next week, as if you can get the good people elected at the local, county and state elections you will eventually drive change.
#2 You do realize corporations pay more taxes than anyone else, right? THere may be an exception or two where some company exploits some provision, but they pay taxes. Wal-Mart (#1 Fortune 500, made $23.5B last year, but paid $7.5B in taxes. If anyone on this posting is paying over 30% of their income towards taxes let me know).
#3 How does this work with #2. We are going to end subsidies, but then subsidize keeping jobs in the US? I mean if soemone is willing to pay $50 for a tee-shirt we can end their manufacture in China and reopen the textile mills in North Carolina, but until then, for a job in the US to make sense its needs to cost less than the wages of the worker in China, India, etc plus the cost to then get that work product here in the US. If it doesn't then we don't deserve to keep the job.
Mike, your use of textiles as an example is misplaced. Most textile and soft-goods manufacturing is done in countries where child labor is rampant. Including sporting goods and t-shirts. And there are a lot more costs than just labor.
Corporations need to be TAXED an equivalent to the labor cost difference in displacing a job. If it costs $16hr here for an employee to stamp sheet steel and $1.25hr in some other country, that corporation needs to be taxed the difference. That's not a job subsidy, that's an incentive to stay here.
Giving money to corporations to stay local does not work. It simply feeds the profit line when a corporation (cough – sic) willingly (wretch) provides a paltry number of jobs within the US that they can quickly throw away when it ceases to be useful or beneficial to the corporation. If a corporation sends jobs OUTSIDE of the country that worked perfectly fine here, that hurts the domestic market far more than it helps the corporation.
Shipping jobs overseas eliminates that local spending power. All it does is enrich the corporate elite for a short time. Once nobody is left to spend money, there will be no economy to speak of.
On unions; Not all unions are bad. Without unions of limited collective bargaining, worker rights and safety will diminish. If term limits are put into effect, and campaign financing/lobbying is banned/made illegal at *ALL* levels of government, politicians will work for the benefit of the people. Once that happens, unions will be made irrelevant.
As an aside, think about what unions have brought as a benefit to this country before you place a blanket statement about the evils of them. If it were not for Unions and the Union movement, trichinosis infection through tainted meat would still be a common problem. We would likely STILL have child labor in this country as well.
In every society and every culture in history, the 1% rule the 99%. The rulers always have it better. If by some miracle OWS actually made a difference, would the new 1% be better than the old one? This is a phenomenal waste of time. Unless your are trying to become one of the 1%, you are always going to be on the short end of the stick.
Occupy fox and talk Radio. Let them know that you work hard for your benefits and you don't support any more tax breaks for wealthy corporations that hire slave labor all around the globe. By the way corporate earnings are sky rocketing right now. So why don't they hire more Americans?
Correction: Corporate profits have already skyrocketed. They are now starting to show signs of leveling off and coming down a bit. Typical of most people, never current on happenings, always looking in the rear view mirror. Thanks for paying attention!
By the way, it's not their job to "hire Americans". In a capitalist system with private enterprise, their job is to maximize shareholder value. Their fiduciary duty is to shareholders, not the citizens of the country where their company resides. It's a global economy, get used to it! If the leftist politicians didn't have so many costly and prohibitive regulations in place, maybe it would make sense to "hire Americans". As it stands now, it doesn't. This is huge problem with OWS, they rail against capitalism and corporations, but want the jobs they provide without realizing the dumbocrats they support are a huge part of the problem.
The contribution is changing the conversation. The Tea Party was able to change the conversation from jobs to deficit. OWS has succeeded in brining the focus back on jobs and wealth inequality. To the issues that really matter.
Stupid kids. You want jobs? Find one, or create your own, even if it means working your butt off (and don't give me this "there are no jobs" nonsense; there are jobs, you just have to look for them). It's not the government's responsibility to make sure you have a job. It's YOURS. Same goes with welfare. If you're in a rut, government assistance should be a LAST RESORT, not a first response. Pull your own resources before you mooch off of public funds. I don't mind helping a disabled worker, but I don't want a penny of MY tax dollars spent on some lazy schmuck who claims disability just to get out of working. Also, quit whining about how corporations are being unfair and blah blah blah. You don't have to spend money with them. Want to reduce corporate influence on government? Elect people who won't be swayed by the corporations, or just run for office yourself. And enough of this "income equality" BS. There will always be income inequality. Want to make more money? Work harder. If you don't wanna do that, then be happy with what you've got. Don't like companies that use unethical business practices? Boycott them.
BOTTOM LINE: Put down the picket signs and take action. Don't wait on your government babysitters to do it for you. If you want change, do it yourself. If you want to be happy, then find your own way to happiness. Don't demand that people hand it to you on a silver platter. Life doesn't work that way.
And now the Occupy Morons are getting robo calls to harass average Americans. And the call was filled with all the anti-capitalism class warfare garbage that the Left has been spewing for the past few years.
the problem is the lobbyist, they influence the politicians. how many politicians do you know that would work for min. wage? they all say they want to " serve the public" until they get that big money. and they all b.s us to get it?
Occupy fox and talk Radio. Let them know that you work hard for your benefits and you don't support any more tax breaks for wealthy corporations that hire slave labor all around the globe.
By the way, I love the guy in the Photo holding the sign reading "Next Step – General Strike". Yeah, right. You can't go on strike unless you have a job. And, I am not going on strike so you can take more of my money to make your life easier!
I am the 53%!
I am one of the 53% with a very comfortable income. However, I fully support OWS. The business community is out of control. They raise prices on the basis of any excuse that their PR department can manufacture while moving more and more jobs out of the country. Meanwhile, they are still importing cheap labor from Mexico to do jobs that citizens should be doing. While visiting Hilton Head Island on vacation, we saw lots of construction, but very few American citizens doing the work. Mexico is still well supported by the transient labor market. I would like to see OWS organize nationwide boycotts of big businesses that move jobs out of the USA. If they aren't creating jobs here, they are part of the problem. If they are moving jobs out, they are the problem. They should not be considered American businesses any longer. They are simply greedy internationalists that could care less if the U.S. prospers or fails. However, if we all stop buying a particular brand, we just might get their attention.