Two Months Along

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) began on September 17, 2011. What impresses and truly humbles me is the tenacity of the OWS folks. They have been working at this for over two months. The movement started rather modestly but it grew and spread across the nation and then on to other parts of the globe. This has happened without an individual leader. The OWS folks embody the 99% which is us. Some have suggested that they need a leader or a spokesperson. If they had an individual leader they would risk the cult of personality and the media focusing only on the one and not the many. They are wedded to their General Assemblies and to consensus which is brilliant when achieved but a freakin' bear to process. Unlike many WTO meetings in the past, they have managed to keep most of the anarchist and disruptive types out of the movement.

In the beginning, many people were puzzled by OWS. Then they misunderstood it. Now more and more people seem to get it; seem to understand its importance. No single post or article responded to that initial misunderstanding better than Max Udargo's letter. I think the longer OWS folks hang in there, the longer the media keeps covering the movement, the longer we keep talking about it, the better the chances are that OWS will lead to positive change for us all. Yes, I still have hope.

And if I had felt my hope waning in the face of the deep pocketed purchasing power of corporations to buy elections, the intractability of right wing ideologues and all of the stupidity, callousness and calumny which presently passes for political discourse in this country - well, my hope would have been buoyed by this little video out of Littleton, New Hampshire.