Over the course of the past two weeks, protesters in New York City have been converging on Wall Street to protest what they describe as being the “greed and corruption of the 1 percent.” Performing demonstrations in front of the New York Stock Exchange and, more recently, on the Brooklyn Bridge, news of mass arrests and police brutality have been making the rounds on Twitter and other media websites such as Reddit and 4Chan. While television news stations have been capitalizing on reports of police brutality and false arrests, the reasoning behind these protests has somehow escaped the grasp of the international press, leaving members of the public to wonder, “exactly what is happening over there?”
The fact there exists no official leadership behind the protests is a persistent problem with the legitimacy of the demonstrations. A website created to help condense their efforts and provide “technical support work for resistance movements” features a live chat interface where protesters can gather to plan demonstrations, but without any centralized structure, the protests add up to nothing more than a slew of random meet-ups for restless protesters to channel their rage. The website describes the demonstrations as a “leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions… using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.”
As interesting as this all of this is, there’s one thing missing: an objective. Everywhere you look, we’re reminded of the reasons why people are protesting, but it remains to be seen exactly what protesters intend to achieve as a result of their efforts. While the list of grievances grows day by day, the list of potential solutions is as vapid as it ever was.
It would almost appear that, without formulating any sort of definitive plan, an onslaught of irritated dissenters simply materialized on Wall Street to impart upon the so-called 1 percent how annoyed they are with the system.
However encouraging it is to find that people are motivated to take their frustration to the street, especially in spite of the reputation this generation has for being apathetic of political change, all of these efforts can pose no real threat to the current “system” unless protesters can clearly define the goals for their demonstrations. Simply gathering in Liberty Square to tell people you’re angry accomplishes nothing unless you express to your opposition what specific changes need to be made to sufficiently satisfy your constituents.
If the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are to affect any change whatsoever, they must form a centralized leadership and outline specific goals for each protest. Furthermore, before demonstrators can take to the streets to complain about the injustices of the U.S. economy, they have to first try to conceive of a solution to the aforementioned problem. It’s not enough to walk the streets New York City waving a sign with some abstract quote about the economic enslavement of American citizens plastered across the front unless you have the ability to explain why this is the case and exactly what steps need to be taken to improve the situation.
Americans are unhappy. We’ve already established this. Rather than beat a dead horse, we need to take the next step: decide what changes can be made in order to accomplish a pre-specified goal.
