An open letter to #OccupyWallStreet
Posted: October 13, 2011 Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent! 19 Comments(It’s nice to be back after a long hiatus. Hi to all my old blog friends, and to my new ones!)
Sometimes I think I may have something to contribute to #OccupyWallStreet. Sometimes I don’t know. The only people who would know are you, if you’ve seen what I’m talking about. So, well, here goes. Sorry that I’m talking about my own stuff. I don’t know any other way to let you know about it, and it may be worth your time.
I’m not trying to answer the question about “What’s the message?” The message is “A fair deal for the 99%!” Obviously.
#OWS Robin Hood protestors kayaking down the Chicago River (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Nor does anyone need help with some of the great tactics OccupyWallStreet is already using.
But I might have something to contribute to the discussion about the kind of society we want to have. (And to help out Very Serious People who say they are good with math, but otherwise seem to have trouble understanding anything.)
#OccupyWallStreet is focusing on the crimes of Big Money, and the story is the same wherever you look. Environmental pollution, cell phone privacy, copyright law, marriage equality, living wages, everything is tied together by an understanding of what individual rights really mean and what they are.
For instance, the right to life is a matter of law, but the right to a living is not. And yet, without the right to a living, life becomes a privilege. The right to a living implies enormous changes to economic systems. It makes sense to think about how to make those changes as fairly as possible. OccupyWallStreet is not about getting new privileges and making a new underclass.
Another example. The level of acceptable environmental pollution is set by assuming only a few people will pollute. But if we’re all equal, then we can all pollute equally. Based on rights, rather than a privilege to pollute, acceptable levels have to be set according to what is scientifically defensible if everyone polluted equally.
And a final example. If everyone is equal, nobody can have more access to the law than anyone else. An open legislative process is one implication. It’s a right, part of being equal before the law, to know who authored which laws . Nor is it hard to do. Software writers have shown the way with versioning systems such as Plone that can track millions of changes in large collaborative projects.
My ideas aren’t necessarily new or unique, but I haven’t seen them all together in one place with their interrelationships spelled out. Those ideas, in my work or anywhere else, show that the issues raised by the 99% aren’t just grievances. Not that that’s news either, but non-sympathizers like to pretend it’s about protestors who are whining at not getting theirs.
Grounding the movement in the big picture makes it easy to show that the issue is rights. Not complaints and not grievances and not money. The protests are about being deprived of rights. The goals are to regain rights.
I try to explore the concepts of equal rights in our current context. Whether I come up with anything plausible or useful will show up in time if people want to have a look at it. In case anyone does, in the long fall evenings camped out in the Occupation zones, here’s the link to the whole nine yards, aka Re-imagining Democracy. If it does nothing else, it moves the Overton window back to the left.
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
It’s really good to see you again, quixote7. I agree that the #Occupy protesters are fight for their rights. Right now the top 1% are hogging not only all the resources, but also all the rights.
For one thing, it’s way past time to get rid of that law that says corporations are people. Unfortunately, I think the corruption has gone beyond the point where laws can change it. And that’s why I’m grateful to the people who are taking to the streets. It’s our only hope out side of violent revolution.
Yes, when top 1% rigs the system so that the 99% have to do all the hard labor while they get the premium back room deals and we continue to get screwed(99%), you begin to scream. The GOP and the Dems are both in the pockets of Wall Streets’s Greedos.
Small business isn’t getting access to credit and we are having a hard time keeping our employees employed. Insurance premiums are sky rocketing and we are having to pay for multiple insurance schemes, that offer little assurance/insurance to those insured, in fact the new health insurance co-pays are really a preventive/GATE to NOT ACCESS care.
Thoughtful as ever, quixote! Great to have you on the frontpage here.
I love this part:
Brilliant writing and thinking there. Without the right to a living, health care, and education (including higher ed), life is indeed a privilege, not a right.
How can we “pursue happiness” without the ability to make a living?
Thanks for the kind words! The whole media attitude about OWS drives me nuts. It’s one of the most obvious symptoms of the corporate capture of our whole society. I’m not saying people didn’t unthinkingly come down against, say, antiwar protestors in the Bad Old Days, but they didn’t all regurgitate the same few focus-group-tested talking points in chorus.
(((Hello)))
The condescending attitude of the media just drives me nuts! And even the liberal A-listers were dismissive, until Occupy started to grow and get attention–so now they’re trying to co-opt it. I’m so glad not to be part of the in-crowd so I can think for myself.
What a day…quixote fabulous post, and so glad to see you writing again…we are so fortunate to have you and peg here.
Interesting way of looking at the OWS movement. The so-called directionless, unthemed, no-goal approach is driving the traditional press and pundit class wild. Yet, the 99er idea was brilliant–everyone [except for those who have their heads stuck in places no head should be] can get their minds around that and understands what it means on some level. The minority is raking the majority of Americans over the coals and calling it good. If we don’t like it, we’re anti-American, a friend of Lenin or a big fat whiner.
It gets very tiresome.
I agree with you that this isn’t about money or “our fair share.” That’s the way the opposition would like to frame it. It’s about the inequities in the system, inequities that have grown and are now frozen into the landscape as if they were perfectly normal and okay. Be it in our criminal justice system or employment or as you mentioned healthcare. I think the financial blowout has rocked people [or at least it’s beginning to rock people] out of the trance reinforcing the notion that this is the way things are, the way they’ll always be and there’s just nothing we can do to change it.
Boston had an astounding quote from Michelle Bachmann in the Morning Roundup:
“We have charitable organizations and there’s universities who are willing to take care of people who are indigent,” she told him, lovingly. “If you’re indigent, there are programs set up for the indigent. But don’t destroy the finest health care system in the world to have socialized medicine.”
The finest health care system in the world would be for whom then?? Only those worth saving or healing? Only for those with the power and money to access the finest health care system in the world. And everyone else? Out of luck, I guess. And notice the word ‘willing.’ There are charitable organizations and universities . . . ‘willing’ to take care of the indigent. What happens when or if they’re not willing? Again, out of luck. And if you’re seriously ill, out of time.
Your discussion goes further to explain the idea of the ‘equal’ meme. It’s something I’ve heard ridiculed repeatedly by others, as if everyone involved in this movement is juvenile or breathing hippy-dippy air. Once you put it out this way, it is far harder to dismiss,
Enjoyed the read.
(Peg, just wanted to say parenthetically that I thought I’d scheduled my post later in the day. I haven’t got the hang of things yet. Sorry for coming in way too fast on the heels of yours!)
I saw that Bachman quote somewhere else today. Apparently it was in response to a man without teeth because he can’t get dental care! He asked her what she thought he was supposed to do. And that was her response! “You could try begging.” 😯
I mean, I know that’s how she thinks, but I’m shocked she’s not enough of a hypocrite to stop herself from belting out such sh*t.
I’m really shocked by a lot of what I’m hearing for normal discourse anymore. These things were once said in whispered voices, between private, like-minded parties because they knew they’d be called out, maybe even booed. Now, the same ridiculously cruel comments are ready for prime time.
Btw, apologies are unnecessary, quixote.
I tweeted that, as it is shocking how the ‘Christians’ have taken ‘Christ’s’ message out and replaced it with some strange meme of ‘Let them Die’ and ‘Let them beg’… shocking and most sad indeed, and they do it while under the cover of ‘Christians’.
Welcome back, it is good to read your thoughts again. 🙂
Thanks! Good to be back.
There’s this: Declaration of the Occupation of New York City . This statement has been posted for two whole weeks on a site purporting to belong to the General Assembly of the original Wall Street protesters. Seems to be an unambiguous statement of grievances. Does anyone know why it isn’t getting air time? (Other than TPTB prefer to pretend it’s all just a mystery what OWS wants.) Keith Olbermann read it aloud on his show a week ago, and while I’m looong over him, hearing this document given voice sounded pretty cool to me. Can’t disagree with one word of it.
Gosh, am I happy to be reading you again!
That’s a thought provoking example. It contains a lot of little gems including “scientifically defensible” as a concept. Imagine laws based on things that were medically or scientifically defensible for a change instead of subject to whimsical ideological or mythological whim. Also, think about the idea of a right to pollute? How can any thing that yields a high social cost be thought of in terms of anything else but something to minimize and not maximize like a ‘right’.
Yeah. Environmental damage is primarily a matter of rights. Biology just provides the information, not the answers.
Interesting, how when money and power and mega-industries are involved people often get all confused. If somebody walks into your house and slips arsenic into the milk, nobody argues about whether it was just a little bit or not. They go to jail for trying to hurt you.
But if they put arsenic into the milk via the cow on the factory farm, well, that’s all right then.
Go figure.
Excellent points.