http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/its_time_to_occupy_the_majority_20111120/It’s Time to Occupy the Majority
Posted on Nov 20, 2011
By E.J. Dionne, Jr.
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It’s not the ‘60s anymore. The protests of that era were rooted in affluence. Too often in those years, the left cut itself off from the concerns of the white working class and disdained its values. That’s the history the right wants to revive. In fact, the Occupy demonstrations are precisely about the concerns of Americans who have been sidelined economically. This in turn is why polls show broad support for Occupy’s objectives of greater economic equality and more financial accountability.
Thus the question going forward: Will the Occupy movement play into the hands of its enemies by living up to the stereotypes they are trying to create? Or will it instead move to a new phase that builds on its success?
Ongoing violent demonstrations will simply not help the cause, and Martin Luther King Jr.‘s lessons on nonviolence are useful here. This movement is about something much bigger than “occupying” a particular space. Occupations proved to be a shrewd tactic. They are not a cause or an end in themselves. Focusing on holding a piece of public land simply makes the movement a hostage to the decisions of local officials, some of whom will inevitably be hostile to its purposes.
More importantly,
the movement should remind itself of its greatest innovation, its slogan: “We are the 99 percent.” This is an affirmation that it is trying to speak for nearly everybody. Its tactics should live up to this aspiration by building support among the vast number of Americans who will never show up at the encampments. It should also want to help political figures such as Warren, who understood far earlier than most the costs of inequality and of the abuses of financial power. The last thing this movement should want to do is create fodder for the ads and emails propagated by Warren’s foes.
The occupations have done their work. Now it’s time to occupy the majority.