Occupy Ends in a Lie

Yesterday, I eagerly went down to Zuchotti Park for an Alternative Media event that never happened. There were some alternative media players around. I spent some time speaking to Luke Rudkowski. I heard there were some other alternative journalists around. But the organizer of the event was nowhere to be found. Rumor has it he overslept...just couldn't get out of bed, a sad example of a problem that plagues many leftist groups: organizers who can not organize even their own lives.

So to a noticeably small crowd many people spoke and showed various messages. Probably the most lunatic man, not really part of the group, held a sign stating that Jews run the World. When people stopped to argue an Occupy organizer  tried to move him away and began arguing with him. "It's not just the Jews" the organizer stated...as a Jew I began to feel slightly uncomfortable at the implication. Who did these more moderate people think ran things then? Us and our cronies reading from a copy of the obviously-fake-but-never-quite-disproved-in-the-eyes-of-antisemites The Elders of Zion? I didn't want to find out what the answer was so I moved away towards the center of the action.

At the center individuals stood up to lecture a crowd stopping after every string of words to have the whole group repeat. The man in the center of the group would say something like 'climate change is the worst problem facing humanity' and the entire group would repeat. This happened over and over for every sentence he spoke. Were it not for a high percent of the crowd being dressed like schizophrenic homeless people, and the obviously left wing politics, I felt I could have been at a Christian prayer meeting. Or a part of a Reform Jewish Yom Kippur service for that matter. Just one that seemed to be lasting for an eternity. But instead of some admitting to personal sins we were covering the sins of the current regime. To anyone who even follows alternative media the problems of the current system are all old news; the question which remained unanswered was what anyone was going to do in terms documenting it innovative ways that inspire actions. But there was in fact no teaching about how to produce media in any organized fashion that I saw.

Given my distaste for what felt like a Church-of-leftists event, I wandered to the edges and struck up a conversation with Like Rudkowski. Eventually we joined the group in marching down towards Wall Street's famous bull statue which was jealously guarded by a team of police officers.

The officers walked around, chests forward in something that easily could have been mistaken for a performance artwork about state power and capitalism. What exactly was so controversial about people getting near the statue I don't know; but it required an entire group of officers to stop it. It was an ironic display at best considering how many massive financial crimes go on inside the banks and investment firms as opposed to outside of them on nearby public sidewalks.

And there lies the problem: Occupy has plenty to fight, but apparently not a lot of "fight" left in it's collective soul. On my way home I passed by Zuchotti park and at that point the most organized group were an apparent off-shoot called Occupy Weed Street. I promptly left. Watching young people extolling the supposed virtues of marijuana to a group of people too disorganized to have an event they planned for reasons including organizers not getting out of bed was too much for me. Years ago when I asked my better heeled friends and family what Occupy was, they all had one answer: "crazy people." Whatever Occupy once was, it seemed to be headed in the direction of lunacy with drugs, hot pink hair dye, and grungy black clothing for people who were clearly not rock stars included.

I woke up this morning and checked the Occupy website to see how they perceived themselves...and what do you know? An article on the success of the alternative media event trumpeted the success of the event before it happened; in spite of the fact that it never actually did. The event was a sad example of why the current alternative media can not "replace mainstream media" as it's author posits it does. The publication of the article was a sad excuse for journalism: something like a public relations fluff piece that got published instead of an investigative piece: exactly what alternative media complains about all the time. So, no matter what else I get a chance to read, I'm going with what I saw with my own eyes: the demise of a potential mass movement. In one hopeful note, some spin off groups continue forward confronting the new financialized version of the capitalist system at two of it's weakest points: debt and fraud. So perhaps yesterdays events were about the cycle of the life of a movement: out with Occupy, and in with Occupy the SEC, Strike Debt, and of course a few real alternative media outlets.