This is an excellent piece by Gordon Lafer. And I think it perfectly explains my ambivalence about the Occupy Movement. Mr. Lafer, who spent last year working as a senior staffer on the House Labor Committee, sees things about exactly how I see things. The OWS protests are a direct result of the inability of Washington DC to tackle our biggest problems, but also a sign of exasperation on the left about our ability to ever succeed legislatively. Let’s take a look at two parts of Mr. Lafer’s argument.
The protests are also in large part a response to the disappointments of the Obama administration. Indeed, almost every policy demand that OWS might possibly voice has already been proposed, debated and defeated—at a time when Democrats controlled all branches of government. Members of Congress considered but declined to enact proposals to impose a tax on Wall Street transactions; to limit executive compensation; to fund a mass WPA-style jobs program; to allow bankruptcy judges to mark underwater mortgages to market; to make it easier for Americans to form unions and bargain for better wages; to eliminate tax benefits for companies that transfer our jobs overseas; and to forswear any more NAFTA-style trade treaties. The OWS refusal to articulate policy demands reflects the conviction that any remedies that fit the scale of the problem are impossible to pass—not only in the current Congress but in any Congress we can realistically imagine.
In some ways, it’s the White House that pushed people to turn outside the system. The administration has long admonished the left not to expect too much. Former press secretary Robert Gibbs famously declared that “the professional left” needed to understand that things like “Canadian healthcare” are simply “not reality.” The president repeatedly asks that we appreciate his modest achievements as the high-water mark of what can come from such a limited system. For the OWS protesters to be coaxed back into the legislative game, they’d have to believe that Obama is lying when he says this is the best we can expect. The problem is that the protesters believe the president is telling the truth.
Now, for at least two years I have been almost a prophet of the “this is the best we can expect’ school of thought. The value of this line of argument is that it allows people so see things more clearly and, therefore, to assign blame where blame truly belongs. There are reasons that we cannot get a Canadian-style health care system created in the United States. There are a lot of reasons, actually, all with differing levels of responsibility. But the president’s refusal to push for such a system is not one of them. Similarly, there are several reasons why we haven’t been able to close Gitmo, but the president’s lack of desire to close the prison is not one of those reasons. There are reasons why we were not able to pass a Cap & Trade bill through the Senate, but the blame for that has nothing to do with the administration’s desire for a Cap & Trade bill. People who argue that Obama gets exactly the outcomes he desires are wrong. Likewise, the president would like to do another massive stimulus bill but cannot get one placed on his desk to sign. You should know who to blame for that. You should also know why he doesn’t bother to ask for it.
The Republicans are the main problem. They’re the ones who are using every procedural trick in the book to block progress on carbon emissions and job production. But they’re not the only problem. After the Citizens United ruling legalized unlimited and unaccountable corporate funding of campaigns, the Democrats are more beholden to Big Business than ever before. Then you have a Senate where Oklahoma has the same power as California and New York, and where you need 60% of the body to agree before anything can happen. On top of that you have a conservative monopoly of political speech on the radio, and a host of corporate funded media outlets and think tanks churning out utter bullshit that pollutes the public discourse and skews it in a conservative direction.
The result is that we can’t pursue truly progressive solutions through the legislative process. Not in the last Congress, certainly not in this Congress, and not in any foreseeable Congress. That’s what I meant the other day when I said that Mitch McConnell’s plan of complete obstruction was designed to thwart change and kill hope. Yet, he has many allies in that effort.
The OWS protests are a recognition that the way forward in Washington is blocked. Now, Mr. Lafer argues that OWS must transform itself if it is going to create any real changes.
OWS is clearly inspired by Tahrir Square. Yet Egyptians succeeded in toppling the Mubarak government not because they occupied the square but because their occupation exerted direct pressure on the country’s most powerful business interests. As SUNY Stonybrook sociologist Michael Schwartz has detailed, by shutting down the tourist industry, disrupting construction projects whose financing had already been committed and initiating general strike actions that threatened to shut the Suez Canal, the occupiers of Tahrir threatened the interests of the economic elite—and that is what brought down the regime.
Clearly, something similar—nonviolent action that directly challenges the economic elite—is required here if we’re to succeed in making serious change. It’s daunting, but there is a precedent. Before there were civil rights laws, people broke the back of Jim Crow by picketing, boycotting, getting beaten and arrested by the tens of thousands, in direct action against the most powerful forces of their society…
…This is the nightmare scenario for those at the top, and the promise of a new day for the rest of us. This is something that could get out of hand. This is Shays’ Rebellion without the guns.
Here’s the rub. Things are bad in our country, but they could be much, much worse. Whatever else happens, the reelection of President Obama is desperately important. And, yet, here we have a movement that is sucking up a huge amount of energy on the left and which, to be effective, must create a “nightmare scenario…that could get out of hand” for our elites.
How could I not feel ambivalent under these circumstances?
In the history of our country, left-wing civil disobedience has a tendency to create a reactionary backlash. What we’re banking on here is that the country will react to this unrest like they did in the 1930’s and not how they did in the 1960’s and 1970’s. But with the media dominance of the right and the lack of any meaningful campaign finance laws, is that really a safe bet?
It also concerns me that all this unrest is taking place in areas of the country that vote Democratic. Most of the country is already suspicious and afraid of what goes on in Oakland and Atlanta and Philadelphia and New York and DC. Yes, that is where our financial elites have their corporate headquarters, but it’s not where we’re getting the most resistance from members of Congress. How much pressure is this putting on suburban politicians?
I don’t have any easy answers. The one thing I know for certain is that we’re at risk of seeing the Republicans win back the White House, hold the House, and take over the Senate. And, if that happens, all the craziness we’ve been witnessing from Republicans will be weaponized. If that happens, we won’t recognize our country, and we’ll probably never recover.
