[lbo-talk] October 2011 Movement / Occupation of Freedom Plaza in DC

[Stephen Jones]

Carrol - the "tipping point to what?" question is answered with my reference to Doug's hope for a social-democratic popular mobilization and social ferment following a liberal-left disaffection from "young first nonwhite prez" Obama and the Democratic Party.  This would be a replay (of sorts) of the disaffection of liberal-lefties from "young first non-protestant prez" JFK that planted the seeds of what we now call the "Sixties" and "Seventies" with their various liberation movements.  In the 1950s and 1960s, that disaffection went deep within traditional academic, religious, and other institutions.  I have my doubts that such a thing is in the making today... the social imagination among the near-elites is now directed toward lucrative e-worlds and entranced by jet-setting transcendentally non-committal "up in the air" lifestyles, and resources have been pinched off for anything else.  Meanwhile, the bureaucratic and PR technologies of the state are

 much more formidable than 40-50 years ago.  

More specifically about this proposed mobilization for October 2011 in Washington, DC (http://october2011.org/welcome), there's hope that this will be Tahrir Square.  Or maybe Madison, Wisconsin.  But Tahrir was the culmination of a lot of organizing and strikes and eroding of state authority: http://www.solidaritycenter.org/files/pubs_egypt_wr.pdf.  And as for Madison, as soon as the state Democrats returned to town (NEVER having promised to block the governor's anti-union and austerity proposals anyway, only to "compromise"), the capitol police cleared out the protesters like so much trash.  For both Tahrir and Madison, there were wonderful cartoonish villains - Mubarak and Walker - that focused popular anger... the October 2011 movement has to contend with Teleprompter Jesus (I borrowed that moniker from the message board at Glenn Greenwald's blog).  And on Carrol's suggestion regarding 10,000 people we don't know having an impact: sorry to say

 this, but with our present state of inequality, the NYTimes will ignore 10,000 or even 100,000 people in Freedom Plaza... but not if their own Krugman arrives and stays.  Hundreds of thousands marched in NYC in 2004 to little or no effect.  Until union leaders and other erstwhile Democratic party hacks, er, stalwarts show up and stay angry at ObamaGov, the boundaries of "respectable politics" will be maintained, there will no breach, the possibilities will not open.

I'd like to know what others think.  Thanks.

Stephen