Moveon had a rally scheduled in the same park that was occupied by our local OWS movent, scheduled before the OWS became a nationwide movement. So they invited a bunch of non-Move-on local activists.
The rally opened with my Mother (90 at end of year, socialist since age 11 when she supported the EPIC campaign). She talked about the New Deal, but also about how it came about, not because Roosevelt was "good guy" or because people had his back, but because there were sit-down strikes and strong left that scared the elites into making concessions. She ended her speech by telling people that if they wanted to be effective forget donating time and money to lesser-evil Politicians and join the young people over in the occupied area of the park. She was followed by really good speakers on various issues, including some really strong militant union people. And the rally ended with a speech by a woman who quoted Cornel West's call not to be afraid of revolution. She also said to forget the Democratic party and support the worker's movement.
Now I'mnot claiming this was perfect. But pretty clearly one thing it was not doing was pushing people to support the Democratic party, and especially not draining energy from OWS to the Democrats. The local Moveon organization has er moved on in a very different direction than the DC organizers would prefer.
Now one example proves nothing. But I suspect that in general the interaction of local Democratic activists will take one of two forms. Their support for OWS will including giving up any attempt to at cooption, because the activists themselves will find themselves moving beyond unconditional support for the Democrats. Or actvists will try to participate as partisan Democrats and find themselves marginalized and pathetic. I'd be curious if the experience of people in other venues, especially larger ones, has been similar. What about people in NY or Oakland or Seattle? For that matter what about people in other small towns and cities?
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