[lbo-talk] OWS takes a walk uptown

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Oct 15 20:16:49 PDT 2011


From Doug's Report: "A guy in a Teamster jacket attracted some press attention (“so you’re not all hippies,” asked the reporter). Beyond, the news zipper reports that “Occupy Wall Street Movement Goes Worldwide.”

The media don't have their formula yet and have been trying out old ploys, the "hippie" one being a favorite, but of course it isn't working. But they will, unfortunately, learn as they did in the '60s. I don't know what it will be, but one think is certain: It will bear little resemblance to the reality. I don't know how many on this list I've persuaded to read Morgan, but if you do, it will prepare you to some extent for the way in which activity will appear and disapperar from the news, and the strange forms it will take when it does appear. Clearly the internet will make communication _within_ the movement(s) less dependent on the media, but it will be up to participants to get the messages out to a wider public: the media won't do it. It's no use even spending any time or thought to how to get "good" publicity. It won't come.

Those of us experienced in other ways of mobilizing ourselves and building on results are going to find the current movement continuously gratng 00 That was my experience today as I sat through a session of the Occuy ISU on the steps of the old courthouse in Bloomington, and I've worked out a provisional personal slogan to allow for that: I hope the Occupy Movement with its current "process" goes an awful lot longer than I want it to.

Carrol

P.S. Probably no one has noticed that a month or two ago the word "organize" disappeared from my vocabulary to be replaced by "mobilize." Marv in a post described his ideal "organizer," and in my response to that post I quoted that and said something like "that sounds about right." Then after I clicked the send button I began to think, and the more i thought the more I began to feel that we really did not want Mark's super Organizer; that in fact in so far as we were successful in the '60s it was through mobilization by groups, not by organizers. Organizers belong in the back room keeping the web site up to date. The better ones will of course emerge to work with others in mobilizing, a collective task that needs no superheroes except as part of that.

----

On 10/15/2011 9:05 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Report, analysis, pix:
>
> http://lbo-news.com/2011/10/15/ows-takes-a-walk-uptown/
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



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