>
> On Oct 28, 2011, at 10:31 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
>
>> Lots and lots of good stuff in this last from scb, but the
>> occupy-Walmart idea is really especially fine. Walmart has
>> to be open to do business; but if it's open anybpdy can walk
>> in. Just mill around in the aisles, block traffic, accumulate
>> a cartload of cheap shabby krotz, wait patiently in the checkout
>> line, then abandon it at the register. What are they going to
>> do? Shut the store? You win either way.
>
> How would the bottom 40% of the income distribution, Walmart's core customer base, feel about this?
This is NOT the way one goes about considering a tactical suggestion. You are looking at the "final product" and leaving out everything that would come in between. So your question is, at this point, a quibble, a provocation.
As a tactical suggestion it is brilliant, but it is only a suggestion at this point. In actual practice, it is taken up by a group of people, perhaps a whole group, perhaps a number of representatives of different groups meeting to consider joint actions. They discuss it and discuss it, turning it this way and that way. Their _first_ consideration of course is how they mobilize enough people to carry out the action. The problem of mobilization leads to the problem of the right slogans, and the problem of right slogans leads to the problem of the constituency at which the slogans will be aimed, and broader problems of publicizing and explaining the action. I obviously can’t write out the details of this process; only the 10 to 50 people involved in it can do that in practice. But at some place along the line those 40% would come into consideration, and if the general political climate was right, quite obviously a large proportion of the 40% would love the action.
Carrol