Occupy Growing Pains

Within any movement there will be new ideas that don't always fall in line with the core or movements within movements. There has always been a debate within Occupy to participate politically or not.

A few months ago I came upon the 99% Declaration, a workgroup of the NYC General Assembly. The purpose was to petition the government with a list of grievances for redress. This was perfectly in line with OWS. But the 99D's plan was to elect representitives, and if necessary, run candidates. This is contrary to OWS's philosophy. It will neither endorse candidates nor abide representative democracy.

As the 99D's deadline approaches, national media is starting to pick up on the welcome message that OWS is formulating a group of candidates to represent the 99%. This is false.
There is now a rift within the 99D and a new group forming apart from the taint of the founder's tactics to leverage the name of OWS for the 99D's political plans.

Daily Kos

I know that many will pounce on this thinking they've found a crack to point and laugh at as a means to boost their need to be right in their negativity towards Occupy. But, as a supporter I see this is as good thing.

To me this means that real dialogue is happening and people are expanding or discovering their ideologies and goals. This can also be a weeding out process as there will always be people who seek to take a large group and make it something their own. This is far from a weakness, this is strengthening.

Personally, one of the things I love about the core of Occupy (nationwide) is that they are not a political party, their goals include targeting/exposing corruption, harmful or failed policies, laws, elected or appointed officials with protest, raising awareness and spurring conversation.

Occupy can also serve to foster individuals or groups that will get involved politically and into office, I have no problem with that nor any expectation that it will always be pretty and conflict free.

Occupy is fundamentally an expression of victimhood. Protest always consists of two implicit statements, whether the protesters themselves are aware of it or not.

The first statement is that the protesters are unhappy with what their intended target group are doing. The second, however, is that the protesters expect, and are attempting to demand, that said target group fix the problems which they themselves have created. In this case in particular, that will not happen. Occupy are protesting against the byproduct of only a single element, of an extremely complex and long term plan, which constitutes nothing less than a deliberate, extremely conscious attempt to end at least 95% of all carbon based life on this planet, human or otherwise. For the most part, they are entirely unaware of the real magnitude of what they are up against.

I did, however, see Zucotti Park as being useful, primarily as a means of information exchange, and also because they fed people and did various other things. Occupy's positive benefits tended to come from the other things that it did; not as a protest movement.

Occupy becoming a political party, does not, and should not be equated with Occupy "maturing." There is a fondness within the establishment, of using maturity as a euphemism for becoming ineffectual. Radicalism gets things done; getting the proverbial haircut and suit and tie means voluntarily rendering yourself impotent. You might fill your own wallet by doing that, and look after your own individual interests, but you won't accomplish anything, as far as systemic change is concerned.

The American political system is completely and irredeemably corrupt. For Occupy to become a political party, and attempt to interact with said system, would be for Occupy to imply belief in the legitimacy of said system. Anybody involved with said party would then proceed to completely waste their time, because no party will or can be elected, outside the Republican/Democrat duopoly. The cabal will not allow it.

reply to post by petrus4


I think you missed something. The 99% Declaration group was a working group within Occupy. Occupy does not want to participate in the political system, The 99D did and as time went on how to go about that caused a fracture within that even smaller group. My point is that all of them still remain within Occupy which in my opinion means that as more people join or even just join in the dialogue...as they learn how deep and widespread the corruption is and start seeing through the illusions there's room for expressing what that knowledge inspires you to do even if it doesn't fall in line with the core.