Probably like most people, I’ve been hearing about the Occupy movement through media, both news coverage and social media. I won’t pretend to understand it, I haven’t been following closely. But it has bugged me how I keep hearing that the movement lacks clarity and focus.
Yesterday I listened to an excellent Radio Open Source podcast episode. Christopher Lydon interviewed Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University, about what he’s been learning about the Occupy movement by talking to protestors in Boston — and putting it into a global economic, social, and historic context that I found sobering.
So give it a listen:
Mark Blyth (6): Going to school on “Occupy Wall St.”
One point Blyth made that particularly struck me — and that I especially wish every journalist would take to heart — is this: The labor movement didn’t come out of nowhere. It didn’t spring into being fully formed with collective bargaining and arbitration procedures. It coalesced gradually, in fits and starts, from a society struggling with the “volatility constraint” that comes with rampant inequality.
Birth is messy. Infants aren’t born talking in complete sentences. So don’t look at the Occupy movement expecting this:
Boticelli's "Birth of Venus"
After listening to all the context Blyth offered, I suspect we’re watching the earliest phases of a different kind of labor movement: the labor pangs that precedes the birth of something that might eventually walk and talk. Something that probably won’t go by the name “Occupy.”
I only hope the world can collectively raise this baby right.
Well said.
Check out this video
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On the other hand they have an amazing opportunity to frame the issue to their advantage and I hope they take advantage. Progressives need to come up with a power frame to counter the powerful frames the conservatives have developed.
I worry when the focus is on demonizing big business when it would be more constructive to focus on something a little loftier like the importance of citizens in a democracy to contribute to the well-being of their community. If corporations want to be seen as citizens and reap constitutional benefits, fine. But let them contribute in a way that is as much as or larger than the benefits they are receiving.
There’s a very practical approach as well which is you don’t shit where you eat. That’s Warren Buffet’s message. The US is a fantastically advantageous environment to run a business so you make sure you take care of the environment that made it possible (labor, infrastructure, resources) rather than suck it dry and look for greener pastures.