Pitching a tent in a public park is an act of defiance to whomever you're shouting at. But the campers at Zuccotti Park think that Wall Street is in close proximity. It is not.
Dodd-Frank, the legislation that *will* change the way banks run their business, is not at Zuccotti Park and it doesn't live under a sheet of blue plastic. The Occupy crowd should learn this lesson, but they won't.
Robert Reich crabwalks an argument in defense of the campers who have been ordered to vacate the premises.
This tsunami of big money into politics is the real public nuisance. It’s making it almost impossible for the voices of average Americans to be heard because most of us don’t have the dough to break through. By granting First Amendment rights to money and corporations, the First Amendment rights of the rest of us are being trampled on.
This is where the Occupiers come in. If there’s a core message to the Occupier movement it’s that the increasing concentration of income and wealth poses a grave danger to our democracy.
First Amendment rights are not a zero-sum game. Political speech must merit attention and it must support principled action. What Reich conveniently disregards is that there is no 'Occupy Manifesto'. There's just a bunch of people who are 'concerned' and 'aware' and 'making their voices heard'. That and a toddler throwing sand makes you a parent. Billions of those, get in line. All of that free speech is going nowhere but into the microphones and videocameras of a few dozen media affiliates and ultimately into their editing rooms. None of it is coming out coherently as recommendations for appropriate regulatory reform.
In short, the Occupiers are outgunned by real policy wonks. #OWS doesn't know where to find a real banking regulations expert and so have decided to use a sleeping bag instead. No matter how you slice it, 'We are the 99%' is not going to be the text of any of the real democratic politics that comes out of Washington to be enforced by the SEC.
If such a Manifesto were made, vetted and circulated, instead of requests for cash and non-perishable food for campers, a real process could ensue. But that would require the kind of discipline and thought exemplified by the likes of Thomas Paine. "Hey hey! Ho ho!" doesn't cut it. And so they will fail.
The people, united, are always unrequited.
Zuccotti Park is blighted so they've been disinvited.
Their movement's benighted and some should be indicted.
The law, they can't write it, and so they'll never right it.
Now that they've been smited, will they keep trying to fight it?
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