Wall Street Protests

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Cyber Wolf

The Tea Party got that part right about their movement at least... most of the people who are associated with the Tea Party who got elected into regional/state rep offices last year were brought up from local grassroots to where they are now.

I agree and disagree with this. First of all, the influences of both the Tea Party and OWS must be recognized.

The tea party was created by a group of older conservative Americans who strongly believed in the idea of a republic and getting change by electing officials who represent your viewpoints, which makes sense from their background. Unfortunately for them, once elections get brought into the mix, so do money and politicians. As we have seen, the "Tea Party" largely got bought out by a numerous number of extremist politicians who brought social issues into the mix and that is where they failed (I am talking about the Tea Party on a national level, not smaller grassroots movements).

OWS was created by a group of people that were influenced by the labor movements, civil rights movements, and Arab Spring, where street movements and disobedience were used to bring about change. But, it can be strongly argued, in many situations, that these movements are only successful when their message correlates with the interests of the people in power, possibly giving a false sense of power to the people protesting. Street protests will bring attention to causes, but I do not believe that they alone are influential enough to bring about any significant change.

Even though I do agree that OWS needs to change its tactics, I wouldn't recommend they centralized or completely switch over to the Tea Party tactics. They need to diversify their strategy. They need to keep a presence protesting but they also need to organize in ways that can influence politics as well. They need to convince politicians, the rich, and other Americans that our current financial setup is unsustainable, or at least inefficient, and something needs to be done about it or else everyone suffers. Witty and emotional cardboard signs will just not cut it. I do agree with their decentralized setup, OWS will not get hijacked this way, but there needs to be a few respectable influential people that will speak out and agree with the OWS movement but not claim to represent it.