I haven’t figured out what a good starting point for decommissioning my brothers would be, but in terms of the country’s financial troubles, it seems to be on Wall Street, or close to it. When the protests actually got started a few weeks ago, you’d think I would have been elated. I was not. I am ashamed to say that the only thing I heard in the scant coverage of the protests was that they were using a lot of social media technology. Thanks to my job and my personality in general, I am so sick of hearing about Facebook and Twitter and all the rest of it that any time I hear words related to any and all of those inventions, I tune out the rest. Unless, of course, it’s in another country. Then I think, man, what would that have been like without Facebook? Closer to home, though, I am weary of those who appear to be dependent in a life-or-death sort of way on their connections and their devices, devices that as best I can tell are welcome in any venue, devices that, in my opinion, seem to have the power, quite ironically, to really make a good dent in the ability humans have to communicate … with one another.
Then, as the number of protesters grew, the heavy hitters of television started covering it, which I guess they sort of had to since the protesters were just a few blocks from the network studios. And the condescension in that reporting, from PBS to NBC and everywhere in between, was all it took to turn my ass around on the whole thing.
For some reason, the protestors were not allowed to protest on Wall Street proper, which I think is questionable. So, they set up shop in a park, where many of them also camped. And when one reporter showed up one morning to poke around, he was shocked to discover – are you ready for this? – that some of them had not woken up yet. These protestors are sleeping late! There was an interview with one young woman who was listing off a number of issues that concerned her, including global warming, modified food, the treatment of women in various countries, budgets for schools that shrink as budgets for military adventures get bigger. The reporter paused, looking into the camera, as if to say, can you believe this? And the dweeb in the anchor chair commented that there didn’t seem to be much focus. One guy set up a radio station, but it doesn’t transmit any further than the park where they were camping. An interview with one young man got botched because his mouth was covered with duct tape. My guess is that the duct tape was a representation of voicelessness, but the reporter struggled with it.
One of the remarks I heard repeated most was that this group has no leader. As I’ve said before, I have issues with the words leader and leadership. I speak only of my experience in a corporate setting and in volunteer activities I’ve done over the years for community efforts, and in those two realms, those who toss those two terms around may as well announce that they’re full of bullshit. So I overreact to them almost more automatically and more adamantly as I do to the use of the term “community” when the discussion is about computers. But, in this case, I thought the tossing around of the leadership nonsense was particularly inappropriate, because to me it’s clear as crystal that a protest against the stranglehold in which those with hold those without is, almost by definition, a protest against the abuses of leadership. Another comment made by many reporters that’s equally nonsensical, I think, is that the protestors had no message. Aren’t messages the current that carried us to this point?
One morning I heard that the protesters had been forbidden from using microphones. The next morning I heard that not only were more people showing up in New York but that people were protesting in other cities as well. In Portland, the media’s primary concern seemed to be whether or not the protestors and the participants in the Portland Marathon would clash. What if there was a conflict? What if they were planning to occupy – pardon me – the same public space at the same time? What would happen then? What would the police do? What would the protestors do? And the runners? Are you scared? Hell, I am. Terrified.
One woman traveled to New Yrok from Denver to join the protestors because, as she had to explain to the reporter twice, she had protested at the Democratic convention in 1968 in Chicago – another leaderless, message-free gathering, I suppose – and she thought a little generational continuity was in order.
It took listening to her to clarify for me what I think of the whole thing: The protests near Wall Street and beyond mark yet another arrival of a new generation of citizens who have enough faith in our system to question it. And they brought their computers with them. One of the weirdest little bits of reporting I heard was the declaration, in a slightly shocked tone, that many of the protestors don’t have jobs. This was echoed on one Portland radio station (one that can always be counted on to up the ante when it comes to dumbing it down) who declared the protestors “lazy, unemployed spoiled brats.” And I thought, that’s kind of the point, is it not? They don’t have jobs because, well, in spite of the good times in the board room and on the quarterly earnings conference calls, there don’t seem to be many available these days. They do, however, have Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and all sorts of other outlets that probably haven’t even been named yet. Good for them.
