While I never personally witnessed the demonstrations in the south in the 1950s and 1960s or the protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, I have read and heard enough to register a few common themes, the same themes, believe it or not, that took hold in the 1980s when a shamefully small group of brave men and women took to the streets to call attention to the fact that thousands were dying of a virus most people who were not directly affected by it preferred to ignore. Catastrophically for many, among those who refused to acknowledge or address the virus and its implications were the residents of the White House.
Martin Luther King and those who had to make more than one attempt to even begin the march to Montgomery because they didn’t have appropriate permits to cross a bridge on the outskirts of Selma were deemed lawless in many newspapers, including the New York Times. A few years later, the people who believed that the country’s participation in the war in Vietnam was wrong were dismissed and marginalized for equally trivial (in my opinion) concerns: their clothing, the length of their hair, their music, the fact that they preferred their alteration in the form of smoke rather than drink. Forcing what I consider the ultimate act of patriotism into verb form, they were dismissed as unpatriotic.
From what I think is an impressive range of people, I am amazed, and not in a good way, at the response to Occupy Portland: Isn’t it ironic that they’re using Facebook? Isn’t it ironic that they’re protesting big business and yet almost everything in the encampment contains petroleum? And isn’t it ironic that the rally to urge people to move their accounts from one of the big banks to a credit union was staged at Pioneer Courthouse Square, where there’s not only a Starbucks but a Bank of America ATM as well?
After thinking about it and talking about it and debating it with myself and with others, here’s my answer: No.
In terms of the petroleum content and holding a gathering in a space occupied – pardon me – by two of the most egregious brands of all time, I’m comfortable shooting down both notions with the same missile. Pioneer Courthouse Square in downtown Portland is an easy to find, easily accessible gathering spot. The fact that the Starbucks on the busiest corner of the square has a Bank of America ATM beside the south entrance is not the fault of the Occupy Portland participants. Our short sightedness about allowing for-profit corporations to tarnish public spaces should not deter those exercising what’s left of the right to assemble to do so in a place known as “Portland’s Living Room,” a space that as of today still belongs to us all. Similarly, in terms of petroleum’s presence in a mind-boggling array of products, placing the burden of our decades-long preference for cheap over responsible on the shoulders of the occupiers is nothing more than an easy way to ignore the main point and focus instead on the incidentals.
My reaction to the criticism of the occupiers for doing their business on Facebook is a bit harder to explain. I do feel that the role of the cranky old man sitting in a broken down rocking chair out on the front porch, bellowing ridicule at any and all who are not wholeheartedly of his era, is one that I was born to play, not just because I like it but because I am good at it. So try to imagine how painful it was over the weekend when certain thoughts invaded the outskirts of my consciousness, and imagine how painful it is for me right now to type the following letters:
I love Facebook.
Seriously. It’s free, it’s easy to use, you can talk to the world almost instantly and without censure with nothing more than an Internet connection, and if you don’t have one you can go to the library and use the connection there. And, in a way I imagine is similar to how religion was regarded in this country once upon a time, you are free to not participate. While I think a lot of what gets posted on Facebook is horrid, a bit of blessedly uninterrupted reflection during the extra hours of Sunday morning led me to the very simple conclusion that hating Facebook because of the inane postings, of which there are millions (in my opinion), makes as much sense as blaming the U.S. Postal Service, one of our national treasures, for the avalanche of credit card offers and special deals on insuring your car, whether you own one or not.
If you want to get technical about it – and I do – forget for a moment the notion that Facebook is corporate, which, for the record, I think is inaccurate. There is indeed advertising on it, as there always is when the marketing team gets involved, and many companies have pages with thousands of followers who are offered special deals on this that and the other. And that, say some, makes Facebook corporate. As one friend said to me on Sunday morning, if the protesters were truly sincere about opposing corporations they would have chosen craigslist to communicate rather than Facebook. Or they could communicate with blogs. Why the hell should they? Facebook is there, an astounding number of people spend an astounding amount of time already signed in and it’s free. Well yeah, said my friend, but it’s corporate. There’s advertising. To which I said, there is advertising on the Number 20 bus I ride downtown from time to time. Does that mean public transportation in Portland is corporate? And furthermore, if ads make it corporate, does my riding it undermine my belief that public transportation is a critical component of a city’s character? I don’t think so.
What I decided on Sunday morning is that the wrongness of what friends have said to me about the hypocrisy of using Facebook to protest corporate domination really stands out when applied to the protests against Vietnam and last-class citizenship of black people in the south. Those demonstrations, after all, were staged on streets and sidewalks and in plazas built and maintained by the very government against which they were protesting.
So, their endeavors were hypocritical? Yes, according to the many who preferred commenting from the safety of the sidelines over actual participation, but, according to many more, whose clarity of purpose became only more so with the passing of years, no.
