Occupation without a Message

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been gripping the nation for the last three months, spreading from its origin points in New York to various outcroppings throughout the country. These offshoots of the original range from the large in size, for example Oakland, California, to the small in nature, see the almost always desolate sight of Occupy Pittsburgh. What all of these have in common, though, regardless of size, is their intent to bring attention to the economic inequality pervading the country. The differences between the haves and the have nots have never been so apparent, and, with the continuing worsening of the economy, it appears as if the gap will be doing nothing but widening for the foreseeable future. Surely, this is a worthy cause worth rallying around and should be more than evident to most Americans. However, it's not.

The problem may be to due to the fact that the very simple message of economic inequality is being drowned out by various other voices, some not as passive as those who started the movement would invariably claim. The various causes championed at any given sight are so divergent and seemingly random in nature as to provide any passerby with a vision not of a democratic movement but of a scattered, rag tag convergence of any number of causes that don't necessarily fit under the same umbrella.

Further degrading the movement and its message, regardless of its clarity and coherence, has been an increasingly hostile reaction by city officials who are at wits end trying to strike a balance between First Amendment Rights, the rights to assemble and protest and the, for lack of a better term, occupation of highly trafficked public spaces that, for all intents and purposes have been held hostage by the Occupy Movement. The evictions of protestors from New York to California have been handled with anything but kid gloves and resemble nothing short of a police action that puts one in mind of how security forces violently clear the streets of protestors in many Middle Eastern countries. The disturbing scenes of violence by police officers on seemingly passive protestors is more than troubling and seems guided more out of a need to send a hard to ignore message to anyone thinking of striking up a similar movement in the future than the simple task of clearing a public space would require. Overkill isn't a strong enough term for this action.

Which brings us back to the message itself. If there had been some more coordination between the various Occupy sights and the appointment of some form of central leadership that was able to convey a coherent, on point message, would this movement have spiraled out of control as it had? Probably not, or at least it wouldn't have been greeted with such a hostile reaction by city officials and it may have served to generate more sympathy from many of the media outlets and politicians that have simply written this entire movement off as a bunch of jobless individuals who are complaining about something that they don't deserve to complain about. The very lack of a message allows people, like a Frank Miller, to simply write off these protestors as a bunch of thieves and "rapists" without batting an eye.

I personally support the Occupy movement, in theory. However, a lack of a clear message and the lack of any sort of centralized leadership leads me to believe that it's not something I can really support in principal. A mishmash of grievances, no matter how much I agree with each and every one of them, does not a movement make.