Submitted to a Candid World
Tea parties
A Local’s Impression of the Wall Street “Occupation”
One of the better signs; click to enlarge.
As some of you may know, I live on (and so have ostensibly been “occupying”) Wall Street for the past two years or so. Some thoughts, then, from the front lines.
For those who live or work on Wall Street — a group increasingly composed of the former as opposed to the latter — the inconvenience factor remains more bark than bite. To walk anywhere on Wall Street between William and Broadway, locals must suffer through a gauntlet of more-annoying-than-usual tourists, and tolerate the baffling presence of three-officer mounted patrols by the Stock Exchange, but that’s about it. Call it a large-footprint, low-impact police presence.
To the protesters themselves, let’s correct a few misconceptions. First, contra this guy, if the group is “mostly white,” it’s because the occupiers represent a pretty decent cross-section of America. College-age white hipster-types, or what’s become the pejorative media face of the movement, are in the minority next to middle-aged men and women of all races: the tea party age range, in other words, but with the racial and gender diversity of the left. Latinos represent somewhere on the order of 10-12.5% of the group, and come with translators, Spanish-language signs, and a parallel Latino “Assembly” (more on that later). You won’t hear much of religion beyond some signs (“Jesus stood with the 99%!”, etc.), but the movement has appointed, badge-carrying chaplains, and apparently sports its share of observant Jews. On Friday night, across the street from Zuccotti Park, about 200 people gathered for a crowd-chanted Kol Nidre, followed by a full Yom Kippur service. I’ll have pictures later; it was impressive.
Violence and violent rhetoric are nowhere in evidence; for all the media makes out of the Marxist presence (“Down with corporations!”, etc.), they’re a minority clustered at the back of the park, and hearing them speak, they lack the bloodlust of their progenitors. Apparently, violent revolution is passé; these guys just want a constitutional convention. Similarly, anti-police activity and signs seem blissfully contained, the latter limited to one or two signs on the periphery, and the former to marches, which draw from a broader population base than the “occupiers.” Most of the protesters are affirmatively non-violent, with more than their share of puppies and guitars, and a free massage station that (I was told) was purposefully designed as stress relief for those occupiers who get too angry, at the police, or the city, or whatever. Yeah, it’s kind of funny, but it beats the alternatives.
I can’t disagree with those who say the protesters lack a coherent message; they still do. But the organization of the movement itself is more than a little impressive. Every night at 7, the occupiers hold an Assembly to discuss the day, their philosophy, and issues of camp management; later in the night, the same information is communicated in Spanish at a Spanish-language Assembly. On Friday, we heard a debate about whether to ban smoking in the park. A schedule of events is prominently displayed on the south side, convenient to the sleeping section of the park, and cleaning crews circulate throughout the area to preserve some semblance of sanitation. Labor is cleanly divided, with “stations” to fulfill most of the occupiers’ needs: there’s a Food Station, a “Comfort Station” for distributing toiletries, donated bedding, and hygiene products, and a sign-making station (pictured above). The National Lawyers’ Guild has a small volunteer outpost, and volunteer Legal Observers circulate throughout the park (and on marches) in bright green hats, so you can find them in a pinch. New Latino arrivals are greeted with translators at another station, where legal staff warn how political activity can impact your immigration status. City regulations forbid the use of microphones and amplifying equipment, but the group makes do with the “People’s Mic”: when an announcement has to be made, a leader yells “Mic Check!”, and those just within earshot respond, and repeat the message as needed. “Mic Check” comes in handy for everything from speeches and religious services to mundane camp management announcements. One we heard:
MIC CHECK!
Mic check!
A PUPPY IS MISSING…
A puppy is missing!…
Think of it like the Beacons of Gondor, but for hippies. I hope they found the puppy.
At this level of organization, it might seem baffling that the group still lacks a coherent, unitary political agenda. But focusing on this deficiency might risk misunderstanding the movement. This isn’t a protest for something; instead, it’s a (thus far) remarkably effective way of increasing the visibility of the radical left generally, in all of its iterations. For most movements, that’s the first, not the last step: it took the Continental Congress months, and the monumental efforts of one John Adams, to translate decentralized anger into an independence movement, and it took Fox News, Dick Armey, and Glenn Beck to forge a movement from the angry rabble of the tea parties. Give these guys time, and some support at the top, and something interesting might come of it.
That said, I admit that there’s a lot to dislike about the protesters. According to some, the occupiers have solved the “bathroom situation” by using customer restrooms at local businesses, all without (of course) paying a dime. That’s inappropriate, gross, and provides an unnecessary point of friction between the protesters and the community. Second, there’re far too many Ron Paul supporters. Ugh. And some locals have apparently “joined” the protesters just so they can smoke pot in public (though to their credit, I heard a few organizers getting very angry about the potentially de-legitimizing effect public drug use would have on the movement).
Finally, we can already derive a central theme to the movement: that corporations wield too much influence over the daily lives of Americans. If we woke up tomorrow and Dodd-Frank was fully implemented, Citizens United overruled by constitutional amendment, and investment banks healthily restrained by a resurgent SEC, I think most of their demands would be met, and the country would be better for it. These are people who actually care about their country — one sign, “If corporations are people, how many corporations are buried at Arlington?” really hits home — and want to leave it better than they found it. At least they’re doing something about it, and I for one see no irony in using corporate products to promote an anti-corporate message. Didn’t we use English law to dismantle the English monarchy? As far as causes go, I’d already take this one over the tea party’s cause célèbre of re-establishing child labor.
Why “Occupy (Take Back?) Wall Street” Might Matter, Maybe
The “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are a strange bunch. On the one hand, they’re far too few, and far too unsure of why exactly they’re there, to be taken seriously. (Locals will remember the comparably schizophrenic agenda of the “Take Back NYU” protests in 2009: those guys were hilarious.) On the other, they’re getting into a disproportionate amount of trouble, always a sign of a successful protest; pretty good at putting a useful spin on it; and when they can be troubled to state a unitary agenda, it comes off as inoffensive, educated, and classically liberal. The pervasiveness of corporate influence in America really is worth protesting, and despite the fact that there aren’t really enough of them to fill the two-block-by-two-block square between Ground Zero and Broadway (not on, but just north of Wall Street), these guys seem to be getting their share of attention, from both sides. Should we care about them?
Probably. If we’ve learned two things from the tea partiers — and I suggest that that is precisely how many things we’ve learned from them — it’s that the crazier you are, the more attention you’ll get; and numbers don’t matter if you can put on a good show. Despite the right’s nonstop attempts to fudge the numbers, Glenn Beck’s 9/12 project drew substantially fewer than the Stewart/Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, but left a stronger mark on the national consciousness because the attendees took themselves seriously, for all of their obvious silliness. American politics is fundamentally about the drama of it all, and the contrast of consciously grungy hipsters (and zombies) with the tall, stately buildings of the Financial District tells a good story. I would blanche at giving the protesters the kind of official recognition Republicans have afforded the tea parties, but it might be time for elites to pick up, contextualize, and refine their message into something that could actually effect policy change. Beneath the superficial absurdity of “Occupy Wall Street,” there’s a valid undercurrent of old-style economic populism, something that’s been missing and needed since the ’80s. It’s past time for someone to tap into it, and tell the true story of corporate greed.
Investigating the Tea Party’s America: CAP Picks Up Our Lochner Analysis
Earlier this week, drawing on a column that explained the roots of their legal reasoning (such as it is), we analyzed what the tea party actually means when they invoke “economic freedom” and curse Progressive Era-regulations. It’s not a pretty sight. From our post:
When Lochner [a Supreme Court decision invalidating workplace safety regulations] died, it died for a reason. For several, in fact. First, because we realized that “economic freedom” — true laissez faire – means freedom for the rich, and crippling abuse for the poor. Left to their own devices, the robber barons of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries proved themselves singularly capable of becoming true despots in a way that the federal government never has. Without government intervention, these figures could leverage need and a lack of viable alternatives to create and maintain a permanent underclass, doomed to work late and die young. The law should be addressed to removing those barriers, notstrengthening them. [. . . .]
This is the world to which George Will — and all Republican candidates who speak so boldly about “economic freedom” — yearn to return. A world where children work because they legallycan and practically must, and where having a job matters more than not dying from (or at) it.
And now, lest you think I’m making this all up, per a Center for American Progress Report, extrapolating a legislative and legal agenda from the tea party’s increasingly extremist economic theology (pdf),
Nearly 100 years ago, the Supreme Court declared federal child labor laws unconstitutional in a case called Hammer v. Dagenhart. Twenty-two years later, the Court recognized that Hammer’s holding was “novel when made and unsupported by any provision of the Constitution,” and unanimously overruled this erroneous decision. Sen. [Mike] Lee [R-UT], however, believes that, while Hammer might “sound harsh,” the Constitution “was designed to be that way. It was designed to be a little bit harsh,” and thus we should return to the world where federal child labor laws are unconstitutional.
Perhaps tea party theology sounds fun at the abstract level. Who doesn’t like limited government? What could possibly be more American? But consider what happens when you inflect that theory onto the real world — and consider also that we’ve tried this all before, with unhappy results.
Internet Culture: Popularity, Conspiracies, and Numbers, Numbers, Numbers
Last week, Conor Friedsdorf of The Atlantic wrote what I thought was a fairly charming vignette, of obviously limited factual value, about how he, along with two girls denied Harry Potter tickets, were the only attendees at the Orange County premiere of Sarah Palin’s comically titled new biopic, The Undefeated.
Seriously, she lost in 2008. We all remember that, right?
Anyways, this puff-piece, dashed off at 3 AM PST, has since become the most popular (and controversial) piece of Conor’s short career at The Atlantic. In a post yesterday, he chronicles his shock, responds to his detractors, and in the process, pens an abnormally all-encompassing story of life, culture, and writing in the internet age. Let’s investigate.
Popularity: as American magazines go, The Atlantic is fairly highbrow — exceedingly, even– and Conor’s writing is no exception. As he notes, he’s written a number of pieces sharply critical of the left, of the right, and several excruciatingly well-researched pieces, some of which took months, and one of which — on the best long-form journalism of 2010 — I will certainly now read. Yet he’s become “famous” for a hastily penned gag post that, while very clever, bears little relationship to the reason we value publications like The Atlantic, and writers like him. Why?
Because we read for sensationalism, not for substance, and the internet rewards writers who understand this.
My experience is similar (though on a lesser scale). As of this writing, this site’s most widely read post, at 28,1256 page views, questions whether Birther queen Orly Taitz is, or was likely to remain, a lawyer. And the premise of that post was ultimately disproved! She was properly admitted to the Supreme Court’s bar, though I still maintain that she fairly clearly committed several grave violations of the rules of professional conduct. My favorite post, on Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, actually took a long time to write, holds up well, but clocks in at the #3 slot, with a comparably dismal 12,158 views. (My second favorite, on science fiction’s moral authority, comes in at #12). If we construe exposure as a “payoff” in blogging, the effort-to-payoff model this sampling suggests discourages talent, insight, and substance, to instead reward well-timed hackery and snark.
Some blogs defy the odds. Andrew Sullivan supplies consistent quality content and, by all estimates, is widely read for it. But he’s the exception, and his stats probably admit of similarly disturbing trends. This is a serious Problem For The Internet, probably compelled by the breadth of available content, and the frequency/necessity of on-the-go reading. Both pressures combine to create the internet as a medium exclusively designed for rapid consumption. I’m as guilty as the next man, but it’s something we need to confront, because the alternative, of an internet where information is sought only for entertainment, feels disastrous.
Conspiracies: call it a corollary of the last point. Any world where sensationalism rules becomes, naturally, a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. Just so, Conor’s critics latched onto a provably false fact pattern where Conor didn’t just invent the whole story of the empty theater — no. He made it a reality by conspiring with theaters, newspapers… everyone… to bring about the downfall of Sarah Palin, by underreporting attendance at a fictitious theater. Naturally, the theory was picked up, and run into the ground, by Andrew Breitbart, who us did the favor of even reporting the lie incorrectly.
From “death panels” to birthers, here, too, is a poignant representation of political discourse in the internet age. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” and, because it sounds better, is more widely read, sits more prominently in the public consciousness, and controls the conversation moving forwards.
Numbers, numbers, numbers: Finally, Conor flags one of the stranger points about this entire exchange. How many people attended Palin’s little panegyric is, literally, irrelevant. He says:
But what is ultimately at stake? Say it earns billions. Is that going to shrink the federal government? Or reform entitlements? Or affect the foreign policy America adopts? Why would an ideological movement that insists the country is going down the tubes waste so much time and energy complaining about their perception that a movie is doing better than the MSM says?
A good question, which becomes better when you realize that this isn’t an isolated incident. Time and again the conservative media have instigated, or suborned, attempts to artificially inflate attendance numbers at rallies, and general caucus strength. The movement seems more obsessed with proving its relevance, rather than earning it with policy victories. The tea party has always been more heat than light, and based on the battles they pick — like this one — that’s how they like it.
* * * * *
Sensationalism, conspiracy, and an obsession with status. Such is the state of political discourse on the internet, and therefore, the go-to style of the conservative grassroots. It’s strange to see these three ills so close together, and in a situation where they’re so clearly problematic, but we have Conor, and the Palin camp’s reflexive need to overreact to damn everything, to thank for this rare opportunity. Now, what can be done about it?
Profiles in Corporate Responsibility: Triangle Shirtwaist a Century Later
Today’s New York Times ran, as the site’s cover story, a series of pieces on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, an industrial tragedy that killed or injured over 200 workers, and lent urgency to both the organized labor and Progressive movements.
The facts of the disaster remain remarkable: a small fire broke out on the eighth floor and, because the factory owners had not installed alarms, reached the ninth and tenth floors without warning. Women ran to the exits, but found them locked to prevent theft, and to ensure that they could not leave without the foreman’s knowledge. The only key was in the hands of that foreman who, of course, had left at the first sign of trouble, consigning his workers to their wholly unnecessary deaths.
Desperate to escape, 62 women tried to jump to safety from the burning ninth floor. None survived.
In the wake of the tragedy, New York’s legislature, until then held at bay by corporate lobbyists and a conservative court, finally modernized its labor laws. Today’s tea party would destroy that legacy, because to them, “Progressives,” “unions,” and “regulation” are dirty words. How many of us have to die or suffer until we learn, again, that corporations can’t be trusted to look to the public welfare? That’s not their job. It is the government’s.
The Lowercase Tea Party
I’ve made a practice of, and faced criticism for, referring to the “tea party” and affiliated organizations in lower-case. To bring some resolution to the issue, here, in full, is my reasoning.
Capitalization denotes a proper noun, as in, an actual person, group, or an otherwise unique entity. I’m writing from New York city (“city” is not capitalized, because the name of the city is “New York”), I’m a lawyer at Unnamed Law Firm LLP, and I live in Manhattan. Therefore, none would doubt the proper capitalization of the Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Nation, the National Tea Party Federation, or the The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, all of whom exist, and claim to be the central group representing the tea party philosophy.
Similarly, I capitalize the National Resources Defense Council, Riverkeepers, Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Defenders of Wildlife. I’d also capitalize the Republican Party, the Chamber of Commerce, the Cato Institute, and the Federalist Society. But I would not capitalize the green movement, or the conservative movement, and I do not capitalize the tea party movement.
Ideologies, unless denoted by an otherwise proper noun or somehow historically unique, do not receive capitalization. I’ve never capitalized the progressive movement (although Glenn Beck does), but I would capitalize the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution (understood by connotation to denote the period from the late 1700s to the late 1800s), and the New Deal. Similarly, unless the tea party movement is somehow canonized alongside such events, I will continue to not capitalize it.
I do not respect the tea party movement — their motivations, maybe, but hardly their hypocritical and nonserious execution — but this grammatical choice is not intended to convey that disrespect. However, should the various tea party groups manage to unite behind a single banner and present a unified front, rather than looking and acting like a barely-organized partisan front, maybe they’d deserve capitalization. But still not respect.
Thesis for the Week
From the President’s address:
The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.
Leadership, as distinguished from playground antics. This is all that I’ve been saying, and it’s not surprising that the President did a better job of it. We shouldn’t need an excuse to build a productive dialogue, but as unity often comes from tragedy, we should take this one, if we can.
Update: comparable to Jed Bartlet’s speech from the season 4 premiere of The West Wing. 10.3 metric Bartlets?
More than any time in recent history America’s destiny is not of our own choosing. We did not seek nor did we provoke an assault on our freedoms and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people’s strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arrive. Forty-four people were killed a couple hours ago at Kennison State University; three swimmers from the men’s team were killed and two others are in critical condition when after having heard the explosion from their practice facility they ran into the fire to help get people out… ran into the fire. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They’re our students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we’re reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars.
The GOP’s Greatest Hits, 2008-2010
Representative Dingell (D-Mich.) reads:
Remember, these aren’t people on the street, bored campaign workers, or “lone wolves.” They’re elected representatives or candidates, in each case, acting with the imprimatur of the authority of the conservative movement.
The Roots of Republican Extremism
Conservative spokespersons nationwide, including Sarah Palin, continue to miss the point of the larger, and now necessary debate on today’s powderkeg political environment. And that is simply this, as written a few days ago (with some modification):
In a world where a congresswoman, a federal judge, and a nine year old can wake up one morning, and only one of them survive the day, a rhetoric built on dehumanizing and threatening political opponents is unacceptable, and now is a perfect time to say so.
The half-term governor asks us when if ever political debate was more temperate. Such questions are irrelevant, because as Americans, we are not limited by our past. If our past were equally extreme, it would still be necessary to outgrow it. But there is no unbroken succession of tolerated incivility from Preston Brooks to Sharron Angle. For a reminder of when things changed, take the account of David Brock, who remembers it before, and after, in Act II of this episode of This American Life.
Brock hits on two late-twentieth century game-changers. Newt Gingrich in 1988:
The left at its core understands in a way Grant understood after Shiloh that this is a civil war, that only one side will prevail, and that the other side will be relegated to history. This war has to be fought with the scale and duration and savagery that is only true of civil wars.
And Rich Bond tothe 1992 Republican Convention in Houston:
We are America. Those other people are not.
And now Sarah Palin. Equating attacks on her extremism with “blood libel.”
If we’ve become accustomed to a political discourse where some of us are Americans, and the others are not; where politics must be conducted with a “total war” mentality that would make Napoleon blush; and where despite an actual assassination attempt, we write off assassination threats as nothing more than a major party’s attempt to energize the base; then we have a problem, and if it exists in our past, it also exists in our present, and needn’t in our future.
I acknowledge that moderate Republicans will have trouble with this debate. After all, the fault is not theirs, and one may fairly bristle at the implication of guilt by association, even where it is expressly disclaimed. But the solution to that fear — and the path of true leadership — is prompt action. And delay is complicity.
