And We are Here to Protest What We are Here to Protest!

I recently saw a sign from the ongoing "Occupy Wall Street" campaign that got my attention and provoked a bit of a laugh. I don't recall the precise wording, but the gist was very clearly this: "Wall Street is responsible for all poverty in the world."

I had to chuckle ironically as I read it, and also had to chuckle with a steadily lessening enthusiasm as I read more and more of the material coming from the Occupy Wall Street movement. There were dozens and hundreds more signs, facebook comments and Tweets with similar slogans, their spelling ranging from fair to incompetent, and with growing dubiousness as to the truth of their content. The first sign mentioned here was clearly an unresearched statement at best, as there are many other demonstrable causes of poverty in the world such as war, confiscatory governments as in the case of China and the former Soviet Union, and other causes having nothing to do with Wall Street. However, not only was some of the other content on this issue even more assinine in its name-calling and wild accusations, it also demonstrated a disturbing muddle of reasons for why these people were even protesting in the first place.

The reasons for protesting include and are not limited to the following: Wall Street, bankers and businessmen, big banks, big corporations (in general), oil companies, big government, too small goverment, the environment, and oddly, even global warming. In short, the protests are protesting the System, the Man, or whatever derogatory term can be appended to all that is found wanting in society.

This ambiguity of purpose is being hailed by the media as an "American Spring," akin to the Arab Spring. The comparison only serves to highlight the ignorance of the people doing the comparing. The Arabs know exactly what they want: to overthrow autocratic governments characterized by brutality and respression on a scale unknown in the United States. The Wall Street protesters are at Wall Street protesting... whatever the hell they are their to protest. Who knows? They could be protesting for lower bacon cheeseburger prices for all we know.

The Annual March for Life is a good example of specificity of goal, regardless of whether one agrees with their agend or not. The March for Life marchers are in DC every year to make abortion and euthanasia illegal. Period. The protest lasts about 3-4 hours, is quiet and orderly, and is thoroughly unified in its purpose. The recent outbreak of violence in London is a good example of just the opposite: it started as a protest involving a black man shot by a police officer, and ended up as a frighteningly anarchic free-for-all of wanton destruction that brought much of London to its knees for an extended period of time. There was no purpose, just frustration in general.

Ambiguity in regard to protest is not only counterproductive, it is dangerous. When there is a single goal in mind there is a much greater chance of being heard and understood; where murkiness of purpose reigns, general fear is the end result. If in the end the Occupy Wall Street movement is in New York to simply protest "the Man," what they are calling for is revolution, because what they want is an overturning of the established order in favor of something else. The "something else" is left in the moral hinterland. The first order of business is to destroy. If what they want then is revolution, what then makes this protest different than the ones in London?

And not that I necessarily agree with having a stock market and big banks and big corporations, but here is an important point that must be made. It matters not to the organizers and protesters in New York that the social media sites they use to organize are run by corporations. Nor that the cameras and smartphones being used to capture the march were conceived, designed, and brought to market by corporations. Nor that the sloganed t-shirts were printed by an online vendor which is a coporation, or that the TV's being used to watch and cheer on the protesters were undoubtedly built by corporations. And, in the most ironic touch of all, the protesters are taking funding for their campaign using an online donation setup that feeds into - horror of horrors - a bank account run by a banking corporation. Or maybe more ironic is that the vehicles hauling all of these people to the banking district run on gasoline, which comes from oil, which was dug up by an oil company.

If you want to be taken seriously, Wall Street protesters, walk to New York naked and shake your unmanufactured fist at the big banks instead of a sign made from corporate cardboard. Unless you are there to protest against the killing of whales off the Japanese coast. Then you can wear and bring whatever you want to.