re: #62 reuven

Good! I’m glad to see that. But the problem, in general, with broad unfocused movements is that they become hard to control. It would be to their benefit if they distilled it down to a concise list of reforms they want, and make sure that the message is clear.

I certainly feel sorry for people who are out of work or feel helpless, but I’m very confused as to what they want.

You are confusing movements and campaigns. A movement typically has a broad-based support for a general idea, often without clear leadership or specific demands. A campaign targets a specific issue, proposes a solution and has some level of organization to carry it out.gay rights are a good illustration of this. The general idea of the movement is ending the stigmatization of and discrimination against LGBT is fairly broad, in the beginning there were no national leaders and no specific policy goals. The campaign for marriage equality on the other hand is a campaign. It has a specific solution and an organizational structure.

The Occupy movement is not a campaign. It’s based on the idea that there is a massive, and growing disparity between the wealthy and the rest of us, and that disparity need to be fixed. That’s the entire message. Most people understand that fixing problems of this magnitude isn’t simple or easy, there isn’t one obvious solution to any of this. The Occupy movement now has more than 600 affiliated protests in America alone, with no organization about the local level. If each of these 600 occupations sad down and hashed out a list of demands you would probably get about a thousand different demands.

This is why the occupy movement is not a campaign. The actual OWS line is now “we will not propose solutions, but we will endorse them”. Which I think is a good start. No one is going to be able to control this movement, no one should. This is a movement supported by roughly 40% of Americans. There are going to be lots of view points, some odious. To decry this movement because some people you don’t like show up and wave signs around is to decry the very ideas of democracy. Anyone can speak, some might get shouted down however.