Occupy Wall Street is easily the greatest, most successful political movement in American history — a national phenomenon involving white, affluent college students from all walks of life.
Yes, lately it has been a lot easier to ignore. Much like a bear, it went into hibernation for the winter. But also like a bear, it’s going to wake up come spring and start mauling its enemies. And stealing picnic baskets.
What’s made OWS so successful? That’s easy to see when you look at less successful movements — like the civil-rights movement, which was huge in the 1960s but then lost momentum. Why did it falter? Because it had goals and met them.
Nothing ruins a political movement like achieving its goals. No one wants to keep yelling and waving signs after they get what they want.
OWS wisely avoided this pitfall. The Occupiers roared in with nonspecific anger — about such things as Wall Street, with its walls and its streets, and the rich, with their money they got somehow — but it never set any actual goals.
The Occupiers just came and set up camps near banks with absolutely no exit strategy. And then they started yelling, “We won’t leave until . . .” and sort of mumbled after that.
This brilliance is why OWS will be around forever, unlike lesser movements.
Actually, OWS does have one specific concern to address. In cities from New York to Oakland and even Washington, DC, officials have told the Occupiers that they can’t camp in public areas. But this gives OWS an issue that complements a never-ending political movement: camping rights.
Many in OWS weren’t even aware of this problem when they started their protests, but that’s what a good movement does — it organically finds problems no one even knew existed.
If you think about it, campers are one of the most oppressed groups out there, often forced to set up tents in the middle of nowhere where no one can see them.
But no more. OWS isn’t ashamed of camping and thus wants to camp out in public, to be seen by all, and in walking distance of a Starbucks. And with WiFi access.
So OWS has temporarily given up all those nonspecific concerns about greed to focus on the important right to camp in public. Because as long as the Occupiers can camp, they can keep this movement going forever.
I expect all this to have a huge effect on the November election. After all, whiny white college kids are a giant political force.
No, they may not have a lot of money to donate — they’ve spent most of that upgrading their Apple products — but they have huge enthusiasm for vague change. The same vague change Barack Obama promised in his 2008 campaign yet failed to deliver, instead bringing specific change that was wildly unpopular.
So, under OWS influence, expect the national debate to move from such misguided, concrete concerns as jobs and the national debt to the more important and ephemeral concerns of greed, fairness and rich people being too rich. Don’t be surprised if one of the presidential debates is replaced with a drum circle. No candidate will dare come out strongly against camping.
The Occupiers will continue to camp out to fight for their right to camp out. They will go to any lengths to defend camping rights. (Except they won’t wander too far from their tents, because if you leave those unattended, people will steal from them.)
It’s an important, serious cause, and perhaps when economic conditions force us to live in shanty towns, we’ll look to them as the new Founding Fathers. By then, I hope, they’ll have figured out how to deal with the rats.
Political satirist Fr
ank J. Fleming’s e-book, “Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything,” is out from HarperCollins.