Thank You Occupy!

A year into the movement(s) inspired by last fall's protests in Zuccotti Park, I want to thank Occupy Seattle, Occupy Wall Street, and other Occupiers: You shifted the public debate from deficit hysteria to income inequality. You risked arrest and assault just for speaking up, and inspired many of us to speak up too. After 20-plus years of organizing and nonprofit work, I know how important hope and change are to those of us in it for the long haul. Thank you for boldly and audaciously giving us hope and showing us change. 

Fundraising Idea for the Times: If the 99% Had a Dime For Every Time …

This past summer, Congress and President Obama suddenly panicked about “our children” and “our children’s children.” This was their fear:

Maybe in 20 or 30 years, we will have failed to pay the same bills we have failed to pay for the last 10 years, and if we don’t drastically and immediately cut spending, we will “saddle” untold numbers of people not yet born with a terrible fate, and this fate will be worse than any spending cut consequences  endured by anybody already in existence.

During interviews and press conferences, members of Congress would respond to questions of all kinds by  invoking “our children’s children.” Had a reporter asked, “Senator, So-&-So, why did you vote against the resolution to designate a National Labradoodle Appreciation Day?” the answer likely would have been (through gritted teeth), “I cannot condone saddling our children’s children, with our national debt! What the American people want …”

To avoid possibly burdening “our children’s children” in 20 years or more, it was imperative to prioritize the elimination of our national debt and put aside lesser problems, like war and hunger, that exist in the here and now.

I started thinking about how the endless “children” references could be used to raise money for good causes – like organizations helping the one in four U.S. children currently suffering from hunger.

Hypothetical example: Organization Good Cause asks its constituents to commit to donating a set amount of money each time their U.S. representative says “our children’s children” at the upcoming town hall meeting. To publicize its fund drive and generate momentum, it recruits a rich, famous person to pledge $1000 for each “children” reference. Two-hundred people who read about the fund drive in the paper each pledge an average of $2 per “children” reference. At the town hall, the representative makes 10 such references. Good Cause generates $14,000.

But then, concern for “our children” abruptly disappeared, and with it, my fundraising idea … until Congress and President Obama discovered the job shortage in the U.S. and used it as an excuse to push deregulation, or free trade, or tax breaks, or a combination thereof (depending on who’s pushing).  (Exploiting a real policy problem to tout - ad nauseum - a corporate agenda is what I call “committing a nauseum”).

This is not only an opportunity to call out leaders for pushing fake solutions to a real problem; this is an opportunity for the right (small "r") organization to raise money. This is an opportunity for the Occupy groups.  Here’s a hypothetical example, using Occupy Seattle:

·    Occupy Seattle (OS) asks people to commit to making a set donation each time ­­- between 10/24 and 10/31 -  either President Obama or any of the seven Republican presidential candidates commits a nauseum in any of the daily updates on their campaign or government websites.

·    OS gets the word out about its fund drive and generates buzz: OS mentions the fund drive in interviews with media, finds a rich famous person to make the first pledge, uses social media, …

·    OS sets up its website so that a visitor to the site can:

1. Sign up to participate in the fund drive and electronically “send” donations;
2. Get daily updates on: number of fund drive participants, number of nauseums committed, and amount of money raised so far; and
3. Find out how OS will use (and has used) funds it raises.

Occupy-ers (wherever you are), if you have a website, a webmaster, and maybe a famous person among your supporters, you could be on your way to raising money for those tents, first-aid kits, umbrellas, tarps, sleeping bags, rain ponchos...

O Ye of Little Faith: Why I Support Occupy Seattle

Occupy Wall Street/Seattle/Wherever: There’s no uniform message. No point. It’s unprofessional. Disorganized. “Just” a bunch of 20-somethings. Not serious.

Not true. I don’t represent or speak for Occupy Seattle (or anywhere else). But I feel compelled to respond to these concerns that won’t go away.

Here are Occupy messages that are hard to miss:

1)  There are a lot of people out there who are really pissed off about how hard it is to take care of their basic needs - food, shelter, health care (hence, the “99%” signs).  Occupy protests are happening (or being planned) in Seattle, Olympia, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Madison, among others across the U.S. … Looks like the “personal responsibility” meme isn’t working so well right now.

2)   And they (the pissed) are serious about demanding change: When was the last time Seattle saw a tent city of protesters showing up to demonstrate, sleep on the ground, pee in a porta-potty, wash with hand sanitizer, and eagerly await the donation of some stranger’s used socks and sleeping bag? At the same time similar protests were going on across the U.S.?

To those who cite the absence of a single message as evidence of protesters’ disorganization, naiveté, etc., I say, Get real: Why expect a single message out of an uprising comprising people all over the nation? If these messages evidence anything, it is the breadth of the problems that must be addressed.

What do demonstrations like Occupy Seattle accomplish? They:

1)  Publicly challenge any doubt about whether there’s a problem, its severity, or the urgent need to act. It’s hard to deny (to oneself or others) how severe and widespread the problems are when people are occupying the streets in protest and getting arrested. All over the nation.

2)  Liberate people afraid of making waves from the constraints of “polite” and “professional”  protest methods that are easy for those in power to ignore. Occupy Seattle makes it harder for office workers, store clerks and shoppers to pass protesters and continue to believe stereotypes of them as hippies, kooks, kids-who-don’t-know-better and other supposedly suspect characters who shouldn’t be paid any attention.  And Occupy Seattle makes it easier for “regular” people to join the protesters when they get off work or finish shopping.

One more point: “Polite” or “professional” protest is not reliably democratic.  Meetings with the mayor and editorial boards are more available to some than to others. Running for elected office is not an option for most people. Position papers are things that few people know how to write, and fewer still are willing to read. But public protest is something that most people can participate in.

Go, join Occupy Seattle, and see for yourself. And bring some extra socks to donate.