The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is not going to effect change tomorrow, next week, or even next month. (I wonder if any of the protestors will go home for the holidays.)
It is true that they don't have a list of demands. It is also true that they do not collectively subscribe themselves to any one concrete ideology, be it political, religious, or otherwise.
It is true that the Occupy Buffalo, our local subset of the movement, has gained little, if any, national attention.
People who think any of that matters are missing the point.
In one of the most excruciatingly boring classes I ever took at UB, I learned about a Marshall McLuhan theory called "the medium is the message." Finally, I'm putting that class to some sort of use; it's helped me understand the OWS movement. (The moral: You're paying for your education. You may as well pay attention. You never know when something might come in handy.)
In short, "the medium is the message" means that the process by which we obtain information has a greater long-term effect than the information itself. Take YouTube as an example. A few videos go viral in YouTube's infancy, and they get millions of hits. Years later, the original videos are forgotten, but the idea of a "YouTube sensation" is a part of our culture these days.
Apply that idea to OWS.
The protestors are smart not to embrace an ideology, present a clear list of demands, or elect a visible leader. The obvious reason for this is that the movement wants to remain inclusive to anyone and everyone who is dissatisfied with the current social, political, and economic climate (and there are people throughout the political spectrum who feel that way).
But the true genius behind that decision relates to longevity. If the protestors did have clear demands and elect a visible leader, they could be immediately dismissed.
Let's say that they elected a college student as their leader and made their key issue the out-of-control college debt in the United States. Within 24 hours, Bill O'Reilly would be yelling at him/her on Fox News and dismissing everything he/she had to say. Politicians would come out for or against the leader's position, they'd argue for a bit, and they'd choose to do something or nothing (probably nothing) about it. OWS would become a footnote.
Without demands, political affiliations, or a leader, the pundits on Fox News are only left to nervously laugh, wondering, "Who ARE they, and what could they possibly want?" And maybe – just maybe – it's high time for the pundits to stop knowing and start wondering.
The Occupy Buffalo movement, just by existing, shows that there are also many people in Western New York who identify with the people in Zuccotti Park. That is an accomplishment in itself, and it is probably much more important than whether the Buffalo occupiers directly do anything else, as long as they stay in Niagara Square.
Remember that this is a global movement; the mere presence of occupiers in different cities indicates to the politicians and media that the people are united in the feeling that nobody is listening to them.
In journalism, we are told to "show" rather than "tell." The occupiers would make good journalists. They aren't "telling" what their demands are, and they do not pretend to have figured out the panacea to all the world's problems. They are simply "showing" a bunch of people who are pissed off. And it's bewildering the politicians and the media.
This new "medium" – a bunch of pissed-off people who won't go away – is the message, and that will effect more change than any traditional "message," such as a list of demands.
Email: luke.hammill@ubspectrum.com
