Occupy Wall Street Inc.'s first factional dispute is a real humdinger.
The question has arisen among the protesters as to whether they should maybe ask somebody to maybe do something about maybe this or that or something else: "We absolutely need demands," said one protester. "Like Frederick Douglass said, 'Power concedes nothing without a demand.' "
But, there's always a killjoy: "Demands," said another protester of, it seems, the Maddening Ambiguity School of Thought, "are disempowering since they require someone else to respond."
Yes, I suppose placing demands on the powers that be would indeed be "disempowering" (although it's kinda '60s-empowering to use that word) to the powerful. A public petition to redress some wrong is, by its very nature, a grassroots species of controlling behavior.
This protester, however, appears to have meant that the issuing of demands is internally disempowering: "Itβs not like we couldnβt come up with any," he added, "but I donβt think people would vote for them." Well, then, he's lost me, for they're protesting against ... what? He has also amused and comforted the wickedly powerful, since, evidently, the revolution will be televised, but not in any way organized.
In other locales, notes the Times, there are "many groups in the movement slowly formulating demands, though in each city, opposition has arisen from skeptical demonstrators." In Boston, for example, one of the aforementioned skeptics wrote, on Facebook, this mysteriously philosophical bagatelle: "The process is the message." My favorite, though, was a Baltimorean who told the Times that the movement's purpose is a "public sphere not moderated by commodities or mainstream political discourse" -- in short, Look at me, hear my roar of postmodernist, poststructuralist gibberish. His procedural message? Pomposity.
This is all a bit sad. The OWS movement possesses a vague yet intensely legitimate discontent with the ethically corrupt status quo, but it also requires the one thing it least desires and most rejects: a kind of benevolent despot, to lead it and provide form and meaning. Otherwise, they're only a bunch of folks on the streets.