[tel]

I want to agree with this, and I do agree with it, but the concept also scares me. It feels like rule-mongering, like winning on a technicality alone.

Occupy Wall Street failed to express any unified goals and demonstrated a lack of understanding of specific reasons why they felt grievance was justified. In many ways it was more of a mob and its message was lost.

But it's also difficult to claim that it does not represent a growing fear and pain felt by a fairly large number of people. An emotional plea if not a logical one. A representative government should have an ear to such things and the fact that it appears not to is about as clear a statement of purpose for OWS as I think history will ever have.

This is often the case with civil unrest of any kind. When a system for representing the needs of citizens fails to do so---whatever the reason---then by the notion that the powers of government are given by its citizenry it becomes important to create a message to show the extent and damage of this failure. There are a lot of ways to do this and people will find the ones that they feel might work. They might fail and pick methods which do not work (riots, e.g., which invite pollution of message, judgement, loss of support, and legitimate reason to oppose) and they might be forced into methods which are poor.

But I fear to live in a place where the government fails to hear these things for too long. Not individuals in government, either, but government.

Voting is not the only tool of civil will. It's supposed to be designed well enough to keep civil will from turning to less constructive tools, though.

[hueving]

But OWS wasn't representative of a very large portion of the population. That's the issue with not having a message. Other than acting as a way for people currently pissed off about something to get together, it provided no message for the broader population (e.g. baby boomers with collapsed retirement accounts, etc) to get behind. Every time I asked someone about OWS that wasn't an early twenties reddit user, they would just mention that they were the modern 'hippies protesting the system'.

Successful protests have leaders are not nearly as organic as they initially appear. OWS participants failed to realize this and instead sat around empathizing with each other.

[tel]

I'm not claiming OWS was at all successful. I'm claiming that ignoring people complaining just because they fail to organize well is something of a warning sign.