Occupy Wall Street : A Few Thoughts

Really rushed for time today, but wish I had more to go down and see for myself what's happening on Wall Street. I had seen from early reports that it looked like the typical mishmash of characters we typically see at most progressive/left-leaning protests (even gay rights one where the communists handing out tabloids and the anarchists handing out attitude all seem to get along just fine somehow), which quite frankly I've grown accustomed to, not being a stranger to exercising my Constitutional right to assembly.

And, knowing how it can take some time for fledgling protest movements to get on message and vet their best leaders, I expected the early days to be more pageantry than incisive policy debating.

Still, when I turned to The New York Times, my bible for most things New York politics related, I was really taken back by the headline on one article: "Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim."

Then I saw the same sentiment echoed on Facebook, and, well, I penned the following:

Much of the "adult" response to the wall street protest seems focused on how little the protesters understand about the stock market. I have two responses to that : 1) you don't need to understand how derivatives etc. work to know you're sitting in a world of shit with no job prospects and that no one in a position of power seems to have a clue as to how to help you; 2) as is evidenced by how little effect the world's financial leaders have had in correcting the crisis, I'd say it's rich for anyone, including the so-called experts, to suggest anyone else is undereducated on how the system works. If they truly had a grasp on the system, the solutions to crisis would be more obvious. It's gotten so complex, no one really understands it.

One comment in response to that compared Occupy Wall Street with the more specific goal-oriented protests that ACTUP organized in response to the AIDS crisis. There is no question that the ACTUP tactics were extraordinarily precise and well considered, but in that case, it was fairly more obvious what was needed (easier access to the medication that could slow down the advance of the syndrome's life-ending effects and more awareness about how to avoid contracting the virus).

In the case of Wall Street, no one seems to knows what our best first steps to curbing the damage being wreck by the Great Recession should be. Even Paul Krugman offers more generalities than specific steps. So the idea that the protesters are supposed to do what an army of economists and MBAs can't do strikes me as a red herring.

Yes, it's uncomfortable to have some of the protesters out there prancing around nude or holding up placards with over-generalized statements. But at least they're out there. This photo says it all to me (Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times).

If I were the head of the NYSE I would send out PR agents to let the protesters know they wanted to listen to why they're there. Not to lecture them or correct their misconceptions about how the market works. Just to listen. The way Wall Street seems to be just holding its nose as it hustles by the protesters now strikes me as a strategic mistake. There probably isn't much that can be said that will help them right away, but this sense that the rich just don't care how hard it is out thee is what sparks revolutions.

If Occupy Wall Street is still going on when we get back from London, I will be making time to go down and listen to the protesters myself.