OWS Continued

Here's the New Yorker cover for this week:

And a Calvin and Hobbes from the archives, still very on point:

Yesterday Doug Schoen had a very negative op-ed in the Wall Street Journal here. Schoen argued that Democrats were making a potentially catastrophic mistake by choosing to align with OWS, because their views were wholly out of step with mainline America. Numerous writers have criticized Schoen's characterization of his own research, including here. Today, the Journal Online published a clarification piece, repositioning Schoen's research, showing the group is much more mainline than Schoen claimed (here). This is the summary graf from the Journal article today:

"So the survey tells us that the Zuccotti Park protesters are underemployed at twice the national rate, lukewarm to warm on Obama and broadly in favor of taxing the wealthy and encouraging a Tea Party-style populism on the left."

 If you watched the Republican debate last night, you surely heard the cheers Cain received when he reaffirmed his criticism of the protesters, saying "If you are not rich, it's your fault", and "What do they want the Wall Street folks to do - come down and write them a check?" Today Representative King declared that if Martin Luther King were alive, he would condemn the protesters. Remarkable. Remember the spiritual truth: "What you believe is what you will see." Republicans and conservatives as a group are simply not getting it. If OWS proves to have legs, this will be costly.

For those of you really intrigued with this leaderless, structure-less, agenda-less movement (as I am), here are two serious, in depth articles from today:

David Graeber, former Yale prof, now teaching in London,has been in this "direct democracy" movement for a good while, and he wonders here why it looks like OWS will be/is successful, whereas earlier efforts had more limited success. A blogger called 

riverdaughter also reflects on OWS' success, and advises those who wish to participate to "go for a walk. or have a snack break" if the euphoric feeling of flow gets too strong and heady, because when you feel the high, you are so open that you can be vulnerable.

Riverdaughter tells us that there are beginning plans for a very large Central Park rally on 11/11/11...lovely symmetry.

Pay attention to this movement. Something is moving. Things that were not visible before are becoming visible. Some call this magic. Others call it awakening.