Why Occupy has succeeded and will continue to succeed: they are not a single-issue movement.

[morningfog]

Below is an excerpt from the wonderful Wendell Berry, written over a decade ago. His critique of single-issue movements and why they are doomed to fail highlights what Occupy has gotten right. Occupy is not solely focused on economic inequity, although that is certainly a major issue for the movement. Occupy is more sophisticated than many previous efforts, they realize that is but one piece of the problem.

Occupy also stands and confronts environmental injustice, racial injustice and people's right to work. Occupy is anti-war, pro-choice and pro-free speech. Occupy is supportive of prisoner's rights and homeless rights. Occupy is all that and more. Occupy recognizes the inter-connectedness of these issues and is flexible in its ability to address each.

Additionally, without being bound to a single-issue or a singular leader, they are adaptable to current events and ever-changing injustices. Reading the essay by Berry, you can see that his hypothetical movement has been realized in the horizontal and local leadership of the Occupy Movement.

from Essay : In Distrust of Movements by Wendell Berry

http://thegreenhorns.wordpress.com/essays/essay-in-distrust-of-movements-by-wendell-berry/

The movements which deal with single issues or single solutions are bound to fail because they cannot control effects while leaving causes in place.

* * *

And so I must declare my dissatisfaction with movements to promote soil conservation or clean water or clean air or wilderness preservation or sustainable agriculture or community health or the welfare of children. Worthy as these and other goals may be, they cannot be achieved alone. I am dissatisfied with such efforts because they are too specialized, they are not comprehensive enough, they are not radical enough, they virtually predict their own failure by implying that we can remedy or control effects while leaving causes in place. Ultimately, I think, they are insincere; they propose that the trouble is caused by other people; they would like to change policy but not behaviour.

The worst danger may be that a movement will lose its language either to its own confusion about meaning and practice, or to pre-emption by its enemies. I remember, for example, my naïve confusion at learning that it was possible for advocates of organic agriculture to look upon the “organic method” as an end in itself. To me, organic farming was attractive both as a way of conserving nature and as a strategy of survival for small farmers.

Imagine my surprise in discovering that there could be huge “organic” monocultures. And so I was not too surprised by the recent attempt of the United States Department of Agriculture to appropriate the “organic” label for food irradiation, genetic engineering, and other desecrations of the corporate food economy. Once we allow our language to mean anything that anybody wants it to mean, it becomes impossible to mean what we say. When “homemade” ceases to mean neither more nor less than “made at home”, then it means anything, which is to say that it means nothing.

AS YOU SEE, I have good reasons for declining to name the movement I think I am a part of. I am reconciled to the likelihood that from time to time it will name itself and have slogans, but I am not going to use its slogans or call it by any of its names.

* * *

My first condition is that this movement should begin by giving up all hope and belief in piecemeal, one-shot solutions. The present scientific quest for odourless hog manure should give us sufficient proof that the specialist is no longer with us. Even now, after centuries of reductionist propaganda, the world is still intricate and vast, as dark as it is light, a place of mystery, where we cannot do one thing without doing many things, or put two things together without putting many things together. Water quality, for example, cannot be improved without improving farming and forestry, but farming and forestry cannot be improved without improving the education of consumers — and so on.

* * *

My second condition is that the people in this movement (the mtewiid) should take full responsibility for themselves as members of the economy. If we are going to teach the economy what it is doing, then we need to learn what we are doing. This is going to have to be a private movement as well as a public one. If it is unrealistic to expect wasteful industries to be conservers, then obviously we must lead in part the public life of complainers, petitioners, protesters, advocates and supporters of stricter regulations and saner policies. But that is not enough.

* * *

My third condition is that this movement should content itself to be poor. We need to find cheap solutions, solutions within the reach of everybody, and the availability of a lot of money prevents the discovery of cheap solutions. The solutions of modern medicine and modern agriculture are all staggeringly expensive, and this is caused in part, and maybe altogether, because of the availability of huge sums of money for medical and agricultural research.

Too much money, moreover, attracts administrators and experts as sugar attracts ants — look at what is happening in our universities. We should not envy rich movements that are organized and led by an alternative bureaucracy living on the problems it is supposed to solve. We want a movement that is a movement because it is advanced by all its members in their daily lives.

The entire essay is well worth the read.

[Lionessa]

1. I think they have made a difference, I think the uprisings are the ONLY reason hiring is picking

up. I think those that were hoarding all that cash decided better to give just a little to cause the Occupy movement to lose footing instead of growing as the weather begins to improve. I think we will find that they are going to give just enough and not a penny or a job more than it takes to wind them down.

Already, the outrage over the evictions is dwindling, everyone seems to want to just thank god and his mercy that they FINALLY got a minimum wage job with 30 hours a week and no bennies, besides the stock markets are soaring,... SARCASM.

[GodlessBiker]

2. OWS is defining the political dialogue. It is a political backdrop and very valuable.

[doc03]

3. I wasn't aware they still existed n/t

[morningfog]

5. In the local communities and cities, where they have been mobilizing and helping,

they are not going unnoticed.

[T S Justly]

4. Excellent. K&R (nt)