We Demand Better Demands

Something that I noticed while researching critiques of the movement was that there was a major demand for demands by the media from the OWS partakers. I would say leaders instead of partakers, but OWS is a leaderless organization, which makes it even harder to have demands. Finally, after much scrutiny, a major branch of OWS did release official demands, in addition to the already existing declaration. However, after the demands were released, the media mostly only replied with a further distaste for the movement, basically calling the demands outlandish. Now, I did not expect the media not to critique the demands, but I thought they would have been a little happier that at least a part of the movement was being clear about their intentions. I do agree that some of the demands are a bit far-fetched, but as I have stated many times, the form of protest that OWS has mostly chosen does not necessarily believe in stating demands as an appeal. Following this theme, the demands that were released are not so much an appeal but are instead outlining direct major changes to the system. This reminded me of a post that Sam made (click here to read it) about whether or not the mainstream media is against OWS, and I am starting to agree. I have attached several articles about the perceived ridiculousness of the demands, what do you think?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/occupy-wallstreet-list-of-demands

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/money/occupy-wall-street-list-demands-shows-ignorance

http://nation.foxnews.com/occupy-wall-street/2011/10/04/read-demands-occupy-wall-street-and-try-not-laugh

We Demand Demands

While researching OWS for the blog posts, it has been difficult for my classmates and me to find any concrete demands from OWS, or what they really stand for. There has been many assumptions made by the media and onlookers pertaining to the “demands” of OWS, while in reality, the movement has made minimal, official demands. This lack of official demands has been a major and central critique of the OWS. After much scrutiny by the media, OWS finally released a list of demands (that can be seen here on their website), but even then it was in the form of a declaration. Finally, after over a month of protesting, a list of demands was turned over to the media. The media then proceeded to scrutinize the list (which will critiqued in a different post). In a previous post, I discussed how OWS is an example of direct action. To recap, direct action is unlike passive protesting because it does not appeal to the system, but defies it. OWS demonstrated direct action by their occupations, demonstrations, and even today’s strike, across the country. What the media, and most of America, misunderstood is that a list of demands is not part of the direct action process. The central idea of direct action is to act as if the current system has no power.  By giving the system of a list of demands, it would only solidify the system’s power and it would make the protest an appeal- no longer make it direct action. So even if not having demands is a perceived weakness of the movement, it actually made the movement a true demonstration of direct action by denying the current system. So, in the spirit of direct action, Don’t Fight the Power, Deny it!