What Future for Occupy Wall Street? by Michael Greenberg As Occupy Wall Street enters its fifth month, dislodged from most of the public spaces it had staked out around the country last fall, the movement seems weakened, its future uncertain. It sometimes appears to be driven by a series of tactics designed to maintain its public presence with no discernible strategy or goal—a kind of muddled, loose-themed ubiquity. The movement has proven adept at provoking media attention, but one may wonder what it amounts to, apart from its ability to reaffirm its status as a kind of protest brand name… If Occupy Wall Street is to become the embodiment of public conscience, it will have to pose similar questions that defy moral evasiveness and make people urgently ask, for example, what degree of inequality and what forms of corporate influence on government will be tolerated. The problem for protesters is that while severely limiting corporate power in government is a worthy goal, it’s morally abstract, with little visceral impact. And economic justice is a vague and sweeping term that invites both personal grievances and broad interpretation. 
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What Future for Occupy Wall Street? by Michael Greenberg

As Occupy Wall Street enters its fifth month, dislodged from most of the public spaces it had staked out around the country last fall, the movement seems weakened, its future uncertain. It sometimes appears to be driven by a series of tactics designed to maintain its public presence with no discernible strategy or goal—a kind of muddled, loose-themed ubiquity. The movement has proven adept at provoking media attention, but one may wonder what it amounts to, apart from its ability to reaffirm its status as a kind of protest brand name…

If Occupy Wall Street is to become the embodiment of public conscience, it will have to pose similar questions that defy moral evasiveness and make people urgently ask, for example, what degree of inequality and what forms of corporate influence on government will be tolerated. The problem for protesters is that while severely limiting corporate power in government is a worthy goal, it’s morally abstract, with little visceral impact. And economic justice is a vague and sweeping term that invites both personal grievances and broad interpretation. 

Source: nybooks.com

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