The system needs adjustment

Screed, anyone?

Port of Oakland being shut down may be the first real thing that has happened as a result of the Occupy Wall Street protests. I respect the value of symbolic protests, but Guy Fawkes masks and oversized puppets are dumb, dumb, dumb.

It happened in Oakland organically - the police picked a fight, hurt a guy, and a week later a major regional port gets shut down. Because, motherfuckers, sometimes this shit comes back on you. It happened in Oakland because of the police overreaction, and it happened in Oakland because people who lived and worked in Oakland decided to object, decided to change the debate and escalate, not withdraw. Stand up, not stand down.

The climate was right, Oakland was already "occupied," whatever that may come to mean, and a critical mass of motivated people were willing to stand up and object. Shutting down a regional port for a day is both huge and insignificant, depending on your perspective. What matters is the war, not the battle.

OWS et al will only really matter if they can persistently drive home a single message. Consider the WWI veterans marching for their benefits, or the March on Washington. Real change, long term change, only comes when the people in the street show the mirror to the nation at large.

But those WWI vets were conscripted, compelled to fight, then discarded after use. They had suffered and fought, then been abandoned to the winds. MLK had struggled for decades, being imprisoned, fielding death threats and yet still calling out a clear message, long before he ever told those men and women in DC about his dream.

We can't only focus on the victories, the icons and the symbols, because they only really matter if they stand for something, if the struggle to achieve those victories were undertaken honestly and persistently, at any cost. Changing the world has always and likely will always mean putting yourself in the line of fire.

I do not speak figuratively.

"When the general strike happens," was the phrase I remember this one kid using a lot when I was in undergrad, just before the WTO protests, back when it was totally hardcore to burn a poly-blend flag on Evergreen's Red Square (accelerant was required). I was not impressed. Later I studied fundamentalist Christianity and the phrase, "When Judgment Day comes," had a familiar ring to it. 1998-era activists and evangelicals shared a half-assed vision of the New Day. A New Day which will, most certainly, come, and so why get too worked up about it? An everyday sort of faith. "I wouldn't be surprised if everything I've always said would happen happened, but it probably won't happen tomorrow." These are not the people who change things. These are the people who chatter on about how they told you all along, and you're doing it wrong, and me too, me too.

Real commitment means making that shit happen, braving the batons, tear gas, bullets both rubber and lead. It means expecting to spend the next few nights in jail.

Today, OWS needs more than anything to hold its god damned ground. The longer the movement is a real movement, the more clear its message will be and the more real its effect will be. Tea Party managed this (for better or worse). You rally the people, THEN you figure out what the fuck you all really want. But only the people who show up, who participate, really get a voice in what happens. That's how politics are (is? Is politics singular), at least in a system that gives the nod on occasion to democracy and public welfare.

I don't think OWS will get cleared out by winter snows, and in Oakland at least it won't be cleared out by tear gas and handcuffs. It may well be ten years of disquiet before we see real change. That did not stop Reverend King. If OWS means (or will mean) anything, it must be ready for a long and inglorious struggle. Usually these things amount to little... but sometimes they don't. Sometimes the message is too clear, and we redefine the world we live in.