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Occupy has been starved for meaningful commentary from the press corps. Most of what has been published varies from haven’t-got-a-clue to total bullshit. Most journalists need to be told what to write. Occupy has kept its beliefs and goals close to the vest. It hasn’t been easy without a roadmap for a clueless press.
Thankfully, someone like McQuaig is around to help out her media colleagues.
Are occupations really necessary to draw attention to their cause? Perhaps not. But I’d trust their judgment over mine. After all, they’ve managed to change the public discourse, putting inequality front and centre — something activists and writers, myself included, have failed to accomplish despite decades of trying.
An article last week in the mainstream magazine New York notes that we’re now moving “from the terror era to the income-inequality era.”
Wow. After only two months, the Occupy movement — without backing from billionaires or governments — seems to have moved us into a new era. Not bad for a leaderless group that sleeps in tents and doesn’t even use microphones.
UPDATE: The US blog The Moderate Voice has reprinted a post on Linda McQuaig’s column from Owen Gray.
Cross posted at Let Freedom Rain.
While I have been extremely sceptical of the Occupy movement producing any tangible results, I cannot help but agree with Ms. Mcquaig. The Occupy protests have brought inequality and the rising gap between the haves and have-nots front and center. This is something to be proud of and even if every Occupy encampment get’s evicted tomorrow, they will have succeeded. Why? Because despite all the media trying to white wash over them, and despite our collective inability to focus on any specific issue for longer then one second, we are STILL talking about them.
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McQuaig is right, as usual, but she’s not the only one. Rick Salutin is another writer who gets it. We have to be careful not to put the Occupy movement into a box, turning it into an event that’s ending. It’s the beginning of a long process of enlightenment for the general public. There won’t be any real change until people demand it and now they’ve been wakened up that can start to happen. We have to keep the momentum going and keep educating the masses. It really is the best genuine opportunity for change we’ve seen in a long time.
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I totally agree with Linda McQuaig. Finally, the media is actually mentioning such things as income inequality and corporate greed. We’ve ignored all sorts of abuses to our economies and democracies by focusing the last decade on fighting terrorism. It worked well. Especially when you consider how it put a halt to the momentum built by the anti-globalization movement. Hopefully, this will register with the media and politicians for a long while.
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