Sad, Yet Predictable

Wall Street was cordoned off for a second consecutive day as organizers of a demonstration targeting financial firms failed to lure the 20,000 protesters they had sought to occupy the area “for a few months.”

About 300 to 400 people remained near Chase Manhattan Plaza today, down from 1,000 yesterday, for a protest dubbed “#OccupyWallStreet.” A smaller group, followed by a column of police motorcycles, marched uptown on Broadway as people beat drums, strummed guitars and held up signs reading “end corporate welfare” and “we are too big to fail.”
~ from Wall Street Occupied by a Few Hundred People as Protesters’ Ranks Dwindle by Laura Marcinek ~

Organizers have worked for months on this protest. They had hoped to see thousands of people in the streets, yet they barely amassed 1,000. This is the state of protest in the US today.

When I lived in Salem, Oregon, we were able to turn out over 1,200 people for a protest against the Iraq war. It took a lot of work over the course of 4 weeks, but the vast majority of attendees came from throughout the Willamette Valley. The #OccupyWallStreet effort has been national in scope and yet they couldn't muster as many people as we did marching on the Oregon state capitol.

This observation is not meant as a dig against the current organizers. I don't think the problem is with them; it's with the people! Folks simply don't want to leave the comfort of their couches to challenge much of anything anymore -- even the very people and institutions that are ransacking the nation.

Part of the blame for this overall malaise must fall at the feet of Barack Obama. As I've noted before, he has done more damage to progressive activism than can be imagined. He has co-opted most of the mainstream progressive organizations so that they sit on the sidelines twiddling their thumbs as he continues the policies of the Bush era.

There are massive protests taking place all over the world as citizens revolt against the designs of disaster capitalism. But not here. Will Americans ever wake up or will we all simply die in our sleep?