In and Out of the Box

These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back.

This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished.

It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured.

And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are.
~ from Why the Elites Are in Trouble by Chris Hedges ~

The political and economic elites (as well as many progressives too) have tried hard to place the Occupy protests in a box of predetermined size. However, as Hedges points out, the protesters themselves have refused to be cordoned off in any way, shape or form. And this is why the elites SHOULD be worried.

One box the elites have tried to fashion for these hundreds of protests is a physical one. In most locales, officialdom has set aside certain "areas" in which citizens can exercise their rights of free speech and free assembly. Try to go outside of those designated spots and the police state rears its ugly head.

Many in the mainstream media have created a box of description. We're told that the protesters are a bedraggled phalanx of rebellious young people who don't understand what it takes to build a mighty nation. They are dirty, lazy and shiftless types who can't find jobs because they don't apply themselves. So, with nothing better to do, they have set out to block traffic, impede commerce and annoy public officials.

And then there's the box of form that the elites and many leading progressives have tried to shove the protesters into. A movement can't be taken seriously, they say, without a list of specific demands. If you can't come up with a programmatic schema, they chortle, why should we take you seriously?

But, for all the various efforts to contain these protests in one box or another, it ain't working. The protests are stretching their legs in new and bold directions.

At this point, we don't know if anything substantive will come of it, but, to borrow a phrase from the Obama campaign of 2008, it does engender the "audacity of hope!"