For all the head-scratching and hand-wringing in the corporate media over the “message” -- or lack of one -- as it turns out, the American people understand exactly what the Occupy Wall Street movement is talking about.
Evidence that the occupy movement has triggered some deeply dormant impulse in the American psyche is everywhere. Here in Northern California, “occupiers” are standing their ground in San Francisco, Oakland and other major cities. In San Francisco, protesters are refusing to leave Justin Herman Plaza, and police are preparing for a standoff. In the largely working class city of Oakland, where poverty is endemic and gang-related shootings are a near-daily occurrence, the protests are growing larger by the day. Last week, “Occupy Oakland" was given a notice by city officials to vacate Frank Ogawa Plaza. There too, demonstrators are refusing to leave until their demands are taken seriously. Those demands include increased regulation of banks and Wall Street investment firms and fundamental changes to the system of economic distribution.
In other parts of the Golden State, Wells Fargo is being targeted by occupiers in an organized effort to collectively withdraw funds. Earlier this month, hundreds of protestors shut down a Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco's Financial District. Others are participating in protests, teach-ins and non-violence trainings in their cities or communities.
Here in Northern California, and across the nation, the “electricity of change” permeates the atmosphere. The potential for a collective awakening of “we the people” from cultural unconsciousness induced by the anesthesia of corporate consumerism is omnipresent.
It is a “Howard Beale moment.”
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