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Published on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 by On the Commons
http://onthecommons.org/tea-party-vs-occupy-wall-street
Finally, a truly populist uprising
by David Morris
Host David Gregory complained about Occupy Wall Street protestors “demonizing banks” and wondered, “Is this not a reverse tea party tactic?”
Gregory is right. In many respects Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is indeed a mirror image of the Tea Party. To the Tea Party government is the enemy. To OWS the huge corporation is the enemy. OWS wants to raise taxes on billionaires. The Tea Party wants to considerably reduce them. OWS wants to rebuild and strengthen the safety net. The Tea Party wants to weaken it
Both OWS and the Tea Party are mass movements but their attitude toward the masses couldn’t be more different. OWS and the other #Occupy protests lack leaders and a formal platform, but their demands clearly emerge from the thousands of individual grievances expressed in homemade signs and letters. Mike Konczal at Rortybomb.org did a statistical analysis of 1000 personal statements posted at We are the 99% TUMBLR and found them far less ideological than practical. Their demands effectively boil down to these. “(F)ree us from the bondage of our debts and give us a basic ability to survive.”
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