Both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street want to change America. That is where the similarity ends.
The Tea Party is a well organized political machine. It has clear leaders, an agenda, and it has raised substantial money it uses to promote political candidates that support its agenda. It is a marvelous example of how a grass-roots organization can become large, powerful and thrive in today's America. It has created significance – which is no small task!
Occupy Wall Street is so disorganized it doesn't even appear to have specific leadership, or hierarchy. It's even hard to label. OWS participants demonstrate a lot of anger at the status quo, but shows no clear agenda about what they would like done differently. OWS appears to have some ability to raise money for its encampments, demonstrations and legal work, but it does not appear to support any particular candidates, or even any particular regulatory platforms or Congressional issues. Easily enough, one could say it is not significant and deserves little attention.
Just looking at the Republican Presidential campaign, it is pretty clear that the Tea Party is making a difference in what candidates say, and what they do. The Tea Party clearly has impacted the political process. On the other hand, for all the media attention Occupy Wall Street receives, it is completely unclear how OWS affects government at all. Overall, or even in the Democratic party where you would expect progressives to be its best allies.
Yet, I find Occupy Wall Street more interesting than the Tea Party, and there are specific reasons I think everyone should pay attention.
For all its organizing skills, the Tea Party doesn't seem to be growing. Its communication clarity, and its ability to rally supporters, belies the fact that the group isn't becoming any larger. It has a hard core group of supporters, who are quite homogeneous, but it isn't attracting waves of new followers. As a trend, it seems to have plateaued. Whether it will have any impact outside its own relatively small group and enclaves is unclear. We have a way of seeing the same people light up at Sarah Palin speaking gigs, but we don't see much groundswell of endorsements otherwise.
On the other hand, the Occupy Wall Street participants seem to be growing (at least if we track rally participants and arrests!). There are more events, in more cities with each one seeming to bring in larger audiences. Despite incredibly weak traditional "management" OWS is growing participants, which are remarkably diverse. And apparently willing to accept criminal prosecution for their involvement!
People from all ethnicities and age groups – and even income levels – are becoming involved in OWS. It is no longer a "bunch of out of work college kids" as we see more pictures of retirees, blue collar workers, blacks, whites, asians and latinos. Each new police initiative gives us more pictures of people being pepper-sprayed, billyclubbed and dragged away that leads readers to say "that looks a lot like my (cousin, aunt, grandma, uncle, father, etc.) "
And the number of participating cities keeps growing, even becoming international. Occupy Wall Street looks like a trend, even if we don't know exactly what that trend represents! Despite lacking the focus of anti-war protests circa 1964 ("Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?") the events keep growing in number and attendance. – and seem remarkably drug and crime free given that we assume most participants are – well – homeless, unemployed and impoverished.
The Tea Party talks a lot about history. From generalizations about "the way things used to be," to frequent references to the 200+ year old Constitution. It appears to represent replacing the status quo with previous behaviors, including reaching back to the era before Federal income taxes and most regulatory departments – as if American had no recessions or economic problems prior to the Great Depression.
Unfortunately, even as a someone north of 50, I find it hard sometimes to connect what the Constitutional framers meant with the reality of 2011 America. Trying to relate Tea Party generalizations about "limited government" in a world where I'm happy someone assures nuclear power plant security and food safety are hard dots to find a connecting line. Often the headline sounds good ("lower taxes") but the details leave me asking how do we invest in infrastructure to compete with China in 2012?
For those who are under 35, such connections to historical perspectives are a remarkable struggle for relevancy, and appropriateness. These people want are new solutions to today's problems – and those seem to be in short supply from the Tea Party. While OWS folks all know how Ronald Reagan is, he's much less a god than he is just a former President (like Kennedy, Roosevelt, or even Lincoln.)
When reading the Tea Party agenda, there isn't a lot about innovation. For all its Libertarian viewpoints, which followers of Ayn Rand surely enjoy, how America in 2012 is going to increase investments, create jobs and become more competitive in a highly dynamic, global economy against skillful businesses from China, India, Brazil, Russia, etc is remarkably unclear.
Even though supply side economics have been institutionalized since the Reagan era, there are no strong arguments that today's problems would be helped by doing more of the same. Whereas there seems ample arguments that perhaps 30 years of doctrinaire implementation of such practices might have contributed to our current problems.
Regardless of your views on demand versus supply economics, there is a complete dearth of innovation in the Tea Party agenda, which is at the least troubling, if not problematic. How is America to regain its growth agenda by voting into office Tea Party supported candidates?
On the other hand Occupy Wall Street seems to have at its core the notion that insufficient growth is precisely the issue. The "99%" are people who, in a 2011 rendition of Howard Beale from the 1976 movie Network, have people throwing open their windows, sticking out their heads and shouting "I'm Mad As Hell and I'm Not Going to Take this Anymore." Protesters are screaming for innovation. They clearly want more investment, particularly from banks, and more hands-on management of growth to create jobs. Even if they lack any policy recommendations for how to make this happen.
It may sound a little like "mommy, I'm hungry, can you get me something to eat?" which would be naive for a 20-something to say. But with millions of them living on futons in their parent's basements, using mobile phones paid for by parents, desperately in debt with college loans and with no prospects for work — it's a cry worth hearing, don't you think? What is the answer that will allow them to apply their skills, enhance their growth – and buy a house!
The OWS people are genuinely angry. They cannot comprehend why America cannot seem to create more jobs, or provide affordable health care for its citizenry, or even deal effectively with wave after wave of property value declines and foreclosures while those at the top of the economic pyramid seem to keep doing better every year.
Even if the OWS tactics are off-putting to the vast majority, their message does attract a tremendous amount of sympathy. A lot of "regular people" (what Richard Nixon might have called the "silent majority") are asking, "why didn't the bank bailout seem to create jobs? Did we really gain by saving GM? How could we use so much government money, and seemingly still be in the same swamp? Why can't I refinance my house? Why do bankers and CEOs receive $10M bonuses after we bail out their industry?"
America has a growth problem. Has had one for a decade now. An inability to create jobs turned the first decade of this millennium into "the lost decade." For the first time ever, America ended a 10 year span with fewer people working, the stock market lower, wages lower, fewer people insured, interest income non-existent due to low yields and tax receipts down – leading all the largest population states to the edge of bankruptcy and pension-system meltdown. Like post 1995 Japan, America seems to be in a permanent "Great Recession."
And that problem has spilled over into other developed countries, with the Eurozone now struggling to deal with economic stagnation in countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain. Harsh government program belt-tightening in Greece is designed to lower the spending costs closer to revenues, but how that will put the huge number of unworking Greeks, especially younger ones, to work is completely unclear.
Throngs of unworking people in Italy and Spain are hearing that their future, as well, will involve less government assistance. But where any jobs will be created from belt-tightening is simply not addressed.
Occupy Wall Street is easy for a traditionalist to ignore. One could blame their attention on "left wing liberal media." But there's a trend here. Something worth understanding. Unless we invest in innovation to put people to work, this "movement" could become a much more serious social issue.
