A few weeks ago, if memory serves me just before the week that Occupy Wall Street started Bloomberg warned that if something is not done about unemployment and growth there would be "riots in the streets."
While he was originally criticized for hyperbole and overstatement that is one call that was proved pretty quickly, as the protests against Wall Street are growing.
As a New Yorker this is pretty close to home for me. On Saturday night there was some excitement with the the 700 arrests because of the protesters apparently storming the Brooklyn Bridge. It certainly would be very poor judgment if this is true as nothing will lose a movement like this support quicker than if they seem to be deliberately messing with people trying to go about their lives, the very people they are supposed to be trying to help. In the Anonymous protests at Bart Transit in San Francisco the protests that interfered with people returning from work cost them some popularity with the people in the area. I know I wouldn't be happy if I were caught up in delays that they decided were not important as they served a higher cause.
As it turns out it may be that they were set up, that the cops told them to that they should protest on the bridge that this was a safe place for them. As I noted above I am a New Yorker but this is in Manhattan and I live in Nassau County, Long Island. On Monday I did briefly see a white van with lots of colorful writing in magic marker. It sped by pretty fast but what I did make out was Wake Up America! and beneath that something about Debt!
I tried to get a look but they were gone. It got me to thinking that while it is no surprise to see protests in Manhattan we in the quite suburbs don't expect to see anything like that here. It would certainly be a mistake for them to in any way disturb the peace in areas like this as people would not take kindly to it. That's suburban life for you.
There's a sense in which this sort of thing is a popularity contest. If people get together and say they are making demands on behalf of the American people they are kind of out on a limb. What if most Americans decide they don't speak for them? Yet political protests are different than simple empirical vote counting. The standards by which they are judged is different.
Can I admit to you that I have a certain amount of ambivalence about this? While I believe totally in the right of Americans to protest in any legal non violent way they choose I don't know that I much like doing this sort of thing myself. I feel like I'm an individual and there's something about a whole bunch of people chanting the same slogans, holding the same signs, demanding the same things I don't know about. I feel as if the process kind of arrogates my own individuality.
I don't deny that protests are legitimate and I do want to express solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. Yet while they for the most part are demanding the same things I want very passionately I just don't know about the form their action takes. People power is in some sense it seems to me is opposed to individual power.
I can't help but remember Theodor Adorno. Here he was a radical political theorist with all these way out theories on revolution, music, and aesthetics. Yet when the Vietnam protesters sought him out in the 60s he shut the door on them. I'm not sure why exactly he did this but it may have been that as a man of thought he found the form of their action repellent. It also may be true that as Zizek has suggested in his heart of hearts despite all his Marxism he was a Cold War Liberal who wanted the West to win the Cold War in reality.
Please don't misunderstand my remarks here as a criticism of the protesters just my own attempt to be reflective and honest with myself.
Charlie Rangel attempted to express solidarity with them over the weekend and he was jeered by some protesters though others criticized this.
One thing that makes me feel more solidarity with them is that many of them were chanting Yes We Can! That solidarity with Obama I appreciated.
Ultimately Bloomberg was right. It almost seems unfair that these protests are implicitly against him. He agrees with the demands in principle at least. Of course assessing his own term is another question but certainly we haven't got enough help from either Washington or Europe.
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