Occupy Movement: Re-energized and Marching

Today thousands of occupy Wall Street movement’s activists are marching and not camping any longer. After the police attack on the camps last week, ordered by Major Bloomberg and deemed illegal by a judge, the OWS (Occupy Wall Street) movement must either change its strategy, after two months, or it will lose its momentum.

The organizers and the activists finally understood that in order to keep the movement alive nationally they had to do more than camp in public spaces. Last week, the unjustified and sometime brutal action of the police in Oakland and New-York helped the OWS movement by putting them back in the news cycle.

This new strategy, including a bigger march today in New-York with union members and a solidarity strike by students is likely to be more effective by getting more big media attention. But the organically born movement still lack the “teeth” to make a maximum impact and fully be heard by the political class. Demonstrating and marching is a start, but this strategy has its limitations as well. If the OWS movement want to take the fight effectively to the corporations and banks gaming the system in their favors, they should work (in conjunction with unions) in setting up a nationwide general strike. If OWS was successful in this type of strategy-a general strike- than it would show that the movement could have a substantial political impact.

This political potential has not been realized yet by the grass root movement. To survive and possibly expand even more, OWS must start believing in its own political power to impact the election of 2012. OWS can be a formidable political force as long as the concept of a leaderless movement is dismissed. Some politicians such as Senator Sanders are supporting the movement, but what OWS movement should do is encouraged and backed politicians such as Sanders to challenge President Obama in the Democrat primary. General strike? Demonstrations? Calling for a boycott by consumers of a few days? All the options should be “on the table” for the OWS movement.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Thimothy Krause