Occupy Wall Street

I support Occupy Wall Street. In the last week, I’ve visited the camp in Liberty Park a few times and yesterday, I added my body to those of thousands marching on Times Square and then slowly filtering down to Washington Square.

Coming from across the media spectrum have been thousands of voices of criticism of the protestors, mostly from people who claim they have no focus, they have no leaders, they have no clear goals. I’ve been thinking about that aspect of the movement a lot (and having a lot of conversations about it), and I’ve decided what I think is best now is self-reflection followed by enunciation.

First, the movement is so nebulous because it is against something so fundamentally rooted in our daily affairs as a society; something so integral that it’s actually quite difficult to give it a name (instead of pointing to random symptoms of it). Furthermore, everyone who is alive within that system has a different relationship to it, a different experience of it, and a different visceral reaction to it. Each chant, demand and form of expression that pours from this shifting crowd is going to reflect that. Individually, each protestor has her or his cause. Collectively, we’re against just about everything.

From here, my plan was to lay out an explanation for what, exactly, in the system I'm so against, but I found myself paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the task. So I turned to the man who has swiftly become my favorite journalist in America, Matt Taibbi, and unsurprisingly, he's already written the article I found myself having so much trouble putting to paper. So I hereby defer the reader to his article and let the professionals enunciate that which the amateurs only feel in their guts:

Matt's Article.