economic democracy

Bill McKibben 11-29-2011
Sign Seen at Occupy Wall Street in October (Image by Mike Fleshman via flickr)

Sign Seen at Occupy Wall Street in October (Image by Mike Fleshman via flickr)

I was also struck by their refusal to simply announce a set of demands. Occupiers aren’t dumb—they’ve read and heard the many calls from the media and politicians that they simply say what they want. It would be easy enough—but in some sense it would detract from the greatest usefulness of the campaign, which has been to articulate a sense of despair bordering on rage. Because they didn’t quickly say “we want this bill passed,” commentators have had to grapple with the actual message of many Occupiers: Our economy is unfair. It gives too much power to corporations who abuse that power for their own ends. They’ve not just cheated us financially; they’ve cheated us of our democracy.

In Washington these days, the great unanswered question about the Iran-contra scandal is the nostalgic Watergate favorite, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"