Occupy Wall Street did not do a lot of shutdowns, they quickly migrated marches to sidewalks and sit downs to public spaces to the consternation of nypd.
The reason they fizzled is they had absolutely zero marketing experience. When they finally got down to listing their demands, it was a 43 point manifesto from save the penquins to truther investigations.
BLM really didn’t get anywhere (they initially had a ~14 point demands) until someone came up with “Defund!”. Marketers would get you down to 2 or 3 items, but two syllables was brilliant.
The reason Occupy failed is not because of marketing, it's because they were not organized to face the raw powers of the State protecting Wall Street moguls. By peacefully demonstrating on sidewalks, you're not having any meaningful impact and you're not being heard.
Someone in this thread mentioned "civil disobedience" movements. Studying the history of such movements (anti-apartheid politics, workers movements, womens rights, anti-colonial struggles), we quickly realize although having a mass of non-violent protesters (popular support) is important, the actual balance of power lies with more militant groups putting actual pressure (sabotage, blockages, attacks) on our overlords to change things for the better.
This is revisionist. They could not sustain a united front, it quickly deteriorated and was diffused with people supporting various agendas. It was important for the message to reach people in order to ramp up support and for the movement to sustain itself, that was a colossal failure.
> was diffused with people supporting various agendas
That sounds pretty healthy. I mean, having a central authority deciding for everyone else is precisely what's wrong with our society.
It also doesn't help to keep a unified front when you have many people injured/traumatized/incarcerated due to police actions (political repression). So while i agree the Occupy movement was a colossal failure, i don't agree with your interpretation of why.
If a large movement doesn't converge on a common purpose, it falls apart, simple as that. There is no need for a "central authority", just message discipline. People may have different gripes and ideas, that doesn't matter - they ought to be able to agree on some things to make that work. Effective labor movements have pretty clear purposes.
> Effective labor movements have pretty clear purposes.
I don't think that is true. I've personally witnessed several major movements in France which involved literally millions of people on the streets, some of which were successful and some not. Let's look over the past 20 years:
- the anti-CPE movement (CPE was a reform for quasi-slave labor for people fresh out of studies) won after months of intense and violent struggle (think molotov cocktails) and university occupations
- the national suburbs riots of 2005 (caused by cops murdering two kids, and Sarkozy raging racist discourse) failed after weeks of intense and violent struggle ; nothing changed except some people were jailed
- in 2010-2011, the protests against retirement reform gathered over a million people every week and the government was on the verge of collapse (we no longer has gas in the petrol stations) yet the movement was never very violent, the government never ceded and so the movement lost
- in 2016, millions of people demonstrated and blockaded for months against working law reform, yet Macron (at the time "socialist" minister of economy) passed it without a vote (article 49-3 of the constitution allows the government to bypass the parliament, and it had not been used in decades) ; this was the first mass movement after the State of emergency (2015) and we can see the fascist cops were on free wheels as we started getting serious life-threatening injuries at every demo even in smaller cities
- in 2018, with the gilets jaunes, despite approval by a vast majority of the population and the protests spreading to even the tiniest countryside cities for over a year and half, the movement failed as it was teargased/grenaded/batoned to hospital (or to death, as with Zineb Redouane) and MANY people were either jailed for extensive periods of time or crippled for life
All of these protests i've noted had very clear objectives and were very massive. Some succeeded, some not. What's the difference between those cases? The only difference is the decisions by the government and the amount of blood they were willing to spill. If you want to know what kind of blood spilling i'm talking about, there's a gilets jaunes collection here: TRIGGER WARNING http://lemurjaune.fr/
On the other hand, studying the history of political repression gives us much clearer ideas on how/why social movements can succeed or fail. The fact that INTERPOL started with a "international police conference on the peril of anarchism" for example, or early collaboration between french/russian/american services to hunt down radical troublemakers. Or the Church committee investigation about FBI's COINTELPRO. Or in France, the many post-WWII scandals involving pro-nazi police prefects (like Maurice Papon who ordered to kill and deports hundreds-to-thousands of algerians in a single week of october 1961). Or the fascist militias organized by De Gaulle (Services d'Action Civique) to attack May 68 demos. Or... and the list goes on.
Modern States have spend considerable resources on counter-insurgency strategies because that's how they hold power. Whether opposition movements have a common purpose is irrelevant as long as the State has the powers and is willing to cripple or kill a significant portion of the demonstrators should their organizing start to be effective.
Disclaimer: i was not in NY and have never resided in NY.
> The masters of Wall Street didn’t have to lift a finger.
No, because they had their obedient militia (the police) teargas, beat up and arrest everyone for them. And the media to spew lies along the lines of "we don't know what these people want" because their desires can't be confined in a single bill/reform.
These people wanted what Barack Obama promised and denied them: hope and change. Food & housing & healthcare for free for all. Putting an end to racial policing. Etc. They were met with rubber bullets and detention. And now clueless people like you who were not on the ground (i personally was involved with other Occupy movements in Europe at the same time) now judge them based on State/corporate propaganda.
That's pretty representative of any form of collective organizing defying the status quo. The civil rights activists of the 60s in the USA were equally derided by the media and repressed by the police in their day, just like the gilets jaunes of today's France.
> Best of luck with projection and raging about conspiracies on the internets.
You've mentioned "conspiracy theory" twice now. What's a conspiracy theory about what i said? Are you implying police/political repression does not exist and we all live in a free and democratic society? Or something else entirely?
The reason they fizzled is they had absolutely zero marketing experience. When they finally got down to listing their demands, it was a 43 point manifesto from save the penquins to truther investigations.
BLM really didn’t get anywhere (they initially had a ~14 point demands) until someone came up with “Defund!”. Marketers would get you down to 2 or 3 items, but two syllables was brilliant.