An Occupier returns to Dewey Square

The one difference between the Occupy crowd and the Tea Party crowd. After the Tea party and single day meetings around the country they took their views to the ballot box. After the Occupations ended the happy campers and drummers will do zero follow up. I doubt more than a 10th of the group at Dewey Square are even registered to vote.

As an aside, is any one else freaked out that it's December 12th and the ground is not frozen?

Sorry, Matt, but you just brought yourself down to wall street's level. Your tweets make you sound like a pompous, head-inflated douche. Changed the world? No, you didn't. The world may change, but Boston's little misguided, confused occupation didn't change anything, except for people's opinions of the movement.

Oh dear! The city had to pay to clean up after the Occupiers! Lord knows the money that went to Police overtime and cleanup would have gone directly to housing the homeless, getting them mental health and addiction services, saving the whales and polishing unicorn horns.

Thank vishnu we can go back to complaining about how the glorified median strip isn't used by anyone. All these people actually making use of the damned thing was really screwing up that whiny UHub meme.

And certainly these stinky, drum-banging trustfund hippy, millenial, Apple-product dependent, suburban-sourced, clueless, lazy-ass, shouldn't have gotten an overpriced liberal arts degree in the first place, nitwits haven't changed a damned thing. No doubt Martha Coakley would have launched a counterpunch on the banks even if absolutely no one was talking about this outside of platitudes of bad apples and "boys will be boys (who are actually sociopathic criminals)."

And for the whole two or so months that this thing has been going on there has been no electoral effect of these people (assuming those elections in Ohio and Maine where GOP/Tea overreach was slapped down and a GOP recall in AZ had more to do with people being happy with the way things are), so we can assume that none of them will vote or try to influence matters going forward, because.... well that sounds good to me. They may be willing to sleep in a tent on a median strip, but I doubt they'll vote.

This all seems like a very reasonable analysis of the situation.

If you're a dick.

Matt,

First of all, thank you for your commitment to the protest. I can easily imagine what a profound experience it must have been in your you and the other participants.

However, I'm afraid that I have to agree with much of Stevil's remarks. After the first few weeks of the occupation movement, it became obvious that the sheer audacity of "occupying public space" as a protest had captured the public's attention. It also became obvious that the movement was far more interested in appealing to every small constituent group than it was in creating a legacy that would have a positive affect on American political life.

What could have become the founding of a great American progressive resurgence instead mixed a protest about corporate malfeasance into a jambalaya of competing special interests. Protests about concentrated corporate power became diluted with LGBT rights, Animal rights, anti-capitalist screeds and protests and student loan relief. Ultimately the message was became further diluted when the discussion became almost soley about the Occupation itself being an act of free speech.

Occupy had a rare opportunity to punch through our present muddy politics and provide real information and provide real alternatives. Instead Occupy tried to completely reeducate the American public about a utopian community experiment that was spoken of as if were a permanent option. Because most of us spend a great deal of time making a living, raising our families and dealing with all of life’s minutiae, the public, we don’t have time for hour of GA’s each day interrupted by working group meeting. In other words, occupy should have worked more to provide a few retail options.

As sympathetic figures such as Bill Clinton and Tom Menino have suggested, the movement would have done better to use that great energy and excitement that arose to choose one or two issues such as a return to progressive taxation, re instituting the effective government regulation of the banking system that the U.S. enjoyed for decades after the FDR administration or even supporting Elizabeth Warren's campaign.

Sadly it appears that the legacy of the movement may be as temporary as the already fading chalk etchings on the sidewalk. Instead of making lamentable comparisons between your actions at the camp to landscapers unrolling sod, I challenge you and the other participants to take some time learn your lessons from your unique rich experiences and do better.
America needs you.

Love all the entitled douchery in this comment section from people sockpuppeting that the money could have been better spent.... coming from the same concern trolls that often cry taxes are evil and liberals drool.

ultimately, Occupy did do one concrete thing, it changed the focus of the MSM. Lots of recent talk about income inequality, unemployment, foreclosure, the damn economy and lack of JOBS.

Something that barely got a whimper from the MSM and our elected officials just two months back.

It was all austerity, all the time; so main street time to buckle those bootstraps because hey, Wallstreet is too important to ask to tighten theirs. That not fair of us, even with a trillion dollar bailout.

Good on them. They changed the dialogue, directed by the beltway and 1%. Thats is no easy feat, and they did so more successfully than the Teaparty.