the occupiers

Remember the Occupy movement?  It started out as Occupy Wall Street, which it actually never did, but it did occupy Zicotti Park, a small park near Wall Street.  I don't remember any precipitating event, it just seemed to come out if the blue in September 2011.  Their goals, as wiki tells me in a glowing article that appears to be written by occupiers themselves, were vaguely income inequality and real democracy.  Real democracy is too vague for me to get ahold of, but income inequality, why that is something I have been yammering about in the ivied halls for years, with surprisingly little results.  

My methods for diminishing income inequality would be closing loop holes and a more progressive income tax, and having the gummint provide basic services for everybody.  The Occupy Movement's methods would be, well they weren't telling.  They weren't telling because, um, they wanted to see a thousand flowers bloom, they wanted to see a lot of answers out there and they didn't want to discourage anybody by getting behind this idea or that because that might discourage others who preferred other ideas and they would drop out of the movement. and the movement wanted to be, above all things inclusive.

Well that's one way to have a big movement, and it was pretty big, there were little islands of Occupy everywhere, and it seemed like a grassroots movement, that might well, as Beagles is fond of saying, take over.  The mainstream press loved them, those young smooth untarnished faces with their hopeful gaze.  Is it not said that a child shall lead them, but the only thing I remember children leading is that crusade that came to a very bad end.  

And while the Occupiers didn't end up being sold into slavery, they did fade into obscurity.  They occupied these little bits of property here and there. but after that what?  If a reporter stopped by to ask what they were thinking they would hear a bunch of idealistic pap. and nothing more.  Like the morning dew they just evaporated away.

Couldn't they see this coming?  Couldn't the leaders have done something about it?  Well there were no leaders.  There was no titular leader of Occupy.  There were all these little charters who were quasi independent, surely among them there were folks
who were more charismatic than others and were sort of leaders, but they could lose their unofficial position whenever a more charismatic guy came along, and if he became too charismatic the whole group in general would reject them because they didn't believe in leaders.

And that is exactly the kind of hierarchical structure that Black Lives Matter has.  More on this after the weekend.