OPINION/TED RALL
DEMANDS SCHEMANDS The occupations are about the process “Our demand is that you stop demanding that we come up with demands!” I thought about that line a lot this past week. (It’s from a recent cartoon by Matt Bors.) I was a block from the White House, at the protest that began the Occupy movement: the October 2011 Stop the Machine demonstration. Stop the Machine, timed to begin on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, was based on a simple, powerful premise. A coalition of seasoned protesters, including Veterans for Peace, CodePink, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Progressive Democrats of America and Peace Action, would take over a public space, then refuse to leave until our demand—withdrawal from Afghanistan—was met. Adbusters magazine preempted our demonstration, which had been widely publicized, with Occupy Wall Street. It’s the sort of thing an unscrupulous businessman might do. But it’s all good. The sooner the revolution, the better. And the Occupy folks chose a better name. Like other old-timers (I’m 48), I criticized Occupy Wall Street for its wanky PR and street theater shenanigans. Critiquing with love, I joined others in the media for demanding specific demands. That, after all, is how agitators used to do things. Hijack a plane and ask for money. Take over a prison until the warden agrees to improved conditions. Strike until you get a raise. That’s one of the things that changed on 9/11. No one ever claimed responsibility for the attacks. No group issued any demands. The Stop the Machiners in Freedom Plaza
8 | OCTOBER 19–25, 2011 | BOISEweekly
are mostly Gen Xers in their 40s and Baby Boomers in their 50s and 60s. There are hundreds, sometimes thousands, of them, many spending the night in tents. Eight blocks away in McPherson Square is Occupy D.C., the decidedly younger and whiter (mostly Gen Yers in their 20s) Washington spin-off of Occupy Wall Street. As you’d expect, Occupy is wilder and more energetic. As you’d also expect, Stop the Machine is calmer and more organized. “What are your demands?” my friends back home emailed me. Coming up with demands is job one. But job one is slow going. This is not merely a non-hierarchical but an anti-hierarchical movement. Everyone gets an equal say. Influenced by the Occupy movement (and other progressive protests, such as the anti-globalization struggle), Stop the Machine has embraced a system in which all decisions are arrived at by unanimous consensus. Anyone, regardless of their social status or education, can block a decision agreed upon by hundreds of other people. Before last week, I thought this decisionmaking process was madness. No leaders means inefficiency, right? Well, right. Meetings drag on for hours. Often nothing, or very little, gets done. Discussions go off on tangents. Poorly informed and even mentally disabled people get to talk. And everyone—even those of us with years of political experience and education—have to sit there and listen. I’m as snotty as they come. Out on the plaza, however, snark is a liability. A scary homeless guy heckled me while I gave a speech calling for revolution over reform of the system. He went on so 8 long and so intensely that a D.C. cop
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