#occupyendgame Tuesday November 15, 2011

Update: Well it looks like Zuccotti Park isn’t officially shut down, that being said I think these takes are still applicable for the next couple of weeks.

It was inevitable, but as many now know NYPD was shut down Occupy Wall Street late last night. This of course shouldn’t surprise anyone. Even as a casual observer, it was pretty clear that the physical occupations would eventually end, either voluntarily or by physical removal.

So with the slow end of the physical manifestations of the movement, one of the overwhelming questions of the Occupy Wall Street movement comes back to the forefront of the discussion.

What Is The End Game of Occupy Wall Street?

With the symbolic epi-center now closed, the simplest talking point is that without the camps, the movement is dead.

I’m sure that will be the overwhelming stance taken by the whole movement’s critics, but anyone who has even remotely followed the events over the past two months will be able to see the holes in that argument. I’ve had the privilege of observing the movement as Canadian living in the US and I can safely say that the Occupy Wall Street movement has laid the ground work for some interesting change in the next few months.

What Changed?

By taking the smallest step back and looking at the events in a holistic view, it’s clear that conversations in America have changed. In early September, the average American wasn’t dissecting The 99% vs 1% , nobody was discussing The 53% vs 47% and they certainly weren’t making closing accounts at major banks. The average citizen wasn’t discussing Income Inequality, crippling student loan debt, the hardships fallen on the unemployed veterans and pushing for the rich and elite to pay their fair share. There were no calls for a General Strike in Oakland and there certainitly wasn’t any disruptions to the daily routine of Washington Politicians. So it goes without saying that the Occupy Movement has at least changed the political debate.

While messages are only a small element of the entire storyline, also don’t discount some of the most recent policy initiatives from The White House. Reforms pushed through to help relieve student loan debt and a push to encourage businesses to hire more veterans, were likely influenced by the hundreds of students and marines standing with the Occupy encampments. It wasn’t by chance that these announcements were made at the same time as the occupy movement gained stregthen – everyone knows that coincidences in politics are very rare.

So while no dictators were toppled as in the Arab Spring of 2011 and the fringe anti-capitalists didn’t get their dream anarchist society; the Occupy Wall Street movement has struck a nerve with the average American citizen.

So What is Next?

In my gut, I’ve always thought that most of the camps would close down in the next two-three weeks. Anyone who has slept in a tent for more than two days, will tell you how unfaltering of an experience it is. And as the holiday season approaches, the audience for political discourse will inevitably shift focus towards Christmas shopping and Turkey dinners. That of course is just human nature.

And while that was only my gut feeling, it appears I wasn’t alone in this thought. In an interview yesterday, Adbusters founder, Kalle Lasn called for the tents to close down. (BTW, Adbusters is the Canadian magazine that initiated the whole concept).

… hours before the Occupy Wall Street camp was raided by the police, the editors of Adbusters, the Canadian, anti-consumerist magazine that dreamed up the movement, suggested that it might be time for the protesters to “declare ‘victory’ ” and scale back the camps before winter sets in.

So with the camps closing, what is really next?

In my opinion, it’s far too early to discount what Occupy will do to the political rhetoric in the US. In a similar manner to how the Tea Party movement didn’t just end after people left the National Mall after Beck-a-pooloza in 2010, the real effect of Occupy Wall Street will be seen in the next set of American elections. If the conversation surrounding the 2012 presidential elections revolves around income inequality, the fair share of the rich and the lack of social mobility in the US, then the occupy movement will have become a success.

But in the meantime, my feeling is that you’ll see many academics, bloggers and pundits picking up the mantel from where the occupy camps left off. Eventually you’ll see politicians incorporating some of the concepts into their platforms. I’ve alluded to some of the changes in the current administrations policies, and I have a feeling those types of changes will trickle down. In an interesting opinion piece for the New York Times, Jeffrey D. Sachs discusses the possible next steps for the average citizen and I think there is some validity in sentiments of a potential third Progress Movement (albeit some of them are quite Utopian).

The young people in Zuccotti Park and more than 1,000 cities have started America on a path to renewal. The movement, still in its first days, will have to expand in several strategic ways. Activists are needed among shareholders, consumers and students to hold corporations and politicians to account. Shareholders, for example, should pressure companies to get out of politics. Consumers should take their money and purchasing power away from companies that confuse business and political power. The whole range of other actions — shareholder and consumer activism, policy formulation, and running of candidates — will not happen in the park.

So is the closing of the symbolic Zuccotti Park camp the end game? I don’t think so. It actually seams more like the inevitable next step in it’s evolution. Sure the physical manifestations of this spontaneous movement may have ended, but there are too many potential outcomes, and really only time will tell… and for me, that really is the most intriguing part of this whole exercise.

With that I’ll leave you with an interesting comment from the Occupy Wall Street PR team as they were being evicted from Zuccotti Park. Yes, it’s a bit fluffy and philosophical, but it is an interesting last volley.

Such a movement cannot be evicted. Some politicians may physically remove us from public spaces – our spaces – and, physically, they may succeed. But we are engaged in a battle over ideas. Our idea is that our political structures should serve us, the people – all of us, not just those who have amassed great wealth and power. We believe this idea resonates with so many of us because Congress, beholden to Wall Street, has ignored the powerful stories pouring out from the homes and hearts of our neighbors, stories of unrelenting economic suffering. Our dream for a democracy in which we matter is why so many people have come to identify with Occupy Wall Street and the 99% movement.

Categories: The-Southern-Neighbours, the-political-world,

Why Election 41 is Not Canada's Social Media Election... Sorta Tuesday April 26, 2011

Earlier this month, I made a pretty bold statement that I didn’t believe Election 41 would be a won by a Social Media Movement. And while I still stand by that prediction, I’m going to clarify this statement… just a wee-bit.

If you’ve been following the election rhetoric, you’ll notice that there are two social media movements which seam to be making waves in this election. Unfortunately, for the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, Greens and the Bloc, neither one of these campaigns is being spear-headed by a specific political party.

Yes, a case could be made that the NDP is making some waves online, but in my opinion I don’t think their unimaginable surge is tied to a specific online social media campaign. The Liberals viral attempts with Ignatieff’s Rise Up speech and the Facebook Creeper haven’t generated any traction. While it doesn’t seam like the Conservatives have really been able to harness the power of social media to really create a buzz or even energize the audience that exists on those networks. The Greens and the Bloc, well I maybe missing something, but overall they aren’t really in the online conversation.

So What’s Happening Online

If anything, I can reinforce my original statement that the Social Media campaigns being organized by the major political parties aren’t clicking with the online audiences. As I mentioned in my previous post, there are a few reasons for that.

Yet … we are seeing two independent movements, with completely different motives, which are starting to change the conversation and may ultimately effect final week of the campaign.

Do you know what those campaigns are?

In my opinion, they are Rick Mercer’s Vote Mob call to arms and Sh!tHarperDid.com.

The Rick Mercer Vote Mob Campaign

This movement was kick started by a rant on The Rick Mercer Report, in which Rick challenged the youth of Canada to show politicians that they aren’t just an apathetic demographic.

It was the earlier of the two campaigns, but it seams to have caught some decent steam. A quick search on YouTube shows dozens of Vote Mob’s being organized at each major university to encourage students to vote. These grassroots vote mobs are generating enough of a buzz for mainstream media to take notice.

So will the Vote Mobs movement create encourage an influx of Canada’s youth to get out and vote? We won’t really know until May 3rd, when the statisticians are done their work, but without question Mercer’s call to arms is creating a buzz and getting the attention of students – even if some politicians don’t like it.

I don’t have enough of a understanding of campus culture around the country to understand what these mobs might do in terms of numbers. (Remember I went to the U of C, a notoriously apathetic commuter university without a strong on-campus culture. These mobs could really change the culture on some major campuses like Queens, Guelph, UBC, etc.,) But if there is anything that the overal online conversation is noting, is that this all to arms is getting students to involved. And a stronger youth vote will definitely have an influence on election day.

Sh!tHarperDid.com

Which brings me to the big one. Yes, Sh!tHarperDid.com.

Regardless of your age or demographic, if you haven’t heard of SHD.com I have to question which rock you’ve been living under.

It has been retweeted and linked on facebook thousands of times. A quick look at the online conversation over the past two weeks, shows SHD as one of the biggest online stories of this campaign. (Subsequently, overshadowing the social media release of all the major parties)

With it’s vulgar tag line and crew of trendy hipsters, SHD.com asks the view to look at a laundry list of Harper’s deeds. Even with the cute sketch of Harper’s infamous kitten photo, it is a pretty rough attack at Harper.

While many will say it’s nothing more than a few angry artists taking pot shots at the less than cool Conservative Party, I think SHD.com has probably done more to shape the election conversation than any social media campaign. If you look at the trajectory of the entire campaign, SHD.com was the first major volley in the personal vilification of Stephen Harper. Yes, there were underpinnings of anti-Conservative and anti-Liberal slanders, but it was overwhelmingly on party policy.

A quick glance at the overall twitter conversation, and it’s clearly migrated from a question between a Conservative majority or a Conservative Minority to one of a Conservative Majority or the removal of Stephen Harper as Prime Minister. In fact, I gander to say that more then ever in this campaign, the rhetoric has shifted towards a personal attack on Harper. Which is an incredibly interesting turn of events and one that I think stems from the introduction of SHD.com into the conversation, which for many people has made it cool to hate on Harper.

Again, What Does This All Mean

If I knew, I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog post.

But what I can say is that the conversation online is changing and it’s not being controlled by Canada’s political parties. Rather this post goes to show that neither party is winning the Social Media battle in this campaign. Instead, that the conversation is being influenced heavily by outsiders with completely different motives.

I’m leaning on these two campaigns in this post, because I think they show the positive and negative sides of Social Media movements. On the one hand you have Rick Mercer and impromptu-version of the Rock the Vote campaign. Then on other you have the hipster attack at Prime Minister Harper and his current record. Two completely different campaigns, but both creating buzz and bending the online conversations in ways which the major political parties only wish they could.

Categories: the-social-media, the-political-world, The Canada Vibe, The Soapbox