Occupy Wall Street 'demands'

Having done my fair share of 'civil disobedence' in my day, I'm following with interest the 'Occupy wall Street' protesters.

And while I agree to a degree and am supportive of their over all theme, this, to me, is NOT clearly well though out.

A couple of examples.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich introduced a 'Contract With America in 1994.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/ContractwithAmerica.html

ONE page, ten points. It was rightly based on the K.I.S.S. principle. Keep It Simple Stupid. Newt, at least then, knew his audience. Americans have a really, really short attention span.

So the 1994 Contract With America was pretty near perfect much as Spokane is pretty near perfect.

http://near-nature-near-perfect.com/

Then just last week, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, having forgotten about the short attention span of the American voters, released a 23 PAGE 'New Contract With America'.

http://www.newt.org/21st-century-contract-america

23 pages.

Newt while I am sure your 'Contract' is wonderful, please see Thomas Jefferson re: proposals to change the way we are governed :

http://archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

And now on to the 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters.

The same advice. Note how Jefferson kept using 'HE' referring to King George the 3rd.

Identify a specific target to oppose.

I've linked your 'offical' Declaration below but some excerps -

For me, in short, your biggest failure is 'they'. Define exactly who you are against and also define exactly why you are against them.

If you don't you may well gain in popularity in the short term (reactionary populus politics IS exciting) but 'they' and 'them' fade after time as targets of opposition.

In just a couple of weeks, the 'story' has changed from where you WANTED the focus to be - the 'who' and 'what' you are against to now the 'story is simply 'YOU' - occupying Wall Street.

Few and fewer care why you are there. You made the story about you being there instead of what you are protesting.

Want me to join you and fight the injustice of Bank of America in fraud against foreclosuers? Great! Show me the facts.

Ditto being against Congress. Want me to join you in fighting the corruption of influence peddling? Great! Show me the facts of memebers of Congress taking money and 'fighting for the people' while voting for the companies.

But - 'they'?

'They have taken our houses'........
'They have taken bailouts'..........
'They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace'......
'They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press'........

There are 21 of these 'they'.

This is the same logic/reasoning that the Tea party (also populus reactionary politics) used.

http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declaration-of-the-occupation-of-new-york-city/