Marching with Occupy Boston

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  This week we feature two posts from our regular guest contributor, John Hess of UMass/Boston, reporting on Occupy Boston.]

Occupy Boston
Photo by Twp (Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)

I have just returned from the demonstration to support Occupy Boston (10-10-11) and can happily report that it was a successful march of probably two or more thousand people.

Aside from flashes of déjà vu, a number of things struck me about the march.  It was sizable, though there is certainly room for growth, growth that will almost certainly come.

There was a festive but serious atmosphere about the march.  Simply being there with so many others who shared the same outlook was exhilarating.  Though there was a fair amount of grey hair and grey beards in the crowd, and a fair amount of union representation, the large majority were students, or of that age.

These kids were not naïve thrill seekers or copycats.  The ones I spoke with were sharp, aware, and committed, and above all enthusiastic.  As we used to say, good vibes were everywhere.

For me, the march was a stunning and unmistakable refutation of some of the myths that have surrounded the Occupy Wall Street wave starting to sweep the country.  One myth is that the students are naïvely copying protests of the ‘60s.  The second is that what the protesters want is amorphous, airy, or uncertain.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Although there is no agreed upon platform of practical demands yet, this is in part because many of the protesters seem fully aware that both political parties are in the arms of Wall Street (as Mark Twain famously said in the Gilded Age, “We have the best government money can buy”), and that an appeal to Congress for reform is probably not the way to go at this moment.  Nevertheless, there is a clear sense of agreement in political outlook, and this is best reflected in the chants and slogans of the march today.

John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston