General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Let's Not Forget OWS... [View all]sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)OWS did not land on the streets on Sept 17th. For months before that day a small group of organizers were preparing for what they thought might be at most, a two week occupation of Zuccotti Park.
Three months before Sept 17th, they did a trial occupation to test out their plans, how the police would react, whether or not their strategy regarding using their own media, photographing and video-taping arrests, having legal advisers present etc, were sufficient to deal with any reaction from both the media and the authorities.
They kept in mind the media coverage of the anti-War Protests. You could say the media did cover those protests as they were present and a few articles did appear in the media. But to a majority of Americans, those huge protests, even the ones around the globe, never happened. I asked a friend recently eg, if she remembered the ten million anti-war protest, but she did not. CNN did begin to cover that historical global event, but ended the coverage early in the day.
Yes, the media was there for OWS, we saw them. But OWS never intended to depend on the MSM or coverage. Months of preparation included using Social Media, citizen journalists, live streamers, Utube and any other outlet to get the message out. What they expected from the MSM is what happened but it was irrelevant. The coverage of the attacks on protesters by the MSM did help turn viewers against the cops, but it was NOT the MSM that brought the crowds into the street for them to cover. That was all due to the months long organization by OWS itself.
Eg, they never expected to be there for, at the most if they were lucky, two weeks. The also never expected it to spread around the country to other cities. What they did hope for was that people would come to NYC and join them, and that did begin to happen initially.
The success of their preparations to reach as many people as possible was evident on Twitter as people organized around the country, when the Unions came out early to join them, the Nurses Union eg, Community Organizers all of whom were online also. Students, Labor, all were online and OWS had reached out to them regardless of the media.
Two reasons why they they did not care or depend on the MSM. One, no one trusts the media anymore to give fair coverage to events such as the anti-war movement. Two, if they do, they editorialize most of the time not in favor of these movements generally painting them as 'hippies' etc. with the intention of undermining them, as they did the anti-war movement.
So had no media showed up at all OWS would still have happened. When actual police brutality of the kind that happened in Portland and Oakland, the media left, rolled up their cameras and literally flew away. But it didn't matter, all that brutality was captured on video without them.
Their goals were exceeded when they were not only still in Zuccotti Park weeks later but with growing numbers, with visits from celebrities and politicians, authors, musicians, economists et al which did bring some media coverage, no one was more surprised than OWS. And when early on it spread across the country and then the other parts of the world, even the early occupiers were amazed. The power of their own media was responsible for that.
I watched the Chicago Occupiers grow from four young women to the large movement it is today, not in the media, but on the social media. Same thing with Oakland, San Francisco, LA, Boston etc. This all happened through their own media. Then London, Paris, Hong Kong, Australia, Ireland, it was amazing. OWS joined the Indignados in Spain and other cities around the world in November of that year to coordinate protests all over the Globe which was incredibly inspiring. We watched it all on the Social Media.
I am not saying the Media wasn't present, or that it did not cover some of the activities in the early stages. Eg MSNBC did some great coverage, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and the best coverage from day one was on RT. But OWS was not going to leave it to the MSM, if that was what they had depended on, they most likely would not be around today.
They published their own newspaper, The Occupied Wall Street Journal, using professional journalists to assist them, then other cities did the same thing. Today there is so much news available as to how they are evolving, how they are growing, on hundreds of websites around the world. That is why they were able to mobilized so many thousands of people for Occupy Sandy so quickly.