Dear Editor,
In an op-ed column published on Oct. 4, Daily columnist Walt Laws-MacDonald's criticism of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests points toward a fairly widespread frustration over the movement's disorganization. Because the movement is, in effect, criticizing the failure of our current economic system, the desire for an organized, talking-point friendly set of demands expects the protesters to compromise their outrage in exchange for a few simple policy tweaks. Fixing the economic system, however, will never be so easy. I cannot claim to speak for any of the individual protesters, but judging by the words they choose to describe themselves, their demands are straight-forward: They want the "other 99 percent" to, quite literally, occupy Wall Street — to have more influence on the inner workings of our economy. Wall Street will never, of course, let this occupation succeed in anything beyond the symbolic manner of the protests. I like to believe, however, that these protests make us all a bit more aware of how absurd it is that such a small fraction of the population controls so much of our economic and national well-being. In this regard, the protest likely aims to spark smaller, more localized conversations about the economy's negative effects and might be partly understood within a broad activist tradition of consciousness-raising.
Sincerely,
Matthew Nelson
Ph.D. student in English
