The “Occupy” movement has been criticized from the beginning for lacking cohesiveness, direction and policy. To me this is the strength of the movement and what draws me to it. The lack of specific goals points to the wide array of people who are involved. These people see many problems with the current system. While there certainly are specific problems that many of them would agree with, to boil everything down to these few points would miss the larger picture.
Rather than issuing a few demands, having them dealt with in a neat and tidy fashion, “occupy” is asking us to slow down and have a conversation about how government, business and society function. A conversation that cannot be expressed in a few sentences or a few demands.
Expressing a specific narrow policy framework would place the movement in the very system it is protesting against: a bureaucratic system that concentrates more on rules and form than on substance. A system where the few with concrete “actionable” demands outweigh the voice of the many.
