Why occupiers vow to ‘fight like an Egyptian’

‘Banks got bailed out; we got sold out.”

“Hope RIP. Change RIP.”

“Wall Street stole my pension. 70 years old and broke. 97 pounds and dropping.”

Those were some of the signs protesters held this weekend in the demonstrations centered in downtown Manhattan — but also sprawled out across the country.

Republicans and Democrats would do well to pay attention to who these people are and what they want. After all, these protesters have a 54 percent approval rating — more popular than either political party.

Despite deep suspicions on the right, Occupy Wall Street is not a left-wing electoral force, and the culture of the occupiers is one that profoundly distrusts electoral politics. There were no Obama signs — in fact, no signs supportive of either party.

There’s a reason this movement is popular. While the Democrats and the Republicans are both in election mode for 2012, Occupy Wall Street has successfully argued that America is in a national crisis that electoral politics is unlikely to resolve.

The stats are dismal. Median income dropped 7 percent from 2009 to 2011, during a putative “recovery.” A majority of Americans believe that we will see another Lehman Brothers -style financial meltdown — giving an implicit thumbs down to the Dodd-Frank bill’s promise of preventing another financial crisis.

Americans are increasingly desperate. You see that in the protesters’ major themes — donating, serving and preparing food for all hungry people who want it. The occupiers prepare food in makeshift kitchens, while local farms and individuals send canned and fresh food. Supporters pay for pizzas through a cellphone texting system, so pizzas are regularly passed around to anyone who wants a slice, including the homeless and the destitute. The occupiers are by and large educated, and many are middle class or part of the formerly middle class.

But the food distribution isn’t just a community-building effort, the occupiers are simply feeding hungry people. Right now, 19 percent of Americans say they couldn’t afford food for themselves or someone in their family at some point over the past 12 months. This is a major increase from the 9 percent who said this in 2008. For context, in China, whose per capita income is a 10th of ours, that number is 6 percent.

For now, to the extent that occupiers have policy demands, they are mild — largely aimed at limiting the power of corporations and money in our society and politics. According to the signs they carried to Times Square on Saturday, they want a restoration of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, limiting the financial role of banks; the public financing of elections; taxing of large corporations, prosecution of some bankers, health care reforms and an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It’s basic process liberalism, and most of the demands written on protester signs could easily be matched to a corresponding bill introduced into the most recent Congress — most of which could not pass both houses.

But if they don’t believe voting will matter, then what is their theory of change? It is to get America to admit to itself that it is in a depression and that its political institutions have lost the allegiance of the public. And those institutions, through mass arrests, are proving the case.

Either party could co-opt this movement, simply by beginning to solve the problems faced by ordinary Americans. The current options being considered aren’t promising. The American Jobs Act, though it could raise aggregate demand somewhat, speaks volumes for its lack of ambition and its undercutting of Social Security. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s jobs program, which appears to be a form of military Keynesianism leading to a war with Iran, seems as misguided and confused as the policies that drew the world into World War I.

The Obama administration and Congress have other, better, policy options. The administration could, for example, crack down on bank accounting manipulation, in particular the mismarking of second mortgage valuations, which are holding up mass restructuring of mortgages. The administration could restructure an undercapitalized Bank of America, begin principal write-downs and kick-start lending again.

Any U.S. attorney could easily begin prosecuting bankers for any number of activities — like illegal foreclosures on active-duty troops. Obama could do this with the authority he has now — though probably not with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner or Attorney General Eric Holder around.

Obama could bring troops home and end our various foreign wars, and cash spent abroad would then circulate domestically. The administration could deem China a currency manipulator, boosting net exports.

Taking these actions would restore faith in the political process and allow citizens to believe again that their political leaders can in fact represent them.

But barring policy action, the likeliest scenario for now is a slow-growth economy, with housing gradually trundling along the bottom, buffeted by its structural unsoundness, high inventory and record low interest rates. The economy could always turn up — if housing turns around and corporate investment picks up.

But things could also get much worse — an ominous Eurozone crisis has been lurking for months, and U.S. bank exposure to the Eurozone is an unknown quantity. If that happens, the future will be chaotic — and electoral politics may no longer be the most valued mechanism for distributing political influence.

The people organizing these protests are keen observers of power. Their lack of faith in elections doesn’t just come from disappointment in a president whom many of them supported in 2008. The protesters have also watched what has happened around the world — their organizing techniques were imported from Egypt and Spain via Skype. They watched a people take down a dictator and are inspired by that. Hence, the “Fight Like an Egyptian” buttons.

Many of them saw an uprising in Madison, Wis., over Gov. Scott Walker’s collective-bargaining and privatization initiatives; and they understand the choice to initiate recall elections rather than strikes resulted in a crushing loss for workers.

This is perhaps why one chant in Times Square — “The whole damn system, tear it down” — wasn’t as mild as the signs asking for the removal of money from politics. Or why the pledge of another speaker, who announced that she wasn’t going to stop until “We shut down New York City,” is perhaps worth looking at seriously.

Citizens are finding ways of exercising power outside the ballot box, such as worldwide protests and demonstrations and setting up high-profile tent cities. Citizens are coordinating internationally, and some are considering general strikes and other, more aggressive, techniques to challenge power — techniques that if successful in one country can quickly spread elsewhere.

If political party leaders choose to aggressively ignore the destruction of the social contract these protesters are trying to restore, they may only be ratcheting up the pressure for large groups of citizens to innovate in challenging them.