Is It Time to Just Show Up?

Woody Allen may have said it best.  Eighty per cent of success is showing up. 

The time may not be right for Occupy Wall Street to forge a common message.  But a unified slogan could be just the thing for the moment when critics are trying to debunk the movement for its formlessness.

"Just Show Up" could serve the purpose.

Six million Americans have been out of work for more than six months.  If that doesn't qualify people to protest against the greed and opportunism that has exploited them, what would?  The thing about the six million -- and all their dependents -- is that most of the time they're invisible.  So it's hard to imagine how much misery and shame that represents.

As long as people who are suffering from the system's excesses remain huddled by the hearth -- as long as the unemployed protest their fate from corner bar stools across America -- they can be dismissed as an inevitable consequence of capitalism.

Right-thinking people know they are not.  Increasingly, they represent the silent majority.  Instead of being shuffled out of sight, isn't it time for the real majority to JUST SHOW UP?

Conversation of a Decade

As we said when we launched Prophets of Boom, the crisis brought on by credit default swaps in 2008 and the subsequent collapse of the U.S. housing market would begin a conversation that will likely last a decade or more.  Young Americans who fear they are being disinherited by the excesses of the elites have brought the debate about their future out into the open with their move to occupy Wall Street

The movement is spreading to cities across the U.S. and there has been online chatter from the West Coast about expanding it to include main streets in Canada.   The power of the internet to mobilize like-minded people is being demonstrated to anyone who cares to check. 

In fact, the conditions that move New Yorkers to demonstrate at the altar of capitalism are being felt everywhere that the powerless are being dominated by others.  Increasingly in America thanks to skewed expectations, downloading of public expenditures to communities in crisis and outright greed, the conditions for dissent are being defined by one's distance from the centers of power.  That distance can be measured in miles, money and years of experience.  A very large constituency exists within those parameters - one that is finding its voice and exploring its influence.

The system of goverenance that was devised to harness regal and economic power for the collective good is seen to be failing.  Web-based means are mobilizing an opposition that is far more united and adroit than traditional politics or the ballot box.  How these dynamics play out in the coming decade could change policies or it could change the democratic system itself.   

One thing is clear:  contemporary leaders will need the widsom of the founding fathers to fashion a compromize that will satisfy the parties to this debate.  So far they have mostly been mute.