1. Are OWS, the Madison protests of last winter, the Arab Spring, the Indian anti-corruption movement, and the Tea Party all examples of the same phenomenon? Are they miscellaneous stories plucked from the world’s headlines? Or–in the case of OWS and the Tea Party–are they contrary forces?
2. Who is most susceptible to OWS pressure? Wall Street (I think not), municipal authorities, college presidents, the media, the Democratic Party?
3. Structure: Is OWS an example of Jane Mansbridge’s “unitary democracy?” Of Clay Shirky’s organizing without organizations? Is it leaderless? Leaderful? Deliberative? Democratic, or anarchistic, or both? What are the prospects of survival, growth, and impact for such forms?
4. Legal questions: Which Occupations are illegal? Do local authorities have the right, discretion, or obligation to enforce the laws that forbid encampments? Are there legal and ethical means to remove occupiers?
5. What are the effects of OWS on public opinion? The media and public have given more attention to inequality of economic outcomes during the OWS period. Is OWS causing that change, or reflecting it?
6. Learning and dialogue: Is OWS a space for people to change their minds and develop their thinking, or are participants repeating what they already believe to peers who already agree? Will OWS promote free speech and inquiry in larger environments, such as UC Davis?
7. Ideology: what is (or will be) the predominant current within OWS: liberal reformism, radical anti-capitalism, or separatism (the creation of mini-utopias)?
8. What are the connections to other forms of politics, such as campaigns and elections, public interest lobbying, litigation, and economic actions such as strikes and boycotts?
9. Assets: what do the OWS participants bring to the table? Note that assets can be unconventional and overlooked–not just power, money, numbers of followers, and legal rights, but also values, innovations, stories. Still, not everyone brings every asset; what does OWS have and not have?
10. Is OWS the beginning of an era of agitation from the left (and perhaps also the right), or will it be a footnote by next year?

My thanks to Facebook friends and others who have attended Occupy Wall Street and provided independent reports. The question on my mind is the one that every academic “expert” seems impelled to ask: what do the Occupiers want?

“They have to organize around specific demands and specific targets,” [Occidental Professor Peter] Dreier suggests.”

“But if the movement is to have lasting impact, it will have to develop leaders and clear demands, said Nina Eliasoph, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. … ‘So there is a tension between this emotionally powerful movement,’ she said, ‘and the emptiness of the message itself so far.'”

Nathan Schneider’s FAQ page says:

What are the demands of the protesters? Ugh—the zillion-dollar question. …  In the weeks leading up to September 17, the NYC General Assembly seemed to be veering away from the language of ‘demands’ in the first place, largely because government institutions are already so shot through with corporate money that making specific demands would be pointless until the movement grew stronger politically. Instead, to begin with, they opted to make their demand the occupation itself—and the direct democracy taking place there—which in turn may or may not come up with some specific demand. When you think about it, this act is actually a pretty powerful statement against the corruption that Wall Street has come to represent. But since thinking is often too much to ask of the American mass media, the question of demands has turned into a massive PR challenge.

It is a political act to take over Wall Street and turn it into a space for free speech, where diverse views can be expressed and collective decisions made, free from coercion, money,  majority rule, or status. That is a symbolic statement in favor of civil society against both state and market.

The consequences are quite unpredictable. If the idea is to impress the American people with an alternative model of how society should be organized, I think it will fail. The model will look unattractive.

If the idea is to build a coalition or social movement that can gradually coalesce around actionable demands and develop power as voting bloc or durable protest movement, then it has potential. This process will take time and patience. Participants will have to overcome difficult coordination problems, especially since I am confident that they will reject the traditional strategy of revolutionary movements: purging most of their diversity in favor of a disciplined “vanguard.”

If the idea is to demonstrate that a substantial minority of the American people is angry because Washington’s response to the economic crisis has been too timid and overly moderate (not too radical), then I think the objective is worthy. Probably between 14% and 24% of the American people stand to the left of the Obama Administration on economic issues, and they have been largely invisible to the rest of the public. That invisibility has been a problem for the administration itself, whether the White House sees it that way or not. The only potential danger lies in misrepresenting the 14%-24%, which is very diverse and may look different (demographically and ideologically) from the people occupying Wall Street.

Tahrir Square is an inspiration, but the Egyptian protesters had a concrete demand (“Mubarak out!”), and they succeeded because the Army and the Muslim Brotherhood joined them. I think the best guess is that those two institutions will now run the country, with some tolerance for the secular “democracy” movement. That’s a major achievement but not one that looks like a model for the United States.

In Dynamics of Contention (2001), Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly analyze mechanisms, processes, and episodes as components of contentious politics. Mechanisms are specific phenomena, such as taking over a public space, clashing with the police, or obtaining media attention. Processes are concatenations of mechanisms. The Civil Rights Movement was a process encompassing many mechanisms, from bus boycotts to training programs; from famous speeches to votes in the Senate. Episodes, finally, are large historical events that result from processes: the fall of Jim Crow or the ancien regime in France.

It seems to me that what we observe on Wall Street is small collection of mechanisms. Similar mechanisms have also been observed in Madison, WI, and overseas. The question is whether they can merge into a process and achieve an historical episode. That will require: 1) collaboration with very different kinds of mechanisms, such as mainstream union organizing efforts and electoral campaigns, and 2) some degree of consensus about objectives. Both require a different set of mechanisms from the ones that have been reported so far from Wall Street–but the sequence is perfectly healthy as long as it progresses to the next stage.

In lieu of a post today, here is a link to my article on The Democratic Strategist, number six in a symposium on distrust in government, organized by Demos. The previous five contributions have been helpfully diverse, but all have shared the premises that: 1) deep distrust is an obstacle to progressive politics; 2) distrust is not simply a result of anti-government rhetoric and hostile media but also flows from people’s authentic experiences of government; and 3) progressives can reduce distrust by governing differently. My prescription is unique in its emphasis on enlisting the people in governance.

Project Vote is pushing an important line of argument. They say that our policy debate is distorted because the media is fascinated with the Tea Partiers (“Who are they? What do they want? Will they affect elections?”) and is ignoring the huge number of new voters who turned out in 2008. Those new voters tended to be younger, less wealthy, more racially diverse, and more politically progressive than the typical US electorate, and they won a national election. If the press today would constantly ask, “Who are they and what do they want?” the whole policy debate might be quite different.

Lorraine C. Minnite writes, “heading into the 2010 congressional midterm elections the views of traditionally under-represented groups who were mobilized in record proportions in 2008 have been drowned in tea.” See her “What Happened to Hope and Change? How Fascination with the ‘Tea Party’ Obscures the Significance of the 2008 Electorate” (PDF) and a soon-to-be released Project Vote survey.

Reporters focus relentlessly on predicting the next national election. (I’ve quoted the former CNN political director, Tom Hannon, saying, “the most basic question about [an] election … is who’s going to win.”) From that perspective, it’s somewhat rational to focus on the Tea Partiers and not the recent Obama voters. Current polls that screen for likelihood of voting in 2010 suggest that the electorate will shift rightward again in 2010 because of who turns out. Thus, if you want to predict the next election, it makes sense to focus on the new conservative voters. Two important caveats, however, will probably be missed. First, the Tea Party will not represent the median voter, who will be moderate; and second, the electorate will probably swing back leftward in 2012.

Assuming that the media (and the blogosphere) continue to focus on predicting the 2010 election, the only way to shift the discussion is for progressive constituencies to threaten to vote. They need to tell pollsters that they are excited to vote, and they need to take public steps–like marches and protests–that indicate mobilization. That’s how the game is played right now, and they’re not playing well.

But the game isn’t satisfactory. “The most basic question” about politics is not “who’s going to win.” The most basic question is: What should we do? Although the press can’t answer that for us, they could provide information relevant to our decisions.

From that perspective, “Who will win the next election?” shouldn’t matter much. At most, it should have a modest impact on our strategic plans, but it should not cause us to change our own goals. (Thus the relentless focus on the horse race is problematic.) Who voted in the last election is perhaps a bit more relevant, because the winners presumably have some democratic legitimacy as the current governing coalition. Who might vote if we changed our politics is more interesting, because it invites us to consider a wider range of strategies. I’ll be looking forward to the Project Vote survey for that final reason–it will suggest ideas about how we might be able to mobilize new progressive voters with new progressive policies.