“In a contemplative mood” on Google+, Stephanie L. Davis recently called for a leader to emerge who will speak for the Occupy movement. Davis pointed to Mario Savio, the student agitator who headed the “free speech” movement at Berkeley in the 1960’s, as an exemplar of the type of leader we need today; someone who, in Davis’s words, “can ignite and unify America.” But, do I need remind everybody, that we already do have amongst us exactly such a leader, a spokesperson who happens to be the single greatest orator in a generation. This charismatic visionary is smart as a tack—certainly more intellectually-gifted than me—inspires thousands, if not hundreds-of-thousands, offering hope, evincing change. This articulate spokesperson, additionally, issues from a humble background, pulled himself up through study and hard work, spurned the seductive enticements of Wall Street when dangled in front of him, choosing instead to organize marginalized citizens to work together so they too might gain a voice inside the marbled corridors of power. Precisely the charismatic leader who Davis yearns for has already appeared. His name is Barack Obama!
Barack Obama, of course, does not speak for Occupy Wall Street nor for any of its members. Nor has Obama been particularly successful at unifying America. Quite the opposite. To the vast majority of occupiers, the 44th President of the United States of America is little more than a pawn of Wall Street. Jaime Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, need only pick up the phone to chat with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. But if, say, Stephanie Davis or Leland LeCuyer were to try to call—well, good luck.
“Is Never too soon for you?”
Let’s face it, the rules are different for different people. The 1% have access the rest of us do not. That’s simply the way it is. But, unlike reasonable people who accept that this is the way things are and leave it at that, a few unreasonable folk do crazy things like camp in Zuccotti Park because they simply can’t accept the fact that things are the way they are. Why? Because the status quo is fundamentally unfair and, as a result, fundamentally unjust. Furthermore, the fact that some individuals, because of their wealth, are granted privileges denied to the vast majority because we are not so fortunate is anti-democratic and completely contrary to the ideals that the United States of America had been founded upon originally.
Money not only talks but, according to the wise eminences who preside over the Supreme Court, is speech protected by the First Amendment. Thus Dimon gets to bend Geithner’s ear, then Geithner Obama’s, so that you and I end up paying not only for our own money, money that we lent to the bank in the form of a deposit (for technically a demand deposit is a loan issued from the depositor to the bank), but additionally we end up paying through our taxes for the bailout to cover the losses incurred when the bank gambled and lost—lost with the money that we lent them—lost our money!
Perhaps in Lincoln’s day it was reasonable to orate about “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” but today it would be and is entirely unreasonable, not to mention contrary to fact, to utter such blatantly untrue words. So it is refreshing that some few, very brave and very deficient-in-reasonableness campers have come forward to put their bodies on the line, so that these ancient yet forsaken ideals might be brought back once again into the fullness of reality, that once again we can reasonably and without any irony speak about “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Which brings me back to leadership.
More than a few of these idealistic, angry, unreasonable occupiers cut their teeth politically campaigning for Obama. Many have learned the folly of entrusting their fate into the hands of any charismatic leader. It’s not just that their champion may betray them, but they have learned the hard way that power actually and really does reside within themselves—but only so long as they speak together, as one voice. Setting before themselves a leader to speak for them, however brilliantly and stirringly she or he might declaim, would mean surrendering that power to speak for oneself. Let me repeat this. You have political power only when you speak as one. You forsake that power when you appoint someone to speak for you.
The fact that no leader has emerged from the occupiers isn’t a sign of weakness or of lack of political organization. Quite the contrary. It signals that the people will no longer settle for anyone else speaking for them. They will speak for themselves, thank you.
As you might imagine, Stephanie Davis’s post stirred up several responses. The most interesting, perhaps, was the very first: Timothy Ang suggested that the occupiers pick Davis as their spokesperson. I second the motion. Davis can and should grab the “mic,” speak for herself, and let her words be echoed and amplified by the entire assembly. Then so should you and so should I, each and every one of us. For, frankly, nobody is better qualified or capable to speak for Stephanie Davis except Davis herself. Nor can anyone speak for you other than yourself. Nor me for myself.
May three million leaders bloom!
Then and only then will we have government of the people, by the people, for the people. Government of the 100%. One nation, indivisible. E pluribus unum.
