Last night, I attended the kick-off rally of Occupy Minnesota in the newly renamed People’s Plaza in downtown Minneapolis. The speakers’ microphones and voices weren’t always strong enough to reach the hundreds of people gathered, so we amplified the message (as other Occupy groups have been doing) by repeating each speaker’s words in concentric circles. “MIC CHECK!” the speaker would yell, and the first circle of people would repeat “Mic check!” and then people further away, “Mic check!”
“PEOPLE OVER PROFITS!” they would shout. “…People over profits!” “…People over profits!”
It reminded me of a sequence from “Horton Hears a Who,” the 1970 TV cartoon adapted from Dr. Seuss’ book, which my family owns on a DVD collection. In it, Horton the elephant finds a dust speck on which lives a whole civilization of tiny people: the Whos. Everyone else thinks Horton’s crazy, so they decide to destroy the dust speck, while Horton desperately tries to save its people.
In the climactic scene, Horton tells the Whos to make as much noise as they can to let the larger animals know they exist. They begin banging on pots and pans and yelling, “We are here! We are here! We are here!” Their cries reverberate up from the dust speck, animated as words floating up and rippling out into the air: “WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE!”
Many critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement have claimed that the protesters don’t have clear demands. That’s simply not true. Several of the signs I saw yesterday—maybe even a majority—had specific, economically based slogans: “Bring back the Glass-Steagall Act.” “Forgive student debt.” “Corporations are not people.” What I’ve witnessed of the occupation is well-organized and quickly adaptable to challenges.
But even if this movement were as free-form as reported—and it is broadly inclusive, to its credit—wouldn’t that be enough, at least to start with? Wouldn’t it be radical just to have all of the poor, marginalized, fucked-by-the-system people stand up and say, “We can’t take this anymore”? For them (us) to say, “WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE! WE ARE HERE!”?
That, to me, is the power of messages like We Are the 99 Percent. I don’t know if this can bring about the fundamental, long-term overhaul that is needed. I don’t know what will happen if the protesters camp out for days, weeks, months and still nothing changes. But I know that people are inspired and energized just by standing up and letting their voices be heard.
We are the 99 percent. We are here.
