They had no immediate demands. People thought it was pointless and the protestors copped a lot of criticism because of it.
Almost ten years later Bernie Sanders rallied millions around a platform that was based on the idea of 'the one percent'. That wouldn't have happened if the idea hadn't already been made popular by the Occupy movement.
So yes, there is a point to protesting - even if you don't have any demands.
Frame Alignment theory is the sociological term for what you're describing. After Occupy there were millions of people who were more prepared for a message about the corruption of elites and the need for ordinary people to reclaim democracy in a profound way.
Beyond framing, Occupy also created social networks between activists, and those activists gained a lot of experience and developed specific skills. We saw an example of this network and these skills being deployed with Occupy Sandy, where those networks were used to out-organize FEMA and the Red Cross in areas of NJ after Hurricane Sandy.
Occupy also popularized and tested various forms of social organization and social technologies. Thousands of people now know from experience the strengths and weaknesses of permanent encampments as a tactic, consensus decision making, the people's mic, etc. Mass R&D.
How about frame alignment but in the opposite direction? I'm convinced the cruddiness of Occupy made more conservatives out of my somewhat liberal friends than any thing conservatives specifically did in the recent past.
I'm suspicious of the "made conservative" notion there. If someone's devotion political point of view A is so shallow that some people being irritating is enough to change them to B forever, I suspect they were always a dispositional B.
Young people getting conservative as they get older is nothing new. As Douglas Adams wrote:
“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
And that's for something as neutral as tech. The older people get, the more they get out of the status quo. My dad jokes that he got a lot more conservative when his bank account had something in it.
Really? Because there are a lot of cruddy things in the recent past to consider. I lived in New York during the Occupy rallies several years ago, I don't recall them having significant effects much beyond Wall Street (literally, the street/downtown train stops). There was a lot of coverage, but I didn't get the impression that people were losing their shit about it.
Sure, but Sanders, and later Clinton, still lost... to a man so regressive and unfit most people believed he could never ever win.
So while Occupy may have brought the concept of the "one percent" into the public consciousness, did anything actually change because of it?
At this point I'm of the opinion that Trump will ironically cause much more (progressive) change simply because he makes people, even conservatives, angry enough that they swing the other way.
If the Democrats regain control of Congress in 2018 I expect it to be in no small part because Trump is in office. I expect this to be easier than if someone like Kasich or Rubio was sitting in the Oval right now instead.
Assuming I'm right, the major downside is that a lot of less privileged people will be in much worse situations for a while.
In fairness, Sanders polled significantly better vs Trump than Clinton did. How he would have done in a straight matchup is speculation, but at least based on polls before Clinton won the nomination, he had a better shot.
Why? Voting for someone doesn't mean you think they will win. It seems that for many Republicans it was a happy surprise. (Going by post-election news reports from West Virginia.)
I suppose when I say "people" I mean pundits & pollsters, not American voters as a whole; my bad for not being specific. There were certainly some people in the media (Nate Silver, for one) who absolutely acknowledged that there was a strong chance Trump could win, but theirs was a minority opinion.
Sanders' backers are arguably pushing potential 2020 candidates farther to the left than had Sanders not become popular. I think single-payer as a litmus test could be somehing that impacts the race, and Sanders can get credit/blame for that: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/healthc...
Except for the shift left that Clinton's platform made in the last couple mounts of the campaign? Bernie, even after losing, move the Overton window a couple notches. Unfortunately it was too late by then.
You say that like it's some damning put-down. Of course he didn't succeed; the elites usually win. That's why they are elite. It's no shame to have tried and lost.
His organization is funding and supporting local elections and initiatives across the country. If you accept that local politics is the foundation of national politics in the US, over time he may accomplish a great deal.
He was able to have some success on his platform, which would have failed earilier. This most definitely helps with discussion later. He was able to influence a section of society enough to get into politics. He's still able to command attention when he speaks about something. He likely inspired some other folks and made it more OK to be a democratic socialist. (Unfortunately, this has worked on more detestable outlooks with this last election as well).
The aftermath of him not winning the primary influenced the election itself. Some folks voted differently than they might have otherwise and third parties were a real topic of discussion, even though no one actually thought they would win. Heck, even being able to run for president - something most citizens couldn't pull off - is a win in itself. And he did it with that message and on one of the two major parties' tickets.
Not every accomplishment involves a clear defined win or money.
Really? Bernie is the most popular politician in the country, and now billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and even the Ayn-Rand-reading Mark Cuban are promoting single payer healthcare. That's a big change.
Sure but its absurd to just assume "all non-votes were for bernie". Do the same for Christie and now he's the most popular politician in the country...
On a small scale, this election seemed to make a significant fraction of people more able to identify with what they actually believe, rather than in terms of what they oppose. And I think that will have a lot of value, long term, for political discourse.
Now, I can say with some confidence that I’m a left-wing libertarian. Before this shitshow, I don’t think I was really politically aware enough to be able to identify as anything but “anti-Republican”.
Not even ten years later. Occupy was fall of 2011. Bernie Sanders ran in the primary from spring 2015 through spring/summer 2016 for the election of fall 2016. So, more like four to five years later.
They had no immediate demands. People thought it was pointless and the protestors copped a lot of criticism because of it.
Almost ten years later Bernie Sanders rallied millions around a platform that was based on the idea of 'the one percent'. That wouldn't have happened if the idea hadn't already been made popular by the Occupy movement.
So yes, there is a point to protesting - even if you don't have any demands.