To bring you up to speed, Public Policy Polling released a survey yesterday finding that Occupy Wall Street was losing ground in public opinion. At the time, I wrote that this in itself wasn't anything to lose any sleep over, because Occupy Wall Street isn't up for election anywhere. Successful protest movements are seldom extremely popular -- both the anti-war and the anti-segregation movements in the '60s were unpopular at the time, regardless of how Hollywood portrays them now. What's important in a successful protest movement is that people agree with you. The point is to mold the national dialogue -- in other words, to change the subject -- and get people to debate the issue or issues that you believe are of primary importance. It doesn't matter if people approve of how you do it, because generally they won't. Public protest is disruptive and inconvenient, which is the entire point. People talk about inconvenience and, if somewhere in the conversation the sentence "They've got a point, though" pops up, then mission accomplished. It's not about you or getting people to like you, it's about getting people to talk about the issue.
Which was why the PPP's analysis bothered me (emphasis mine):
I don’t think the bad poll numbers for Occupy Wall Street reflect Americans being unconcerned with wealth inequality. Polling we did in some key swing states earlier this year found overwhelming support for raising taxes on people who make over $150,000 a year. In late September we found that 73% of voters supported the ‘Buffett rule’ with only 16% opposed. And in October we found that Senators resistant to raising taxes on those who make more than a million dollars a year could pay a price at the polls. I don’t think any of that has changed- what the downturn in Occupy Wall Street’s image suggests is that voters are seeing the movement as more about the ‘Occupy’ than the ‘Wall Street.’ The controversy over the protests is starting to drown out the actual message...[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
