Artur Davis: Has Occupy Wall Street Accomplished Anything?

Occupy Wall Street is, in its current state, visible, noisy, and not terribly relevant. How can you stay relevant when the first major policy item on your agenda – student loan forgiveness for the unemployed and the low-income – is already law, and the second–substantial tax hikes for the wealthy – has already been claimed by one of the major political parties?

Two other gripes with OWS: first, every modern progressive movement has derived its moral authority from its efforts to elevate some marginalized class of Americans. This is the first left leaning movement whose rhetorical goal is to pull one class of Americans down to size. It is self-consciously divisive in a way that blacks, women and gays never were.

Finally, while the 99 percent is a glib, clever phrase, it literally links the interest of a hungry child in the Mississippi Delta to those of a six figure accountant whose mortgage is underwater. If you are going to mimic the symbols of Dr. King’s Poor Peoples Campaign, at least have the depth to say something specific about poor people.

(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)