OWS summary

The article “Ask Not What Occupy Wall Street Will Do Next; Ask How We Will Change The Status Quo” opens up with a comparison between where Occupy Wall Street is now and where it was a few months ago. The author explains that OWS movement’s publicity has died down immensely since the original movement at the end of last year. Fitzgerald counters his statement by saying the movement has come along away since it originated.

He uses multiple analogies to help express his idea of what OWS is such as comparing it to a “brand” or a “reality television show.”  The movement acts as a mean to motivate “consumption”, or the ability for others to believe in the ideas behind the identifiable movement regardless of its quality. He describes OWS as the 99% which represent the lower-class heroes and the 1% to be the controlling villains who are battled against with the use of rallies and Youtube videos. Fitzgerald believes that OWS should resist transforming from indefinable to something permanent and no longer up for debate, reification. OWS should lose its identity as a society and become a claim “that private interest is a public problem.” By this he means that although any adult (public aspect) can invest in stocks only the rich few (private aspect) hold the power in the market along with the most influence when it comes to Congress halls by means of lobbyists. Fitzgerald believes that the power held by the stock market should allow everyone to have a say in what goes on in it which was precisely what OWS was fighting for. He ends his piece by saying that although OWS continues to fight, Wall Street continues its daily routine without a change. We should anticipate the affects of publicity on the status quo rather than what OWS will do next in order to stop worrying about “it” and start talking about “us.”