"What are these people for? To the degree that they're for anything, it's left-wing nuttiness."

I felt our discussion today was a bit unfair towards Occupy Wall Street. For all of its flaws, OWS did affect the public conversation: before last summer, the 1% - 99% breakdown was not as widely understood or discussed as it is today, while the phrase occupy has turned out to be resonant in the culture at large (even being co-opted by good ol' "bootstrap" individualism, as in occupy your life). 

We have not really seen the effects of last summer's protests - the friendships and alliances forged, the new ideas generated, the connections made. For example, episode 4 of this excellent Frontline report focuses on a group of financial analysts who joined the protests (more on them here).

Nor is it finished, as a visit to two OWS websites will demonstrate (here and here). Even more interesting is the website of Adbusters, the group that triggered the protests to begin with.

Finally, the "human microphone" was not an uncritical repitition of someone else's ideas but a clever adaptive response to New York City's prohibition on amplification in public spaces (new cell-phone aps may make it unnecessary in the future).

Chris