'Flash Mob Politics' From Both Sides Now
Clarence Page

They're mad -- mad as hell! -- and they're taking their anger to the streets.

Who needs leaders, structure or formal agendas? A few commonly shared and loudly expressed gripes and slogans will do.

"I can't afford my own politician so I made this sign."

"If only the war on poverty was a real war, then we would actually be putting some money into it."

Yes, I could be describing the tea party movement, but I'm not. I am looking this time at the grumbling on the other end of the political spectrum. The "Occupy Wall Street" protests, modeled on the Tahrir Square demonstrations that toppled Egypt's government last spring, popped up in mid-September in New York and have spread to Chicago and other cities across the country.

That's ironically appropriate to me, since the tea party movement first took to the streets in Chicago's downtown financial district in early 2009, almost lampooning President Barack Obama's election night rally that had taken place a few blocks away in Grant Park.

Now it's the left -- farther left than Obama -- that's back in the streets, fueled by how Wall Street made soaring profits after the government bail-outs in 2008 and 2009 and caught the elevator while the rest of us get the shaft.

Welcome to the age of flash mob politics. Like a flash mob, like-minded people connect by Twitter and other social-network contraptions and just show up someplace where they display their collective indignation and swear they're going to keep coming back until ... what?

Well, goals are not the strongest suit of flash mob politics. The call to protest Wall Street initially came from Adbusters, a left-wing, anti-corporate Canadian magazine that describes itself as "a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society."

Beyond that sweeping pronouncement, it's not easy to pin this movement -- like the tea party -- down to specifics. "It's a spontaneous gathering, there is no leader," Hope Asya, 22, a Columbia College, explained to a Chicago Tribune reporter in a recent "Occupy Wall Street" demonstration that peacefully occupied a few feet of sidewalk near the LaSalle Street financial district. "Our democracy ceases to represent us; it represents corporate interests."

That sentiment was echoed in similar leaderless and mostly peaceful demonstrations across the country. It also sounds familiar. I heard the same anti-pinstripe-elite sentiments at early tea party rallies. The teas' spokespersons used to call their movement "bipartisan," but it since has become inextricably identified with the right wing of the Republican Party, which has welcomed their energy, if not their unpredictability.

As a result, today's tea party passionately defends tax breaks for the rich and vows to dismantle President Barack Obama's health care program and, they hope, the presidency of Obama. What would happen to the millions of everyday Americans who would be left uninsured again? Well, like the lefty protesters, the teas are not big on specifics.

But, let's face it, kids, you've gotta move votes if you want to see real political change. That's probably why, after weeks of street demonstrations and hundreds of arrests, the orphan "Occupy Wall Street" movement has grabbed White House attention.

Asked if the President was concerned about the protests, Jay Carney, President Obama's press secretary, said he had not discussed it with him. Still, Carney happily launched into a pitch for the President's agenda on jobs, economic stimulus and consumer finance protection -- "legislation that Republicans are now eager to try to dismantle," he pointed out -- as an appropriate response to the frustrations of the demonstrators.

"(T)o the extent that people are frustrated with the economic situation," he said, "we understand." Indeed. Hardly anyone is more frustrated with the sputtering global economy than those whose jobs hang in the balance, like Obama.

Now that they have our attention, could the Wall Street protests grow as the tea party movement did into a Twitter-connected network of activists and voters who can exert some real influence on the major parties? For now, at least, it is refreshing to see some protesting by the other political side for a change, as long as they keep it peaceful. After all, these days there's plenty of rage to go around.