The biggest lesson that should have been learned from the
1999 WTO demonstrations is that violence causes an unsurmountable backlash in public opinion.
This "movement" has been coming for a long time.
When people across America, whose lives have been shattered and destroyed, come to realize the true face of the global "free market" system, the legitimacy of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the US administration will be challenged.
A latent protest movement directed against the seat of economic and political power is unfolding.
How this process will occur is hard to predict. All sectors of American society are potentially affected: wage earners, small, medium and even large businesses, farmers, professionals, federal, State and municipal employees, students, teachers, health workers, and unemployed. Protests will initially emerge from these various sectors.
That was written in 2009. The source is
Preparing for Civil Unrest in America - Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on US Military Bases. for anyone that cares to look.
The government will crack down, and at that point the movement is doomed.
Not because it isn't legitimate, but because there is real fear
it may grow beyond control.
The term civil resistance, alongside the term nonviolent resistance, is used to describe political action that relies on the use of non-violent methods by civil groups to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and coercion: it can involve systematic attempts to undermine the adversary's sources of power. Forms of action have included demonstrations, vigils and petitions; strikes, go-slows, boycotts and emigration movements; and sit-ins, occupations, and the creation of parallel institutions of government.
It does NOT include violence or destruction.
OWS may not be the face of the movement when it's all said and done, but people are tired and want real change.
Real change, not administrations that promise it and don't deliver.