Guest perspective by Ralph Nader
The question confronting the Occupy Wall Street
encampments and their offshoots in scores of cities and towns around the
country is quo vadis? Where is it going?
This decentralized, leaderless civic initiative has
attracted the persistent attention of the mass media in the past five weeks.
Television cameras from all over the world are parked down at Zuccotti Park in
lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street.
But the mass media is a hungry beast. It needs to be fed
regularly. Apart from the daily pressures of making sure the encampments are
clean, that food and shelter are available, that relations with the police are
quiet, that provocateurs are identified; the campers must anticipate possible
police crackdowns, such as that which has just occurred in Oakland, and find
ways to rebound.