Dude, Where's My Job?

Extract

The question of what occupy wall street wants has been a hard one to answer—despite or because of Adbuster's founding call for “one” “simple” and “uncomplicated” “demand.” This is partly because the Adbuster candidate, “Democracy without Corporatocracy,” was a little vague and partly because the many specific demands that followed it—from reinstating Glass-Steagall to reforming campaign finance to establishing an “Office of the Citizen”—didn't really capture the radical spirit of the movement. What emerged as most characteristic of OWS was something like a critique of the very idea of demands: we refuse to make any because we refuse to acknowledge that anyone has the authority to accede to them, or we will make only demands that cannot be met. But this strategy, not unlike the mechanism of occupation itself, has obvious limitations: going someplace just because you're not supposed to be there and asking for something only as long as you can't possibly get it doesn't look like a recipe for changing the world.