Connecting the Dots

Credit: Mark Tucker

By Nathanael Romero for Occupy Detroit Media

This Tuesday, after spending two weeks at Occupy Wall Street, I arrived at Occupy Detroit. Leaving New York wasn’t an easy decision. I had grown to love not simply the energy and joy of Liberty Plaza, but first and foremost all the creative and compassionate people who had come to make that space their home. But as it was the case with going to New York, I felt compelled to return to my home state and witness the encampment at Grand Circus Park for myself. In both cases, my decision to join the movement felt less like a choice and more like being pulled by an irresistible magnetic force.

Since arriving at Occupy Detroit, I have joined the Media Working Group. My experiences in dealing with the swarm of reporters at Occupy Wall Street have informed me about how clueless the corporate media can be when it comes to understanding what the movement is all about. Whenever reporters asked me why I was there or what we were protesting, I often found it difficult to dignify these questions with a response. But we in Michigan know exactly what the folks on Wall Street are protesting: we’ve dealt with economic hardship for a long time now and know firsthand the damage caused by the financial and corporate elite.

It is not a fault of ours when the media says that the Occupy Movement lacks focus, or when naysayers are unsure of what this movement is all about. Rather, such superficial criticisms are a product of the media’s failure to connect the dots. One powerful element of the occupy movement is its composition – a diverse coalition of everyday people unified in the understanding that we cannot fight for economic justice without fighting for racial equality, for peace, or for ecological justice.

The media fails to grasp what we at Occupy Detroit understand, that Wall Street is but one player (albeit an important one) in a global system in which finance, governments, and multinationals work for the benefit of the 1%. We understand that rise of foreclosures in Detroit is not simply an isolated phenomenon but is enmeshed within a global system that privileges the rich at the expense of the rest of us. We understand that the problems of this world cannot be tackled by a single-issue approach. We understand that so much of what is wrong in this world is interconnected. We understand that if we are to make a better world, we have to tackle things globally, as well as locally.

The networks of global commerce, international finance, state and military have no center: the net of injustice is cast wide, globally. When we focus our efforts on various nodes within this network, such as Wall Street, Washington, or Lansing, we realize that what goes on in these places of power has disastrous implications for the entire world, as well as for our home communities. The corporate media do not like to think in global terms such as these because to do so would undermine their very existence. The fortunate thing is that we know better than to be duped by media whose primary function is not to inform, but to serve the interests of the 1%.