Reddit reviews The Occupy Handbook

Occupy Wall Street was largely made up of upper-middle class 18-30 year olds, and OWS quickly alienated labor unions like SEIU and UniteHERE from its movement. To read a good analysis of OWS with different perspectives, check out The Occupy Handbook. OWS did serve a purpose in that it added class antagonism language to the vernacular of pop-politics, but it was a terrible example of community and/or worker organizing. OWS lacked any sort of structure or method that could lead to sustainable organizing, and because of that we saw no meaningful political change emerge from OWS.

>The main problem I believe, is that instead of the left actually organizing and doing something about the issue, like occupy wall street, all they do is just blame everything on the republicans (for a understandable reason).

OWS lacked organization and effectively did nothing. Labor organizing has historically been the main facet of left-organizing in the US, and since the mid-1970's, capital has organized a deliberate effort to create the decline of organized labor within the US. By doing so, there has been no strong opposing political force to prevent organized capital from enacting neo-liberal economic policies favoring capitalists and further alienating everyone else in that time. Organized capital has historically supported the GOP, and organized labor has historically supported the Democrats. So you can see why people may blame republicans. But, organized capital has organized so effectively that even democrats are organized by capital now, as organized labor does not have enough power to prop up the democrats as it once did.

I do think this tide is changing, though. OWS is, at the very least, a manifestation of the changing culture that recognizes and is agitated by class antagonism.

Left organizing in the US has grown slowly over the past four decades. A friend, coworker, and fellow labor organizer once told me that in the US, progressive organizing goes painfully slow...until it doesn't.