Unaccredited, Uncredentialed, Unpaid, Unapologetic
Resist The Narrative.
The thing one must understand about News, in general, is that it is driven by the human need for a story to organize the world. And if that story is repeated enough, it becomes true to everyone- except those who live that story, day in and day out.
If you ask Reuters, for instance, you’ll find the repetition of the same memes the mainstream ever goes about Occupy: it is disorganized and lacks a coherent message.
This is demonstrably untrue, which I will, in the coming days, show in a simple word-frequency content analysis (the data has been collected and needs compiling- COMING SOON-); that doesn’t matter though, because it fits the narrative.
The Occupy movement resists the old narrative on how politics, policy and activism are done by acting firmly from Anarchist/Direct Democracy principles. That isn’t to say they aren’t organized— if you want to talk about parliamentary procedure, Occupy, as a movement, runs by the same Roget’s Rules of Order as the 112th Congress of the United States.
It is just as bogged down in motions to carry as any other organization, only with “twinkle fingers”— symbolic, but quiet, ways to praise or condemn particular thoughts, agendas or action items— and “temp checks” on how the group may feel about something, without a vote.
This is something they have done in the larger, city wide General Assemblies in Downtown Chicago, something they have done in neighborhood Occupy meetings and, indeed, something they casually do amongst themselves— as I witnessed during a seminar on Economics, where one eager, though quiet, participant confused a Harvard Professor by constantly wiggling digits in his periphery.
It is a failing of the media as a business model that they can not get deeper into the story- News simply does not have the resources for a story so boring as the truth behind a popular uprising.
Cheaper to point the camera, provide no context, and let the images speak for themselves—- after editing, of course.
Don’t blame the Journos, blame their leash-holders, Media Consolidation and the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
But I digress.
The only way to resist the Narrative is to talk about the truth: your truth.
Be a witness to what is happening on the ground. See it. Go to a meeting, a single meeting, and let it speak for itself.
Don’t speak objectively- you’ll fail, just as all news has failed by holding itself to an impossible standard and letting the public hoist said expectations upon them.
You may find that in the meeting you attend, there is no coherent message for you to hold on to— though they begin every meeting by saying they are a non-violent, non-partisan movement, so you can start there— and you may find that they seem disorganized to you.
That is just fine.
As long as you have witnessed the truth and haven’t been spoon fed it, believe as you wish. Do not accept someone else’s narrative of the story; play a small part and, from there, try and see the whole.
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