They are your houses

All week long I've been getting into arguments with friends and strangers about the Occupy Wall Street protests. I'm not sure why I'm so bothered about it but I can't seem to shut up. 

Partly it is the incessant whining about "media blackouts" that seemed not to notice the literally thousands of news stories about the events. 

Partly it is the group's evident lack of ideological or programmatic focus. Not that they're not trying. Even as the protests were in full swing, the Coup Media website was polling supporters (and anyone else who happened onto the site) to find out what their demands should be. 

The list of candidate positions weirdly includes  not only perfectly understandable wishes like free college education for all and nationalized health care but also the repeal of the 16th Amendment (which allowed the federal income tax) and re-opening the investigation of the 9/11 attacks. (Here is the full list: http://coupmedia.org/the-sovereign-peoples-movement.html )

But mostly I suppose I'm comparing Occupy Wall Street to another ongoing protest, the one against the Tar Sands Pipeline. I love their well-rehearsed discipline, their laser focus on a specific issue, and their orderly and methodical way of getting themselves arrested, one after another, by the hundreds, outside the White House. It made me proud of leaders like Bill McKibben and Chris Shaw for knowing what they are talking about and getting the world to listen.

And finally, I am remembering a poem by Richard Wilbur, who would later be my teacher, written in spring of 1970 for the Wesleyan Strike News. There's a sentence I can't forget, as I think of the houses bought with the mortgages that spawned the current Wall Street crisis. "They are your houses."

FOR THE STUDENT STRIKERS

by

RICHARD WILBUR

Go talk with those who are rumored to be unlike you
and whom, it is said, you are so unlike.
Stand on the stoops of their houses and tell them why
You are out on strike.

It is not time for the rock, the bullet, the blunt
Slogan that fuddles the mind toward force.
Let the new sound of our streets be the patient sound
Of our discourse. 

Doors will be shut in your faces, I do not doubt.
Yet here and there, it may be, there will start,
Much as the lights blink on in a block at evening,
Changes of heart.

They are your houses; the people are not unlike you;
Talk with them then and let it be done
Even for the grey wife of your nightmare sheriff
And the guardsman's son.