Rochelle Gurstein, writing in The New Republic, covered a recent event with author Chris Lehmann speaking about his new book, Rich People Things - which details the hilarious (and patently scary) ideas of the kind of one-percenters happy with being labelled “elite.” What’s fascinating is the softness of today’s language, and how young writers and even activists often seem timid of giving offense. This captures it well:

The historians among us spoke of the radical labor movement that emerged in the last part of the nineteenth century and offered a number of examples of their compelling visceral imagery—plutocrats as “blood-sucking parasites of property”; the factory labor system as “a prison-house” or “chattel slavery”; the competition between men that underwrites capitalism as “bestial”; industrial cities as “inexpressibly base and ugly.” A young woman in the audience said that the nineteenth-century language did not sit well with her and that her generation did not feel comfortable with the language of 1960s “Up against the wall, mother-f-er” confrontation. She expressed some concern that her ivy-league college education—she had been an American Studies major—had made her so hyper-sensitive to speaking ill of anyone that she no longer had words that felt right to her to condemn those responsible for wrecking our country.

Yet as Gurstein noted, the Occupy movement has found a kind of potent street poetry - it reminds me most of Muhammad Ali - in shouts like: “We don’t see no riot here! Cops, take off your riot gear!” And she noted the sheer bravery of the words in the tense stand-off with university cops at UC Davis (an aside: why does the University of California employ heavily armed troopers?) when one young man used the “mic check” technique to bring ethical and moral concerns in the very air:

The one voice: We are willing The many: WE ARE WILLING

to give you a brief moment TO GIVE YOU A BRIEF MOMENT

of peace OF PEACE

so you can take your weapons SO YOU CAN TAKE YOUR WEAPONS

and your friends AND YOUR FRIENDS

and go. AND GO.

Please do not return. PLEASE DO NOT RETURN.

We are giving you a moment of peace. WE ARE GIVING YOU A MOMENT OF PEACE.

You can go. We will not follow you. YOU CAN GO. WE WILL NOT FOLLOW YOU.

Then, the students as a group shout, “You can go! You can go!” And the police as a group warily back away and leave. At which point the students, surprised by their victory, erupt into cheers and applause, followed by “Shame on you! Shame on you!” That this young man had the presence of mind, the poise and courage, to speak as he did at that frightening, chaotic moment astounds me. 

The words of Occupy continue to hold some real power.