Occupy Targeting

Stay on target.   Stay on target.

With a tiny bit of free time on my hands this last week, and my flighty muse temporarily disinterested in the book I'm chugging away on, I found myself doing a little bit of research.

With the days growing short and the winter coming on, the Occupy Movement here in DC is going to be facing a conundrum of sorts.  The long history of sustained camping-demonstrations here in the Nation's Capital combined with a moderate-to-progressive local ethos may not yield the sort of forcible removals we've been seeing in city after city this last week, but one never knows.  It didn't stop the aggressive action to clear out Zuccotti Park last night in New York, at the heart of where the Occupy movement began.  There, the response of the Movement was mostly what it needed to be.  Just clear out.  Just pick up peaceably, smile at the nice officers and tell them you love them, move, and then settle back in the next morning, like the murmuration you are.

Still, time is short.  The Death Star is clearing Yavin.  It is important to stay on target.

The larger challenge will come, in DC at least, in reinforcing identity and in spreading popular support for the movement among Americans generally.   To do this, I would ask that Occupy K St and Occupy DC consider direct action that reflects the actuality on the ground.   Having gotten the satire out of my system on that subject, here's a simple proposal for consideration by the General Assemblies in question:

As the political system is not, not yet, the focus of Occupy, focus on the ground you inhabit.  Call out those places of power that are not accountable.  What troubles most Americans is the control over our political system by powerful, entrenched, and moneyed interests.  The One Percent, as they say.  These are the lobbyists, the potent influence-shops that employ our politicians and politicos after they've left office.   This is where corporate money buys the direction of our culture, and where the good of the country is taken out of the hands of voters and citizens.   This is the heart of injustice.  The political leaders from either of the two parties we're permitted to choose from do not speak against these places, and they will not.  Not ever.  It's where their campaign staffers go to work, and where they themselves hope to pad the nest for their retirements.

Resisting those places would have purchase, deep purchase.   If America hears you are doing this, Honeychild, ninety-nine percent of them will wave their hands in the air and say AMEN.  Even the Tea Party will acknowledge the excellence of your kung fu.

Here in the District of Columbia, there are plenty of office-fronts where a few hundred souls with signs making noise could light up, in a prophetic way, those places of unaccountable power.  These are not places known to most citizens, but as I'm a DC townie who likes to do research, I know 'em.   The next time you're considering a nonviolent Guy Fawkes-masked march or an impromptu resistance dance party, consider these as destinations:

The Podesta Group.   Akin Gump.   Patton Boggs.   I have selected these three against two primary criteria:  1) they need to be in easy walking distance of your encampments, and 2) they need to perfectly represent the essential power you oppose.

Let me light 'em up a little for ya.

The Podesta Group is a good place to start.  They're at 1001 G Street, NW, Suite 900.   They are, according to opensecrets, the number three lobbying shop in DC this year, pulling in over twenty million dollars from their clients in 2011 alone.  And oh, what lovely clients they have.  They've pushed the interests of BP, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Bank of America, and various Big Pharma corporations, and that's just this year.

If you're having a Pavlovian response to Podesta, well, that's because it is just so very tasty.

Akin Gump is a DC powerhouse, and has been for decades.  I used to work in the same building they inhabit, at 1333 New Hampshire Avenue, NW.  I watched former lawmakers and power-players go in and out, in and out.  The guy who advised Clinton to hush up the Lewinsky thing?  He worked there.    They represent, among many others, Chinese interests, Big Oil, Boeing, and casinos.  It's a short walk, right next to Dupont Circle, and if you want to stop in for a beer at the Front Page afterwards, it's right there.  They're number two on the list of 2011 lobbying firms, at twenty-five million in receipts in 2011.

Finally, there's Patton Boggs, the big boy on the block.   They're looking at nearly thirty million in client money for 2011.  Their huge client list includes various large big Pharma players and Walmart.  They are also in the notable employ of several big-ticket investment and financial interests, who are their largest dollar amount clients.

Meaning, my friends, that they work for Wall Street.  This is where the power of Wall Street reaches into the halls of governance, kids.  This is where the social connections of power are leveraged, bought, traded, and sold.    This is why you're here, and it's only a 25 minute walk from McPherson Square, at 2550 M Street, NW.

So I will leave this in your hands, to do with what you will.  Be peaceful.  Be loud.  Be gracious.  Be bold.

Re: The Occupy K Street Account

The following represents a privileged client communication of Ferguson and Cohen, LLC as defined by federal law, SEC Section C642.h - C645r, 1992.   Any unauthorized distribution of this material represents a violation of the aforementioned statute, and will be subject to felony prosecution and penalties.





CONFIDENTIAL
DATE:  10.28.11
TO:  R. Cohen, D. Ferguson
FROM:  J. C. Morgenstern
RE:  Occupy K Street Account Development Strategy Session

Following our new client development strategy session last month, I and my staff were tasked with doing an initial development FTF with Occupy K Street.

As the management team discussed during our September 17 planning meeting, the Occupy movement has increasing brand visibility, with all media-market metrics since brand incept showing explosive and exponential growth.   This growth is coupled with a strikingly positive brand-identity in broad and multiply replicable public survey data, a yield that is verified by our own internal assessments.

Our review of recent contract-chatter through informal professional social networks indicated that, amazingly, neither Occupy Wall Street nor its subsidiary Occupy K Street have retained the services of brand management and strategic planning consultants.  Clearly, this represented an opportunity for F&C to expand our client base into a new and growing market.

Our New York office was charged with initial contact with Occupy Wall Street, and I and my team began preliminary work on potential front-end deliverables for the K Street subsidiary.

To that end, my client development staff conceptualized some preliminary Six Sigma/POLIS Delta protocols for the movement, which we felt would clearly represent the value-added of engagement with F&C's branding team.  The two most promising POLIS/Delta yields:

1) Increased Drilldown on Brand-Specific Marketing Events:  In our assessment, Occupy K Street has the potential to be the most viable of the Occupy subsidiaries, particularly given its location at the nexus between corporate power and the American political system.   Its primary location is within several hundred yards of some of the most influential and well funded corporate lobbying firms.   To date, however, it has failed to leverage that synergy to any discernable advantage.

Instead, it appears primarily focused on impromptu dance parties in intersections, making cardboard signage, intense respectful discussions, and drum circles, none of which are recognized as mission critical functions in our Six Sigma protocols.  It has also diluted brand-identity by engaging in non-productive partnerships with previously established brands, such as FreeTibet LLC and GazaCorp.

Our value-added on this front would be to identify individual lobbying firms, their partners, and their office locations.   Focusing media events on the entities that define K Street in the public eye would, in our assessment, yield a positive and predictable process result.  It would also expand brand appeal into the fragmenting Tea Party market.

2)  Improve Social Media Messaging Brand Protocols:  A review of social media outputs indicated considerable potential for improvement in messaging strategy.   The primary twitter feed, for example, seems primarily used to say there isn't enough water/shelter/pizza, or to fret about the cops, or to talk about interpersonal disagreements.  As messaging goes, this could use some refinement.  A market-identity that is hungry/thirsty/cold is unlikely to draw significant support in the key 18-34 young urban demographic, and while highlighting interpersonal drama works well within the reality television marketplace, it has been shown to be less effective as a tool for mass movement mobilization.

Refocusing primary social media messaging away from damage control, in-house-chatter, and development efforts and towards the aforementioned Brand-Specific Marketing Events would increase the visibility of the Occupy K St movement.  Those functions could be dealt with by secondary outlets.

With these two primary yields, our team endeavored to approach senior management at Occupy K Street to establish the front-end relationships necessary for proposal negotiations.  Background research indicated that the management structure at all Occupy subsidiaries is a carefully guarded corporate secret, and our experience onsite confirmed this research.  Each initial contact insisted they had no knowledge of senior management.  Most seemed unwilling to admit to any knowledge of CoC structure, and would stay messaging-consistent, insisting that there was no such thing.   Despite this considerable and impressive control over management access, we persisted.

Our eventual on-site FTF came following a chance encounter with an individual named Johnny Justice Muffin, who admitted that he was, in his own words, "The Supreme High CEO of All This [Fornicating] [Excrement], Bro."   CEO Justice-Muffin indicated that there is some distance between our anticipated front-end billables (150 hours at a staff-average $100/hr, plus 35% overhead) and their fiscal year 2012 budget for management consulting (a previously used tarp, two hand-made free-range squirrel-fur caps, and a package of what was described as "some seriously kind [stuff], it only looks like shake, man.")

Given this hard-line approach to contract negotiations, it is our recommendation that next-stage conversations be subcontracted to our contract development specialist team.  I will look forward to further conversations on that front, and to responding to your questions, at this next months client development strategy session.

JCM

Occupied K Street

Yesterday, after doing some church stuff in the morning and some housekeeping in the later morning, I seized my one open window during the day, hopped on the bike and motored downtown.

The day was drab and overcast, although not too chilly, and the hum into town on Fifty was smooth and devoid of traffic.

From my inside-the-Beltway suburb, it's an easy run to the center of DC on a motorcycle.  I loafed over the Roosevelt bridge, did a few zigs and zags, and found myself cruising my target street.

K Street.

It's a bustling central artery in the Northwest quadrant of our nation's capital, and the symbolic heart of lobbying in America.  It's lined with shining office buildings that all abruptly end at the same height.  Regulations, dontcha know, but the net effect isn't unpleasant, as you don't get that dizzying concrete canyon feeling.   At about one thirty in the post meridian, K Street was a purposeful whirl of humanity, and most of that humanity was on foot.   Trim young business-casual and suited professionals moved in clusters, coming back from lunch or finally getting outside.   Tall lawyerly types walked and talked intently into their smartphones.

The sidewalks were crowded with folks on foot, as they are on most days in DC.  DC is a place where you walk, unless you enjoy sitting, burning carbon, and amassing adipose cells in your posterior.  It's why DC workers are...well...not quite as...um...expansive...as most Americans.  That was true at the intersection of K and Connecticut, where Farragut Park was filled with fit lunching wonks and office workers.   It was true at the intersection of K and 16th, where the stream of humanity crossing in front of my bike was young and on the go.  The sense was of energy, of dynamism, of purpose.  It's that way every day.

I reached the bike lot at K and Franklin Park, and lo and behold, DC had left a parking meter unrepaired.  Schweet.  Gotta love that free city parking.  I stowed my helmet and my gear, and doubled back to McPherson Square, where I wanted to get a feel for the Occupy K Street protests.

At McPherson Square, things were a little...sleepier...at mid-day than they were on the rest of K Street.  The encampment took up the Northwestern section of the Square.  It was a modest smattering of tents and a sprawl of sleeping gear, occupying a space roughly equivalent to the back yard of my unassuming suburban home.  In that space, small clusters of protestors sat or moved about quietly.  

J. Birdseye McPherson

Around the statue of Major General James Birdseye McPherson, a circlet of handmade cardboard signs sat out on display.   Circling the circlet were a few passersby, their smartphones out, taking pictures, taking video.  I joined the dance for a few minutes, carefully perusing the signs, and taking my own pictures.

No one spoke to me.  No one was minding the display.

Moving a few paces to the southwest, a little klatch of protestors were having a meeting of some sort.  All were sitting, talking quietly and earnestly, and as I watched, they communed inaudibly within their closed circle.  Apparently, one of their collectively determined meeting protocols was "jazz hands," which must have meant something for group process.   "We have a quorum?"  "I second the motion?"  "May I go to the bathroom?"  I couldn't tell.

I meandered back into the encampment, and had to work hard to resist the temptation to tidy up a bit.  It's hard to turn off that parent switch, but I managed.  I looked around for a center, or a place to get information.  There wasn't anything or anyone I could see.  Just cardboard signs.

Having determined that the one person I might have known there was not present, I drifted about for a bit.  Someone shouted that food was available at the mess tent.  Animated chatter came from table filled with laptops.  A middle-aged woman talked flutteringly with a passing lawyer-type, asserting her strong desire to try both Bush senior and Dubya for war crimes.  He seemed gently bemused.   A barefoot young woman sat in a softly speaking group, and absent-mindedly picked her toes.  A boy, perhaps six or seven, padded past in footie pajamas, holding a sign.  A TV crew that apparently came from some land where the women are all blonde drifted about, talking with people.

Across the street, catty-corner to the Northwest, a cluster of a half-dozen young, entirely African American DC cops milled about.   They talked animatedly, and were clearly there to manage the demonstration...but nothing was happening, and they seemed bored and listless.

After half an hour, I'd seen all I could see.  I moved back up K Street, through a trickle of pedestrians.  I tossed a leg over my bike, and rolled on out of there, through the busy streets of Northwest, out to 395, and home.

Occupy What?

So as the Occupy Wall Street protests spread into the fertile soil of unemployed and underemployed America, I find myself looking at the gatherings that are stirring here in DC and thinking about what they're called.

Occupy DC may have been the first choice, but I wonder about that.  I know, I know, Washington is everything that is wrong with America, but honestly, this ain't the Tea Party.  This is not a wild yawp from the conservative lumpenproletariat, who are and have always been easily distracted from systemic issues by waving flags and reflexive nationalism.  It's smarter, more organic, and less easily hijacked by self-promoting blowhards working for conservative media conglomerates.

Occupy DC?  What does that mean?  DC isn't monolithic, any more than New York is monolithic.  Protesters in New York knew that you needed the right focus.  Would you occupy Queens?  Would you Occupy Times Square or Occupy Soho or Occupy Chinatown?  Of course not.  That's not the part of town that counts, unless you're mad about this season on Broadway or harbor a compulsive dislike for Peking Duck.

It had to be Occupy Wall Street.  Just had to be.

DC is similarly diverse.  Are you going to Occupy SouthEast?  Honey, they may be hurting because of the mess we're in, but they're not the problem.   Are you going to Occupy Adams Morgan?  Maybe at night, because it's cool, but again, that's not the issue.

If the movement is to resonate in solidarity with the New York demonstrations, the focus needs to be K Street.  K Street, O my brothers and sisters, is the symbolic heart of American corporate lobbying and its influence over our political system.  That's where the connection is, where the golden cord of power and influence and wealth binds the two streets together.

It's already rolling that way, but it needs to be clearly laid out.  If there are to be cries of protest at what is happening in our nation, if we want power to know that we're finally paying attention and see the connections, they should be at the intersection of Wall and K streets.

What They're Looking For

"It is not a person's fault because they succeeded. It is a person's fault if they failed. And so this is why I don't understand these demonstrations and what is it that they're looking for."   


GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain, Wall Street Journal,  10/05/11 


He is right.


It is our fault.


We have failed.


We have failed to grasp that human beings do not exist in isolation.  While we are created with the blessing of liberty, we are not created alone.  With the freedom given to us by our Creator, we can choose to move graciously in relation to one another, moving mindfully and righteously and kindly.   That is the purpose for which we exist.


But we are free.  Freedom is a part of our nature.  From that freedom, we can also choose to tear at each other, seeking power and material wealth at the expense of the other.  In this generation, we have chosen the latter.


Our choice to walk the path of self-seeking power and the concentration of wealth is not a new choice.  It is an ancient one, a mistake we have repeated over and over and over again throughout our blighted history as a species.   Within the sacred narratives of the tradition from which I spring, that casting-out-of-balance has happened again and again.  


We who keep and teach that story remember it.


Two and a half milennia ago, it happened just as it happens now.  Seeking power over other nations, the people cried out for a king.  The prophet warned them:  the king will amass wealth, taking more and more for himself, until everything you have belongs to him.  All will fall out of balance.  And yet the people ignored the voice of the one who spoke for our Maker.   


And things fell apart.  Wealth yearns for wealth, as power yearns for power.  The son of the first King began it, gathering in the gold and the fruit of the land, and placing the great golden bulls on the altar of the shining temple he built.  The son of the son of the first King, the taste of gold in his mouth, doubled and redoubled his demands upon the people, wealth seeking wealth, power seeking power.  And the kingdom fell apart.  


When finally a wiser king sat on the throne, the Sacred Law was rediscovered.  Written into the Sacred Law given to the people was the demand:  keep things in balance.  Never let the wealth of the people become fixed forever in the hands of the powerful.  The purpose of this law was simple.  When things fall out of balance, if you do not make an effort to set things back in balance, covenant fails.  Community collapses.  The people will no longer be at one, standing equal before their God as is their Creator's desire, but will be slave and master.


Following the death of the wise king, things collapsed again and again, as the centers of power drew in and sought more power and wealth.   Prophets spoke against it, reminding those in power of the purpose of the Creator.  Sometimes they were heard.  More often, the siren song of wealth rang too strong in the ears of the wealthy.


And so the story has gone, telling itself over and over again.


What are the people looking for?  Many things.  So many things.  But many things are broken.


Mostly, they are crying out that things are out of balance.  There are words for what they want, words I know well.  Justice is one such word.  Though most of the protesters would not name it as such, from the old, old story comes the word Jubilee, the year of setting things right.


When things fall out of balance, that becomes the yearning of the people.


It's a yearning and a message I know well.  I teach it every Sunday.


Pity so few of our leaders seem to have been exposed to it.