Will Occupy Wall Street win because they're named?

Robin Hood didn’t wear a mask as he robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Today, he more likely would be anonymous. The near mythical hero who hid in Sherwood Forest has been evoked as part of the Occupy Wall Street, or OWS, movement that has spread beyond America’s corporate hub of New York to other cities and other countries. It’s a long way from the vague email idea originally conceived by the anti-corporate Adbusters magazine in Vancouver, Canada. This is a different side though to the other defining attacks on corporate power bases this year: they have names and faces. Attacks by anonymous hackers to disrupt or steal information from major firms have been a repeated feature of 2011. And initially the limited mainstream media coverage in the US of the OWS protests were equated them to hackers: mere anarchist, anti-capitalist hippies. [caption id=“attachment_108825” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“An Occupy Wall Street demonstrator is detained by police while others march nearby, in New York. Victor Blue/The New York Times”]  [/caption] But unlike so much of the social media world, when reporters went down to meet the colour bunch, they found individuals of all ages and backgrounds willing to be named. In fact all the protests have been public and very open about their goals, such as the Robin Hood Tax on banking transactions. During the arrests of 700 people on Brooklyn Bridge, those held by police shouted their names and details to lawyers on the walkway above them to ensure protection of civil liberties. Names have given the movement power. “I am here because. . . “, and then joining into “We are the 99 per cent”. But with names comes identification. It would be extremely easy for police to collect the details of those at the protests, simply by sitting back and going online. And should the public turn against those making the anti-corporate stand, they could easily submit thousands or millions of pieces of evidence to the authorities, just as in Vancouver after the ice hockey riots in June. So is it better to be paranoid of state power and be anonymous like the hackers of Anonymous or LulzSec, and as the digital age allows? Or is there more symbolism and power in being public and saying, “I am this citizen and have the right to be heard”. You can say the same thing anonymously, but maybe nobody listens. The US likes to talk about so-called “culture wars” - essentially the battle between conservative and liberal views of everything in American life, from violence on TV and gay marriage, to abortion and the environment. But rather than culture wars, we have identity wars where individuals and corporations battle relentlessly - and sometimes illegally or certainly unethically - for your identity. You want to control how you define yourself through Twitter and Facebook, and corporations and politicians want to know as much of your identity as possible so they can manipulate part of their own brand into part of yours, for profits and votes. Asserting your own identity loudly in itself is no longer enough though because we are so sutured to pieces of technology and products it’s nearly impossible to say where the human ear ends and the mobile phone begins. Even this past week, as Blackberry users questioned why they remained loyal to a phone that didn’t work for three days, while Apple fans queued for hours to get a slightly updated version of the phone they already had. Neither of those were very human identities - they are utterly tied to the products we hold in our hands and use relentlessly throughout the day. To the companies involved, we are part of bottom lines, boosted through marketing focused on being “cool” and connected to your other cool friends. Those same companies are as guilty of corporate greed as any of the others traded on Wall Street. But of course, for the protesters outside, they’re using those corporate products to protest the profits they’ve fed. In fact, one of the chief complaints against the occupiers themselves was that they used local shops without buying anything. Yes, how dare they briefly not use a Starbucks identity when they just want to use the toilet. So the movement has created its own “Occupied Wall Street Journal” to distribute to the masses, and protest signs of all descriptions and colours, and even digital branding for other projects to easily copy in other cities. Those are focused attempts to control the portrayal of the movement - if we assume it is a movement, since even that word implies organisation and forethought which really wasn’t there. Meanwhile, Fox News and other outlets dismiss the occupations as anarchists, or unAmerican because they’re challenging capitalism or perhaps promoting a “tree hugging” agenda. Fox backed their own grass roots movement last year with the Tea Party cause. Pick whichever mass protest you prefer. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you’re named or anonymous anymore. You can say what you like through social media and people will either believe you or not. Whichever side you support, both sides will square off against each other. The battle isn’t ideology or identity - it’s numbers. “My page has more likes than yours.” If indeed the OWS campaign does represent the “99 per cent” of the population who don’t control all the wealth, and if they can get a convincing proportion of the 99 to agree with their identity, then they will win. Robin Hood was successful, in the mythology, because he was a named hero and the country rallied to the identity they constructed around him. Whether that can work around the Robin Hood Tax is still too early to tell.