占领华尔街运动将向何处去

    乍一看，露宿于华尔街街头的示威者似乎并不是一股催生改革的可靠力量。但茶党（Tea Party）的集会最初也没有显露出有朝一日会改变游戏规则的潜质。

    这两个群体都崛起于政治和金融领袖未能解决美国摇摇欲坠的金融局势之际。他们都对未来忧心忡忡，但方式有所不同。

    茶党鼓吹财政改革，但最终的结局或许只是激化了政治僵局而已。诞生仅一个月的占领华尔街运动则旨在揭露并彰显严重的不平等问题，但目前还未能提出一套方案来颠覆美国日益分化的体系。

    占领华尔街抗议活动‘是针对美国领导层的一次明确而清晰的倒戈行为，”加州大学圣巴巴拉分校工作、劳工与民主研究中心（the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara）主任尼尔森•利希顿斯坦称。

    “抗议者正在寻找某种方式，来掌握自身的未来，”他说。“就某些方面而言，这个时期比上世纪30年代还要糟糕，当时的美国还具备生产能力和大规模生产率。但如今的体系并没有一个结构稳健的基础。”

    现在判断华尔街抗议活动会有什么结果还为时尚早，但此前有过全国性改革脱胎自这类无纲领运动的先例，北伊利诺伊大学（Northern Illinois University）研究劳工和社会运动的历史学教授罗斯玛丽•弗雷尔说。

    她说，肇始于19世纪90年代末期的平民主义运动针对强大的银行、铁路托拉斯和其他金融精英，但这项运动耗费数十载才有所作为。“直至上世纪30年代中期，华尔街才受到约束。”

    “运动启动之际通常并无目标和要求，”弗雷尔说,“这些运动往往以各种抱怨开始。关键在于人们持续聚集在一起。”

    当初，志同道合的共和党人孕育（甚至启动了）的茶党运动，如今的占领华尔街运动同样有可能在没有明确领导的情况下找到立足点。

    工会已经声援支持“99%人群”，甚至给祖可蒂公园露营地的抗议者送来了咖啡和甜甜圈，但劳联产联 （AFL-CIO）董事达蒙•席尔瓦说，工会组织非常小心，唯恐转移人们关注的焦点，稀释抗议者的讯息。

    抗议活动利用了公众普遍存在的情绪，即对金融行业的救援行动严重损害了其他人群的利益，让美国严峻的就业形势成为全国关注的焦点。这次抗议也揭露了政界的失败：迄今为止，他们未能采取任何措施来应对就业领域全方位动荡的局面。

    加州大学河滨分校（University of California, Riverside）教授迈克•戴维斯说：“美国很长时间没有针对就业问题进行过严肃的讨论了。”但这位专门从事经济史和社会运动研究的学者表示，就业问题并无轻而易举的解决之道，因为“没有什么政策能把我们近些年来丧失的550万个制造业岗位还给我们。”

    曾在1998年担任麦克阿瑟基金会（MacArthur Foundation）研究员的戴维斯说：“很重要的一点是，抗议者是否有能力将其思想扩散到全美的社会生活中去，这样抗议活动才不会被视为一场仅仅局限于精英校园和城市中心的运动。”

    他补充说，如果不能取得实质性的改变，抗议活动也可能会逐渐退潮，比如2006年洛杉矶爆发的以支持移民权利为主旨的大规模示威活动。现在距离那次示威活动已经过了几年的时间，“还没有取得进展，几乎未能催生出任何权利。”

    劳工历史学家和其他学者把占领华尔街跟过去的一系列运动【比如，1932年为退伍军人争取现金福利的酬恤金游行（the 1932 Bonus March）和民权运动（the Civil Rights Movement）】以及当代的抗议事件【比如，反对剥夺工会集体协商权的威斯康星州抗议活动和埃及解放广场（Tahrir Square）争取自由的示威活动】相提并论。这些示威活动都获得了不同程度的成功。

    At first glance, protesters camping on Wall Street's doorstep might not seem to be a sure recipe for reform. But Tea Party rallies initially didn't seem to be a game changer either.

    Both groups, worried about the future but in different ways, emerged as political and financial leaders failed to tackle the country's battered financial situation.

    The Tea Party plumped fiscal reform, but may have wound up simply solidifying political gridlock. The Occupy Wall Street protest -- only a month old -- is giving voice, and visibility, to serious inequalities, but has yet to arrive at a formula to upend the country's increasingly stratified system.

    The Occupy Wall Street protest "represents an explicit and clear defection from our leadership," says Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

    "They are looking for some way to grasp their futures," he says. "In some ways, this period is worse than the 1930s when the country had production capabilities and enjoyed mass productivity. But now the system is not on a structurally sound basis."

    It's too early to tell what will come of the Wall Street protests, but prior national reforms have sprung from such unscripted movements, says Rosemary Feurer, a history professor at Northern Illinois University, who studies labor and social movements.

    The populism that began in the late 1890s, and aimed at powerful banks, railroad trusts and other financial elites, took decades to make a difference, she says. "It wasn't until the mid-1930s that limits were put on Wall Street."

    "Movements don't start with goals and demands," Feurer says. "They always start with grievances. The key is people gathered in a sustained way."

    Like the Tea Party, which was nurtured -- perhaps even launched -- by like-minded Republicans, the Occupy Wall Street movement could find its footing without overt leadership.

    Labor unions have expressed their solidarity with the 99 percenters -- even bringing coffee and doughnuts to their Zuccotti Park encampment -- but are wary of taking any focus away and diluting the protesters' message, according to Damon Silver, a director at AFL-CIO.

    By harnessing widely shared sentiments that the financial sector's rescue seriously damaged the rest of the population, the protest has cast a national spotlight on the grim American jobs picture. It also shined a light on the failure, thus far, of politicians to take any steps to deal with the across-the-board upheaval in employment.

    "It's been so long since this country has had a serious conversation about jobs," says Mike Davis, a University of California, Riverside professor who studies economic history and social movements. But, he says, there are no facile answers because "there is no policy that can bring back the 5.5 million manufacturing jobs that we lost in recent years.

    "Much will depend on the ability of the protesters to extend their ideas into the fabric of the country's life so it's not seen as being confined to elite campuses and cities," says Davis, who was a MacArthur Foundation fellow in 1998.

    Protest movements also can peter out without achieving meaningful change, he adds, pointing to the massive 2006 pro-immigration rights demonstration in Los Angeles. Now, just a few years later, he says, "there has been no progress and there are hardly any rights left."

    Labor historians and others compare Occupy Wall Street to a raft of past movements -- back to the 1932 Bonus March for veterans cash benefits or the Civil Rights Movement as well as current phenomena like the Wisconsin rebellion against bargaining rights-stripping and Egypt's Tahrir Square freedom demonstrators, which have had varied degrees of success.