More on Occupy Wall Street — You Don’t Win By Making Demands
So I’ve been tweeting up a storm today on the question of whether #OccupyWallStreet needs to compile a formal list of demands. (Spoiler alert: Nope.) I’m not going to rehash my whole argument here right now, but someone tweeted something at me a little while ago that gives me an opportunity to explore one piece of it.
Here’s the tweet in question, posted in response to me saying that “When people say #OccupyWallStreet needs to articulate demands, they usually mean they want it to embrace their demands.”
@dc_dsa: @studentactivism Partially agree. As Frederick Douglass said, “power concedes nothing without a demand.”
That was pretty well played, I must say. Apt, pithy, and deploying one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite activists. But let’s take a look at the whole passage:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will
