mattlawyue

Almost a month ago I read a story in the New Yorker about the playwright Katori Hall, and her upcoming play The Mountaintop. This is the official description of the play:

Taking place on April 3, 1968, THE MOUNTAINTOP is a gripping reimagining of events the night before the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. King (Samuel L. Jackson) retires to his room at the Lorraine Motel while a storm rages outside. When a mysterious stranger (Angela Bassett) arrives with some surprising news, King is forced to confront his destiny and his legacy to his people.

I saw it this past Sunday, ironically, on the dedication to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.

I will not pretend to be a theatre boy or a Broadway kid - I vaguely remember the Lion King on Broadway from my youth, thinking, this sucked so much compared to the movie. How come Mufasa hasn’t fallen to his bloody death, and why can’t I watch Simba stare fear in the eye? It really is a fucked up movie that I will watch on repeat with my niece whenever she wants to.

But the Mountaintop was fantastic. I wouldn’t know how to judge a good play from a bad one to write a credible review. I’ll just say by the end of 90 minutes, I was standing on my feet applauding Jackson and Bassett for God knows what reasons. They were believable? The way they enunciated their lines? Their chemistry? Who knows. I enjoyed myself, and I’ll leave it at that.

And it was certainly worth taking a couple hours out of my Sunday to walk along Broadway on a breezy fall afternoon, jacket and aviators relaxing on my body, a playbill in my hand, inhaling a beautiful New York City afternoon.

But you best believe if there was a Knicks preseason game I would have been home fucking glued to the TV, picking apart why I’m still against the Amar’e and Melo duo.

Maybe there’s more to New York in the winter than basketball after all…

Exactly two weeks ago, as the headlines of the Brooklyn Bridge arrests trickled into the mainstream, I wondered how Occupy Wall Street would capitalize on the spotlight. Where would they go next, and how would the proverbial dominoes begin to fall, spreading the movement from city to city? On which stoop would the narrative perch itself?

(For clarity, as I mentioned in the first post, I’m looking at this through a communications lens).

Two weeks later we have Occupy:

Philadelphia. Washington. Boston. Chicago. Atlanta. Los Angeles. San Francisco. Rome. London. Toronto. Sydney. Hong Kong. Tokyo. Madrid.

How did they do it? Did 700 arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge really catapult protests globally?

Yes and no, but it certainly was OWS first national headline. Two weeks later, they have their second:

Thousands Protest Times Square, Buoyed by Occupy Wall Street.

(Insert incredible photographs of protestors bottling up Times Square).

It’s hard for the media to bullet point a single voice or message from OWS, because there really isn’t one “leader” in the traditional sense of the word, standing at the podium. It’s a bubbling mass spitting varied complaints, leaving editors to generalize in their nut grafs what high unemployment, corporate profits, low wages, and income inequality are:

Marches led by discontent over economy. Basically.

But it’s drowned out by reports of police clashes, arrests, park cleanings, etc. Trivial items that should be near the bottom of the pyramid, not the top. These will certainly keep OWS in the news, but ultimately for all the wrong reasons.

OWS risks leaving it to the editors to generalize what they’re about, and over time, dropping the story further down the pole. Violence with police becomes the inevitable headline. And don’t ignore the public fatigue that will eventually wear on the average person with a job. They might support the movement now, but they’ve got jobs and bills and lives to worry about, certainly more pressing business than waiting for OWS to make their point.

Eventually they will need to formally announce their purpose, either through a press release or a press conference, or risk having this organism die without having implemented any significant changes to the system.

I believe OWS has done a masterful job carrying their momentum through social media, but it would be wise of them to take advantage of traditional media at some point: morning shows, talk shows, radio, etc.

But perhaps the protests continue to grow exponentially, and a high-profile banker - perhaps a Pandit or a Moynihan - says something stupid that catches fire, and social media continues to profile abuses by police, and eventually Capitol Hill is forced to acknowledge the situation, forcing the hand of the President, and then Greece defaults, and then Europe goes bankrupt, and so on and so forth.

That’s the beauty of this, you don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Through a communications lens, it’s interesting to watch the Occupy Wall Street Protests (OWSP) develop in real time. Supposedly inspired by Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring, which was itself jolted by Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, he the martyr who doused himself in flames to defend what was left of his dignity, the OWSP by all accounts is a belated reaction to the interminable economic storm.

And as it stands, the protestors are just waiting for their own Bouaziziesque moment to call their own, not because they need any more inspiration, but to force the hand of mainstream American media to descend upon New York City to get some crowd shots, interview a few disgruntled children of Uncle Sam and spread their image to that space in between LA and NY, like only the 21st Century can - unless, you know, the police provide that moment for them, which they might have already:

About 500 arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge says NYPD.

Why they find it necessary to announce that number themselves is probably protocol, but it doesn’t do them any favors.

Take one part recognized American landmark, add a handful of people marching, mix with police and orange barricades, and let simmer until it shits a headline worthy of the front page:

Brooklyn Bridge March, 500 Arrested. Or something along those lines.

Here’s where I get really interested:

If you’re the protestors, how do you capitalize on this headline, on the national spotlight? What is the next move to keep furthering the story, to keep the legs pumping? And thinking long-term, how do your second, third, fourth actions get you from New York City to Philadelphia to Chicago to Washington etc? How do you knock down the first domino?

If you’re the NYPD, how do you minimize the damage of probable arrests made in the near future? When the protests were just that, with no police intervention, it was a story basically ignored. This becomes undone when you have physical encounters and credible pictures that can spread like wildfire through the Internet. What strategy and statements do the NYPD have in the pipeline for the “break glass in case of emergency” moment?

Time will tell which side has a better grasp on their communications.

UPDATE:

500 arrests have now risen to more than 700.