Diary: Commentary - America's Greek Chorus

Having attended the meetings of Occupy Fort Lauderdale, I have had occasion to use "the people's mic." The "mic" was a response by Occupy Wall Street attendees to the lack of a public address system -- New York City requires a permit to use such equipment. Instead, a speaker breaks their speech into small pieces of just several words, and all attendees within hearing distance repeat the words as one loud collective voice. The speech travels far and clearly.

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In ancient Greek theatre the chorus also spoke in a collective voice. They helped the audience by explaining the characters' actions and the play's themes, and acted as the moral guide that put into words the societal values being transgressed by the play's hero. The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City published by the Wall Street group does exactly those same things. The Occupy movement, speaking as a chorus through the people's mic, would be our Greek chorus. We should also note that though the voice is that of a Greek chorus, the structure of the document echoes the structure of a better known U.S. political document.

The Declaration of Occupation, after a short introduction, lists twenty one grievances with the words "let these facts be known." In structure it is similar to the The United States Declaration of Independence, which introduces its list of grievances against George III with "let facts be submitted to a candid world." The U.S. Declaration lists twenty seven grievances, in the same format -- short paragraphs of a sentence or two, each.

The grievances of the new Declaration address its points as if they were a moral accounting of financial transactions. For example:

"They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage."

"They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses."

"They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right."

"They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers' healthcare and pay."

It is a call for accountability in this, the age of non-accountability. Compare to the chorus' final speech in Antigone:

   "Great words of boasting bring great punishments,"

or Agamemnon:

   "Keep on, grow fat, polluting justice, since you can."

or Oedipus the King:

   "All citizens who witnessed this man's wealth were envious."

The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City is a call for an accounting of those who have been unaccountable until now. Consider that this group, the majority of which is young people, live in times in which they've seen a war gone badly, but no Vice President or Secretary of Defense held accountable. They've seen a major city destroyed by a hurricane, but no President held accountable. They've seen millions of jobs shipped away to other countries, but no politician held responsible. They've seen a Presidential candidate run promising "Change," but not held accountable after no changes were delivered. And most importantly, they have seen banks push predatory loans on millions of people, sell trillions of dollars of bonds they themselves called "radioactive," and yet not a single banker has been held accountable.

Perhaps we in the U.S. are living in a society something like a Greek tragedy. It's time to listen to the chorus.