Don't oversimplify Wall Street protest

Please don't compare the Occupy Wall Street movement with the Arab Spring. But the US protests do reflect some real problems,

In less than a month the "Occupy Wall Street" phenomenon has become a new battleground in the partisan struggle and culture wars that divide the US. While demonstrators are focused on issues that are worthy of protest, they have few practical proposals to offer.

Moreover, the often-heard analogy to the Arab Spring does not hold water. Indeed the comparison does a disservice to all those who risked - or lost - their lives in overthrowing tyrants in the Middle East and North Africa. In New York, "police brutality" almost always stops at pepper spray.

A comparison with the US Tea Party holds up a little better. From opposite sides of the political spectrum, both movements argue that "the system" does not work - and they have a point. US economic inequality is growing and the Congress, its members beholden to special interests that feed their campaign war chests, shows many signs of having lost sight of the big picture.

These protests, aided by social media, have spread from the financial district of New York City to as many as 70 cities, acquiring along the way an inevitable but unfortunate encrustation of publicity-hungry celebrities, veteran anti-war activists, assorted other one-issue zealots, party-hardy funseekers and plain cranks. Meanwhile corporate America, the nemesis of these protests, is moving with its usual alacrity: pizzerias offer an OccuPie, T-shirts are being hawked, the ice-cream maker Ben & Jerry's has signed on, a video game has been announced …

But as winter nears, protests seem more likely to fizzle out than to grow.

This is not the first time young Americans have coalesced around a cause: supporting equal rights for blacks, resisting the Vietnam War, opposing apartheid, and more recently (and less wisely) denouncing globalisation. In each case a key factor was sheer youthful exuberance, so that the process of protest, no less than the merit of the cause, is part of the crowd-building appeal.

True, those previous movements did undeniably contribute to changing US public policy, and for the better, on civil rights and Vietnam. But those campaigns involved millions of people arrayed behind practical policy proposals, which are glaringly missing here so far, as well as moral certainty. A few thousand people, assembled on sunny autumn weekends, is not a revolution in the making.