Occupy Boston -- What's next?

First things first. Congratulations to both the Occupy Boston protesters and the Boston Police.

As far as I can tell, both sides did everything right. The Police gave everyone who wanted to leave the time to do so.  They made a strong show of force and then, from all reports, used little or no force in arresting those people who chose to stay.  Those protesters who did elect to get arrested also spurned the use of force. In short, everyone acted with respect to their adversaries.  Many people in politics could take lessons.  So could and should police departments in other cities.

I respect the choice of the occupiers who decided that leaving voluntarily would not diminish their cause. I respect the choice of those decided to stay as well. My prediction is that most of them will see their misdemeanor charges continued without a finding and then dropped after successful completion of some community service.

I also want to give my thanks to those who pitched in, either with time or money, to clean up and help restore the park.  If you wish to help, there are at least a couple of ways to give online.  I gave directly to the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy.

But it's now time to ask "what's next," and I'm prepared to offer some totally unsolicited suggestions. Some of you may feel I'm unqualified to comment, since a) I've already said I'm not part of the 99% nor part of the 1%, and b) I've spent a fair amount of my career working for financial services related companies, and have made business trips to Wall Street itself. Feel free to stop reading now.

The suggestion I've heard to occupy foreclosed homes, is, to my mind, a poor strategy.  First, it surrenders the moral high ground, since unlike a park there's no legal right to be on the property.  Second, it gets the note holders a greater incentive to accelerate proceedings on the targeted properties, resulting in faster evictions.  Third, for those loans which went into default due to fraud, there aren't too many "perps" who still have an interest in such properties.  The real estate agent, the mortgage broker, the "bundling firm," the rating company, the person selling the derivative securities -- they've all taken their cut and moved on.  The people who are left are the mortgagor and whatever sucker who got stuck with the bad paper, and the mortgagor may not be blameless either.  The "robosigning" firms are a far better target, but the place to fight them is in the courts, not the streets.

My first suggestion is to tighten the focus of the group. The Occupy Boston website shows over 50 "working committees." That's something I'd expect to see from a big Wall Street business trying to retain the status quo, not a protest organization trying to change it. The best way to waste momentum is to spend in too many directions, Instead spend your time on crafting ideas and choosing a few tactics rather than debating what goes on business cards.

Speaking of Citizens United, the time for symbolic demonstrations is long over.  The places to "overturn" the Citizen's United Ruling are not in front of Federal Court houses, nor in front of a big company like BoA or BP.  Instead, it's by changing incorporation laws at the state level by passing laws to make any significant political contribution require a shareholder vote.  This avoids the constitutional issue entirely.  Start with "easier" legislatures like Massachusetts if you will, but the real battlegrounds will be in Dover, Delaware and Trenton, New Jersey.

My other suggestion is to fight with money with money.  There are two proverbial sides to Wall Street, the buy side and the sell side.  The sell side needs the buy side -- after all, someone had to _buy_ and insure those toxic mortgage derivatives.  The buy side in turn depends on other people's money.  Guess who those "other people" are?  If you have an IRA, a 401k, 403b, a 529 plan or even an insurance policy, you need only look in the mirror.  Not surprisingly, not all "buy side" companies are equal when it comes to executive compensation.  Give people the information on which "buy side" firms reveal executive salaries and what those salaries are, so they can make their own choices of firms to use or to create new ones.