Here's a Cause the Occupy Wall Street Should Get Behind

I moaned in an October 15 post how Occupy Wall Street and all the other Occupy Somethings around the world have no agenda. As in the movie Network, "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore." Take what? Occupy what? Well, I have an idea for a symbolic gesture, to identify an enemy and then stick them.

The idea comes from a wonderful Sports Illustrated article by Ian Thomsen. (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/ian_thomsen/10/21/NBA.labor/index.html?xid=cnnbin&hpt=hp_bn10)

"On Thursday night in a Manhattan hotel, as owners and players bickered over ultimatums, the NBA was ignorant of a larger threat developing just miles away. On the southern tip of the rich island were gathered thousands of stubborn protesters representing American economic frustration. They were the people of Occupy Wall Street....

"The issues protested by the Wall Street Occupiers are far more serious than the lockout that is upsetting basketball fans. Yet the parallels are obvious. The NBA generates $4 billion annually and its players average $5 million in salary per year. Yet they cannot agree on how all of that money should be divided between the owners of the franchises and the employees. They have been arguing for more than two years without recognizing or respecting what is happening in the world around them -- not only that they should be celebrating their good fortune rather than fighting over it, but that those with far less wealth are beginning to mobilize and realize their own power."

Pro athletes and owners are arrogant. They fight over huge pots of money, and when it's all over, it's the fans who pay. And we fans are loyal. We'll continue to pack stadiums and arenas because those are our teams. Nowhere is that more true than where I grew up, in Pittsburgh. The Steelers define that city: tough, hard-working, and gritty. The Penguins sell out their new arena for every game, and the Pirates -- well, they were the talk of the town in the '70s and last summer until they took a dive in July. My first job was as a sportswriter because sports is what you did in Western Pennsylvania.

Baseball once cancelled a World Series. Hockey cancelled a season. Football went on strike and made a mockery of the game using replacement players and almost cancelled the current season. Now it's the NBA's turn. And it's the public's turn to make an example of these fat cats.

"But never has a league dared to shut itself down in a time like this, during a recession now generating its fourth year of high unemployment and foreclosures. The Occupy Wall Street protesters and their brethren emerging in scores of other cities in America (and around the world) are establishing their own agenda. They are refusing to argue the underlying details of the financial meltdown, and they don't claim to offer solutions. Instead, for now, they are simply demanding that they be acknowledged by those who hold the majority of money and power.

"'Respect us,' the protesters are saying.

"'Or else what?' the rich and powerful seem to be responding. To which the protesters have said nothing ... yet. They are deciding how to respond and what to do amid an ominous silence....

"But now the dots have never been easier to connect. This is a league that has used public money to finance its arenas -- expensive buildings that are now shuttered to the financial detriment of local governments as well as thousands of workers, and it's all because of a very simple and unbelievably greedy story. Everyone else suffers because 30 owners and 400 basketball players cannot agree on how to share $4 billion per year.

"The Occupy Wall Street protesters are trying in their own way to tell the rich and powerful that they must be conscious of the world around them. The NBA owners and players are failing to recognize not only their citizenship but also their extreme vulnerability. They have forgotten that the NBA exists largely due to its fans."

The lockout isn't much of a crisis for the NBA. Eventually, they'll divide up the money and make their millions from the fans and TV networks. And the fans will return, as they always do, and pay ridiculous prices for tickets, concessions, and parking. But...

"What if it strikes the larger public nerve, so that the NBA's $4 billion shutdown is turned into a high-profile example of something deeper and much more important than a game? This kind of public reckoning has been forecast for a long time."

Occupy Wall Street is a protest in search of a cause. The NBA is ideal symbolism of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer as they protest in the park.

"Each time they meet, the owners and players emerge from their failed negotiations and declare how much they love and feel sorry for the fans. It's the one statement both sides share in common, and it couldn't be more hollow or condescending. In the end, the details of their negotiations don't matter nearly so much as the harm the owners and players are creating together."