"What are they solving?"

Yesterday I told someone back home that I had attended a few Occupy events, and the person responded by saying, "Oh yeah? What are they solving?" Apparently corporate media hasn't covered this angle of the protests, so I thought I would invite a conversation on this topic here.

My first reaction is to say that they - we - are solving a huge gap in participatory democracy that exists in this country. In recent years, we've seen a President appointed by the Supreme Court, we've seen our country go to war without the approval of Congress, and we've seen corporations awarded the rights of people. We've seen political debate narrowed by corporate media, extremist conservatives positioned as the new (but not newly corporate-funded) right, we've seen yet more free trade agreements passed in "a rare moment of bipartisanship," we've seen the killing of American citizens by US drone attack on foreign territory, and we've seen billions in taxpayer money funneled to privately-owned banks. All of this is occurring in the context of an increasingly fear-filled discussion of immigration reform and immigrant rights.

I consider these developments to be a danger to and/or evidence of the erosion of democracy in this country - to the ideal of democratic rule and as it is legally defined in our Constitution. In my mind, the connection among the seemingly scattered items listed above is that they are evidence that the American public has been complacent about exercising our democratic rights beyond the ballot box. As a good (woman) friend of mine says, if the vote was my only voice - if voting were the only legitimate avenue of social and political change - I wouldn't have a vote!