Francis Fox-Piven: Occupy Should Sell Out to DNC

This week, Francis Fox-Piven took to the pages of The Nation magazine to stoke the fire of the Occupy movement. She starts by suggesting they are likely to hear pleas from Democrats that they quiet their criticism of Obama:

There will be lots of exasperated advice to the protesters: at least for now, they should work for the election by joining the ranks of volunteers registering voters, ringing doorbells and staffing the campaign offices. And, of course, they should refrain from attacks on Obama. After all, think of how bad things would be with Romney as president and Tea Party Republicans controlling both houses of Congress. The Supreme Court could become even worse, to say nothing of the danger of another war.

Fox-Piven spends a couple paragraphs arguing that, to the contrary, the Occupy movement could play a role in dragging Obama to the correct (far-left) positions on issues. She says that a vocal Occupy movement can raise “the price of appeasement,” meaning the left’s appeasement of the right. She concludes:

Thanks to the lunacy that has overtaken the GOP, Obama is in a good position to win re-election. But he is vulnerable to an escalating Occupy movement. In particular, minority, young and poor new voters are volatile voters, and they are susceptible to the appeals of Occupy. I, for one, hope the movement forces Obama to pay for its support, in desperately needed economic, political and environmental reforms.

In other words, the occupiers should sell out to the DNC this election, just not cheaply.