There has been some hand-wringing among activists and the Netroots about Occupy Congress.
Folks seem to think that big labor groups like SEIU and CWA having their own Occupy event in Washington is a sign that the movement is being co-opted by powerful interests that want to take advantage of its momentum.
Not so.
This is a sign that the Occupy movement is winning.
I saw some of the live feed of this afternoon's spontaneous march along Wall St., where a couple hundred demonstrators walked through the Financial District as part of the on-going protest against economic injustice.
I groaned.
This wasn't the peaceful occupation that I'd like to think the movement symbolizes. I saw -- well -- hooligans -- shouting and being disruptive and acting out an anger that I fully understand, but that seemed (albeit through the shaky lens of an Internet broadcast) well, more than slightly counter-productive.
I have visited the Occupy camp in Zuccotti Park in off-hours a few times and I have come away with the feeling that this particular demographic is not going to change the way the system works in and of itself.
Some of what I saw was great:
People acting in accordance with their conscience to come together to do something great. But this was counter-balanced by people who looked like they weren't there to do anything at all, but rather found another outlet for their permanent state of disaffection with society at large. I admired all of them, but I knew then that this group in and of itself was not going to be able to affect great change.
The really spectacular successes that the Occupy movement has had in street activism occurred when the labor unions stepped in and volunteered the bodies and their organizational prowess to swell numbers in the thousands or tens of thousands.
Indeed, the first people to be arrested on Thursday night were national labor leaders from the SEIU and a New York City councilman. It was these folks who brought in the manpower that gave the substance to what would otherwise have been a much, much smaller protest.
This movement needs the highly-motivated activists who can go at it 24-hours a day, as well as the fringe to keep momentum going.
But it also needs institutional partners -- labor unions, established community activist groups and faith communities -- to bring their strengths and execute on the energy that the core provides.
It also needs people like you and me who drop in when the signal is sent out that another action is going to happen.
The fact that the Occupy movement is being embraced by the institutional -- even professional -- left is not a sign of its demise, but rather that its message is being mainstreamed at an incredibly rapid pace.
I'm thankful for this. The core Occupy folks have given groups with a lot of money and resources something to coalesce around. It put shape to something that was having a hard time coming together otherwise.
When Big Labor or MoveOn or sympathetic politicians show an affinity for this movement -- it's a good sign, not a bad one.
As the Bat Signal projectors put up on the Verizon building walls on Thursday:
We're winning.