Occupy Thread

[SR4]

if it isnt bullshit then the OWS is worse than i thought. how else could you further detach yourself from those in the middle by declaring your anger for EVERYTHING.

[ghOsty]

OWS had multiple problems. Its really depressing to watch because had they had a bit more strategy and better timing they could have actually achieved something.

I agree with this statement, looking at Occupy Minneapolis, the closest one to me. There's a few there who know what the fuck they're talking about as seen in the Livestream, but they're SO disorganized it's really disheartening.

 

I think with the crackdown on the occupy camps across the nation, we will soon see the next phase of this... What that is, I have no idea, but I don't think this is the end at all.

 

I forsee "next phase" measures taken by both sides. There is so much tension between US economics and government and the people right now, the Occupy movement is a sign things are escalating. With more organization and planing the Occupy Movement could really begin to have leverage, however local and federal law enforcement will begin to up their enforcement and opposition. There has already been some violence in this wave of the movement's efforts, it wouldn't suprise me to see that begin to escalate as well. If martial law is put into place to remove for what is in the most part peaceful protests, shit will hit the fan.

[vamos scorcho]

No it's bullshit.

 

wrong.

 

read the article, it expresses rather clearly what the protests are about. if you think that's bullshit then something's wrong with you, or you're part of the 1% already and couldn't give a fuck about how anybody else sees the world

[chenGOD]

Right so I'm reading the article - four paragraphs in and the author has already contradicted the idea that I said was bullshit:

"It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become."

 

contrast with - two paragraphs later mind you, not like the next chapter or anything -

"Apparently, because Goldman and Citibank are corporations, no protester can ever consume a corporate product – not jeans, not cellphones and definitely not coffee – if he also wants to complain about tax money going to pay off some billionaire banker's bets against his own crappy mortgages."

Hardly a ringing endorsement for protesting against everything.

Look I understand what the protests are mostly about (as much as you can have clearly defined goals with no leader) and I agree that there are some systemic changes that need to be introduced. I even articulated some of the changes that need to occur in the "We are the foundation" thread.

That article is some terrible journalism:

"People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something." except that they are trying to sell you something - their idea of a utopian society.

They want change - but they don't know what they want to change to. Change takes work. Real work not standing around in the street chanting vague feelgood slogans.

ps my favorite part about that article was how the author still wanted his iPhone at a reasonable price but didn't want the WTO to butt into American politics. Well guess what - you can't have it both ways. You can't have goods that are made cheaper thanks to freer trade and then not have to abide by the rules when they don't suit you.

[Hoodie]

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/11/84-year-old-woman-becomes-pepper-sprayed-face-occupy-seattle/45035/

 

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/komo/article/Elderly-woman-priest-pepper-sprayed-during-2271197.php#photo-1758710

 

[luke viia]

my girlfriend was sending me texts about that last night as it happened... she lives right downtown, but was at work and watching the protests on a live feed somewhere online. i guess the feed went down during the pepper spray because a cop took the dudes camera, but someone else took over the feed and caught most of the hubbub afterwards...

 

i mean seriously, pepper spraying an 84 year old woman and a pregnant chick? how fucking dangerous can they be? i hope somebody got that name of the officer, at the very least

[luke viia]

on the plus side,

 

On Monday, the Seattle City Council unanimously approved a resolution in support of the growing Occupy movement.

 

Introduced by council member Nick Licata, Resolution 31337 recognizes and supports the peaceful and lawful exercise of the citizens' First Amendment right to free speech.

[acid1]

I don't know how wise it was for an 84 year old woman or someone who is pregnant to attend a protest.

[luke viia]

it was a group march from the seattle central community college to a park downtown. cops stood at the corner of 5th and pine and blocked them, saying they had to disperse. cops decided to pepper spray them after they refused. apparently quite a few of them were arrested. a couple people were also arrested "for suspected pedestrian interference"

 

it might not be "wise" to be at a protest when you're an old woman, but it's not "wise" to mace old women in the face either. i'm not sure what your point is.

[acidphakist]

i'm not sure what your point is.

 

His point is probably something like "don't poke a bear with a stick."

[luke viia]

and your point, then, is "whatever unwarranted punishment cops dole out is justified because they are analogous to bears with sticks" ?

[acidphakist]

Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?" And the snake answered, "Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake."

[SR4]

LOL please tell me you made that up. hilarious

[luke viia]

[acidphakist]

 

[BobDobalina]

Overall I found that RS article to be on point, particularly:

 

We're all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob's Ladder nightmare with no end; we're entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.

 

^This

 

The police in their own way are symbols of the problem. All over the country, thousands of armed cops have been deployed to stand around and surveil and even assault the polite crowds of Occupy protesters. This deployment of law-enforcement resources already dwarfs the amount of money and manpower that the government "committed" to fighting crime and corruption during the financial crisis. One OWS protester steps in the wrong place, and she immediately has police roping her off like wayward cattle. But in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes.

 

This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat – and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all. Yet when thousands of ordinary people hit the streets with the express purpose of obeying the law and demonstrating their patriotism through peaceful protest, the police response is immediate and massive. There have already been hundreds of arrests, which is hundreds more than we ever saw during the years when Wall Street bankers were stealing billions of dollars from retirees and mutual-fund holders and carpenters unions through the mass sales of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.

 

It's not that the cops outside the protests are doing wrong, per se, by patrolling the parks and sidewalks. It's that they should be somewhere else. They should be heading up into those skyscrapers and going through the file cabinets to figure out who stole what, and from whom. They should be helping people get their money back. Instead, they're out on the street, helping the Blankfeins of the world avoid having to answer to the people they ripped off.

 

People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world. They want major changes.

 

^ This.

 

If you think of it this way, Occupy Wall Street takes on another meaning. There's no better symbol of the gloom and psychological repression of modern America than the banking system, a huge heartless machine that attaches itself to you at an early age, and from which there is no escape. You fail to receive a few past-due notices about a $19 payment you missed on that TV you bought at Circuit City, and next thing you know a collector has filed a judgment against you for $3,000 in fees and interest. Or maybe you wake up one morning and your car is gone, legally repossessed by Vulture Inc., the debt-buying firm that bought your loan on the Internet from Chase for two cents on the dollar. This is why people hate Wall Street. They hate it because the banks have made life for ordinary people a vicious tightrope act; you slip anywhere along the way, it's 10,000 feet down into a vat of razor blades that you can never climb out of.

 

That, to me, is what Occupy Wall Street is addressing. People don't know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: FUCK THIS SHIT!

 

^ And this.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

[acid1]

Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?" And the snake answered, "Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake."

lol basically this.

 

Both the preggers and the 84 year old woman knew (hopefully) that there could be dangerous things that can happen at protests/rallies/marches. For weeks the news has been saying how police have been using force to control these OWS crowds. Not only just the police, but the people involved in these gatherings have been known to be dangerous as well. So they made a conscious decision when they left the house that day to face these dangers. Not wise.

 

If you had a pregnant wife or 84 year old grandmother, would you allow her to go out into the cold and march with an angry mob infront of armed police? I would not.

[luke viia]

"allow" her?

[J3FF3R00]

I've been to lots of different protests (mostly about the Iraq war) where there were old people and pregnant women. The first amendment says people have a right to assemble peacefully. Technically, they should be safe. The macho douchebag cops have to go screw that up.

It's people's right (and, if you ask me, civic responsibility) to stand up for their beliefs.

[acid1]

Of course they do have the right, I think the discussion was whether or not it was "wise"

[acidphakist]

I've been to lots of different protests (mostly about the Iraq war) where there were old people and pregnant women. The first amendment says people have a right to assemble peacefully. Technically, they should be safe. The macho douchebag cops have to go screw that up.

It's people's right (and, if you ask me, civic responsibility) to stand up for their beliefs.

 

While I don't disagree that the police force is acting more violently than necessary I urge you not to lose focus of the true issue: whether or not it's ethical, the police ARE using too much force. As such you can expect bad things to happen to you.

[J3FF3R00]

Of course they do have the right, I think the discussion was whether or not it was "wise"

Duh. I was saying that these people most likely were under the impression that they were safe because they thought it was their protected right.

 

 

While I don't disagree that the police force is acting more violently than necessary I urge you not to lose focus of the true issue: whether or not it's ethical, the police ARE using too much force. As such you can expect bad things to happen to you.

How bout I urge you not to lose focus of the true issue: people have the right, granted to them in the first amendment, to peacefully assemble.

 

 

Edit

 

 

Just throwing it out there...

We wouldn't have had a civil rights movement in this country if people stayed at home and said to themselves "Man, I'd really like to go out and march, but there's always that chance that I'm going to get beaten, sprayed with a fire hose and have police dogs attack me. Maybe I'll just stay home and watch Dick Van Dyke".

[acid1]

Murphy's law. We can all be optimists tho if we don't want to evolve.

[acidphakist]

Of course they do have the right, I think the discussion was whether or not it was "wise"

Duh. I was saying that these people most likely were under the impression that they were safe because they thought it was their protected right.

 

 

While I don't disagree that the police force is acting more violently than necessary I urge you not to lose focus of the true issue: whether or not it's ethical, the police ARE using too much force. As such you can expect bad things to happen to you.

How bout I urge you not to lose focus of the true issue: people have the right, granted to them in the first amendment, to peacefully assemble.

 

No, the true issue is that they can beat you senseless and get away with it.

 

U mad, bro?

[J3FF3R00]

 

No, the true issue is that they can beat you senseless and get away with it.

 

U mad, bro?

 

That's actually a different issue that I was posting in response to.

I agree. Cops can get away with that shit and it's horrible and shouldn't happen, but it shouldn't stop people from protesting.

See my edit about the civil rights movement, above.