Occupy Wallstreet

[JackSlack]

Again, I'm with Wraith that all this could have turned out better if the organizers had spent an extra week working out some actual talking points and slogans and whatnot BEFORE getting everyone to gather...

Politics is the choice between the reprehensible and the incompetent.

Still, there's something of a poetic irony here. As the message is being distilled a bit (and it is) the basic thrust seems to be debt forgiveness as a major policy tool. If that's so, it's in sharp relief to OWS's counterpart, the Tea Party; Rick Santelli's rant on CNBC was largely credited with sparking them. What prompted his rant? A proposal to forgive some home-loan debt.

[JustAName]

Well... There's an Occupy Berkeley. I walked past it on the way to class. The rains had already gotten them, so their cardboard signs were soaked and decaying. There were maybe two or three there. They'd taken over the corner by the Bank of America where the homeless people usually sleep. One sign said "Arrest the bankers," another "End all war now" >.< If they're still there tomorrow, mayhap I'll take pictures.

[Geoff_B]

Awww I feel sorry for them. At least they're trying.

[Tycherin]

The road to hell, etc.

[JustAName]

They were much better set up today. (I apologize for my poor videosmanship and for the lighting; it was about 9:30pm - I took it after class.)

[empath]

To be honest, they look better set up than most protestors I've seen involved in the "Occupy n" movement, but a) a fair amount of time has passed, allowing organization to even organically develop, and b) this is BERKLEY; a place famous for political protests for...geez, has it been a half a century now?

Thanks for the vid! (by the by, that 'bird chirp' crossing signal for the deaf sounds LOUD! )

[kodra]

It's really interesting how much message integrity suddenly seems to matter. It's historically been a weakness of pretty much every grassroots movement. A lot of people with vaguely similar beliefs and complaints are going to have similar but not 100% consistent messages, and the level of vitriol the protest generates isn't going to be uniform.

If everyone had the same thing to say with the same level of politeness I would imagine that movement of being perpetrated on behalf of a more organized entity.

My thought exercise of yesterday was "Where would the Civil rights movement be if we held them to the same standard we expect from Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party?" My guess is we'd have disregarded them as a bunch of angry punks who don't know how great they have it by virtue of living in the best damn country in the world.

Just my .02$

[JackSlack]

Matt Taibbi's got a pretty damn good article on the subject. This is the guy who's flat out called Goldman Sach's "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" and a criminal operation, so it's unsurprising he's sympathetic. But he's unusually moderate in this column; his demands are for the most part pretty sensible and lean. OWS could do worse than adopt them as their own.

[JustAName]

OccupyOakland is huge! They had tents and everything! I didn't have my camera this time, but maybe next week.

[CommanderKeen]

Heading downtown tomorrow to see what Vancouver huff and puffs about tomorrow. VPD spent today going around to nearby businesses explaining what might happen tomorrow, and from the sounds of things, various newspaper boxes have been removed from the streets. We'll see if a slightly militant faction shows up, but I doubt it. Vancouver has all sorts of 1000+ person protests on a somewhat bi-weekly fashion without any negatives, aside from traffic downtown getting messed up. I'm sure the Vancouver Art Gallery (which is where most major protests in Vancouver happen) is THRILLED about having the possibility of a protest on their lawn for two months.

[Gordon Fearman]

I can't believe this hadn't been made before.

[Lord Chrusher]

I saw some Occupy Melbourne posters on campus today. Since Australia is doing fine economically right now I am not sure how much it will resonate but I am sure there are plenty of lefties in Melbourne.

[Digital Dolphin]

I can't believe this hadn't been made before.

99% of the storm troopers only hit 1% of the targets?

[madrak_the_red]

...yes

[sdhonda]

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... more-53901

There’s a popular YouTube video called “Occupy Atlanta Silences Civil Rights Hero John Lewis!” that’s making the rounds of the Internet this week. It shows a group of left-wing activists using hand signals and call-and-response chants as they try to decide whether or not to let a friendly politician address their assembly. After a few minutes of surreal deliberations, the bewildered Congressman wanders off. At last count, the video had 400,000 hits.

This is the impression that many Canadians have of the Occupy Wall Street-inspired protests, which now have come to Toronto under the banner of “Occupy Bay Street”: Confused hippies re-enacting their parents’ and grandparents’ 1960s-vintage koombaya bonding and protest theatre. It all seems absurd and easily mockable.

But laughing off the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement would be a mistake. Many people made fun of Tea Party protests at first, too — what with the tricorne hats and occasionally misspelled signs — until those tricorne voters started deciding who got elected to Congress.

The OWS tactics may seem juvenile and occasionally grotesque (one oft-circulated image seems to show a man defecating on a police car). But as with the Tea Party, on the opposite end of the political spectrum, OWS speaks to an American electorate that is largely disgusted with its elites and desperate for some alternative, any alternative, to conventional party politics. Barack Obama’s plunging poll numbers, combined with the GOP’s surreal presidential gong show, demonstrate that alienation and cynicism are sucking the life out of American democracy, which in turn hobbles Washington’s ability to deal with the country’s massive structural problems. That’s not a laughing matter.

OWS activists’ attempts to compare themselves with the Arab Spring are overblown: Protesters in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria and elsewhere risk their lives, not just arrest. But there is a grain of truth in the comparison: In North America, no less than the Middle East, street movements take root when people feel ignored by institutional politics — a prime example being the anti-globalization protesters of the Chrétien and Clinton eras, a time during which all major political parties tended to embrace free trade.

On this front, the Tea Party and OWS actually have a lot of common ground. Both movements are full of people (including Tea Party hero Ron Paul) who oppose America’s involvement in costly foreign wars when the United States is going bankrupt at home. Both groups are disgusted with the Wall Street pig trough that has been slopped up by the Bush and Obama administrations alike. And both groups want to see a tax code and fiscal policy that isn’t larded up with backdoor special-interest tax breaks and earmarks.

On the latter two issues, in particular, the majority reform-minded view of American citizens has been completely swamped by the institutional interests of the GOP and Democratic establishments and their bagmen, with the result that the frustrated majority has been pushed toward the dissident fringes we now know of as the Tea Party and OWS. The two groups differ radically on the solution America needs: The former wants to shrink government, the latter wants to reform it and radically expand its wealth-redistribution function to favour the poor and young. But both agree that Washington in its current state serves an elite that is corrupt, avaricious and even unAmerican.

In response to OWS, conservative pundits have expended much rhetoric in explaining how the Tea Party is more principled and intelligent. But this seems to miss the larger points that both movements are making: (1) that you cannot run a successful economy that benefits ordinary citizens if up to 40% of corporate profits are funneled into government-backstopped financial entities that do little productive work except manage speculative investments; (2) that America cannot be a beacon of freedom abroad if it cannot afford to create a functional society at home; and (3) that America’s campaign-finance system, 24-hour news cycle, and dysfunctional legislatures have yielded a paralyzed political system in which politicians are incapable of tackling existential national problems such as unsustainable entitlement programs, crumbling infrastructure and 13-figure deficits.

As Canadians, we have the luxury of watching all of this unfold from afar (even if some copycat protesters are bringing the same act to our own cities). Rather than sneer, we should appreciate the fact that our politics have not — yet — degenerated to the level where masses of ordinary people on both sides of the spectrum feel that their only political outlet is on the street.

[Geoff_B]

99% of the storm troopers only hit 1% of the targets?

The Academy must be improving...

[Gordon Fearman]

Only Storm Troopers could be so precise. That is to say not at all.

[rustak]

Heading downtown tomorrow to see what Vancouver huff and puffs about tomorrow. VPD spent today going around to nearby businesses explaining what might happen tomorrow, and from the sounds of things, various newspaper boxes have been removed from the streets. We'll see if a slightly militant faction shows up, but I doubt it.

Yeah, it's not like someone lost a hockey game

The madness has spread here; Occupy Toronto is apparently today. Other than causing massive traffic problems downtown (which is already a traffic disaster), I have a hard time seeing this accomplish much :/

Edit: from some of the tweets/coverage: "It's time to take back the money" "We're going to shut down some streets" "stop privatization of water, need a 9/11 investigation, profit driven economy"

[RAIC]

Aaaaand the Dutch have started to Occupy some cities too... Currently Amsterdam and The Hague are being occupied.

[Matt]

Went by the occupy Victoria protest.

My reaction was roughly as follows:



Solidarity protests are fine and all, but get on fucking message. This is not the place to be protesting smart meters and chemtrails, fuckwits.

-m

[Matt]

Though, to be honest, no place is the place to be protesting smart meters and chemtrails.

-m

[JustAName]

Couple pics I got yesterday.





When I asked this guy if I could take his picture, he said, "Sure! If you can get it in the New York Times, even better!"

[Metcarfre]

Water smart meters or electricity?

Or just smart meters in general?

[Kara]

Went by the occupy Victoria protest.

My reaction was roughly as follows:



Solidarity protests are fine and all, but get on fucking message. This is not the place to be protesting smart meters and chemtrails, fuckwits.

-m

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
I'm not at all surprised that it is pretty focused on such things in Victoria. Tis the nature of the hippy population that would be down at Centen right now.

I was at OccupyVancouver for awhile, checked it out, marched with everyone, had some good conversations.
For the most part people knew what they were talking about, made me a happy camper. Lots of talk of overly large tuition and no jobs to pay back student loans with, lots of unemployment talk in general, lots of corporate tax talk. I dug it.
A bit too much 9/11 talk for my liking.
I came home to write a philosophy paper, but once I'm done I'll probably walk back up to the art gallery and see what's up. The general assembly speeches were pretty interesting actually.

[Geoff_B]

Couple pics I got yesterday.

Where'd everyone go?