thread to be critical/skeptical of occupy wall street

(well among other things)

I guess I still find "de-centralized consensus-based governing" a little vague. The fact that it works on a small scale to make relatively simple decisions in an artificial situation (where the necessities of life are mostly coming from outside) for a short period of time is not exactly what I'd call the blueprint of a revolution.

I also think you have to look at ows outside of 'normal politics' - I participate in ows stuff I also participate in knocking on door politics and I don't think there needs to be explicit overlap. people who volunteer or the democratic party have to accept a certain cynicism w/r/t the political process and 'the game' and ows is about changing our overall worldview and is a fight against that aforementioned cynicism that you otherwise accept.

have they started talking about bribing congressmen with yachts yet? that really needs to be the goal right there.

u care about flags and anthems

hurting you should look up and read stuff by david graeber

I don't believe that consensus decision making can replace our national-level institutions but I believe it's something that could have potential for local level politics

btw this is pretty interesting/awesome:
http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2011/12/15/occupy-portland-outsmarts-police-creating-blueprint-for-other-occupations/

(although it's more on the "how to protest" tip than the "how to govern/organize society" tip)

just had an hourlong discussion/argument with a friend about occupy, which pretty much ruined the get together because she started raising her voice and pointing a lot, despite the fact that i was being exceedingly conciliatory and calm, perhaps overly so.

her main objections were that there was no coherent message that she could discern (despite my efforts) and also the general argument that things are worse elsewhere in the world. i tried and failed to correct that but was consistently interrupted by her.

so, so frustrating, because her heart's in the right place in general and yet she seems to be spending most of her "activist" time in opposing occupy.

i kept going back to the civil rights movement in the US, both as an example of something that was clearly worth doing despite things being "worse" elsewhere in the world (as will always be the case) and also by saying that for an apples to apples argument, we'd be comparing occupy to, say, Dec 1955 - Mar 1956. both movements were at the infancy stage, despite decades of background work. to complain that 3 months into occupy there's not a clear endpoint is just ludicrous and naive (though i didn't say that)

While we're at it, what is the coherent message behind the Democratic party?

One thing I do definitely try to say to doubters is "at least these guys are innovating -- why don't you give them a chance and see what they come up with." I mean a lot of people who later became big in politics cut their teeth in SDS, the civil rights movement, vietnam war protesting, etc., often having no idea what they were doing in the beginning. This sort of activism is very fertile for developing a more sophisticated understanding of organizing, and for developing new tactics. There are good Emma Goldman quotes about this sort of thing that I will try to find.

OWS also good at keeping our jobless state on the hot plate for the voting season

The 99% discussion should be good for the democratic party. Yet Newt Gingrich wants to make things much better for the 1% and worse for the 99% (throwing fuel into the fire, hurting our economy) and somehow he has the most support. I don't think Americans are smart enough to revolutionize our government even if it was as simple as voting yes to revolution on a ballot. The amount of problems in our system in staggering and with the way our system is set up it's practically futile to even try to stab at the root of these problems. /pessimism

What I'd say to OWS doubters - watch the Big Picture with Thom Hartman (and if I had some specific youtube links that would help too).

I would avoid trying to have an OWS discussion with any friends or family that vote republican because they are too far gone and you might as well avoid blood and tears so to keep things civil

I guess the fundamental problem I don't know whether OWS can solve is this: on one hand, yeah, they're right. Any revolutionary movement that uses hierarchy and coercion is likely to set up a new unjust system to replace the old one. But revolutionary movements that are free of hierarchy and coercion don't tend to be as good at displacing entrenched power. Or at least I can't think of an example of such a movement that has displaced entrenched power. An alternative is to just set up small-scale mini-societies that operate outside of/in spite of entrenched power. Of course this has been done many times before, with all kinds of communes and commune-like structures, with varying degrees of success. I don't know enough about OWS or the history of communes to know how the principles of the current movement might differ from those.

Anyway, my overarching take on the whole thing is that I don't really feel like I'm at a place in my life where I can really "join" the movement right now, but I'd like to see where it goes and I don't want to detract from it. And people who only talk about why it can't work based solely on what they see on the news are depressing and frustrating and kind of a waste of time.

And people who only talk about why it can't work based solely on what they see on the news are depressing and frustrating and kind of a waste of time.
And people who only talk about why it can't work based solely on what they see on the news are depressing and frustrating and kind of a waste of time.
And people who only talk about why it can't work based solely on what they see on the news are depressing and frustrating and kind of a waste of time.

absolutely

http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/390788_338374726188045_108038612554992_1352391_671758301_n.jpg

"FOLKS IN THIRD-WORLD COUNTRIES ARE EVEN POORER, SO POOR PEOPLE IN AMERICA SHOULD BE GRATEFUL AND SHUT UP!!"

this, almost verbatim, was the argument my friend was making last night, repeatedly, with righteous anger. i couldn't believe it. at one point about 10 minutes into her rant she finally paused to take a breath, and she asked "what do you think? do you agree?". i can't really think of another time in my life where my jaw was actually hanging down, open, involuntarily. i couldn't believe all the shit that had just come out of her mouth. i think i answered "i'm sorry, but that's the saddest thing i've heard anyone say in the last several years" or something.

awwkaaaaaard

leftycartoons.com

Won't someone please think of the 3rd world children!

I do often wonder why protesters don't "wear neckties like civil rights marchers 50 years ago" - any ideas?

the worst argument is SEE THOSE LEFTIES INCITE VIOLENCE AND RIOTS. y'know even though its even a small minority that gets arrested and that the violence seems to always begin when police show up in riot gear and escalating needlessly.

then again, these are probably the same people who said "Kent State protesters provoked the National Guard into shooting!"

hey HOOS, come up to NY and get some facetime w/ models

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/18/the_return_of_the_radical_chic_evening/singleton/

Penn Badgley, an actor on the hit series “Gossip Girl,” has a face too mathematically perfect to be truly interesting,

negging

At the present levels of complexity in society, there's going to be a reliance on expertise, for sure. What matters are the rules that we all play under, and making sure they promote the goals we largely agree on. Creating a huge wealth imbalance isn't a goal I'm siging up for, personally.

― Aimless, Thursday, December 1, 2011 4:11 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Permalink

Skipping 42 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

lol @ "tumblr whites"

― upper mississippi 2: still shakin, Thursday, December 1, 2011 7:01 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Permalink

who can i blame for this

He bounds onto the stage, grabs the microphone and yells “mic check!”

every time i've seen this happen its kind of hilarious

also as somebody neck-deep in this stuff i would like to say hurting's take is the most reasonable one i've read from an """"outsider"""" in a minute

we're the last major-city camp on the eastern seaboard (i'm not counting occupy buffalo, hope friends there will forgive me), and we're approaching our 3 month anniversary.

in the last month we've become more about intracamp politics/issues than that which brought us together to begin with, and that's been frustrating to see; with 200 tents and twice as many people living in a damn park it only makes sense that it would take on all the internal politics of a small town once it got settled.

fights, usually a sidecar to substance abuse among the homeless who've brought their prior issues into the community, have become alarmingly common. tensions are high, and at a time when we're being challenged by weather while trying to have some of our most important existential discussions to date.

a lot of us are trying to start conversations about "2.0," the question of what happens when there are no more tents at the square. there's a faction (as i suspect there's been at every major encampment) that, on discussion of post-occupation tactics, raises the question "post-occupation? how can you TALK like that? what about the people in this camp with no other place to live? where's the place for THEM in your occupy 2.0?"

this position seems to presuppose that camp will continue indefinitely unless we voluntarily tear it down, which strikes me as short-sighted. I also have the luxury of not living at and dealing with the camp 24/7, and i completely understand how someone who made the choice to do that might come to see the continuation of the camp itself as the most important aspect. the camp, though, has always been intended as a means--and i think that to treat it as an end in itself is dangerous in more ways than one.

not really sure what i'm getting at here--maybe the inherent danger of myopia in a community like the one we've brought together, and the consequences of allowing it to remain porous when that openness results in the introduction of elements we're not fully prepared to deal with.

oh and on the question of GAs as local decision-making mechanisms this was kinda heartening in its way--and only 84 fucking years after sacco and vanzetti too

http://www.thenation.com/signupad/165240?destination=article/165240/thank-you-anarchists