ccupy OKC people at Kerr Park, OKC are reporting that eviction is imminent. I drove past the Bricktown police station earlier, and SWAT/SRT vehicles are staged forward there. Bricktown station is about a three minute drive from Kerr park.
I don’t know what to make of this because we hadn’t had any difficulties getting permits issued and renewed until yesterday.
I just got off the phone with a couple of the campers. The day shift captain from the Bricktown station addressed the GA a couple of days ago and told them that with the construction and demolition work going on across the street—this is true, one hi rise being renovated, one next to that being demolished—that those sites had reached a point where they had to have the whole area cleared. Then yesterday, the OCPD told them that they could stay in the lower park and clear out of the upper park and they’ed be OK. This morning, a Sergeant from Bricktown station told them they had to leave the park and that they would not be allowed to move to another park.
They set up a meeting with the Police Chief for 8:30 AM tomorrow morning, but they’ve noted that the Police, who normally have had two cars parked in the alley south of the park haven’t had a presence all day.
They’ve had good relations with the OCPD from the beginning, but it appears that a decision was made on high to remove them. Some campers have left, but through the day more and more people have been showing up as word got out, and a caravan from Norman had just got there at 9:30, raising their number to over 40.
The last thing they heard was that they would be evicted at 11:00 tonight. Since they heard that, they managed to arrange the meeting with the Chief for the morning, but apparently it’s about to happen—I just got a text that police are lining up on the south side of the park.
The livestream feed, http://www.occupyokc.com/index.php/media-and-resources/livestream is offline. They’ve been trying to conserve battery power all day, but they’ve said they would bring it up as soon as it appears something will happen.
Occupy OKC live stream at http://www.livestream.com/occupyspanol Update: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/occupy-okc
This was reported on News9 OKC, the lead story for the 10PM broadcast.
burnspbesq
Sad.
Mayor Villaraigosa has done a fantastic job of keeping the LAPD on the leash. Even last night, when the Occupiers started blocking traffic, the situation didn’t blow up.
It’s worth thinking about whether it’s time for the Occupy movement to move on to the next stage. If the objective was to get people thinking and talking about income inequality and related issues, then I think it’s time for “Mission Accomplished.” Then it becomes time for political action.
Arm The Homeless
@burnspbesq: The question that I have is how do you get anything resembling consensus when the moment that more than three people agree with each other, you’re going to be inundated with the Red Brigade claiming that they are not speaking for the “movement”, and instead allow the media to focus on internal divisions?
burnspbesq
@Arm The Homeless:
Someone (not sure who would be best to deliver the message, maybe Obama) needs to sit down with these folks and deliver the message that Coach K delivers to every Duke team on the first day of practice: a fist is infinitely more powerful than five fingers moving in different directions.
Keith G
@Arm The Homeless: I think it is safe to say that internal divisions and some bad PR is in the cards. That seems to be the way that protest movements transition. The question is: Will there be a cohort of savvy people who can outline some meaningful next steps?
Since these folks are non-hierarchical, this will be interesting.
Arm The Homeless
@burnspbesq: I don’t doubt the message would be welcomed by those who are predisposed to listen to logic. Unfortunately I can easily see a moko-loko heckling from the sidelines, with media breathlessly wondering aloud whether Obama can survive losing the self-important troll vote.
bonkers
Oooo…it’s all so exciting! Like so many other forced occupations by a small minority of people, say….oh, I dunno, like the forced Occupation of Iraq in 2003, it’s always so difficult to tell when a particular place is successfully “occupied.” So does this count as a successful forced “occupation” in OKC?
If so, then what’s the next step? I’d like to know since I’ve got a lot of specific things to do to truly piss off the 1%:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/become-a-volunteer?source=primary-nav
burnspbesq
@Arm The Homeless:
You don’t think Gingrich has the self-important troll vote locked up? How often do they get to vote for one of their own?
Dee Loralei
My twitter stream says OKC raid happening now!
Dee Loralei
@AnonTestPattern was the tweeter
ETA: correct twit name
Soonergrunt
@Dee Loralei: I’m watching the stream on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/occupy-okc and it’s some people standing in the park making snarky comments while about 80 or so are marching back and forth across the park chanting. No police present at this time.
OCPD radio audio stream has no unusual traffic right now.
bonkers
@burnspbesq:
President Barack Hussein Obama had already started the “Pass This Bill” push across the country before I ever heard of “Occupy Wall Street.” He was already changing the narrative before a few hundred people in one square in NYC started getting more press than the President, as he swung his big bully pulpit around the country. Interestingly enough, I’ve now seen video clips of President Obama from back to the 1990s where he’s talking about the exact same issues…consistently and strongly.
Seems to me the “mission accomplished” for OWS now is “F- the Po-Lease!!” and “Fire small college chancellors who are bad at crisis management!” Yes, the next steps will certainly be interesting after this.
Meanwhile, Democrats have GOT to win back the House and strengthen the Senate next year, so readers here have some clear things they can do locally to help with this:
http://elizabethwarren.com
Arm The Homeless
@burnspbesq: With the philandering gas-bag vote in-tow he will be quite formidable.
And who would want to step out from the crowd here, only to have their counter-tops investigated and every person they ever smoked a bowl with being inundated with cash and prizes to hand over the Facebook photos?
I don’t see this ending well. But I am an Eeyore, so my opinion has a metric ass-ton of salt attached to it.
burnspbesq
I know this isn’t news, but Krauthammer’s an idiot.
Dee Loralei
Huh , are you telling me someone on Twitter lied? Well fuck! LOL.
I was in your neighborhood last week. Well podunk OK between Lindsay and Chikasha, though I went to Norman on Friday to eat at the Greek House, had to get my gyros fix. Seriously best gyros place I’ve ever had and the least expensive.(Eaten in NY, NJ, Ct, Fla, Memphis and LA) Same old man his wife and their son run it that did when I was at OU in the early 80’s.
Cool thing, a girl I met my freshman year was there, I recognized her and we had lunch. I was engaged to her brother. Should have married him, he is an optometrist and has two offices LOL.
Soonergrunt
@bonkers: look at the cute little conservative trying to play concern-troll games!
Isn’t he cute in a rabid mouse kind of way?
Edit–hey, shit head! We can always identify you conservative trolls because you always obsessively put the President’s middle name in there. It’s like catnip to you people.
Soonergrunt
@burnspbesq: The sun rises in the east, water is wet, etc.
bonkers
@Arm The Homeless:
Wait. Isn’t that what the “general assembly” process was for? If most of the people who are able and/or willing to “occupy” town squares happen to be Communists or John Birchers, then so be it, right? Democracy can be a bitch after all.
By the way, was there ever a “general assembly” of the actual 99%, which would mean literally hundreds of millions of people? Curious, since no OWSer asked me what I, or anyone I know, thought “we” should do. Those camping out in town squares couldn’t be speaking for a small, small minority of people and acting as if they speak for all of “us” without consulting all of “us,” would they?
Soonergrunt
@Dee Loralei:
Life is like that. I know that my wife misses her family in San Diego, and I really don’t like OKC all that much (I’m a Coloradoan) but I’m not sure I’d want to risk her running into a guy she went to high school or college with, you know?
Arm The Homeless
@Soonergrunt: I thoroughly enjoyed the “forced occupation” comment. It was almost Pollockesque in how just the right amount of shit was dabbled hither, and fro.
If we promise to point and laugh, twice a day, can we keep it?
bonkers
@Soonergrunt:
Oh bless your heart. Yes, conservative trolls often link to volunteer pages for President Barack Hussein Obama and Elizabeth Warren.
Personally, I like using his complete name because I still am amazed that people like myself, who worked our tails off getting him elected, actually won despite the fact that he has that name, and when even most Liberals I know, felt the country wasn’t “ready” to elect someone of his melanin level, and especially with a name like that.
Shows the power of his approach, and the utter, ridiculous failure of the approach of the OWS “movement.” Going forward, which would you choose if you wanted to actually win something and make positive change in the world?
Arm The Homeless
@bonkers: Man, I hope I get to be on your death-panel.
Ira-NY
These regional encampments can’ t be sustained. It is time to change tactics.
Dee Loralei
@Soonergrunt: Yea, I do know. And she may feel the same about going to Colorado with you. But you seem like a good and decent guy, I think you’d stand up to most real guys, maybe not a fantasy guy, but most real guys yea, you’d hold up fine.
bonkers
@Arm The Homeless:
Wow. Just wow.
Okay. I am in an extra sarcastic mood right now, but this IS Balloon Juice, correct?
I admit. The comparison to the forced Occupation of Iraq is an extreme comparison, yet the point is the same…a small minority of people decide to aggressively force what they feel is correct on a much larger majority of people without consulting that majority.
Care to discuss that this is what OWS has done, or would you rather simply dismiss me and continue to assume incorrect things about me? You have the power.
Arm The Homeless
@bonkers: Actually, I prefer cobbler, but a good blueberry pie is nothing to thumb your nose at.
MikeJ
@burnspbesq: I saw the hed earlier and saved myself the tsuris.
bonkers
@Arm The Homeless:
Well, over the holiday, the General Assembly around our table was unanimous in its support for the OccuPie Pecan movement. Will we agree on ANYTHING?
Mnemosyne
@Soonergrunt:
Forgot for a minute there that you have the keys now, didn’t you?
It looks like most of the municipalities learned from the bad publicity in New York, Oakland and Seattle and are trying to de-escalate things peacefully. When the LAPD is refraining from cracking heads willy-nilly, you know there are orders from on high to stay calm and negotiate. So hopefully the OKC police will be able to manage the same ting.
shano
http://www.thenation.com/video/164494/watch-michael-moore-naomi-klein-and-others-whats-next-ows
Well worth watching. William Greider disagrees with anyone who says the movement should start making legislative demands at this time. He is coming from a historical perspective on how social movements grow, operate and develop over time. This is a field he has studied extensively.
i personally think he is right. The OWS movement is 3 months old or so, and contrary to all who say ‘its over’, this is only the beginning of the beginning.
burnspbesq
@Mnemosyne:
Villaraigosa was on with Warren Olney on KCRW earlier this evening, and he sure was trying to get out the message that he is the only thing standing between the protesters and a bunch of cracked skulls in the middle of Spring Street.
JC
Soonergrunt,
Asked on the thread, and sorry to derail, but what are the real issues with the IP bill, backed by Leahy?
What is the truth, minus the hysteria?
NOTE: If google, facebook, msft and apple, are all against something, usually, I’m with those guys.
But still am wondering what the deal is.
I assume that the sites that link to offending content, say especially at the that glorious offender to IP hosted in china, MEGAVIDEO!!!
Tuduo, Vixden(sp?), etc.
But has been said by many, doesn’t really fix the problem.
Anyone who knows how to type in an ip address, can route around it anyway.
burnspbesq
Way OT, but there is a fascinating post up at Lawfare, suggesting that the 2001 AUMF might sunset automatically if we get the ragtag remnants of al Qaeda as it existed at that time.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/11/the-legal-implications-of-the-decline-of-the-original-al-qaeda-network/
shano
bonkers: I think OWS has already changed the conversation. When did the nation ever talk about the income inequality that has built up with bad legislation over the past 40 years?
All we talked about before the OWS camps were the deficit and how much pain the poor and the middle class were going to have to endure this time around.
The national conversation has drastically changed since September.
shano
The leaderless aspect of the OWS movement has problems but it is also a very good strategy in important ways.
I remember all the ‘leaders’ who were killed in the 1960’s. Too many great leaders of movements assassinated back then.
In fact, the police kept arresting certain people in Zuccotti Park that they had pegged as the ‘leader’. They keep on asking who the leaders are.
Sometimes it is better to keep malefactors guessing.
MikeJ
@JC: Not for a host on a shared machine. The ip may get you to the right box, but apache et al will need to look at the name of the site you’re asking for to serve the correct one.
Alternate DNS will be the way to route around it.
Sadly, the BJ post didn’t mention a bill number, nor did the Kos article it pointed to, nor did the NYT article the the Kos post pointed to. Boingboing has posted a dozen times on the bill and yet nobody has come up with a number.
burnspbesq
@MikeJ:
H,R. 3261
Suzan
@shano:
I couldn’t agree more.
As a member of the Occupy Greensboro (NC), we still believe we are in the beginning stages.
And our numbers grow daily.
Thanks for speaking out!
We have just begun to fight.
http://occupygreensboro.org/
Arclite
Not to hijack this thread too much, but here’s a vid of a Beagle Rescue, which the dog lovers among us will enjoy.
Yutsano
@Soonergrunt: Every time I see that screen name…
It’s a moral failing. I admit it. :)
andrewsomething
Thanks for this Soonergrunt. And a big +1 to your comment re:obsessively using the President’s middle name. Always a give away. Why can’t we have better trolls?
Again, for all ya’ll complaining about what “the movement should do,” why don’t you try to make it happen. This all started with a handful of people deciding to camp out in lower Manhattan. The main reason why this struck such a cord is that they stepped up when no one else was willing to do so. The ball is in your court. There’s plenty of aspects about OWS that bother me, but they’ve changed the conversation. That’s enough to get my involvement for now. Show me a better way, and I’ll be there. As the sign says, “‘I hate drum circles, but I hate corporate greed more.”
MikeJ
@burnspbesq: Thanks. I read the Senate version (S968) (linked from the House bill at Thomas). Bizarre.
Only usable against sites outside the US. If a US based domain server is authoritative for the domain in question, the dns operator has to make it not resolve, but it doesn’t affect forward operations. I don’t see it having the effect they want (or that the good guys fear) in practice.
It’s still a shitty bill, and nobody should vote for it. It will hit Google (and bing and yahoo) more than anybody else, and won’t do anything to stop infringement.
MikeJ
@Yutsano: Never saw the toon. I thought of Dizzee Rascal. That actually wasn’t a bad tune the first forty million times I heard it.
gorram
@bonkers: Wait, assuming I understood you correctly, you’re saying a college with over 26,000 undergraduates is small? I wouldn’t call it massive, but UCD is hardly a social clique masquerading as a liberal arts college. This seems especially ridiculous considering it’s arguably the hub of biotechnological and veterinary research in the US.
I mean, besides all of the other stupid stuff you’ve said that other people have called you out on already.
shano
andrewsomething: yea, I feel the same way about OWS. I do not agree with some of the things they have done, but when I went to Zuccotti Park I ‘got it’. It really is an inclusive movement that is dynamic. And nimble, not encumbered by corporate or organizational structure. That is an advantage in many ways despite the downside.
I’ve met some really interesting people in my town I would never have met otherwise, and I have heard some great ideas at OWS gatherings.
I plan to go to an OWS protest at the convention of ALEC on Wednesday. This is one organization that has caused immeasurable harm in our political process, and unfortunately, protesting them is the only tangible way to draw attention of the public about what they actually do behind those closed doors.
bonkers
@shano:
I disagree completely. You can easily find videos of President Barack Hussein Obama talking about income inequality going back into the 1990s, and tons of them from 2004 up to this past week. With him winning the election in a historic landslide, he’s been able to sign several bills that have provided the biggest swing back of the pendulum to fairness in many decades on a bunch of financial issues. This is a fact. It’s not my opinion.
The President had just started on another big Liberal legislation initiative in the weeks prior to OWS being allowed to take over the news by the few Billionaires that own ALL the MegaMedia, with his “Pass This Bill” push. OWS HURT this effort – it’s didn’t HELP it at all.
Remember the Not-Joe the Not-a-Plumber coordinated propaganda effort during the last Presidential campaign? It was because President Barack Hussein Obama talked about “redistributing the wealth” with a more fair tax code. Isn’t that what OWS supposedly cares about? So, OWSers have all kinds of tangible things they could get involved with right before their eyes to start fixing the things they say they care about, and they have the President of the United States of America leading the charge. Instead, they’re fighting with police and going after chancellors at small colleges who are not very good at crisis management.
What OWS is doing is a total waste of time and energy in my humble opinion. Get involved with OFA or Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, or countless other local DemocratIC campaigns. That’s how we’ll fix things.
ImJohnGalt
Henry Rollins for President 2016?
bonkers
@gorram:
Sigh. Would you FEEL better if we agreed to “medium?” Davis doesn’t even come close to being on the list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_United_States_university_campuses_by_enrollment
Moving on…”calling out” now means simply declaring someone a wingnut troll? I don’t see anyone addressing any specifics of the case I’ve been making, except for you trying to get to the meaning of what “small college” means with specific enrollment numbers.
This has been interesting. I usually get called an Obamabot, yet here, I’m a wingnut troll because I like to type our President’s middle name. Did you notice I also always use “President” too, which not something wingnuts use too much. Fascinating…considering I’ve consistently been pushing people to get involved with DemocratIC campaigns at the same time. Plus, anyone who actually got involved in President Obama’s campaign last time knows there was a strategy to use his middle name constantly to diminish the Repub tricks they were playing with it. I purposely type it all out as a form a celebration for our historic win with him, since it’s a reminder of how truly amazing that was, and it won’t last forever so I like to enjoy it while I can.
I’ll try to make things more clear for you and the others “calling me out” as a wingnut or Obama troll…take your pick.
President Barack Hussein Obama = good and effective.
OWS = dumb and counter-productive.
These don’t seem like shocking statements. Hope it’s clear now.
alien_radio
Nice binary choice there back the occupation or back Obama and the democrats. False dichotomy. Also your american exceptionalism is showing, the occupation is international and the internet is it’s viral resivoir. People still keep mistaking this for a protest. It’s not, It’s an open source insurgency.
bonkers
@alien_radio:
I understand someone could back OWS and President Barack Hussein Obama at the same time. I understand it’s sorta kinda international. I’ve been addressing aspects of OWS that have been annoying me, namely the anti-Obama sentiment that fills the majority of it, which is completely nonsensical and counter-productive, in my opinion, and the timing of it.
So “open source insurgency,” huh? Simple question I’ve had for other OWSers and still have not received an answer…How do “we” know when something is sufficiently “occupied,” and once that happens, then what do “we” do?
To me, that should be an easy and consistent answer for anyone who is part of the “insurgency.” So any ideas?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@andrewsomething:
Great. You hate corporate greed. So do the rest of us. Please explain to me how becoming completely wedded to the tactic of camping out gets us anywhere in dealing with it. It was a fine tactic to open with. The spectacle of a bunch of people camping out did exactly what you say it did: it got a conversation started.
The problem is that that’s the extent of its capabilities. The only thing it has going for it as a tactic is the spectacle it creates, and as spectacle, it’s pretty much played out. The only time it really draws attention anymore is when the authorities try to clear out a park. When that happens, the focus isn’t on corporate greed. It’s on the tactic. That’s a dead end.
So far, no one who supports the indefinite camping out in parks has been able to tell me what the end game looks like. The occupations have to end at some point, and that ending either needs to be in response to having accomplished some sort of articulated goal (which would require, among other things, sufficient coordination that someone is able to articulate those goals) or the ability to spin that ending in some useful way. Frankly, the best possible ending of the second sort is getting kicked out of the park by obviously overreaching and overreacting authorities. The movement got the best possible outcome and is now in the process of pissing it away. Much like Lee going north to Gettysburg, they are now engaging in a campaign without strategic purpose and that is likely to end in a political defeat.
This is very distinct from actually having protests. Those can be very useful. With them, the message is front and center. If the energy being spent trying to prolong the occupations were instead directed towards regular protest marches, the effect would be better.
But it seems clear that the pure of heart are bound and determined to set aside any action towards creating a strategy, because that would be less than pure. As such, I’m sure that they will be along promptly to call me a sell out and a tool of the 1% for questioning the wisdom of a strategy-free approach to operating.
alien_radio
The occupation is not the goal. The system of the occupation is the goal. The skills,knowledge and human capital of the occupation is where the value is. When is everywhere sufficiently occupied? Might as well ask “When is your rapid prototyping cycle complete?”
Thymezone
1. Again we have Occupy basically living — camping — in a location where camping is illegal. It seems to me that the “movement” can sustain and move forward, whatever that means at this point, without resting its fortunes on the 24 hour a day occupation of ground where overnight camping is against the law.
2. Since the campground is illegal and its immunity from removal is an agreement with the city created on an ad hoc and day to day basis, one would think that the movement leaders, if there are any, would be proactive in resolving the long term issue here and not wait until the city basically is left with no choice but to try to move the ball. Does Occupy really think that it can just bring people in have them live in public spaces in which camping is unlawful, indefinitely, and that this sort of odd stasis is the basis for the movement’s usefulness going forward?
The most intelligent thing I have seen on this thread is
@burnspbesq:
at the first comment. The national dialogue has been shifted. Time to hibernate for a nice cold winter and come back in the spring with a new plan and a path toward action that actually fixes something.
bin Lurkin'
The Village really, really, really doesn’t want to talk about income inequality and really, really, really does want to talk about deficits, the debt, austerity and sharing the pain.
Once any external impetus to talk about income inequality disappears it will take the Village a time you’ll be able to comfortably measure in hours to get back to all deficits all the time.
Thymezone
@alien_radio:
“When is your rapid prototyping cycle complete?”
When someone at the front of the project decides that whatever prototype you have in test right now is good enough and there is big pressure to move on to the next project?
Unless you have invented a scenario devoid of politically established project deadlines. In other words, unless you are dreaming …. or smoking a joint in your car during lunch …
Just saying.
bemused
Yikes, I turned on the tv and that horror Coulter is on Morning Joe. Huh, I wonder why she just got bleeped.
Omnes Omnibus
@andrewsomething: Folks aren’t complaining about drum circles here and, aside from bonkers, they don’t seem to be arguing that the Occupiers are useless. They are discussing the fact that with the change in police tactics, it might be time for Occupiers to change their own tactics. I don’t necessarily agree with that view, but it is not something that people should be criticized for saying. There will come a time when Occupiers do need to come up with a next step, so I sure as hell hope they are thinking about what that step is.
WereBear
Let’s face one simple fact: OWS got people talking about income equality, when it has been going on for years.
The more people are puzzled about what the Occupiers are doing, the more likely they are to have that question nag at them until they get an answer.
That is not going to be accomplished by ending the protests. The protests end when the injustice does. Isn’t that simple and understandable?
There are deliberately clueless people like Newt Gingrich who say “Get a job!” when the protests are about there are no jobs.
But there is also the unaware clueless, who tell the protesters, “Go home.”
When that’s the point. They have no home.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear:
These aren’t Hoovervilles where the dispossessed who have nowhere else to go have congregated. These are people who have chose a tactic for protest. It has been very effective IMO. There will come a point where this tactic produces sufficiently diminished returns that a new tactic should be pursued.
jayboat
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Don’t worry, although you make tough, honest points here, those of us who are on your side will not question this in an antagonistic manner.
The answers are all in these comments- the purity you speak of is what sparks a movement, and the dynamism of an open system allows it to grow and adapt as needed. The ‘next step’ will present itself in time, hive mind and all that… meanwhile we continue to press forward.
This is only the beginning.
WereBear
I was probably being too metaphorical. They have no future… this is the point of the protest.
Why should they stop before their injustice is addressed?
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: I wasn’t, and am not, saying that it should.
agrippa
I have a wait and see view of OWS.
OWS has changed the topic of conversation. And that is significant.
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: I know.
I just find it interesting that the people who actually made the national conversation shift are being told what to do by others :)
They seem to be doing well so far. Why not let them run with it?
Omnes Omnibus
One answer to your question is that people involved in a project can get too invested in one aspect of the process to see that it might be time to change. I don’t know that this is that time, but it will come and I hope that the OWS folks are ready. I have been reasonably impressed with their focus so far, so I am hopeful.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@jayboat:
Next steps do not simply present themselves. They need to be presented. So far as I can tell, no one is pressing forward; they’re insisting on staying exactly where they are, both literally and metaphorically.
The purity I’m speaking of is not necessary to spark a movement. The civil rights movement didn’t have it; they had acknowledged heads who not only planned specific actions but also articulated specific goals. The movement opposing the Vietnam war largely did have that purity. You might take note that the former brought firth the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, while the latter brought forth Richard Nixon.
A protest movement needs a strategy, just like any other organization that wants to change something does. So far, that’s something that OWS lacks, choosing instead to focus entirely upon tactics. At some point, it is absolutely necessary for someone to step forward and articulate one, and it would be better for it to happen sooner or later.
I agree with Thyme Zone in 52, although my logic isn’t quite the same. I have no problem with using civil disobedience in this cause. I just think that it ought to be useful civil disobedience, and also that those that practice it should expect to be arrested. OWS seems to expect that they can deliberately and openly break the law and then not be arrested. They’re wrong. That’s the test for whether civil disobedience is worth doing: is it an act that is worth going to jail for. If not, the answer is not to do it rather than to complain that authorities aren’t letting you get away with flaunting the law.
andrewsomething
snip….
I can only speak to what I’ve seen and participated in here in New York, but this is certainly happening. With in days of the occupation being broken up, we had a major protest clearly directed at Wall Street not calls to re-occupy the park. This was planned even before the eviction. Over 35,000 came out for the evening portion of the events. So I’m not sure were you get the idea that we’re “completely wedded to the tactic of camping out.”
Please do let us know what your politically savvy, strategically brilliant pragmatic realist ideas for the movement are.
Bullsmith
The First Amendment really is inoperable. This has been true since protesters were first herded into “free speech zones” during the 2004 election.
America Land of the Free*
(*restrictions apply).
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@WereBear:
Past performance is no guarantee of future success. The history of political movements strongly suggests that an organizational model such as that represented by OWS is a very poor structure for producing desired change. Among other things, it indulges the very bad tendency of left wing protests to become about every grievance that a part of the movement wants action on. Protests need to remain focused, and the only way to provide that is with some sort of leadership.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@andrewsomething:
I get it from the fact that you are adamantly opposed to the idea of not camping out in the parks. I didn’t say that you are exclusively wedded to it, so saying that you have had protests doesn’t address my point. That point is that it is the *protests* that can carry this along going forward. All of the energy that you are using trying to prolong the park occupations is at best wasted.
The value of the park occupations was the spectacle. However, it’s the kind of thing where the spectacle has a pretty short effective lifespan. People will start to turn a blind eye to that sort of static tactic.
Further, I’m still waiting for someone to articulate what the end game is here. How do you see this playing out?
Three-nineteen
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): You didn’t answer his question. What are your ideas for what the movement should do next? “Go home and we’ll think of something later” is not an answer.
bonkers
@alien_radio:
Thanks for the answer. You’re the first person to give any sort of serious answer when I’ve asked that, either online or in person.
So the “system” of the organizing, and the learning from it, is the goal. In my own experience being involved in protests, then political organizing later, I’ve concluded for myself that having a clear, obtainable goal is perhaps the most important part of any mass movement. You then build upon each success as you incrementally achieve each step.
Of course, President Barack Hussein Obama won in an historic landslide by Organizing the American public like never before, and I learned a lot from him and his OFA group, which also provides training for those who are interested in learning how to create your own “system” wherever you live. I see no evidence of OWS having learned from past movements, so I’m going to stick with the guy and his group of people who are tangibly fixing many of the things that people involved with OWS supposedly care about. To each their own, of course.
bonkers
@agrippa:
Yes, OWS changed it alright – for the worse.
President Obama had just begun the “Pass This Bill” push for the Jobs Bill, which has all kinds of things an OWSer says they want. The few Billionaires who own ALL the MegaMedia decided to put OWS on the frontpages instead to drown out and subdue any mass uprising for Pass This Bill, and that’s exactly what happened.
A few years ago, Not-Joe the Not-a-Plumber was all about President Obama wanting to “redistribute the wealth,” basically raise taxes on the 1%. In recent years, President Obama has done more than anyone to change the public discourse into issues of income inequality, and OWS came along out of nowhere, right at the exact moment President Obama was beginning one of his more important initiatives, and has confused the issue. Imagine if the time and energy of OWS had been poured into getting the AJA passed, for example.
bonkers
@Three-nineteen:
What should OWS do next?
For the American OWSers, get involved in the local efforts to help elect more Democrats to the House and strengthen the numbers in the Senate, so that more people like Elizabeth Warren are making laws. You can start here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/become-a-volunteer?source=primary-nav
shano
OWS has brought to attention the real problem, Multinational corporations are increasing inequality all over the world. It is the complete failure of Neo Liberalism that is being highlighted.
that is one reason why the goal is for the OWS movement to be global. And one reasopn why, even if Obama passes a “jobs Bill” (I support this) it does nothing to address the real problems.
We all know that Neo Conservatism in our foreign policy was and still is a disaster. When Hillary and Obama were in campaign mode, they both promised many times that they supported the re-negotiation of NAFTA, CAFTA, eta al. So now both Obama and Hillary are in power and what did we get?
Three more Neo Liberal ‘Free Trade’ deals- a continuation of the treaties that are benefitting Mutinationals above all else and causing the massive inequality globally. What happened to their support of ‘Fair Trade’?
This really is my #1 issue because it is the source of our problems both nationally and internationally. OWS is the only group who are even addressing this in a serious way.
WaterGirl
@Soonergrunt: Hey soonergrunt, I am confused. Are you calling bonkers a troll? I agree that Barry, Hussein, Obamacare and other words are red flags that usually mean troll. I didn’t particularly agree with his first comment, but I don’t see anything troll-like in what bonkers said. And he linked to a sign-up page for barack obama and to elizabeth warren.
I am a big fan of ignoring trolls, and I skip over a lot of them, but I have never associated bonkers with being a troll. What am I missing?
FromTheBackOfTheRoom
@bonkers:
YuhRite Poor fking back-stabbed Obama.
Suggested tag: How have we failed Obama again today?
Everyone in the Pool
@bonkers
Standard Balloon Juice protocol ( especially for soonergrunt, ABL and eemom, ) is rapid identification, immediate counterattack with overwhelming deadly force and evacuation of the area before counter-indicative evidence becomes known. This may lead to false-positives, but it keeps morale high.
In other words, if there’s any reason at all to suspect that you are not “one of us,” whatever *that* means, then you will be insulted with the worst language available. If you’re not an enemy, too bad. Balloon-Juice front pagers are often wrong, but they always enjoy it.
Gina
The 99% were never the 99 percent, and they never really were favored by the silent majority. The only thing that kept them going was the press and the unions who used them for their own agenda. People got quickly tired of their message which was preachy and arrogant, and nobody likes that -and forget about the “mike” thing which was really annoying. From the beginning it was bound to failure and it did. The 99% fifteen minutes of fame are over. Pack your things and go.