Occupy Wall Street better defend its identity

Status
Not open for further replies.
A Laughing Baby said:
Did you deliberately ignore the rest of my post that you had to delete for your quote?



It's a problem a lot of systems have to face if they deal with the homeless. Within the homeless population, there are a lot of mentally damaged people (either genetically or due to drugs), and to maintain a safe space for everyone involved, that sort of thing needs to be confronted.
Click to expand...

It's interesting that you don't include their life history and interaction with society, the economic/political system etc as things that can damage people mentally.
 
JihadJane said:
It's interesting that you don't include their life history and interaction with society, the economic/political system etc as things that can damage people mentally.
Click to expand...

There are certainly many factors that could contribute to such a thing, and I apologize for not having listed all of them. I merely limited myself to what I assume to be the most common causes. I do not think that an economic/political system can cause a mental disability. I think it can contribute to an atmosphere not beneficial to an already existing mental disability, however.

To be clear though, I did say "mentally damaged," which is absolutely not the same thing.
 
1ttAQ.jpg
 
RandFan said:
OWS want's what you have.
Click to expand...

Why are you making generalizations about what they want? It is rather hypocritical of you to do so while whining every time someone discusses what a protester said or did that you don't agree with.
 
Oakland's mayor put out the following letter in response to the activity over the past few days:

sija8.jpg


Points 1-3 are reasonable, then she pulls out the finely-worded "free speech activities."
 
Graham2001 said:
I don't believe this to be a monolithic movement, they are however what I'd term a 'catch all party'...
Click to expand...
Forgive me but that seems a like a term without any meaning. Every person in the USA belongs to that party.

But ultimately what I think we are seeing here are the people who believed that simply by electing Obama everything would be fixed now expressing their disappointment that this has not occurred.
Click to expand...
I think people hoped things would be better. That's the reason for elections. It's much more than that simply because of the severity of inappropriate behavior by Wall Street that has severely hurt people. Politicians, Dems and Republicans seem to care more about the rich than everyone else. Now, I will concede that had Obama been able to improve the economy decrease the unemployment rate this wouldn't be happening so you are partially correct. Refusal to increase tax rates while we are waging wars, increasing spending and working to help those who screwed us is a good reason to march in the streets.
 
Last edited:
respect said:
Why are you making generalizations about what they want? It is rather hypocritical of you to do so while whining every time someone discusses what a protester said or did that you don't agree with.
Click to expand...
I'll concede it's a generalization and I'm happy to correct it. "IMHO, many if not most want that." Fair enough?

Now, do you think can we get others to step up to the plate and admit that they are engaging in fallacy, generalizations and quoting anecdotes to smear an entire group by association and painting with broad brush strokes?

Respect, I think you and I both know the truth to that one. I hope to be proven wrong though. What do you think?
 
Last edited:
RandFan said:
I'll concede it's a generalization and I'm happy to correct it. "IMHO, many if not most want that." Fair enough?

Now, do you think can we get others to step up to the plate and admit that they are engaging in fallacy, generalizations and quoting anecdotes to smear an entire group by association and painting with broad brush strokes?

Respect, I think you and I both know the truth to that one. I hope to be proven wrong though. What do you think?
Click to expand...

Where have people been saying that if one does something, they all do it? Criticizing poor behavior at these protests does not inherently do that.
 
A Laughing Baby said:
On top of that, I don't think you quite understand the point of the movement. No one is demanding goodies.
Click to expand...
Inaccurate descriptions. Much of the talk coming out of the protests is for "economic justice" meaning more taxes on the filthy rich or other means of redistributing the wealth. The exact same thing that they whine against when the homeless stand in their food lines.

What cannot be allowed is allowing the discussion to center around the fringe in an attempt to discredit the movement at large. It happened to the Tea Party, and it's happening now.
Click to expand...
31% of them believe in violence to support their goals. 37% think that capitalism is inherently evil. This continued hand waving away of the so called "fringe" isn't fooling anyone.

leftysergeant said:
People who did everything right according to the propoganda that the investor class fed them are getting screwed.
Click to expand...
The right thing for them to do if it was really about getting a job would be to walk away from the drumming circles and make connections with responsible people that could steer them toward a job. But see, it's more fun to pretend to be part of a new revolution of slackers than to actually do something to improve your situation.
 
respect said:
Where have people been saying that if one does something, they all do it? Criticizing poor behavior at these protests does not inherently do that.
Click to expand...
Are you suggesting we should divorce any and all context from the discussion? The thread is about the movement. Are we not to infer something about the movement from the anecdotes? What is the purpose of the anecdotes?
 
Neally said:
Inaccurate descriptions. Much of the talk coming out of the protests is for "economic justice" meaning more taxes on the filthy rich or other means of redistributing the wealth. The exact same thing that they whine against when the homeless stand in their food lines.
Click to expand...

Again, I don't think you understand what the movement is fighting against. Tax rates are just one part. You're staring really hard at one tree when there's a forest behind it.

31% of them believe in violence to support their goals. 37% think that capitalism is inherently evil. This continued hand waving away of the so called "fringe" isn't fooling anyone.
Click to expand...

I did your work for you and looked for the citation for this number, and it's based off a pocket pollster employed by the Wall Street Journal interviewing "nearly 200" protesters. Fantastic methodology.

On top of that, I don't really know if believing capitalism is inherently evil would qualify someone as the fringe. Would it make them ideological pariahs in the modern American political arena? Probably. But does it make them crazy? I would say that it doesn't.


edit: for citation--

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576637082965745362.html

The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.
Click to expand...

For reference, the man who employs this pollster is a political analyst for Fox News and a contributing author to the WSJ.
 
Last edited:
Bloomberg pulls the plug:

When no one from Occupy Wall Street surrendered the generators, more than 30 uniformed FDNY and NYPD officials entered the park to seize them, witnesses and officials said.

"We did send 30 or 40 firefighters through the park, the police department had its community affairs department there to make sure everyone was safe," Mayor Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show Friday.

"Our first two concerns are the First Amendment and safety, and this was about safety."

The protesters say five generators were seized in total, including one which was biodiesel and ran on used vegetable oil.
Click to expand...

New York Magazine notes that this will make things a lot chillier:

However it happened, the safety sweep was a success for the city in more ways than one. Preventing fires is a reasonable concern when you're dealing with a densely packed tent city, but the raid also, conveniently enough, makes it much harder for the protesters to stay warm as the temperatures drop into the low thirties, which will happen as soon as Saturday night. In that sense, seizing generators and gasoline was as much of an offensive maneuver as firing tear gas and flash grenades — and without the PR mess.
Click to expand...

Is this the way OWS ends? Not with a bang but a shiver?

A Fox reporter certainly got a frigid reception:

What has been an otherwise violence-free period during his six weeks covering the Occupy Wall Street movement, took a turn for John Huddy. He explained what happened during Good Day New York:

"This is somebody I've come across several times for the last few days. He threatened to stab me in the throat with a pen. He ripped the mic out of my hand," said Huddy.

"I have a meeting with Bloomberg," said the incoherent protester. The man was soon arrested by the NYPD.
Click to expand...

Meanwhile, turns out that marine (who's doing better by the way) who got hit by a tear-gas canister in Oakland, founded an interesting website.

The site is no longer live, but Olsen was the founder of IHateTheMarineCorps.com, a private user forum apparently dedicated to bashing the Marine Corps. (click to enlarge)
Click to expand...
 
RandFan said:
Are you suggesting we should divorce any and all context from the discussion? The thread is about the movement. Are we not to infer something about the movement from the anecdotes? What is the purpose of the anecdotes?
Click to expand...

Of course what the members say and do is relevant to discussing the movement. Why wouldn't it be? But I haven't seen anyone say that if one member is a rapist they are all rapists or anything like that, yet you keep claiming that people are smearing the whole movement any time someone points out something that a member says or does that you do not agree with. Why do you think that only protester actions that you support are worthy of discussion but not all the crap going on that you don't support?
 
respect said:
Of course what the members say and do is relevant to discussing the movement. Why wouldn't it be? But I haven't seen anyone say that if one member is a rapist they are all rapists or anything like that, yet you keep claiming that people are smearing the whole movement any time someone points out something that a member says or does that you do not agree with. Why do you think that only protester actions that you support are worthy of discussion but not all the crap going on that you don't support?
Click to expand...
Because I've conceded that the ones I discuss don't represent the entire movement. I've conceded that the movement has caused problems, serious problems of crime and sanitation. I'm just asking for reciprocity.

Posting over and over anecdotes of problems without context, without a discussion of what those problems means doesn't leave much room to imagine the purpose. Anecdotes without context or discussion strike me as blatantly ad hominem. To discredit the movement on the basis of some percentage of the people there.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom