Occupy Wall Street better defend its identity

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One of the Chicago Tribune columnists, Steve Chapman, came up with an apt analogy of the OWS protests. It's like honking your horn while stuck in a traffic jam, you make lots of noise but still won't get anywhere faster.
 
Moron the protestors blocking the exits from the DC Convention Center. A "mother" (in name only) used her two infants as human shields to block one door. When confronted, her defense was "The police are the only ones who harmed them!" Truly an appalling video.

The other video at that site is an interview with a wheelchair-bound woman who was denied egress from the center. Ed notes:

And one has to wonder where the fire marshal was when this took place. Blocking egress from a building is a fire hazard, and had the DC Convention Center left construction materials in front of that door even for a short period of time, the facility would have faced fines and no small amount of shaming from the FD. That made this a matter for the city’s police and fire departments, not for security around the facility. If a fire had started in the building, there would have been a whole lot of people injured at those exits, including the two toddlers that Mommy Dearest apparently hopes to martyr for the cause.
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This was also why those two elderly women were knocked down; because the protestors were still trying to prevent them from leaving the building even after they had reached the stairs. Note in that video at about 4:05, the "peaceful" 99% using quite violent methods to try to prevent an older man from getting past them, then, hilariously, telling him to "Get your hands off me."

Mark my words, this is going to end real tragedy for somebody. The mob is getting out of control. The cops could have solved this early on with some well-placed billy clubs and smarter use of the pepper spray/tear gas. Now I fear it would just escalate the problem. It's going to take some people getting killed to quell the riots.
 
OWS protestor blames Jews for just about everything:
Part 1:


Part 2:


Same guy, different sign:
 
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Brainster said:
Already done in Oakland, prior to the sweep.
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The author has some good observations:

To show how egalitarian and open-minded the whole Occupy Oakland movement is, they have workshops both in Marxism 101 and in anarchism. Being mutually exclusive philosophies doesn’t matter — as long as they’re both devoted to destroying capitalism, we can work out the details later in a brutal post-revolution civil war.
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Brainster said:
Moron the protestors blocking the exits from the DC Convention Center. A "mother" (in name only) used her two infants as human shields to block one door. When confronted, her defense was "The police are the only ones who harmed them!" Truly an appalling video.

Mark my words, this is going to end real tragedy for somebody. The mob is getting out of control. The cops could have solved this early on with some well-placed billy clubs and smarter use of the pepper spray/tear gas. Now I fear it would just escalate the problem. It's going to take some people getting killed to quell the riots.
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Reminds me of the incident in Greece where the protesters started a fire in a bank, then blocked the fire trucks, resulting in the death of a bank employee.
Oh well, as bikerdruid said, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
 
This might be a little too much inside baseball, but there are three terrific posts by an OWS supporter since Day 2 exposing what's really going on inside the supposedly leaderless Obamaville.

Part I:

A group of “facilitators,” a dozen or so people who were instrumental in mobilizing protesters in the first place, addressed the assembly through megaphones and wrote down the names of individuals who raised their hands for a chance to speak, on a list known as “the stack.” Through the course of the discussion, it became clear that two goals dominated the General Assembly: one was to create a Tahrir Square-like movement in New York. The other goal—the one espoused by the facilitators—was to disrupt Wall Street for the sake of disrupting Wall Street. The main tactic for achieving this, at the time, was to gain media-acknowledgement of their agitation.

In an effort to push through their agenda, the facilitators used the typical anarchist organizing-tool: forging "consensus." With over a hundred participants in the General Assembly, total agreement on the issues at stake would seem impossible. Here's how they did it:
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Part II:

The Direct Action Committee is the major player of Occupy Wall Street. The leaders of the Direct Action Committee are, for the most part, the original organizers of Occupy Wall Street: members of Anonymous, Adbusters and other full-time activists. These people originally led the General Assembly, and used it to mobilize hundreds of people on marches during the movement’s initial weeks. Now that thousands of New Yorkers gather in downtown Manhattan to march daily, the Direct Action Committee no longer spends countless hours in the General Assembly convincing everyone to consent to these daily marches.
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Part III:

On Sunday, October 23, a meeting was held at 60 Wall Street. Six leaders discussed what to do with the half-million dollars that had been donated to their organization, since, in their estimation, the organization was incapable of making sound financial decisions. The proposed solution was not to spend the money educating their co-workers or stimulating more active participation by improving the organization’s structures and tactics. Instead, those present discussed how they could commandeer the $500,000 for their new, more exclusive organization. No, this was not the meeting of any traditional influence on Wall Street. These were six of the leaders of Occupy Wall Street (OWS).
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Alt+F4 said:
December 1, 1955 - Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her seat.
December 3, 1955 - Montgomery bus boyocott begins.
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I'm sorry, what? A.) That's a protest not an accomplishment. B.) Protests had been ongoing prior to that. It was years of protests and many failures and set backs.

Try again?
 
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Brainster said:
Kidding. But I do suspect that all this "Republicans are secretly gay" crap reveals homophobia among the politically correct liberals who spout it. Not pointing the finger at you here.
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Thanks, but to be sure I'm not a liberal. "Among the liberals"? I don't deny that there are liberals that are homophobes but homophobia is hardly a liberal hallmark. I don't know of any liberals who are trying to "cure" gays. I don't know of any that call them disordered or degenerate. And I don't know any who are using anti-gay marriage for polemics. How "politicaj correctness" would make someone homophobic is beyond me.
 
RandFan said:
I'm sorry, what? A.) That's a protest not an accomplishment. B.) Protests had been ongoing prior to that. It was years of protests and many failures and set backs.

Try again?
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Rosa Parks was demanding her right to sit in the front of the bus. It was a very clear demand.

OWS apparently demands the right to prevent old ladies and women in wheelchairs from leaving businesses they don't like?

BTW, I still haven't seen a single sign demanding that a jobs bill gets passed, but I'll keep looking!
 
WildCat said:
Rosa Parks was demanding her right to sit in the front of the bus. It was a very clear demand.
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Parks was one person. I've posted signs by individuals with demands.
OWS apparently demands the right to prevent old ladies and women in wheelchairs from leaving businesses they don't like?
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Some might think that a good idea. Many civil rights protestors disrupted businesses with sit ins thus demanding the right to prevent old ladies and women, not to mention handicapped children, from getting into govt. businesses. Sanitation strike? How many little old ladies could use the bus during the bus strike?

BTW, I still haven't seen a single sign demanding that a jobs bill gets passed, but I'll keep looking![/quote]I've seen lot's of signs about jobs. I've posted some.
 
Occupy Wall Street

While I don't agree with all of them there are some very substantive points for discussion. (partial list to conform to forum rules)

Forum Post: Proposed list of OWS Demands

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. Unionize ALL workers immediately.

Raise the minimum wage immediately to $18/hr. Create a maximum wage of $90/hr to eliminate inequality.

Institute a 6 hour workday, and 6 weeks of paid vacation.

Institute a moratorium on all foreclosures and layoffs immediately.

Repeal racist and xenophobic English-only laws.

Open the borders to all immigrants, legal or illegal. Offer immediate, unconditional amnesty, to all undocumented residents of the US.

Create a single-payer, universal health care system.
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You forgot some.

Create a single-payer, universal health care system.

Pass stricter campaign finance reform laws. Ban all private donations. All campaigns will receive equal funding, provided by the taxpayers.

Institute a negative income tax, and tax the very rich at rates up to 90%.

Pass far stricter environmental protection and animal rights laws.

Allow workers to elect their supervisors.

Lower the retirement age to 55. Increase Social Security benefits.

Create a 5% annual wealth tax for the very rich.

Ban the private ownership of land.

Make homeschooling illegal. Religious fanatics use it to feed their children propaganda.

Reduce the age of majority to 16.

Abolish the death penalty and life in prison. We call for the immediate release of all death row inmates from death row and transferred to regular prisons.

Release all political prisoners immediately.

Immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Abolish the debt limit.

Ban private gun ownership.

Strengthen the separation of church and state.

Immediate debt forgiveness for all.

End the 'War on Drugs'
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And of course, from the top of that page:

This content is user submitted and not an official statement
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RandFan said:
While I don't agree with all of them there are some Forum Post: Proposed list of OWS Demands

Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. Unionize ALL workers immediately.

Raise the minimum wage immediately to $18/hr. Create a maximum wage of $90/hr to eliminate inequality.

Institute a 6 hour workday, and 6 weeks of paid vacation.

Institute a moratorium on all foreclosures and layoffs immediately.

Repeal racist and xenophobic English-only laws.

Open the borders to all immigrants, legal or illegal. Offer immediate, unconditional amnesty, to all undocumented residents of the US.

Create a single-payer, universal health care system.very substantive points for discussion. (partial list to conform to forum rules)
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<facepalm> To almost all of these....
 
RandFan said:
Parks was one person. I've posted signs by individuals with demands.
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Parks got lots of other people working for her cause. OWS attracts lots of people working for their own causes.

See the difference?

RandFan said:
Some might think that a good idea. Many civil rights protestors disrupted businesses with sit ins thus demanding the right to prevent old ladies and women, not to mention handicapped children, from getting into govt. businesses. Sanitation strike? How many little old ladies could use the bus during the bus strike?
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You're really equivocating disrupting a business that discriminates by race until they end that discrimination to locking old ladies inside a bank until capitalism is abolished?

RandFan said:
I've seen lot's of signs about jobs. I've posted some.
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Seen any lately?
 
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