Occupy Wall Street better defend its identity

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TruthersLie said:
None. The tea parties weren't stupid (or naive) enough to believe in all the goodness of humanity... they weren't stupid (or naive) enough to think that having a $5000 Mac computer would just sit out and remain where it was. They weren't stupid (or naive) enough to have illegal protests w/out permits. They weren't stupid (or naive) enough to think that a camp out would change anything. They weren't stupid (or naive) enough to believe that w/out leaders or w/out concrete demands as a group anything would be done. They weren't stupid (or naive) enough to believe that free drugs, free food and jazz fingers would change anything. They weren't stupid (or naive) enough to not turn in troublemakers and agitators to the police.

They were smart enough to have a concrete set of demands. They were smart enough to have proper permits for their protests. They were smart enough to make sure that "astroturf" and "fake" individuals were spotlighted and then ignored.
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But were their views just as "smart"? (I'm eyeing specifically the one of cutting government programs that can help the poor) Or is it just the behavioral issues?
 
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stokes234 said:
There is a fairly strong attempt in this thread to belittle the legitimate political grievances of the OWS protestors by pointing at examples of crime and weirdness at the camps, and it's hard to read it as anything other than an ad-hominem fallacy.
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It's not their political grievances that are being belittled, it's their behavior, criminal and otherwise.

Check out this guy who offers to beat himself up (NSFW, strong language).

http://vimeo.com/31652786
 
I'm curious: What is the best method for achieving significant change in government? Are the most "behaviorally respectable" (by "rational" people) methods not the most effective?
 
mike3 said:
I'm curious: What is the best method for achieving significant change in government? Are the most "behaviorally respectable" (by "rational" people) methods not the most effective?
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Depends on how you want to define "best". Least bloodshed, fastest, most orderly, cheapest...?
 
mike3 said:
I'm curious: What is the best method for achieving significant change in government? Are the most "behaviorally respectable" (by "rational" people) methods not the most effective?
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It depends how big a body count you want to produce. What's your comfort level?
 
mike3 said:
I'm curious: What is the best method for achieving significant change in government? Are the most "behaviorally respectable" (by "rational" people) methods not the most effective?
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Non-violent change can only come about through the ballot box and/or political pressure on lawmakers. Anything else comes with violence. American/French/Russian Revolutions (and all the others), U.S. Civil War, Arab Spring.
 
Alt+F4 said:
It's not their political grievances that are being belittled, it's their behavior, criminal and otherwise.

Check out this guy who offers to beat himself up (NSFW, strong language).

http://vimeo.com/31652786
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Ah, ok. I thought, what with this being the "USA politics" thread, that a discussion of the OWS protestors would be related to their politics. What a fool I am.
 
Alt+F4 said:
Non-violent change can only come about through the ballot box and/or political pressure on lawmakers. Anything else comes with violence. American/French/Russian Revolutions (and all the others), U.S. Civil War, Arab Spring.
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Protests are a form of political pressure on lawmakers.
 
stokes234 said:
Ah, ok. I thought, what with this being the "USA politics" thread, that a discussion of the OWS protestors would be related to their politics. What a fool I am.
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Yeah, now that you mention it, what are their politics? I mean besides Wall Street is bad, bad, bad....and filled with a bunch of bad, bad, bad meanies!
 
OWS wants power taken away from the business and returned to government as it should be. They just haven't been able to articulate that because they have not all figured out how the capitalist swine have screwed us, but they can see that that is who screwed us.
 
stokes234 said:
Ah, ok. I thought, what with this being the "USA politics" thread, that a discussion of the OWS protestors would be related to their politics. What a fool I am.
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Their politics are socialism, communism, anarchism and the odd person from the kook fringe of the libertarians.
 
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2011/10/political-insid.php



"The Occupy Wall Street 'movement' is nothing like the tea party movement," said another Democrat. "It is much more like the thugs who go to [World Trade Organization]-type conferences. It is far more violent than the tea party movement and is far too volatile for a close association."
Strategists on both sides warned of the dangers of embracing a movement that isn't likely to follow the party's lead. "Rule No. 1," said a Democratic Insider. "You never want to be responsible for something you cannot control."
 
WildCat said:
Not really, but many here were claiming that the tea party rallies were full of violent troublemakers.
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bikerdruid said:
not violent trouble makers, just racists, homophobes and misogynists
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Yeah, they weren't the sort of people I'd want in power ... and they still managed not to kill or rape folks in their rallies.
 
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Alt+F4 said:
If there is a message, yes. Women's suffrage - that's what they wanted. End to segregation in the South - that's what they wanted.
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There are several messages, particularly a desire for reduced inequality and reduced corporate influence on government.
 
timhau said:
Yeah, they weren't the sort of people I'd want in power ... and they still managed not to kill or rape folks in their rallies.
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Is there any way of knowing if tea-party rallies would have attracted less crime if they'd tried to erect camps for several weeks in the centre of big cities?
 
stokes234 said:
Is there any way of knowing if tea-party rallies would have attracted less crime if they'd tried to erect camps for several weeks in the centre of big cities?
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Therein lies one of OWS's biggest problems. They lost sympathy over time and now it isn't about any message, it's about them.
 
stokes234 said:
Is there any way of knowing if tea-party rallies would have attracted less crime if they'd tried to erect camps for several weeks in the centre of big cities?
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No, there isn't.

But here's the thing: they didn't. They didn't even try. So even if you just want to claim that such crime is merely an inevitable side-effect of erecting urban camps, you're still left with the OWS movement choosing to embark on a course of action whose inevitable end result was rampant crime, and the tea party eschewing any such course of action. That's not really much of a defense of OWS.
 
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