Occupy Wall Street better defend its identity

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Something else that's a bit funny. A conversation which can be summed up as "The arguments of X are less effective if one uses Y tactic" is hardly new to this forum. The biggest example is the ongoing do/don't be a dick debate that exploded after Phil Plait used it as the base for a TAM speech on how to be skeptical activist.

I'm awful tempted to go back and find out who is pro-dick/anti-OWS.
 
stokes234 said:
My point isn't that nobody knew about it, it's that nobody has been doing anything about it. Camping out in tents and allowing your stupidest members to suck up all the airtime while typical leftist splits tear your organisation in half and waste your time may not seem like much, and in the end it may not achieve anything other than a brief spat of media coverage, but I still prefer it to people saying they've cared for years and have done precisely zilch and therefore we should all shut up and watch democracy do it's clearly very effective thing.
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Yep. Not much more to say.
 
bookitty said:
There is no love/hate relationship with the cops. There is only a system which keeps cutting funding to the police, making it difficult for them to do their job and closing community outreach programs.

An undermanned and outgunned force will often turn to preemptive aggression in order to keep the upper hand. Oakland is a prime example of this. Having an underfunded police presence (80 cops were laid off in August) in the murder capital of the west is hardly the best way to bring the crime stats down. The fear and anger between the community and the cops was well-established long before Occupy.
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Silly rationalization - The cops are being brutal to the OWS and denying them their lawful right to assemble because there aren't enough cops, or they aren't paid enough, or have enough benefits. Or something.

The fact is the left hate the cops for enforcing laws especially when it comes to maintaining order during marches or kicking illegal campers out of parks, but then loves them when it comes to funding the union demands for wages and benefits.
 
Virus said:
Hey Bookitty, how is it that you can take 4 months off to sit around in parks with druggies?
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Because I only camp out for a night or two at a time. The rest of the time, I go down, help out for about 6 hours and come home.

This has cut into my time, there are days when I get very little sleep because I need to make up for being gone. If you check my stats, you'll see that I haven't had time to post here and there are a bunch of other little things like that which got the axe.

It is possible to be a responsible protestor.
 
Neally said:
Silly rationalization - The cops are being brutal to the OWS and denying them their lawful right to assemble because there aren't enough cops, or they aren't paid enough, or have enough benefits. Or something.

The fact is the left hate the cops for enforcing laws especially when it comes to maintaining order during marches or kicking illegal campers out of parks, but then loves them when it comes to funding the union demands for wages and benefits.
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The aggression between the community and the cops has been simmering in Oakland for years. This contributed to the use of overly aggressive tactics.

I am about as left leaning as possible. I neither love nor hate the cops. I feel that they are a necessary social service and one that needs to be properly funded in order to be effective. Your "fact" is opinion, and it might be better to label it so.
 
Neally said:
Silly rationalization - The cops are being brutal to the OWS and denying them their lawful right to assemble because there aren't enough cops, or they aren't paid enough, or have enough benefits. Or something.

The fact is the left hate the cops for enforcing laws especially when it comes to maintaining order during marches or kicking illegal campers out of parks, but then loves them when it comes to funding the union demands for wages and benefits.
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Well, I suspect this is less of a dilemma than you claim. Left wing activists don't typically hate all police, but do as a rule hate police who are willing to beat up unarmed protestors with truncheons, and otherwise distrust the rest as being typically right-wing. The brutal group is a small minority of the police, and I don't imagine many of the ones that do it are going to be left-wing trade union activists in their spare time.

In the UK, the police aren't allowed to form trade unions. There was an announcement earlier this year that there would be a police march against wage cuts on the day of the big demo against cuts in London, and it got an "oh, the irony!" response from the left-wingers I know.
 
stokes234 said:
Perhaps I missed it, or it simply didn't filter across the pond, but i've never seen any american political parties, movements or organisations come up in the news carrying either the "reducing corporate influence on government" torch or the "reducing inequality" one. Who did you have in mind, and how well has it been going?

And before anyone claims that the majority opinion, and thus the obvious democratic decision and will is that corporate influence is not a problem and to leave it alone, here is the gallup poll that suggests to me if the system worked, it should have done something about it by now.
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bookitty said:
Such as...?
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I suppose "McCain-Feingold" means nothing to either of you? It wasn't a complete renovation, but it was a couple of serious steps in the right direction...and had tangible positive results (being a law and all), an accomplishment OWS can't claim yet.
 
bookitty said:
The aggression between the community and the cops has been simmering in Oakland for years. This contributed to the use of overly aggressive tactics.
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stokes234 said:
Well, I suspect this is less of a dilemma than you claim. Left wing activists don't typically hate all police, but do as a rule hate police who are willing to beat up unarmed protestors with truncheons, and otherwise distrust the rest as being typically right-wing.
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No, not just the violent ones. Look at the videos of the police clearing the parks and you'll see the shrieking protesters insulting and generally creating a ruckus against the police. Hell, they resisted and resented them even before that, for just trying to deal with the dopers and other criminals in the camps.
 
Checkmite said:
I suppose "McCain-Feingold" means nothing to either of you? It wasn't a complete renovation, but it was a couple of serious steps in the right direction...and had tangible positive results (being a law and all), an accomplishment OWS can't claim yet.
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And in this decade we have citizen's united which wiped out most of those positive benefits.
 
bookitty said:
And in this decade we have citizen's united which wiped out most of those positive benefits.
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Some, not most; and beside the point anyway. Asked and answered. What has OWS accomplished? Anything besides talk? Anything that even approaches the effect of a law?
 
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Checkmite said:
Some, not most; and beside the point anyway. Asked and answered. What has OWS accomplished? Anything besides talk? Anything that even approaches the effect of a law?
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So "plenty of people can claim to have been attempting to do something about it." equals McCain-Feingold which is no longer applicable because it was over-turned.

So yes, plenty of people have been doing something about corporate influence on government, they've been making it easier.
 
bookitty said:
So "plenty of people can claim to have been attempting to do something about it." equals McCain-Feingold which is no longer applicable because it was over-turned.

So yes, plenty of people have been doing something about corporate influence on government, they've been making it easier.
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The law was not overturned; only certain provisions of it were nullified. And even in such a state it's still more than OWS has done.

McCain-Fiengold is the first thing I found after a 40 seconds of looking. The point is, campaign finance reform has been in the national political consciousness for over a decade, perhaps as long as two. It's not something people had never considered until OWS came along. During the Bush/Gore race it was even a campaign issue of import.
 
'Occupy Seattle: Octogenarian activist Dorli Rainey on being pepper-sprayed by Seattle police, importance of activism'

She grew up in Nazi Germany and compares the state of the US media (commenting on current threats to internet freedom and the fact that celebrity pregnancies etc are considered to be "news") with the media in Germany during the war.

263894ec4e1558cd9a.jpg
 
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JihadJane said:
'Occupy Seattle: Octogenarian activist Dorli Rainey on being pepper-sprayed by Seattle police, importance of activism'

She grew up in Nazi Germany and compares the state of the US media (commenting on current threats to internet freedom and the fact that celebrity pregnancies etc are considered to be "news") with the media in Germany during the war.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/263894ec4e1558cd9a.jpg[/qimg]
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Godwin!!!

What do I win?
 
Checkmite said:
Some, not most; and beside the point anyway. Asked and answered. What has OWS accomplished? Anything besides talk? Anything that even approaches the effect of a law?
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Well there you go, Bookitty. You haven't managed to reform the system yet you've had a whole two months (to the day) to do it in.

You might as well give up and go home.

I am genuinely surprised by how much bile is spat about protests like this. I'm even more surprised that Americans seem to be the most venomous of all. At a time when you have your politicians using the police to aggressively break up assemblies of the sort that your constitution is meant to protect - a constitution of which you're rightly proud - all some of you can do is cheer them on saying "Jolly good, because it was quite inconvenient not being able to picnic in the park". (Sneering remarks about smelly hippies are optional).

Meanwhile if anyone suggests arresting a bunch of Neo-Nazis to stop them shouting abuse at muslims then many of the same people are appalled at this infringement of free speech.

It's really quite depressing.
 
richardm said:
I am genuinely surprised by how much bile is spat about protests like this. I'm even more surprised that Americans seem to be the most venomous of all. At a time when you have your politicians using the police to aggressively break up assemblies of the sort that your constitution is meant to protect - a constitution of which you're rightly proud - all some of you can do is cheer them on saying "Jolly good, because it was quite inconvenient not being able to picnic in the park". (Sneering remarks about smelly hippies are optional).
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I'm sure you know, but just forgot to mention, that the 1st ammendment, like all ammendments, has limitations. We aren't free to assemble in your living room, for example. Also, I can't speak for others, but for me, it's not bile. It's laughter.

richardm said:
Meanwhile if anyone suggests arresting a bunch of Neo-Nazis to stop them shouting abuse at muslims then many of the same people are appalled at this infringement of free speech.

It's really quite depressing.
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The neo-nazis shout and then go home. They don't camp out for a month. See the difference?
 
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