Congrats, Occupiers -- You ARE the 1%!

[stokes234]

Yeah, yeah, but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order, what have politicians ever done for us?

Peace?

 

[timhau]

Peace?

What? Shut up!!

 

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Yeah, yeah, but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order, what have politicians ever done for us?

They do have something to do with each other: A desire for economic justice.

Couple things on this - they weren't just protesting economic justice. On the tents (and on their signs when they had a huge group marching around the Yard), they had signs protesting just about everything that's wrong with the world, not just economic.

But even though I do agree with their general sentiment that I wish there was more economic justice and have even myself been an activist against specific economic issues, it just doesn't make sense (to me anyways) to protest all forms of economic justice simultaneously (along with global warming, the military, and a million other things). I just don't see what that will accomplish because whoever you are protesting can't possibly meet your demands. Particularly when you are demanding these things from a University.


As to the professor you mentioned - I've never heard of him or seen mention of him, so can't comment on that.

 

[SezMe]

When you ate your breakfast this morning, did you have to fear getting e.coli from the water and salmonella from the eggs? Somewhere along the line a politician worked to get water and food safety laws passed. <snip>

Good post, Blue Mountain. I've been thinking of posting along the same lines because it is hard to think of any aspect of modern living that hasn't seen the inside of the political process. In fact, the very internet Shawn is now reading our posts by is currently under the microscope of the political process.

The idea that "I don't need no stinkin' politicians" reveals a high level of thoughtlessness.

 

[Piggy]

Ok, so now these guys have decided that the way to get people on their side is to... disrupt their workday!

Yeah, that's the ticket!

I cannot believe these people. What in God's green earth do they think they're doing?!

 

[JihadJane]

Ok, so now these guys have decided that the way to get people on their side is to... disrupt their workday!

Yeah, that's the ticket!

I cannot believe these people. What in God's green earth do they think they're doing?!

You are obviously a stranger to political protest!

Ever heard of strikes, for example?

 

[Piggy]

Oh, I think many Democrats sympathize with the protestors, but they (wisely) want to see where it's going to go before they come out publicly. BTW, the same thing occurred with the Tea Party -- few mainstream politicians came out in full support of the Tea Partiers at first.

And now that the Other Wonper Senters have decided it's a good idea to disrupt traffic and interfere with commerce, it's going to be almost impossible for anyone in office to come out in favor of what they're saying.

It's like they called up Glenn Beck and said, "What can we do to play into your narrative today?"

 

[JihadJane]

And now that the Other Wonper Senters have decided it's a good idea to disrupt traffic and interfere with commerce, ...

Oh noes, how dreadful! Civilization is ending!

 

[Piggy]

Why does there seem to be a lot more people complaining about others being inconvenienced by the protestors than people complaining about actually being inconvenienced by the protestors?

Open a map of the United States. Note its size.

Open up maps of the major US cities. Note their size.

Look at your body. Note its size.

I think you'll figure it out at that point.

 

[Piggy]

But that's my point. There was no co-opting, it was organized from the get-go. But I'll say this: I have no way to prove my point and I suspect you don't either. We'll have to agree to disagree.

I can't prove it to you, of course, but I'm in TP heartland, and there were a lot of folks on board with various small local groups literally the day after the election. These people were not organized from on high. But it didn't take long for them to link up, connect with folks w/ money, and become what we now know as the Tea Party Express and so forth.

Baptists could organize a hurricane if they had to.

 

[Piggy]

I agree Piggy. Even though I agree with their complaints, and I have some sympathy to them and the concept of public protest as a general rule, but I find myself annoyed more than anything else.

Last week they did "Occupy Harvard Yard" in Cambridge. Harvard's main campus is surrounded by a giant fence that has several entrance gates. When I went to my night class there last Wednesday, they were blocking multiple gates that were my way in. I had to go all the way around to the other side of campus and was really late for class, but it was okay, because so was everyone else for the same reason. Then, what should have been a 4 minute walk to the subway took over half an hour for me and my classmates to find a non blocked gate we could exit out of. The cops had also shut down several gates because of fears of the Occupy people invading the campus, and the ones that were open were obstructed with protestors. Finally we had to convince a cop to unlock a closed gate because we just could not find another way out.

I mean, what purpose does that serve? All they did was make sure that they made a lot of students late for class and made a lot of us late getting home.

Exactly.

How are you going to get people to rally to your cause if all you're doing is making their lives difficult?

 

[Piggy]

You are obviously a stranger to political protest!

Ever heard of strikes, for example?

No, I'm not a stranger to political protest, or to strikes.

My objection is that these people are ticking off precisely the people they need to get on their side, and they're doing precisely the things they're protesting against.

Strikes are organized and focused. So was the civil rights movement.

This is just a huge mess by people who are aping the surface trappings of protest without understanding the fundamental dynamics that actually make protests work.

 

[NoahFence]

Are they still "occupying" Harvard?

Wonder when they'll actually go to class.....

 

[Tiktaalik]

Recently, Secretary of the Interior Salazar came to the area where I work. I was in charge of security for the event; we were concerned because rumor had it that a bunch of oil & gas workers were going to show up to protest.

They showed up. They went to the designated First Amendment area, where everyone coming in could see them, and held their protest. Then they went to the speech and sat quietly in the audience in their hard-hats.

What happened? Secretary Salazar formally recognized them and spoke to their concerns. Everybody knew they were there and what their concerns were. There were NO incidents - NONE. At the end, everybody shook hands & I gained a lot of respect for the protestors. They got heard and the event went off as planned, without a hitch.

I am now significantly more likely to listen to oil & gas workers concerns than I was before. That, I think, is the way to do a protest. No one was inconvenienced. Everybody got the point. The protestors got formal recognition. Mission accomplished.

 

[stokes234]

Recently, Secretary of the Interior Salazar came to the area where I work. I was in charge of security for the event; we were concerned because rumor had it that a bunch of oil & gas workers were going to show up to protest.

They showed up. They went to the designated First Amendment area, where everyone coming in could see them, and held their protest. Then they went to the speech and sat quietly in the audience in their hard-hats.

What happened? Secretary Salazar formally recognized them and spoke to their concerns. Everybody knew they were there and what their concerns were. There were NO incidents - NONE. At the end, everybody shook hands & I gained a lot of respect for the protestors. They got heard and the event went off as planned, without a hitch.

I am now significantly more likely to listen to oil & gas workers concerns than I was before. That, I think, is the way to do a protest. No one was inconvenienced. Everybody got the point. The protestors got formal recognition. Mission accomplished.

Around a million people showed up to protest peacefully against the iraq war in the UK in 2003, and achieved precisely zilch. I'm not suggesting that disruptive protest is the only way to achieve anything, but when you give one example of peaceful protest that did, I think you might be cherrypicking.

 

[timhau]

Around a million people showed up to protest peacefully against the iraq war in the UK in 2003, and achieved precisely zilch. I'm not suggesting that disruptive protest is the only way to achieve anything, but when you give one example of peaceful protest that did, I think you might be cherrypicking.

But the thing is, a lot of people don't want to give in to asshattery. Make it work once, and you're essentially telling every crank out there that if you're obnoxious enough for long enough, you'll get your way.

 

[Ziggurat]

But the thing is, a lot of people don't want to give in to asshattery. Make it work once, and you're essentially telling every crank out there that if you're obnoxious enough for long enough, you'll get your way.

"if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane."
- Rudyard Kipling

And another relevant poem of warning for the OWS movement:

"As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man --
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began --
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire --
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!"

 

[BenBurch]

Like all good things, it comes from South Park.

South Park only used it, it was an old meme;

 

[Mr.D]

You are obviously a stranger to political protest!

Ever heard of strikes, for example?

Have you?

One of the points behind a strike is to raise public awareness of the value of the strikers by demonstrating (ha!) what happens when they stop working.


These Harvard occupiers are doing what now? Asking for economic justice from the university, and threatening to ... keep on living in tents ON CAMPUS until they get it? It's activism lamed down to a do-nothing feel-good activity - they get to claim to be fighting the good fight in between going to classes at one of the most elite universities on the planet.

 

[Howie Felterbush]

South Park only used it, it was an old meme;

He forgot "PROFIT!!"