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Re: last page:

I've made a cursory argument before that there's probably a mini-generation between Generation X and the Millennials. There's more detail at that link, but one of the big things is that people around my own age (I was born in 1981, but I think it goes for a few years in either direction... think currently late-20's to maybe mid-30-ish) don't fit into Gen X culturally in part because we didn't spend our formative teenage years in constant fear of being nuked (the USSR collapsed when I was 10) and aren't generally apathetic, materialistic self-obsessed shitheads, but at the same time we were outside playing and riding our bikes in places we probably shouldn't without helicopter parents constantly hovering over us. We were latchkey kids and didn't get participation trophies for everything we did, but the internet didn't become a huge thing until around the time we were graduating high school, so we mostly matured without that as an influence on us (and man does that separate us from the Millennials). We had neither Reaganomics nor cell phones. We're arguably a lost mini-generation that grew up on the cusp of massive social change after the end of the Cold War but before 9/11 and e-everything, and we kind of get get lost in between the two major, recognized niches.

I'm resting up tonight, but I'll be down there tomorrow too.

I liked this story, truthvalue undetermined:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/02/1032624/-He-has-a-right-to-speak,-said-the-cop-to-the-banker

[I don't have any problem with supporting myself,]

Oh, COME THE FUCK ON. What are you, 12? Everyone needs to work to survive, and I'm already fed up as shit about people not thinking the work I do is a "job" just because I'm self-employed.

Guess what asshole; if you aren't willing to work, it's nobody's job to feed your stupid entitled ass.

I am not a Libertarian; I would slaughter those cocktarded fuckers to the gods of evolution.

But don't pull out the "I am 12 and what is this" anarchy of total stupidity. If you really believe that you deserve to do absolutely not one fucking thing and yet be supported by everyone who does do something productive, you are an ass.

Um, right there in my first post:

I don't have any problem with supporting myself, but that's not what having a job is really about from a sociological perspective.

And obviously what you're doing is a job in the sense that it's your way of supporting yourself, which is awesome. Self-employment is my own eventual goal; at the moment I'm working shitty labor jobs while putting myself through college. I'm using the term "job" here to refer to the more common 9-to-5 trap that most of America's stuck in, which I view as a level of social control.

Actually, I believe the current state of technology is definitely able to do so.  I don't believe the current state of humanity is, however.  The resources to do something Venus Project-ish are available.  But everyone in the world would have to get behind it.  It says so right on the website.  Therein lies the problem.

Agreed. It's incredibly unlikely without a massive rewiring of our cultural value system. But hey, I'm a dreamer, when I'm not being a pessimist... ...and unlikely as it is, it's happened before. When shit changes, it can change awfully fast.

Word.

Back on topic, and semi-old news for those up-to-the-minute but new to the thread, Occupy Oakland hosts a general strike tomorrow, November 2nd, to "shut down" the city.

Anybody want to take odds on a city of something like half a million people shutting down because 1484 people voted for it?
Don't get me wrong, if this is successful, the message will be powerful.  But somehow I don't think support for the movement is as universal as they seem to think.  Perhaps they are surrounded by so much positive reinforcement that they are sheltered from any dissent.  Or, perhaps I am wrong and this thing has far more influence than I suspect.

If it fails, however, I think the attempt could be pretty bad for the Occupy movement as a whole.  Or maybe not, perhaps a failed attempt will galvanize the silent supporters into paying more attention and participating.  I've never been very good at predictions.

That said though, my money would be on the vast majority of Oakland continuing with business as usual come tomorrow.

I have no idea if it'll work or not. It's the sort of thing that probably needs to be happening, though. I'm getting the sense in Portland that people want to be doing something, but there's still not a lot of agreement on what that something should be. This movement needs a victory to keep it going.

I saw someone singing that in karaoke. He sang:

"So I'll remove your clothes
But not the symptom!"

And I thought: "I can see why you'd think that's the lyric, but no, sorry dude."

I'm tired of this "we need jobs" bullshit. No, having a 40-hour-a-week job is part of how they control you, eating up your time and making you too tired to fight them. I don't have any problem with supporting myself, but that's not what having a job is really about from a sociological perspective.

I don't want a job. I want to use twenty-first-century technology to bring about a post-scarcity society where the average person doesn't need a job to survive.

I am up to my eyeballs in debt trying to keep my head above water because the system is stacked against me by the sociopaths at the top and I see nothing wrong with this: I am the 53%!

[Notes From Jamison Square]

Notes From Jamison Square

Version with pics and links here.

There were 27 arrests at Jamison Square in Portland's Pearl District last night. Yours truly wasn't one of them, but I did spend some time at the park before the police moved in. Here's my understanding of what happened.

A splinter group (I'm told 13 individuals strong at the beginning), perhaps frustrated at a perceived lack of action on behalf of the greater Occupy Portland movement, decided to take up residence in a new location: Jamison Square, a small park in the Pearl District of northwest Portland. This was the major topic of discussion at the general assembly last night, and after talking over the options, a spur-of-the-moment consensus was reached at around 9pm: we would move the GA to Jamison Square so the splinter group could be part of the discussion and add their voices to any conversation we had about the matter.

The mainstream news vans were already parked along the south edge of Jamison Square when I got there, perched like vultures waiting for the corpses to drop. The police seemed to enforce a bit of a double-standard once the 12:01am curfew passed–the mainstream media was allowed (for a time) to remain in Jamison Square proper, while members of the independent media, including the official Occupy Portland livestream, were told they had to stand behind a line of trees; the combination of darkness and distance made it harder to make out what was happening in the park over the low definition live feed from the webcam. "Shenanigans," I heard the cameraman from the live feed say, and I had to agree.

Eventually the mainstream media was forced to move back as well, and there was some consternation over the fact that they turned off their lights (and possibly cameras) as the police began to bring in reinforcements around 12:30am. Was this a conscious decision on the various news channels' parts to enforce media censorship, or simple conservation of electricity in the face of needing energy for the hours of what was coming? It's hard to say, but it certainly rubbed me the wrong way and made me a bit suspicious. The majority of the mainstream media has been pretty poor at keeping objectivity in their reporting of the Occupy movement thus far, and I'm not willing at this point to cut them much slack.

The police, too, had already made their presence felt by the time I arrived at Jamison Square. There were mounted police (who, let's face it, serve little purpose at a function like this outside their use for propaganda and intimidation) and park rangers. The livestream caught footage of a sniper on a rooftop at one point, though apparently s/he moved either down or out of sight as the evening waned. Portland mayor Sam Adams made an appearance just a bit after the 12am curfew, though he claimed he was only present to observe and had little to do with the decision to break up the protest (though if it wasn't his decision, whose was it?). A few protestors made cursory attempts to speak with the police and attempt to dissuade them from making arrests, citing the refusal of other officers to arrest protestors at Occupy Albany, though these arguments fell on ears that were, if not deaf, apparently uninterested.

At about 12:50am, a loud and obviously inebriated man entered the park and began shouting at the protestors, telling them that they were breaking the law. It didn't seem to occur to him that he was not only breaking the 12am curfew but also drunk and disorderly. I have no idea whether the police bothered to arrest him or not; they may have saved all the room in their squad cars for the people trying to exercise their First Amendment rights.

For their parts, the protestors walked and chanted but offered no resistance to arrest when the police cruisers and mounted officers moved in a few minutes after 1am. "We're going to have to be like Gandhi going Super Saiyan," I'd heard one of the protestors say earlier, and while I'm not sure I'd make the comparison based on what happened last night, per usual, the Occupy movement held up its end of the non-violence bargain. Perhaps thinking on the recent example of the police violence against Occupy Oakland, the state response didn't seem particularly brutal (beyond the legalized-kidnapping-and-caging-of-a-human-being-like-an-animal-under-threat-of-legalized-assault that passes for arrest), but word is they did leave horse dung all over the park.

I've written a bit before about the search for meaning in this movement and the importance that symbols will have to Occupy as the movement grows. I saw both factors at work here, as well as another that I've been meaning to write more on–the idea of the Occupy movement as a social networking platform in the offline world, a place where people can come together to have rational, adult discussions about why and how America has crashed and burned so spectacularly over the course of the past few decades (or, one could argue from a broader historical perspective, century). Was last night's occupation of Jamison Square meaningful to the movement as a whole? I can't say that it was from my own perspective, at least not in an immediate sense, but I understand the need that other Occupiers feel for a symbolic victory.

There may be a sense that Occupy Portland has stagnated a bit the past few weeks, and talking to people at both the GA and the square last night left me with the impression that people are ready to do something besides sit in meetings and hold marches. It says a lot to me about the dedication and self-control of the Occupiers that they held a peaceful demonstration last night in the face of that frustration; that said, I'm not sure walking in circles in the dark and letting the police put your fingerprints in a database is the "something" that needs to be done. Those who were arrested have my support–I'm just not sure that this was the symbol we needed at the moment. It's important to let the world know this movement has teeth, yes, but let's choose where, when and how we bite with a taste for the meal still to come instead of filling up on empty calories.

Screw the rules, they have all my money?

Pfft, it's not my fault you chose not to be born to wealthy parents.

Didn't we just start some shennanigans in Uganda?  And there's some saber rattling pointed in Pakistan's direction. 

Democracy will not spread its fucking self!

And when it does, we'll get involved anyway!

[nearly]

From CNN:

President Obama announced Friday that the United States will withdraw nearly all troops from Iraq by the end of the year, effectively bringing the long and polarizing war in Iraq to an end.

Not good enough.

If it's special then shouldn't you share it with as many people as possible?

Sharing is for commies.

Condoms are socialism.

[Permit? What the fuck!? Did this movement lose its balls sometime in the past week?]

That video is great.

Just to give an example of why I'm frustrated to the point of not caring about the GA beyond the usual primate bureaucracy bullshit: I went out a few nights ago and they were discussing moving the GA to Pioneer Square, which is a central part of the city where people who aren't coming out to the (somewhat hidden) encampment would actually see and hear shit happening. It's also where a lot of news crews film every night. It would be awesome PR. Oh, and we wouldn't have to finish every GA by 9:45 because the federal park where they're being held now has a 10pm curfew. All in all, it sounded like a hell of an idea to actually vitalize the process.

It was shot down because:

1) People who are disabled might have trouble getting there and we have to have everyone's voice heard at the GA (and nevermind that attendance is dropping from week to week already). I understand the concern here, but for god's sake, talk about shooting yourself in the foot over your liberal sensibilities. Also, the train that runs a couple blocks from the encampment to the square is in the Free Rail Zone, which means what you think it means (not to mention you have to go a block from the encampment to get to the GA where it is now, and that space has a bunch of steps anyway, so it's hardly wheelchair/walker friendly).

2) The permit for Pioneer Square is expensive, and we'd need another permit to use a loudspeaker or PA system. W... what!? Permit? What the fuck!? Did this movement lose its balls sometime in the past week? Fucking Portland...

So yeah, pretty much done with the Portland GA, but not the wider movement. Like I said, the committees and especially just motivated individuals are doing good work.

I see the value in and support the Occupation movement as a whole; I just don't think the GA process as it's occurring in Portland has much value. Making noise, being visible and encouraging people to address the movement (whether they want to or not) seems effective. Spending three nights endlessly debating the same toothless resolutions while going in circles over the process, not so much.

Or in Discordian terms: It seems that it won't be the bureaucratic, orderly part of this movement that's going to lead to change; it's the decentralized, chaotic parts that will probably do so, assuming anything will.