Occupy

[Cain]

Ah, David Brooks.  All the vices of Victorian anthropology, none of the virtues.

You'll be glad to know this has been widely mocked on the net.  More widely mocked than Brooks normally is, anyway.

The practicing economist that sent me the link to that Brooks article might benefit from reading such mockery, should you happen to have some of those links handy.

I'm still kind of stunned that a working economics Phd would buy that polished turd of an article. I hope it turns out he's just trolling me, but I doubt it.

As always, IOZ is the first stop for mocking the pretensions of cultural elitists

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2011/11/lord-great-chamberpot.html

Apart from IOZ, Charles Pierce is usually reliable in this regard

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/david-brooks-wrong-inequality-column-6537797

Usually mockable Balloon-Juice also has some goods on the article

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/11/01/a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-the-applebees-salad-bar/

Brad DeLong's a fool, but he's less of a fool than Brooks

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/11/ooops-he-did-it-again-yet-another-david-brooks-geography-boo-boo-edition.html

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Some very interesting points, but also, what is left (largely)  unaddressed is what about the ability of people to earn a reasonable living via manufacturing or consumer support, almost all of which has been outsourced without tariff? The US (and I assume other first-world) countries have been gutted in pursuit of inexpensive overseas labor, with no financial repurcussion for companies who engage in these practices.

[Cain]

Oakland port has been shut down.

Military veterans are engaged in a stand-off with police in New York, also.

[Cramulus]

From Occupy Boston:

[Triple Zero]

Wow that's a great image.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

[notathing]

Cram: that's a great political drawing, thank you for sharing.  I am puzzled by the date on the drawing though hah

Lord Glittersnatch: excellent and funny counterexamples!

so, occupy protests in Detroit have been underway, and there have been some interesting occurrences, notably this incident at my college:

http://www.occupy-detroit.us/2011/11/02/occupy-detroit-members-are-arrested-for-questioning-nyse-ceo-duncan-niederauer-later-released/

I applaud the protesters for this, and wish I had known about this event.  I am reading the Occupy Detroit daily now and finding how I can get involved.
The occupy movement in Detroit has been quite well received. It rather hopeful that the movement has taken roots here; everyone in this city and surrounding suburbs knows the system is broken beyond denial.

[Cain]

Occupy London are almost entirely made up of UK Uncut people.

Who are universally acknowledged as wankers.  Also, they're "occupying" the area in front of St Paul's cathedral.  Because you know, Jesus is responsible for the banking collapse.

[East Coast Hustle]

I've decided that if the protests are still going on when I get home with some time off I'm going to find a way to offer some tangible support. I'm thinking that volunteering in the kitchens would be a good start.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/03/acorn-officials-scramble-firing-workers-and-shredding-documents-after-exposed/#ixzz1cgwHXJML

Officials with the revamped ACORN office in New York -- operating as New York Communities for Change -- have fired staff, shredded reams of documents and told workers to blame disgruntled ex-employees for leaking information in an effort to explain away a FoxNews.com report last week on the group's involvement in Occupy Wall Street protests, according to sources.

OH BOY HERE WE GO.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Ah, David Brooks.  All the vices of Victorian anthropology, none of the virtues.

You'll be glad to know this has been widely mocked on the net.  More widely mocked than Brooks normally is, anyway.

The practicing economist that sent me the link to that Brooks article might benefit from reading such mockery, should you happen to have some of those links handy.

I'm still kind of stunned that a working economics Phd would buy that polished turd of an article. I hope it turns out he's just trolling me, but I doubt it.

As always, IOZ is the first stop for mocking the pretensions of cultural elitists

http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2011/11/lord-great-chamberpot.html

Apart from IOZ, Charles Pierce is usually reliable in this regard

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/david-brooks-wrong-inequality-column-6537797

Usually mockable Balloon-Juice also has some goods on the article

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/11/01/a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-the-applebees-salad-bar/

Brad DeLong's a fool, but he's less of a fool than Brooks

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/11/ooops-he-did-it-again-yet-another-david-brooks-geography-boo-boo-edition.html

Thanks Cain. These are excellent.

[Cain]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/04/us-protests-oakland-veteran-idUSTRE7A37A820111104

A former U.S. Army Ranger and Occupy Oakland protester was in intensive care on Friday after a veterans group said he was beaten by police during clashes with demonstrators this week.

The veteran, identified as Kayvan Sabeghi, was the second former American serviceman during the past two weeks to be badly hurt in confrontations between anti-Wall Street protesters and police in Oakland.

The group Iraq Veterans Against the War said Sabeghi was detained during disturbances that erupted late on Wednesday in downtown Oakland and was charged with resisting arrest and remaining present at the place of a riot.

Highland General Hospital confirmed that Sabeghi was a patient in the intensive care unit there.

Brian Kelly, who co-owns a brew pub with Sabeghi, said his business partner served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said Sabeghi told him he was arrested and beaten by a group of policemen as he was leaving the protest to go home.

"He told me he was in the hospital with a lacerated spleen and that the cops had jumped him," Kelly said. "They put him in jail, and he told them he was injured, and they denied him medical treatment for about 18 hours."

I wouldn't be surprised if there was an unofficial policy of targeting veterans first by police.  "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter".

And this is an interesting look into how the OWS actually organizes

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27479

At the teach-in, Ms. Holmes maintained that while the NYC-GA is the "de facto" mechanism for distributing funds, it has no right to do so, even though she acknowledged that most donors were likely under the impression that the NYC-GA was the only organization with access to these funds. Two other leaders of the teach-in, Daniel and Adash, concurred with Holmes.

Ms. Holmes also stated at the teach-in that five people in the Finance WG have access to the $500,000 raised by Friends of Liberty Plaza. When Suresh Fernando, the man taking notes, asked who these people are, the leaders of the Structure WG nervously laughed and said that it was hard to keep track of the "constantly fluctuating" heads of the Finance WG. Mr. Fernando made at least four increasingly explicit requests for the names. Each request was turned down by the giggling, equivocating leaders.

The leaders of the Structure WG eventually regained control of the teach-in. They said that they too were unhappy with the Finance WG's monopoly over OWS's funds, which is why they wanted to create the Spokes Council. What upset them more, however, was the inefficient and fickle General Assembly. A major point of the discussion was whether the Spokes Council and the NYC-GA should have access to the funds, or just the Spokes Council.

Daniel, a tall, red-bearded, white twenty-something—one of the six leaders of the teach-in—said that the NYC-GA needed to be completely defunded because those with "no stake" in the Occupy Wall Street movement shouldn't have a say in how the money was spent. When I asked him whether everybody in the 99% had a stake in the movement, he said that only those occupying or working in Zuccotti Park did. I pointed out that since the General Assembly took place in Zuccotti Park, everybody who participated was an occupier. He responded with a long rant about how Zuccotti Park is filled with "tourists," "free-loaders" and "crackheads" and suggested a solution that the even NYPD has not yet attempted: Daniel said that he'd like to take a fire-hose and clear out the entire encampment, adding hopefully that only the "real" activists would come back.

The facilitators told each group to elect a facilitator, a note-taker, and a spokesperson who would read the notes from each group's meeting. Almost immediately, one of the members of the OWS inner-circle asked my group if anybody had a problem if she facilitated. Nobody objected, so she was "elected." Although she was in the one group that opposed occupying Washington Square Park, she lectured us about the need to occupy public parks.

I was vocal in my group, arguing that the fundamental problem in our hierarchical, bureaucratic society is the lack of a truly democratic, dialogic way of relating to one another—not that public parks close at midnight. I repeated the arguments I had raised in previous General Assemblies, concluding that OWS' main goal should be to develop dialogic, democratic methods in the occupied areas, and to extend this way of life into every home, workplace and school, and in local, regional, national and international bodies.

My advocacy for radical democracy wasn't particularly popular. Ironically, the predominantly middle-class, white men leading the movement claim that their hostility to democracy is in the interest of "protecting minorities," referring to oppressed genders, races, classes, ages, and nations. Far from being "minorities," these people make up the majority of the world's population; the worldwide outcry for democracy vitiates the paternalistic notion that the oppressed need "protection."

The discussion turned to which locations the movement should occupy, ignoring the question of whether occupation for the sake of occupation was a good idea. I suggested teaming with evicted tenants and former homeowners to occupy foreclosed homes, abandoned apartments and unsold condos—an act that would strike at the heart of the economic crisis, and endear the movement to the oppressed. This idea generated a lot of support, but was not repeated by my "spokesperson" when the groups reconvened.

At the teach-in on Sunday the 23rd, one of the leaders' main gripes—rightfully so—was that the NYC-GA was inefficient and dominated by society's vocal minorities, particularly middle-class white men. The underlying cause is not eliminated by the Spokes Council, but is in fact exacerbated by it. The major flaw of the General Assembly is the need for a 90% majority to pass proposals. This "modified consensus" ensures the continuation of the dominant culture through the passage of only the most conservative measures. In the Spokes Council, proposals can be blocked by 11% of the members of 11% of the Working Groups, meaning that a minority of 1.2% can stymie the will of 98.8% majority.

I get the impression there is a level of personal butthurt behind this, but it doesn't invalidate some of the observations made.

[minuspace]

Sedition doesn't go far enough.

Around Franklyn and 101 I forgot the the caption to this one: 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So I heard that over a million people closed their bank accounts today.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

ABC news likes its hyperbole! To clarify; TOTAL in the last few months, not just today. Still, that's impressive.