Occupy

[Cain]

Well, protestors are just smelly hippies.  I find the property aspect of it quite amusing, since apparently property rights are sacrosanct, except when it comes to public property.  Then all of a sudden there are regulations and shit.

This is especially amusing because we have essentially two things (big government and disregard for property) which allegedly outrage conservatives, but wont because Occupy is Communism + Islam + Soros + ACORN.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Well, protestors are just smelly hippies.  I find the property aspect of it quite amusing, since apparently property rights are sacrosanct, except when it comes to public property.  Then all of a sudden there are regulations and shit.

This is especially amusing because we have essentially two things (big government and disregard for property) which allegedly outrage conservatives, but wont because Occupy is Communism + Islam + Soros + ACORN.

Well, it's interesting watching the memes conflict in their pointy little heads.

[LMNO]

I have a feeling they're used to this mental pretzel-ing, simply from having to juggle "The State can't tell me how to run my life/We need laws to keep gays from marrying each other" for the past n years.

[Cain]

Oh, absolutely.  But find a political forum and frame the argument in that way, and watch them twist and contort to justify how public property isn't real property or how since the Occupy protestors are "all unemployed" they don't get a say in how it used (which leads to further hilarious contortions, when you follow the logic of the argument, never mind the factual inaccuracy) and other hilarious consequences of cognitive dissonance.

Eventually they'll just spazz out incoherently at you.

[LMNO]

Hmm.. That gives me an idea...

[DiscoRadio]

When Occupy started, I was so psyched! The urban camping (on the weekends; I still have a job!) was enthralling and a good opportunity to explore a city I've seen all my life. The cops seemed to largely agree with our sentiments and it felt like some of the silly politicorporate shit was finally about to melt away. We were all taking on much larger tasks of organizing than we had ever attempted. If something needed to be fixed for PR or simple convenience of continued occupation, you did it; if you couldn't do it, there were plenty of volunteers. The world felt like it was wrapped in a loving embrace of solidarity.

Then we had a bunch of random protesters none of us had ever seen before who were protesting on "Police Brutality Day." Don't get me wrong, police brutality sucks. Some of the shit going on in Seattle lately absolutely sickens me, (deleting police car footage, making such removal of evidence legal, etc.) but this was not in Seattle; we were occupying Atlanta. These unaffiliated protesters started shouting all kinds of biased shit at the officers present and it wound up with the mayor behind a command center vehicle shouting his nads off and a group of some 30 or 40 officers across the street just laughing at it all.

From that point on, the Atlanta occupation got more and more focused on race, and much less focused on economic issues. A new martyr was selected: some guy who was shot in the back because he flashed a gun at an officer and started running from what I can tell. Note that our site was unofficially renamed to "Troy Davis park" from the very start of it all. Troy Davis himself is a dubious case of injustice as well. I attended a few rallies back in my activist days, but now it looks more and more like the only reason he ever seemed innocent to me was because of a viral social media campaign to get him off the hook.

The final straw for me was on the first "reoccupation night" (and they have been many without success). A black man from Occupy DC informed me that I was slightly racist for preferring Ron Paul to Obama, because Ron Paul may not have said anything racist himself, but allowing somebody to write something racist in his name made him a little racist at best. First, I have no clue how so many people at these occupations can still support Obama (or any politician) and say they keep up with the news. Second, I was clearly not exhibiting racist behavior and I am so sick of getting shit for being born to the "oppressor race." Third, the area we attempted to occupy that night happened to be the MLK memorial and that entire exchange was so against the spirit of the moment that I nearly punched this guy.

After 30 minutes of confused attempts at putting up tents which were destroyed in the big raid, we were surrounded by 10 motorcycles, 15 cop cars, and being hovered over by 2 low-flying helicopters with spotlights. Typical overkill relative to what we'd experienced since. For some reason there were even CSI vehicles hanging around on the big eviction night. I realized the mayor was just going to continue spending as much money as possible to thwart the tremendous threat of non-violent hippies and then complain about how much money they had cost him. I also realized that the last thing they wanted around was another white male who wanted to focus on destroying the ties between the political and financial sectors on days when he didn't have to be at work.

I did leave with a very iconic quote though:
"A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

[Wolfgang Absolutus]

I used to be an anarchist. But then I took a chill-pill. If we aren't going to bother abolishing capitalism, the least we could do is provide help for the least advantaged of us and separate money from politics so we can get some democracy back. No system will be perfect, but that isn't a reason we shouldn't at least try to reform this one.Occupy is a good thing in terms of reform movements. Maybe it will take a couple more years but maybe something will be accomplished by those sweet nonviolent hippies, regular people with a bone to pick, and violent anarchists who want to burn down the system or something.

[Bruno]

I think Occupy needs a new verb.

[Cain]

"Fucking the shit up of".

Ie "fucking the shit up of Wall Street".

Watching serious newscasters talk about the Fucking Shit Up Movement would just be an added bonus.

[Bruno]

Specifically, I mean they need a new tactic other than just standing around. 

We're here.

We're still here.

Get used to it?

[Triple Zero]

"Accidentally the whole Wall Street"

[Placid Dingo]

I guess the deal with that is that occupation as a protest method was really sOmething new at the start of this whole thing.

Contradict if needed.

[Cain]

Specifically, I mean they need a new tactic other than just standing around. 

We're here.

We're still here.

Get used to it?

Fucking the shit up is also a tactic.

While I don't hold high hopes in this regard, I honestly hope the Occupy movement start looking at French, Greek and Thai protests of recent years.  I think if they move to systems disruption, they could effectively rival the banks in their ability to hold the economy hostage.  And that is the only countermeasure which could actually check the influence of the investment banks.  They threaten to implode the global economy on virtually a weekly basis...but realistically, they're a very small minority, whom a government could move against.  If given the right incentives.

Another angle would be for the Occupy movement to try and advise friendly, or at least currently non-hostile government actors how they can help check the influence of Wall Street, while trying to win over neutrals by explaining why it is important.  For the former, the use of Rico laws, anti-terrorism legislation, fraud, anti-trust...basically things that are already on the books but aren't being used creatively or that politicians have actually forgotten about.  Meanwhile, framing the argument that a healthy economy is a decentralized economy, an economy that is robust and can absorb huge financial shocks, and that the banks hate that because it affects their political power, and the argument that the banks are actually engaged in criminal acts, might go a long way in persuading people to be, at the very least, more suspicious of them and their motives.

[maphdet]

Occupy was fucked from the beginning.
It tried to be something of Change for this clusterfuck of politics in the world, but it (imo) is playing in the same game of politics.
This 'movement' will and has opened doors for more transparency within what governments are doing but it also will and has opened doors to control the shit outta people too.
-maph
convinced this shit was started to 'occupy' our time and shit.

/pessimism.

[Scribbly]

I think it made a lot of people take notice of a lot of things about modern politics.

If nothing changes as a result, a lesson will also be learned; peaceful protest is useless.

Consider what that might mean for the coming generation, who are going to be fucked in the ass for foreseeable future, and the methods they may use to protest that instead.