I’d just like to point out that North Korean philosophy of Juche is also an international movement. It’s an international movement of 24.45 million, or thereabouts… and only 24.44 million of them are North Koreans!
Why would anyone listen to OWS? Who was supposed to be listening to them anyway and what actions were those people supposed to take?
From the perspective of people who work at places like AIG or Goldman Sachs, OWS is a minor annoyance to be suffered on their way to and from work. And the people who actually make policy at those firms don’t even have to deal with them at all.
They brought to light all these humorous “twinkle” signals. cite
I still get a chuckle thinking about it even now, so, I vote success.
I block your “success” with crossed forearms!
Is that why Oakland paid 1.17 million to ows because of how at fault ows was?
the tea party was effective. they aren’t smart (they cost the gop several senate seats due to their uncompromising demands for purity) and I don’t agree with their beliefs, but they are an effective organization. they got involved in town halls and primary elections. now they are moving into local politics instead of national. ows was just angry people mad at the plutocracy who have no effective means of expression. ows should follow the model of the tea party, except be more willing to compromise and be rational.
there is so much pent up impotent rage at the economic injustice in the us, but no effective outlets.
And civil rights for blacks.
I think chappachula is correct: failure to focus on a specific set of goals has been OWS’s major blunder. Now government surveillance is their latest digression. I gave up in dismay a year or two ago, reading their platform and seeing such peripheral matters as vegetarianism. Outlining a long-term plan for man is very different from trying to affect the next election.
Protests in the 60’s may have been somewhat disorganized, but there were a few intelligent charismatic leaders around whom young people rallied. What happened with OWS? In a sense, I’d say it failed by trying to be “too democratic.” Focused leadership was needed, not pandemoniac tail-chasing.
But it is amusing to read right-wingers trying to compare the Tea Partiers – whose average IQ and average age are about equal to each other – favorably with OWS. :dubious: The reason the Tea Party is more organized is largely that they’ve always been stooges for the Koch brothers et al.
Well, that’s another thing: Suppose instead of the OWS way, the left were to try to organize something like the Tea Party, and do things the TP way, and primary-out conservative and moderate Dems. Going by the TP’s track record, they might win some primaries that way but lose most of the general elections in play; and wind up with a small, noisy, obstructive caucus in Congress, to the left of the Progressive Caucus already there. Would that make things better or worse?
OWS should have focused on a small number of very popular ideas, e.g. a partial moratorium on house foreclosures. (I and others have outlined the essential ideas elsewhere; one thread was derailed by right-wing gibberish about contract sanctity and the godliness of profit motive. :smack: )
The 1% was an effective meme.
Otherwise, mostly the liberals realizing how little power they have. Still, better than blawging or writing letters. Speaking of which, I thought IOZ had a fun take:
You don’t need a partial moratorium on foreclosures, there’s already effectively one in place - it’s called HAMP/HARP/HAFA - and between that, Bankruptcy, and various State laws, I’ve seen people still in their homes who haven’t made a payment in over four years. Some even longer (hello, California).
Yes, I work in the Belly of the Beast - I know how it works.
Sure, you still have those who lose their home in 4, 5, 6 or so months, but anyone with half a brain and the willingness to put forth the effort can stay in a house rent-free for a loooong time.
Well then they should extend that benefit automatically, even those that don’t know that they can game it.
And the sheer numbers of foreclosures really renders irrelevant your experience of those that haven’t been foreclosed.
Um, no, it doesn’t. I know the guidelines imposed by the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (we have one of those, were you aware?), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (oooo, scary) the Treasury Department, the DOJ, the FHA, HUD, and all 50 of the States Attorney General - many protections ARE automatically extended, and many more can be accessed and used with minimal effort (ask me about Qualified Written Requests sometime). The thing is, some people want to get maximum benefit with minimal (or no) effort. Guess what, sunshine? That’s what got us into this problem in the first place.
You need to put forth a minimal amount of effort to get any amount of help - is that too much to ask?
Hi, Werekoala. I don’t know what your politics are, nor how your comment was intended to relate to the thread’s subject, but it reflects, perhaps unintentionally, a right-wing perspective that infuriates me.
I speak of Dog-eat-dog social Darwinism, though focused not on a rich or well-connected dog eating underdogs, but on “smart” dogs eating the scraps underdogs are too stupid to find. The same people with this perspective saw nothing wrong with Enron, or the Wall St. boondoggles – the natural diversion of wealth to the clever from their inferiors is Capitalism at its best, in their view.
I’m happy to see inventors and pharmaceutical scientists get rich. But it is only the right-wing that dotes on the wealth of a Skilling or Madoff as commendable in itself.
ETA: We cross-posted and I see you didn’t recant. May I conclude that homeowners too ignorant for required effort are a blessing, in your view? Leaving more cake on the table for the cleverer?
I don’t revel in the misfortune of others, nor do I profit on it. I make enough to survive month to month, but little else. I wish I made more, but I do not begrudge those who do, nor look down on those who don’t.
“Homeowners” (and I put that in quotes for a very specific reason) today have access to a bewildering amount of information about what they can do to save “their” homes. However, the Federal Government, and even the banks (at the prodding insistence of the Government) provides them with the information they need to forestall, and in some cases prevent, foreclosure though Websites, newspaper ads, libraries, and even in most cases, pamphlets sent to the customers from the bank.
Seriously, it is a Federal requirement that banks send brochures to customers who fall behind on their mortgages detailing options to avoid foreclosure.
Here’s a dirty little secret - the bank doesn’t want to foreclose on a house!
Why? Because it sits for months or years in Real Estate Owned (REO) status, on the bank’s books. We have to send out inspectors every month. People to cut the lawn. Property taxes and homeowner’s insurance have to be paid (by us). Drain/maintain the pool. Change the locks and fix the broken windows. ALL of that is a cost to the Bank that can’t be recovered (unless it’s an FHA insured loan, in which case your tax dollars reimburse the bank).
So yeah - we don’t want the house, no matter what some people may want you to think.
I’m tempted to start an “Ask Me” thread about mortgages, honestly…
I’m sorry if my remarks sounded like an attack against your bank or you personally. Yes, foreclosures tend to help no one, yet over the past 6 years many many millions more Americans than “normal” have lost their homes. This is very disruptive and imposes a vicious downward cycle on the whole economy.
There were proposals to allow homeowners in default but willing to make reasonable rent payments to remain in their homes, at least temporarily, with mortgages renegotiated or arbitrated downstream. When I suggested this as a discussion topic for SDMB, it was booed down for two reasons:
[ul][li] Imposing rules on banks would violate the Godly Sanctity of Contracts.[/li][li] If banks needed recapitalization, existing shareholders would suffer.[/li][/ul]
:smack: 
I was dumbstruck that Dopers would focus only on increasing the wealth of the wealthy in a situation of economic calamity.
Anyway, I mentioned suspending or renegotiating mortgages as an example agendum that would be popular and achievable if made a focus. Instead, by diffusing itself too widely, OWS accomplished little.
No, I didn’t take it as an attack in any way, it’s just that there is a large gap of communication between people and their creditors that I think is, in some ways, exacerbated by the fact that politicians, and the banks, seem to have this overriding need to “do something”, now, no NOW, instead of letting things find their own natural level. I see it every day - new policies and procedures come out, based on what people who are isolated at the top ("banksters"or politicians) think will make things better - but they have no real-world experience as to how things actually work. They don’t understand that it takes weeks, months - sometimes even years - for their decisions to play out in the Real World ™. So when things don’t change instantly, they make other changes that negate, reverse, or magnify their earlier decisions.
Think of it in terms of the Titanic - I’ve read that had the Captain ordered wheel hard about, that they might have lightly grazed or even missed the iceberg. If he had ordered engines full astern, he would have slowed the ship enough that the impact wouldn’t have doomed the ship. But by ordering wheel hard about, engines full astern, that he ensured that the ship had no real control and hit at just the right angle, at just the right speed, to doom it. THAT is what we’ve been facing in the banking/mortgage industry since 2008 - too many orders from too many directions, many of them conflicting, such that the crew does what they are told, to the best of their abilities, but we still hit the iceberg and sink.
I guess I’m in Occupy, don’t perzackly know, they never sent me a card or asked me for any money. I like it that they were and then disappeared. I like it that no position papers were issued, no candidates nominated, no committee’s formed to study the possibility of convening a working group…
I’ve been to oodles of protest demonstrations, hate 'em like poison. Hate self-righteous bloviation even when I agree with every point being made, maybe even moreso. Speeches make my head hurt, bad poetry by Maya Angelou wannabes make me all stabby. But I do it, its a duty. Never did any military duty, but I figure there’s more than one way to serve your country. Usually, it involves doing things you’d rather not.
(The SDMB isn’t duty, I just like to argue and make bad jokes, so that doesn’t count.)
Occupy was (is?) a different critter, a wholly new thing. You can usually tell when something new is being attempted, it is met with disdain and contempt by Very Serious People. How can you play to win if you don’t follow the rules and NO, you CANNOT change the rules.
Unless, of course, you ignore them.
If all you are about is causing people to pause and think…you don’t need a central committee, you don’t need a designated spokesperson, you don’t need to spend six hours wrangling over the wording of a press release…you advocate democracy by being democracy.
Now, this is not to say I want to chuck ACORN, Saul Alinsky and the more or less established progressive movement out the window. Just that if there’s room anywhere for a bit of anarchic experimentation, it ought to be with us. Experiments always work because you always learn something, even if it was something you may not have wanted to know.
Said it then, what I most wished for with Occupy was that it pop up out of nowhere, make a little rock and roll, get some attention, start some conversation, and then vanish like morning fog. So, far as I’m concerned, it was a success. Occupy is gone, the people who were Occupy aren’t.
Let me post a quick disclaimer; I do read and sometimes post here during the day from my work computer, but have to seriously edit my views for obvious reasons. I can be a bit more open and honest in the evening or on the weekends from my home account. 
With all due respect, that is what we call a Circle Jerk. Sure, it makes the members happy (unless you are the pivot) but it it is a fallacy to think you are doing anything worthwhile for greater society.
It isn’t like military service. People in the military serve a purpose just by being present in hostile territory because they have the real threat of greater force standing behind them. Occupy had none of that. They could have achieved better results just by hosting a keg parties with strippers at random places and the motives would have been more admirable.
I don’t know where people went wrong here but they greatly misinterpreted the message and somehow thought that simple vagrancy on their part would lead to something without any more thought or greater plans standing behind them. San Francisco alone would be the dominant world power if homelessness had such command.
This is hilarious, and one of the best summaries of the “success” of the OWS movement I’ve ever read.