#OccupyWallStreet

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Jas09

I may be wrong, but I don’t think Bricker was knocking the ideas (although he is undoubtedly against most if not all of them) but rather the notion that one might plan a protest prior to deciding what in the hell they were going to demand.

It’s not as bad as it seems. These guys know what they want - they want all the things they suggest in the OP’s quote. What they’re unsure of is which of their demands should be the subject of their public focus.

I agree that it seems funny, but it’s not unreasonable. And FWIW, most organizations that are lobbying or pressing for anything engage in the same type of tactical considerations. The only difference is that they don’t discuss tactics in public, at the grassroots level. They settle on tactics in backroom discussions and then carry out their carefully planned but artificially-focused campaigns. In that sense, these guys are refreshing.

[Shodan]

@drewtwo99

Let’s have a protest with signs, bullhorns, and marching, demanding that we create a referendum to organize a committee that will look into the leading causes of what may or may not be healthy economic decision making. Maybe! We are gonna ask someone, SOMETHING, during our protest! And they are going to have to respond because we won’t take no (or yes?) for an answer! Or maybe we will, but we certainly won’t be nice about it!

Fucking splitter.

Regards,
Shodan

[RTFirefly]

@Bricker

But this call to arms represents all of the stuff I found laughable about leftist organization and protest. I know it’s not emblematic of the mainstream left’s thinking or planning, but I still think it’s hilarious.

Crazies are good deal more hilarious when they don’t have any power, if you get my drift.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Bricker

I find this: http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/hey-president-obama-our-one-demand.html

pretty damn funny.

I have discarded several preconceptions about “The Left” in my 11-ish years here.

But this call to arms represents all of the stuff I found laughable about leftist organization and protest. I know it’s not emblematic of the mainstream left’s thinking or planning, but I still think it’s hilarious.

See, as a lefty, I find this stuff incredibly depressing, and it’s a large part of the reason why I avoid leftist politics. Al Sharpton, bless his heart, recently said of his new job at MSNBC that while he could stand on a street corner with a bullhorn, it doesn’t make sense to fight 21st-century problems with 20th-century tools.

He’s completely right, and street protests are a 20th-century tool that worked in highly specific circumstances. (Those circumstances may repeat elsewhere in the world, but they’re totally not present in the current US).

But this protest? This is the worst sort of process-focused nonsense that a certain especially smug, self-satisfied brand of activist just loves. Normally there’s a goal but no possible way that the protest will achieve the goal; in this case, there’s not even a goal for the protest to fail to achieve.

[Buck_Godot]

@Bill_Door

What do we want?
Something!
When do we want it?
Soon!

Not very inspirational, is it?

As an aside this reminds me of a peace protest that I participated in before the Iraq war. The slogan of choice was

“What do we want!
Peace in Iraq!
When do we want it!
Now!”
The problem was that at the time the war hadn’t started yet and so there was relative peace in Iraq. I tried shouting out a more accurate slogan.

“What do we want!
Peace in Iraq!
When do we want it!
For the foreseeable future!”

but it didn’t catch on.

[elucidator]

This communique? Was it put out by the Central Committee? Signed by the People’s Commissar for Anarchic Disorganization? Did it at least have the endorsement of the Mother’s March for Trotsky?

Well, then, how do you know it bears the official approval of the left?

[Paranoid_Randroid]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

[… According to Al Sharpton] it doesn’t make sense to fight 21st-century problems with 20th-century tools.

He’s completely right, and street protests are a 20th-century tool that worked in highly specific circumstances.

What amuses me is the juxtaposition between 21st and 20th century points of view: they wish to organize a street protest, but this organization is to be done over the web; its marketing employs a Twitter hashtag; the image at the top sports the beloved-by-Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask. When the smoke clears and the old school protest has failed, I fear that ostensibly modern methods will be incorrectly blamed.

[Smapti]

Well, as Russell Brand put it, we gotta do SOMETHING.

[Paranoid_Randroid]

(Apropos of nothing, except possibly to indicate possible skewness within my own point of view, when I saw the protest title my first thought was of a global IRC channel.)

[JimmyFlair]

Am I alone in thinking that protesting in a business district on a SATURDAY may not have the dramatic impact that they thought it would?

[elucidator]

They have jobs? Saturday is their day off?

[John_Mace]

@elucidator

This communique? Was it put out by the Central Committee? Signed by the People’s Commissar for Anarchic Disorganization? Did it at least have the endorsement of the Mother’s March for Trotsky?

Well, then, how do you know it bears the official approval of the left?

You’re right. The OP should have said something along the lines of:

I know it’s not emblematic of the mainstream left’s thinking or planning

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@elucidator

Well, then, how do you know it bears the official approval of the left?

This is as odd to me as people who try to dismiss Ann Coulter because she doesn’t have some sort of “Official Approval of the Right.” No, this doesn’t have the left’s official approval, but it’s the sort of nonsense that happens all too often amongst lefties, and it’s why in college I decided that before being allowed to protest, a person ought to be required to learn to play chess

[Frank]

Tie up Wall Street on a Saturday?

That is pretty funny. Block the subway stations and taxi stands at four o’clock Friday afternoon, maybe. They’ll need shields, I should think; those financial guys wield a deadly briefcase.

[John_Mace]

@Frank

Tie up Wall Street on a Saturday?

That is pretty funny. Block the subway stations and taxi stands at four o’clock Friday afternoon, maybe. They’ll need shields, I should think; those financial guys wield a deadly briefcase.

Are you kidding? It’s all in the smartphone. As for shields, there’s an app for that. And if the shield doesn’t work, there’s a zap for that!

[elucidator]

Well, are you sure your contempt for lefties isn’t just your contempt for people?

Do you have the same disdain for, say, Tea Party rallies? Are there non-partisan, centrist protests? “We demand change! A little of it, and we are in no hurry!”

I’ll grant you, Tea Party rallies are quite focused and very well organized. Seems almost as soon as somebody said “Tea Party”, there was simply scads of organization. Tour organizers, bus charters, guys to set up stages and do sound. Hats off to them, for a grass-roots, down home bunch, they seem to have almost professional level skills at this sort of thing! Very impressive. Why, its almost as if a ton of money fell on them from above, and professional cynics eager to rush to their aid.

We are not well organized. We have no money, or, more to the point, we don’t have MONEY! The other guys got MONEY! Of course, we have funny, we got Mark Twain, Bill Hicks and Molly. They can keep Dennis Miller and Anne Coulter.

All we got is sincerity, tenacity and an enormous capacity to absorb abuse. Probably isn’t going to be enough, at least our heart-breakingly stupid and futile wars have gotten smaller. Yay.

About to get tougher. The Supremes, rancid goat cheese be upon them, have tendered a check to the Forces of Darkness in the amount of $(N+1). You want those guys running things, all you have to do is nothing. They already are. And they play Republcan Poker: they get seven cards, you get five, all yours a dealt face up, and they get to draw twice.

Lefty ain’t for the weak, apathy is for the weak. We could use your help, if you’ve nothing better to do.

ETA: not directed to John Mace Unless it makes him laugh. Then, yeah, sure.

[elucidator]

@Bricker

…I have discarded several preconceptions about “The Left” in my 11-ish years here…

We’re right, you’re smart, sooner or later, you’re ours.

[MOIDALIZE]

Well…“Wall Street Sucks!” is a pretty ineffective message, I think we’d all agree. But there are a whole constellation of problems with our government and our economy tied up with Wall Street; they do have a malign influence, and they should be a primary target. But, Americans tend to be lazy and impatient, and want complex problems delivered up to them in the form of bite-sized, easily digestible sentiments, and if you can’t provide that then you’re screwed because it’s much easier to engage in hippie punching than it is to actually have to think about anything.

I guess I don’t think it’s necessarily silly of them not to have a grand, unifying message spelled out from Day 1. Look at the Tea Party. They started out as “Bailouts Bad!” and have evolved from there to adopting a whole panoply of wingnut anti-government beliefs. Doesn’t anyone remember how incoherent their protests were (Get your government hands off my Medicare.)? Yet they’re not only still around, they’re sponsoring debates on CNN.

ETA: And what Elucidator said.

[AncientHumanoid]

Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?

Whadda you got?

[magellan01]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

This is as odd to me as people who try to dismiss Ann Coulter because she doesn’t have some sort of “Official Approval of the Right.” No, this doesn’t have the left’s official approval, but it’s the sort of nonsense that happens all too often amongst lefties, and it’s why in college I decided that before being allowed to protest, a person ought to be required to learn to play chess

That’s funny. But also brilliant.