But Wall street isn’t the seat of government. I’d say that the OWS is more a petition in that their greivance has been made known in a big way. The federal government can’t ignore it.
Well I won’t recognize it as such. You can have your de facto argument and I won’t say too much against it–but I am recognizing Washington and Washington alone as the seat of the fed gov.
Maybe so, but it is appropriate for this particular movement, with its particular grievances, to focus on Wall Street first, Washington second.
Watch it be ignored. A few hundred people squatting in a park, growing to maybe a few thousand for a few hours once in a while, is extremely ignorable. Hell, the federal government can and has easily ignored political gatherings that were much, much bigger.
The only way “the federal government” will notice it is if it is felt at the polls. And not in some nebulous, depends-on-how-you-look-at-it way, but in a way that cannot be ignored. Like the tea party pushing its candidates that carried its message, and even in places that they didn’t win, they managed to kick some established politicians out of their cushy positions.
Do that a few times and “the federal government” (as in the Congress) will sit up and take a note. Sit in a tent and refuse to move - good luck getting noticed by anyone except the pet press.
It is the scene of the crime. That is where the bankers destroyed the world economy and then allowed the taxpayers to make them whole again. Nice of them.
There are hundreds of sympathetic occupations around the world. You can not blanketly condemn them all. The one in Detroit has helped neighborhood businesses. Even gawkers who come down for a look stop for a drink and a meal. The bars have been very crowded. They will miss the occupation when it ends.
The police and the occupiers have not had trouble in Detroit. The police have barely had contact. But the camp has fed, clothed and provided medical care to the poor and homeless. That was not the mission, but they are trying to good, unlike the bankers who feel absolutely no public responsibility.
Yeah but annoying Wall Street isn’t quite deserving of a Constitutional protection of petitioning the government for redress of greivance, IMO.
Well I meant that more in a way that they are protected from conviction under the right to petition for redress, rather than a way that Washington must change course. THe government can’t ignore the fact they are doing it for that purpose, if I could be more succinct.
Petition? No, it has nothing to do with that at all; no political demonstration does. This is more in the nature of the free-speech and assembly parts of the First Amendment. Petitioning is something you do in a more official and indoorsy setting, with lawyers in tow.
Can you cite the SCOTUS ruling that supports your assertion in that first sentence? Because that’s what this thread is about.
The SCOTUS does not get to rule on the validity of political grievances as such.
SCOTUS made it possible.
Oh, is that what it’s all about? Because the #Occupiers themselves can seem to explain in coherent fashion what they’re protesting for, or against, or regarding. In fact, it mostly comes off as a protest against the general unfairness of life, which puts the entire moment at about the emotional level of a three-year-old that is told that he can’t have a cookie before dinner.
Look, there is value in protest and contrarianism and even “culture jamming”. When done well, such as the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, or the mid-'Sixties protest against American involvement in the Viet Nam conflict, or Kill Your Television. The culture-jamming “The Yes Men” are a brilliant way of bringing attention to the hypocracy of industries and government agencies who say one thing and do another. But a bunch of slobs “#Occupy”-ing various cities until people get sick of the mess, obstruction, and inconvenience aren’t brinigng attention to hypocracy and corporate dominance; like Critical Mass, they’re reinforcing in the minds of the general public the very need to assert control and restrict the expression of rights. What they do ends up being protest for protest sake rather than any effective campaign to develop public awareness and support.
Oh, and if you think “the seat of government is effectively on Wall Street”, whose fault is that? “Wall Street” (or Madison Avenue, or Hollywood, or any other bugaboo you care to name) can’t buy votes. It can purchase influence in the sense of marketing and advertising for favorable candidates, but the ultimate responsibility is with the mass electorate–which of course is happy to buy their sweatshop-manufactured goods from Wal-Mart, supersize their Big Mac Value Meal, and choke down pack after pack of Marlboro Lights. If you want to influence the mean of the population, the way to do so is not to obstruct their lifestyle (whether practically or by perception) but to persuade them that there is a better way that allows them to hold onto what they believe to be critical moral, spiritual, or patriotic values (like watching NASCAR on Memorial Day Weekend or celebrating Independence Day by shooting off pyrotechnics) while embracing your cause. Instead, we have a collection of morons at both extremes of the political spectrum blazing away with the same degree of maturity as witnessed by children on the playground, while anyone who expresses a degree of moderation and rational discussion being ridiculed and dismissed.
Stranger
And a park obstructs people using the park.
Of course it does, but that’s nowhere near the same level of importance and necessity as using the sidewalks, and there are plenty of bigger and better parks in Manhattan. And anyone who wants to “use” Zuccotti Park still can, if you can bear crowds, they’re not keeping anybody out.
And using my right to free speech in a paper hurts some people’s feelings.
I am by no means 100% behind the occupy movement but I am absolutely sure that when the words “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” were written something like the “Occupy” movement was exactly what they had in mind.
peaceably assemble in no way insinuates an occupation on public property. You are free to peaceably assemble on your own property until your face turns blue and the coroner arrives. The government cannot restrict this in any way shape or form as long as you don’t annoy the fuck out of your neighbor. then it’s not peaceably.
Gotta admit, doc, I don’t see where you’re going with this.
Kinda liked your second amendment comment before but, here we go, I’d have preferred it that you cite a little more even though the cryptic comments aren’t entirely bad. I’d just like you to lay out the relevant authorites and then give me the cryptic comments. It’s a little more fun for me that way.
I don’t think peacable assembly is limited to private property, but like I said before, it can’t be long term or else it needs to keep moving from one physical location to another.
Look, I’m not down there with Occupy Main Street, but I am sympathetic to their aims.
They got sold out; Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Citibank: they were all were bailed out and made whole and their brokers got huge bonuses. While most reasonable people can agree that there was plenty of blame to go around for the financial crises, we can also recognize that the firms peddling loan consolidation and their derivatives owns one of the biggest slices. Between the gambling with the world economy and the financialization of corporations (with its ensuing race to the bottom epitomized by outsourcing and the supremacy of short term profits), the financial institutions have a lot to answer for and the government doesn’t seem willing to ask the questions.
Meanwhile taxpayers are on the hook for huge debts in one way or another. Either we will have our retirements and health care benefits cut, or our taxes will be raised because of the huge debt we were asked to take on. Meanwhile, the banks are free to do it again; credit default swaps are still being traded behind closed doors, banks are too big to fail and are raising fees on the simplest of services to boot. We can’t borrow money, not unless we pay usurious rates (>20% interest on credit cards is shameful), and 1/6 of us meets the US definition of poverty. Funds are being cut from education, medicare, medicaid, S-chip, and all we hear of are talk of welfare queens and broadening the tax base while the financial entities that we bailed out their owners are paying the lowest tax rates in over 70 years. The tea party, supposedly against bailouts and subsidies of all types (including corporate?) didn’t help; in fact they seem to have been co-opted by the very forces that spawned them. Now the liberals, delayed in their anger by the hope that Obama represented, are now expressing their discontent and dissappointment that nothing has changed and hope is in vain.
What’s your problem? I say let them protest. How the fuck is it going to hurt this mess we are in? Who knows, maybe something will actually change.