So… what did any of them do besides “protest” (another useless and long-since co-opted tactic)? And what percentage of the time was spent sitting around in choir-sings convincing each other they were right? Pardon me, correct?
what would you have them do? Other than storm the buildings and drag the bankers out in the street to be strung up.
Protesting was a lot of it. marches. effective? Meh…we aren’t talking effective, we’re talking taking action. you said they said around and waited, that they didn’t do.
They did a lot of public education. For instance, they convinced an awful lot of people to move their banking from banks to local credit unions. The banks sure felt the effects, they would beg people not to move their money and often lock the doors as streams of people came in to do just that during a protest.
They came up with ideas to help the homeless and the poor and met with city officials about implementing those plans. They got some traction with some politicians…not so much with others.
They did quite a few things. Other than educating people about the problems they felt were important, most things weren’t very effective – but they made an effort. they gathered food and actually fed the homeless the city dumped on them.
Like I said before, it seemed to me the thing went off the rails still in the planning stages. the hope was (at the time) that once they finished ironing out all the details they would become a more political movement, actually putting people in office. They really wanted as many people involved as possible when putting together these ideas, and that was really their downfall. It took too long, too many unbalanced people had input and it all came apart.
I never saw any such choir sings. there were musicians who came out and played in the evenings some times. Saw that, but it was an end of the day entertainment kind of thing.
I bet that’s where the whole thing started to come off the rails. If there’s wasn’t a clear idea of what the group was dissatisfied with and protesting for, and there was an effort to “get everyone who was dissatisfied with the way things were going together”, then you end up with everyone from the post-college kids bitching about student debt vs. BBA degrees, hippies griping about factory farming, retirees griping about the banking scandal and finally loons bitching because they think the black helicopters should be painted pink.
The whole thing seemed… amateurish and clueless. Worse, to a great many outsiders, it seemed like a massive validation of what they suspected all along, which is that the Occupy movement failed because it was formed by knuckleheads bitching about not having jobs or money… who couldn’t even organize a protest properly.
I’m personally somewhat sympathetic- I don’t like the idea of wealth concentration at all, but I do have an issue with people racking up 100k of student loans getting a BBA in Medieval Poetry and then turning around and complaining that they don’t have a good job. Or people griping that things are somehow “wrong” without having a clear idea of what’s “right” or how to get there.
Ah… I see we envisioned different purposes for the movement. I saw it as a social dialogue, you were looking for a righteous uprising.
Would have been tough to pull off given that Occupiers could usually agree on what topics were of import but not on actual solutions. Sans a united front behind a singular message and backers with deep pockets, yeah, not much chance of a chance of social overthrow. And I’m okay with that. I’d like to think a lot of the people I interacted with did a fair amount of self reflection on what they really owed their fellow citizens/non-citizens/humanity in general. Wasn’t for me to decide that for them.
If that influenced some political leanings and votes more into alignment with mine, cool. I don’t really think formenting hate and demonstrating how to manufacture molotov cocktails at home would’ve been a winning philosophy. Gandhi and his followers had a set goal in mind. Independence for India. Occupy’s primary goal was to interject social inequities and concerns that had been overlooked for decades into the national consciousness.
If I felt we failed on that score, then yeah, the whole thing was a waste of time. But I don’t.
And speaking of blasts (pepper) from the past, spotted this news item today.
bdgr, I don’t doubt the sincerity of your comments nor (to a degree) that of the original and committed occupiers. Understand, we had/have a rabid Occupy believer in the family, who has since moved to Europe because the US sucks so badly. So I have a personal viewpoint as well as a historically informed and quasi-professional one.
But what I read just above is “flail, flail, flail” and that’s all I saw during the movement’s time of potential. “What would you have them do?” is just defensive whining, and “They did quite a few things” is just self-serving nonsense. All of those “things” are trivial, ephemeral and purely secondary effects. Anyone checked to see how many people moved there money back to the (often cheaper and more convenient) evil big banks? You might be surprised. Any college-kid ideas about “how to help the homeless and poor” actually implemented… and in any lasting way? I just read an article that NYC has the largest homeless population since the Depression… are you going to claim victory because it’s not larger?
No, violence was not necessary. But leadership, planning and listening to those who had experience and wisdom in those matters was. Unless I am a completely media-duped sheeple (checks… nope) those things weren’t just missing from the mix, but actively rejected and disdained.
And no, you can’t claim “the crazies” or “the unbalanced people” or organized labor or socialists or commies or the media or even some organized faction of the OnePercent. You had tens of thousands of intelligent, committed, willing and motivated members… who collectively decided that sitting around stroking each other’s egos and choosing a mass attitude of passive egalitarianism was the right tack.
Better luck next time. Unfortunately, Occupy fucked up any chance of “next time” for at least decade, if not most of a generation. These moments don’t come together often… and cannot be made to happen, as things like the G8 protests, Million Man March etc. prove.
I’ll give you it was amateurish. There were no paid staffers. No funded think tanks loaded with pHd’s handing down strategies weighted for psychological effect and maximum social pressure to their puppets. No purchasing of advertising market space or a recognizable media “face” to promulgate “THE” message.
Just a bunch of ordinary people- The homeless guys from under the railroad pass. Blue collar guys fed up with equity firms buying out their companies and laying off half the work force. Parents with kids in the service. The pizza delivery guy with emphysema. College kids frightened of a job “market” that didn’t exist.
Not a “professional” in the bunch. That would have cost money. I don’t think our “treasury” ever exceeded $5k, most of which was spent on signage, food and educational events like "Labor laws and employee rights.
I do not think Shodan’s mind will be changed on this topic. He’s not looking for answers, just confirmation of his biases.
“My oppression was worse than your oppression!”
What a sad little pissing contest.
Yes, it is pathetic to try and compare the oppression suffered by blacks in the. 60s to white 20somethings who find themselves unable to get jobs upon graduation.
He’s the one who stupidly implied that the police were tougher on the Occupiers than the police of the 60s were on the Civil Rights movement.
Bull Connor was laughing in his grave at this.
I should add this is not meant to mock those that genuinely were mistreated but claiming the Occupiers at times had it worse is like saying the Palestinians in the sweet Bank and Gaza have it worse than the Jews of WWII Europe.
It’s not stupid and insulting.
A Children’s Crusade, with the same level of success.
I’m not trying to defend anything. I’m not a member of occupy, I think it failed (for the most part) miserably.
What would you have them do is an honest question. You’ve said they just sat around, and that protest didn’t count etc. What would have counted? In an ideal situation, what could they have done that would have made a difference?
I never claimed there was a victory. Only that they did something other than sit around as you claimed.
well, not that I saw. I sat in on the early planning meetings before the dallas occupy (new York was underway) and they absolutely listened to older people who had been involved in protests going back to the 60’s. They did forgo leadership over a consensus model. It was an interesting experiment that failed.
Perhaps that’s what happened where you were. No, Organized labor or socialists or outside groups etc weren’t the problem. An organized effort by law enforcement crippled it for sure, but in the end I believe that there were just too many of the paranoid set for it to have any credibility. The smart people left and it became a consensus of the extremists. nothing got done after that.
And there was no collective decision to sit around and stroke each others egos, not that I saw. They put a lot of work into all the things I mentioned.
agreed.
Ah…it was late. my bad. No, didn’t see a lot of that either.
Nobody said that. Nor was it made up of of 20 somethings. There were as many middle age as 20 somethings. or all whites. The minority make up here pretty much reflected the population. And most of them had jobs.
Never said that either. And again, this isn’t the pit. no need for insults.
Your take based on what measurables Alessan? And characterizing the time and effort I and the people I met put in as a childish endeavor is obnoxiously patronizing.
Should be apparent in Amateur Barbarian and mine recollections not everyone who participated had the same goals. Some were satisfied, some ended up disappointed.
snip
Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That’s what I’m on about! 
Username + comment = thread winner?
lol
I’m sure the police doled out more pain and su ffering to the civil rights people in the 60s than they did to the Occupy protesters in the 2000s, but this in no way invalidates the pain and suffering of the Occupy protesters.
In short: “My groups oppression was WORSE than your group’s oppression!” may be true, but it still sounds kinda pathetic.
Your posts in this thread are getting a bit harsh for IMHO and more on par for the Pit. Let’s dial back the aggression and close insults.