Occupywallstreet
| Good [+2]Toggle ReplyLink» flo a répondu le Wed 9 Nov, 2011 @ 3:56pm |
 Coolness: 146275 | v.2-1: Dude, lay off the weed :)
My remarks were not addressed to you, rather to George and Bliss. So, indeed, "It's funny how voicing out an opinion makes people so damn susceptible". It seems to me that you're having a very distant and shallow look at the movement and its causes. I guess it's because of the image given by the media: always very partial and missing the main points. Nothing about the causes of the movement has been discussed by the media; the average people watching this on TV news just see "a bunch of unarticulated dirty hippies" or "a hive of utopists monopolizing the public space for no good reason". The "occupants" staying there are not doing so illegally, and provide a momentum for the movement, a lasting visibility and encouragement for themselves and millions of others worldwide. Why isn't this discussion on the internet? Because there's no global structure yet, and all similar discussions that have been occurring on the web for over 20 years were fragmented, all between very small groups of people, all with values and directions conflicting with others. The goal of this movement is to create such a global, distributed structure enabling such a discussion to go somewhere, for real. This means common values have to be defined and agreed upon, and then questions to be asked collectively, to which the discussion will try to provide answers. Before applying a solution, we need to agree on this solution. Before agreeing on a solution, we need to raise a problem. Before raising a problem, we need to agree on common values. Before collectively agreeing on something, we need to define a protocol. The protocol has been defined in the first days: daily General Assemblies, with direct democracy by semi-consensus voted on propositions, using amendments when required, and committees working on different tasks (local organization, online structuration, politics/economy/society/ecology/etc., communication...). The values are currently being defined, and first steps have already been approved. Problems and solutions have already been discussed, but nothing will really be efficiently done before the previous steps are achieved. This takes time, but it's the only way to democratically converge towards something almost everybody will accept and promote. All of this requires as many people as possible, which is why the "occupation" has to stay alive as long as possible, reminding people that something new and huge is happening. Getting your voice heard means that you take part in this democratic process. It's not about deciding to sleep at Square-Victoria or not; the movement is not just a gang of protesters sitting there and waiting to be given what they want. As mentioned in the New-York Times paper I posted above, there are no global visionaries for this messed-up system, and only patches are being applied, quickly and without considering the rest. The movement's purpose is precisely to replace this lack of global vision, by thinking collectively about what should and could be done to fix things so that most people are happy. Awakening people means that instead of arguing with themselves in front of their TV, people should try and educate themselves about what's going on, and discuss with others about the problems and their possible solutions. Most people have no idea as to how the political and economical systems work in Quebec, in Canada, in the US, in Europe, worldwide, etc. If you think you understand enough all of these mechanisms, if you are able to pinpoint the problems accurately, then please teach me. Then we'll be able to talk about solutions. |
| I'm feeling the flow right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy a répondu le Wed 9 Nov, 2011 @ 9:10pm |
 Coolness: 106065 | |
| I'm feeling bump right now.. | |
| Good [+2]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini a répondu le Thu 10 Nov, 2011 @ 7:06am |
 Coolness: 145150 | i think the general assembly process is impeding progress. One of the big problems with OWS is it's inability to first define a broad strategic goal and then to come to specific demands concerning how to achieve this then to formulate a plan of tactical agitation to realize these demands...
this process could look something like this first broad strategic goal: Smash the power of wallstreet second specific demands: 1) ban+tax speculation, preserve the social safety net, forgive student debt, create jobs (full employment at union pay scales) and a recovery. third tactical agitation: occupy the lobbies of the banks (branches and offices) and the front lawn of parliament, any time any committee in parliament meets to discuss cutting and gutting the social safety net (either federally or provincially) we send people to the headquarters of the MPs on the committee's office in their ridding to remind them whose interest they serve. We go to the minister of education's office and refuse to leave until we are given a hearing to discuss the possibility of forgiving at least some of the student debt. We go to the bank of canada and we set up tables and begin playing monopoly (i thought this was cute, get creative) and refuse to leave until someone see's us to discuss the purchase of bonds by the BoC from municipalities who wish to get going on infrastructure maintenance and indeed creation. Above all else keep the pressure up keep the media reporting on it try to get our ideas (demands) to be discussed in the halls of power. Keep growing the movement the question should be 'what are you doing for other people who have serious issues that they need help on, what are you doing for minorities, what are you doing for those in the armed forces, what are you doing for the elderly, what are you doing for organized labour, what are you doing for students?' The measure of a true revolutionary is his willingness to fight for other peoples demands, everybody wants to do 'their thing' their pet project. But this can't work, it can't be Me, Me, Me all the time, if you want other people to support your things then you got to support theirs and indeed fight for it. Real revolutionaries say 'give me power and i will do this, this and this' fakers, whiners, and wannabes dither. The problem with you guys in that park is that it's time for you to get up off your asses and do something, you've had the meet and greet part, and the 'wow this is cool part' and the 'we're so original' part. Now it's time for the 'make a plan' part and the 'let's execute this plan' part. What you seem to fail to realize is that this thing is bigger than you or me or any of us, this is the Mass Strike. And it comes and it goes, the question is whether in that intervening period we can make the changes that we need to survive as a civilization. i fear for our movement guys. |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» flo a répondu le Thu 10 Nov, 2011 @ 9:55am |
| Coolness: 146275 | I see good ideas here, but I fear that posting them on a rave forum won't change much in the system. When you criticize the movement you exclude yourself from it, but when you fear for it then you include yourself in it again.
The GAs are the only way to have most people agree on something and then do something. If you have another solution for discussing and executing your plan of actions, please tell me. This is everybody's movement, as long as they take the time and effort to get involved in it. You yourself have the power to bring forth your ideas and defend them so that they may come into application. I haven't set a foot at the camp for over a week now; I'm focusing my little free time on the internet workforce. I suggest (again) that you participate online if you don't have the time or will to get to the camp. |
| I'm feeling the flow right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» v.2-1 a répondu le Thu 10 Nov, 2011 @ 9:56am |
 Coolness: 159070 | It's all a bit hazy still for me but a little less after your response. Thank you Flo for a very articulate reply. :) |
| I'm feeling o.o right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» flo a répondu le Thu 10 Nov, 2011 @ 10:02am |
| Coolness: 146275 | I'm glad it helps :)
While you replied, I was trying to edit my previous reply to basdini to add this: I haven't set a foot at the camp for over a week now; I'm focusing my little free time on the internet workforce. I suggest (again) that you participate online if you don't have the time or will to get to the camp. I mean, you're acting as if the movement/camp was some sort of social privilege that is owed to you, to which you could make demands, while actually it is a self-organizing new structure which needs people like you getting involved in order to advance. We are not trying to make demands because we know they will most likely not be heard. This is not a usual protest, this is a workgroup of a new kind, trying to be proactive by first defining values and engagements, then trying to come up with ideas to transform passive demands into active deeds. |
| I'm feeling the flow right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy a répondu le Thu 10 Nov, 2011 @ 10:41am |
| Coolness: 106065 | Basdini standing up for organized labor... I'm impressed.
:D |
| I'm feeling bump right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» flo a répondu le Thu 10 Nov, 2011 @ 12:03pm |
| Coolness: 146275 | Once we get out of the stupid "left/right" labelling, discussion becomes more interesting :) |
| I'm feeling the flow right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Masa a répondu le Thu 10 Nov, 2011 @ 3:01pm |
 Coolness: 158720 | Originally Posted By FLO
Once we get out of the stupid "left/right" labelling, discussion becomes more interesting :) Word :D |
| I'm feeling chaotic! right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini a répondu le Fri 11 Nov, 2011 @ 6:34am |
| Coolness: 145150 | Originally Posted By FLO
Once we get out of the stupid "left/right" labelling, discussion becomes more interesting :) agreed, so let's have that discussion, as I have said many times I will fight side by side with any socialist who is willing to oppose the power of wallstreet... dr. T's suggestions for demands for canada: 1% Tobin tax on financial turnover ban CDS and CDO derivatives no cuts in social safety net nationalize the central bank (money supply, interest rates, approved categories of lending determined by parliament) 0% 50-100 year national credit for infrastructure - roads rails electrical grid, water canals public housing public bldgs aim for full employment at union wages news from anna out in oakland: [ www.sfgate.com ] |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy a répondu le Tue 15 Nov, 2011 @ 7:07pm |
| Coolness: 106065 | This Is What Revolution Looks Like
by Chris Hedges Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future. Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise. They think they can clean up “the mess”—always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke. Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional super committee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street. The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are “cathartic” and “entertaining,” as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end. The historian Crane Brinton in his book “Anatomy of a Revolution” laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton’s next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression. I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us. Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as the clearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obey orders, the old regime swiftly crumbles. When the aging East German dictator Erich Honecker was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig, the regime was finished. The same refusal to employ violence doomed the communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. I watched in December 1989 as the army general that the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended on to crush protests condemned him to death on Christmas Day. Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces to fire into crowds. The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through a rigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can be while wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies. The resignations of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s deputy, Sharon Cornu, and the mayor’s legal adviser and longtime friend, Dan Siegel, in protest over the clearing of the Oakland encampment are some of the first cracks in the edifice. “Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators,” Siegel tweeted after his resignation. There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew, as did the spectators, that I was woefully mismatched. Ringers, experienced boxers in need of a tuneup or a little practice, would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought, lie about their long professional fight records, and toy with us. Those fights became about something other than winning. They became about dignity and self-respect. You fought to say something about who you were as a human being. These bouts were punishing, physically brutal and demoralizing. You would get knocked down and stagger back up. You would reel backwards from a blow that felt like a cement block. You would taste the saltiness of your blood on your lips. Your vision would blur. Your ribs, the back of your neck and your abdomen would ache. Your legs would feel like lead. But the longer you held on, the more the crowd in the club turned in your favor. No one, even you, thought you could win. But then, every once in a while, the ringer would get overconfident. He would get careless. He would become a victim of his own hubris. And you would find deep within yourself some new burst of energy, some untapped strength and, with the fury of the dispossessed, bring him down. I have not put on a pair of boxing gloves for 30 years. But I felt this twinge of euphoria again in my stomach this morning, this utter certainty that the impossible is possible, this realization that the mighty will fall. [ www.truthdig.com ] |
| I'm feeling bump right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini a répondu le Wed 16 Nov, 2011 @ 11:42am |
| Coolness: 145150 | |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy a répondu le Wed 16 Nov, 2011 @ 6:39pm |
| Coolness: 106065 | A stones throw from martial law. |
| I'm feeling bump right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Holly_Golightly a répondu le Thu 17 Nov, 2011 @ 10:08pm |
 Coolness: 158685 | KRS-One picked up the mic! Mise À Jour » Holly_Golightly a écrit sur Fri 18 Nov, 2011 @ 3:25pm last night the movement was very much alive and there is way much more people than the first couple weeks in zuccotti park... we were thousands and thousands last night.. all kinds of people.. way much more diverse... many unions... etc.. krs-one was taking care of the ambiance for awhile.. people were meeting in the fed area just north of zuccotti park and the Brooklyn bridge.. some peeps lighted Manhattan buildings and it was like "fight club" style! hah i'mm put up some pics here.. |
| I'm feeling hitched right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» MattWood a répondu le Tue 22 Nov, 2011 @ 3:52pm |
 Coolness: 39330 | An important thing to remember: This movement is NOT against workers, or people who work hard to earn their success. There is a dangerous perception growing that OWS just wants to take money from working families and give it to lazy hippies and students with no direction in life. DESTROY THIS FUCKING IDEA.
Just because you exist doesn't mean you have a right to the same privileges as someone who works twice as hard as you. We don't want to eliminate the gap between rich and poor, we just want to reduce it. If you have to work 80 hours a week to support your family, that is fucked! We as a society can make life easier for everyone, it will just take some planning and serious discussion about how we spend our time and resources. Everyone has a right to the essentials of life. We need to fight to rid our system of corruption and corporate influence. But that doesn't mean that everyone has a right to drive a mercedes and live in a big fancy house. |
| I'm feeling focused right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Holly_Golightly a répondu le Tue 22 Nov, 2011 @ 4:19pm |
| Coolness: 158685 | a lots of people who have great money are pissed too! doesn't means you had success in this system that you don't think that the minimum should be reached for everybody: a roof, a meaningful job(self-realization), universal or affordable or equal services health care, human rights, right to affordable or universal education etc... |
| I'm feeling hitched right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini a répondu le Fri 25 Nov, 2011 @ 5:12am |
| Coolness: 145150 | i guess i see it different then you guys
the point of OWS for me was never social justice, rather it was about smashing the power of finance capital, specifically with regards to preventing wallstreet from ever forcing the gov. to give out more bailout money for what amounts to gambling debts (ie. derivative speculation), secondarily it was about the idea that the time has come to tax wallstreet on their turn over...hence the idea of a 1% sales tax on all financial transaction... i think a lot of people, especially on the left, believe that the answer to all our problems lies in simply taxing the rich more, it's not a terrible idea in and of it self, however it just doesn't get us that far in the grand scheme of things. You just can't get that much money from doing this...although it might satisfy us ideologically, there just isn't enough rich people to really make a difference...You have to go after the institutions (the investment banks and hedge funds) that's where the real money is. By some accounts a 1% sales tax on all securities could raise thirty trillion dollars a year there is no more budget crisis anymore if we do that, it's about stacking the deck a little more against the speculator, by banning certain practices (naked short selling, credit default swaps and other stuff) and taxing other kinds of speculation to discourage the speculators. The truth of the matter is that speculation is destroying our society so we need to move away from these casino economies and move back to the idea of production (producing goods for sale). We have to accept that the push towards a 'service economy' has led us to ruin, and that the idea of 'post industrial society' is absurd. anyway this is just some of my thinking these days... |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy a répondu le Fri 25 Nov, 2011 @ 9:25am |
| Coolness: 106065 | "Perhaps investors at major financial institutions should require that senior level managers submit to established tests to ensure they are not psychopathic. This is not an issue of civil liberties since the precedent has already been well established regarding drug impairment in the workplace. Likewise, it is not a regulatory issue since private shareholders have every right to demand that executives demonstrate they are not biochemically impaired and therefore unable to carry out their fiduciary duties on behalf of investors. If corporate boards are hiring psychopaths as executive management, they are not carrying out their due diligence and could be held legally liable for their oversight."
[ www.rave.ca ] |
| I'm feeling bump right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini a répondu le Sun 4 Dec, 2011 @ 6:26am |
| Coolness: 145150 | has anyone heard about this?
[ en.wikipedia.org ] [ en.wikipedia.org ] was this at use at GAs, what about in montreal? info please. |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Nuclear a répondu le Sun 4 Dec, 2011 @ 1:56pm |
 Coolness: 2603935 | |
| I'm feeling nuclear right now.. | |
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