Wall Street protesters: We're in for the long haul

[Grallon]

  Love the classic reactionary moves on display:

...

Mihali lad you're not surprised by any of this are you?  The establishment will do anything to protect its privileges.  When the killings start the game will really be on.  I can't wait! 




G.

[grumbler]

Wow, he really got you riled.

No need to get your panties in such a twist! 

[Neil]

...the entire genealogy of modern history, which is essentially the history of protest.

That's an overstatement.

Besides, you're up to the same old nonsense that the anti-capitalist left has consistently engaged in:  No matter how small and irrelevant, any display of public discontent means that the revolution is coming.

[Razgovory]

  Love the classic reactionary moves on display:

...

Mihali lad you're not surprised by any of this are you?  The establishment will do anything to protect its privileges.  When the killings start the game will really be on.  I can't wait! 




G.

You gonna give us a time frame?  This year, next year, what?

[garbon]

...the entire genealogy of modern history, which is essentially the history of protest.

That's an overstatement.

Besides, you're up to the same old nonsense that the anti-capitalist left has consistently engaged in:  No matter how small and irrelevant, any display of public discontent means that the revolution is coming.

Yeah on both counts.

[garbon]

http://news.yahoo.com/oakland-prepares-occupy-movement-epicenter-074025064.html

Oakland hopes to become the epicenter of Occupy Wall Street movement Wednesday as local organizers, labor unions and advocacy groups called for marches, pickets outside banks, school shutdowns and an attempt to close the nation's fifth-busiest port.

Occupy Oakland participants, elected officials and business leaders expressed optimism that the widely anticipated "general strike" would be a peaceful and even unifying event for a city that last week became a rallying point after police used tear gas to clear an encampment outside City Hall and then clashed with protesters in the street.

"We are expecting the marches and demonstrations to remain peaceful, and the police department's and the city's role is to facilitate that process," city spokesman Karen Boyd said. "We have done that many times in the past. We've seen many, many instances of peaceful protests, peaceful expressions."

Along with protesting financial institutions that many within the broader Occupy Wall Street movement blame for high unemployment and the foreclosure crisis, supporters of the Oakland events are convening around grievances such as local school closures, waning union benefits and cuts to social services.

Demonstrators in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia said they planned to hold solidarity actions Wednesday.

The day's events in Oakland are expected to begin at 9 a.m., when the first of three rallies scheduled by strike organizers is supposed to kick off downtown. The activities are expected to culminate with a march to the Port of Oakland, where local protesters said the goal would be to stop work there in time for the 7 p.m. evening shift.

Organizers say they want to halt "the flow of capital" at the port, a major point of entry for Chinese exports to the U.S.

Union members could recognize the Occupy demonstration as a picket line and refuse to cross it on Wednesday night, said Stan Woods, a spokesman for the longshoremen's union in Oakland.

Other demonstrators, some affiliated with established community groups, said they planned to target banks that do not close for the day, convene a dancing flash mob, sponsor music and street parties, march with elderly residents and people with disabilities to the California state office building, hold youth teach-ins and takeover foreclosed homes and vacant city buildings.

Because of the activities' free-flowing and therefore unpredictable nature, city leaders said they had no idea how many people would take part or how much a disruption they could pose to residents' and workers' daily routines. Boyd said the government "will be open for business as usual" and was encouraging businesses to do the same.

But the president of the police officers' union said he was worried officers were being scapegoated by Mayor Jean Quan and "set to fail" if Wednesday's actions got unruly. "We're going to be seen as the establishment, and it's not fair to the police, it's not fair to anyone," Oakland Police Officer's Association President Sgt. Dom Arotzarena told The Associated Press.

On Oct. 25, police acting at the request of the city's administrator, who reports to the mayor, were asked to clear the protesters' campsite during an early morning raid. A confrontation with marchers protesting the raid followed that night, and an Iraq War veteran suffered a fractured skull and brain injury when officers moved in with tear gas, flash grenades and beanbag projectiles.

Quan allowed protesters to reclaim the plaza outside City Hall the next day. At least six dozen tents and a kitchen buzzing with donated food have been erected on the spot since then, while the crackdown has galvanized anti-Wall Street events elsewhere and made politicians in other cities think again about interfering with their local encampments.

Occupy LA, a monthlong 475-tent encampment around Los Angeles City Hall, is planning a 5:30 p.m. march and rally through downtown LA's financial district to express solidarity with the Oakland general strike and to protest police brutality.

"It was obvious to the entire world that the acts perpetrated against Oakland occupation were acts of police brutality," said Julia Wallace, spokeswoman for the Committee to End Police Brutality at Occupy LA.

In San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed a resolution calling on Mayor Ed Lee to allow the Occupy Wall Street protesters to remain in a tent city near the historic ferry terminal, an area frequented by commuters and tourists.

"We need to have a government that is truly accountable to the 99 percent, so I wholeheartedly support the movement," said Supervisor John Avalos, who drafted the nonbinding resolution that also calls on city police to avoid clashes with the protesters.

Quan said in a statement Tuesday that she was working with interim Police Chief Howard Jordan to ensure that the protesters issues remain "front and center" on Wednesday.

"The pro-99 percent activists — whose cause I support — will have the freedom to get their message across without the conflict that marred last week's events," Quan said.

Unions representing city government workers, Oakland's public school teachers, community college instructors, and University of California, Berkeley teaching assistants all have endorsed the daylong work stoppage and encouraged their members to participate.

"It's sort of a realization that a lot of people are having that we've all been fighting our own issues, but really, it's all related, it's all the same issue," Oakland Education Association Secretary Steve Neat said.

The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce released an open letter to the mayor Tuesday in which President Joseph Haraburda expressed concern for "the mothers and children, and even grandmothers, who plan to come to Oakland to conduct their regular business" and for business owners who "must face a day of uncertainty" if they do not close for the strike.

"We want to be clear, should Wednesday's planned protests go awry, someone will need to be held accountable," Haraburda said.

Manhattan is too tame for its own "good"?

[Valmy]

  Love the classic reactionary moves on display:

Attempt to discredit the protestors for not being authentic representatives of the working class, even though the interests of the working class should be fought at every juncture unless they can be co-opted into right-wing politics;

Assert the incoherence of the protestors' claims, while the status quo, especially in finance, is outrageously incoherent and deliberately incomprehensible;

Launch personal attacks on the supposed lifestyles or backgrounds of the protestors, without a shred of credible evidence (even when that evidence wouldn't bear on any relevant issue);

Or just make frivolous ripostes and word play about "occupying" in the "let them eat cake" vein;

Or, finally, just attack the notion of protest itself as stupid and impractical, and deny the entire genealogy of modern history, which is essentially the history of protest.

It is really down to a science.  They did the same thing to the Tea Party protests.  This is the gameplan no matter how justified or non-justified a public protest is.

I do sorta like the insistance that the protest have a solution to all the problems which is a pretty tall order when the most brilliant and educated minds on the planet cannot even agree on one.

[Malthus]

It is really down to a science.  They did the same thing to the Tea Party protests.  This is the gameplan no matter how justified or non-justified a public protest is.

I do sorta like the insistance that the protest have a solution to all the problems which is a pretty tall order when the most brilliant and educated minds on the planet cannot even agree on one.

The problem is that a reaction of "we're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore" really isn't that useful, informative or significant - whether from the right or the left.

It isn't like there is any obvious thing anyone could do to make things better.

Protests work when there is an actual injustice being protested against - like Martin Luther King protesting against segregation. You can make the protesters happy by removing the injustice of segregation, so the issues are reasonably clear-cut. How exactly can you make the tea partiers or occupiers happy? Not screw up the economy or environment? Well, that would be a good idea, but to put it mildly opinions differ as to how to go about doing that.

[Valmy]

The problem is that a reaction of "we're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore" really isn't that useful, informative or significant - whether from the right or the left.

It isn't like there is any obvious thing anyone could do to make things better.

Protests work when there is an actual injustice being protested against - like Martin Luther King protesting against segregation. You can make the protesters happy by removing the injustice of segregation, so the issues are reasonably clear-cut. How exactly can you make the tea partiers or occupiers happy? Not screw up the economy or environment? Well, that would be a good idea, but to put it mildly opinions differ as to how to go about doing that.

I guess I have to disagree emphatically.  Certainly a protest that does have a specific agenda is much more useful, by several degrees of magnitude.  But a protest bringing attention to serious problems are absolutely needed  as well.  The elites can sometimes get pretty isolated in their ivory towers, it never hurts to shake them up a bit.  Know that the plebs are restless.

[Malthus]

I guess I have to disagree emphatically.  Certainly a protest that does have a specific agenda is much more useful, by several degrees of magnitude.  But a protest bringing attention to serious problems are absolutely needed  as well.  The elites can sometimes get pretty isolated in their ivory towers, it never hurts to shake them up a bit.  Know that the plebs are restless.

I disagree. Below the cyclic fluctuations of the market, the basic structural problems here are three-fold:

1. The increasing division of 1st world societies into haves and have-nots;

2. The thrust from below of nations wishing to obtain 1st world status for themselves, like China and India; and

3. Problems with the environment, over-use of resources, etc. (we just passed the 7 billion mark)

Problem is that these issues are inter-related in various ways: for example, adressing the desire of China and India to obtain first world status is gonna make the environmental issues worse - and there is little we can do about that. The fact that many are feeling the pinch from a down-turn just scratches the surface of the hard issues facing us, and simple acknowledgement of the fact that many are unhappy isn't really all that helpful. Chances are many more are going to be unhappy in the future, as there is no choice that can possibly make everyone happy.

To give but an example: make the 99%ers happy by decreasing social inequity would require an increase in socialist measures, which in turn would require an increase in government power, which is absolutely certain to drive the Tea Partiers nuts with rage. Make the Tea Partiers happy by increasing protectionism and you piss off China and India (as well as screwing the economy further). Increase productivity for everyone, and you degrade the environment. An so on and so forth.

So, who to make hapopy? Those who protest the loudest?

[Valmy]

So, who to make hapopy? Those who protest the loudest?

The reaction to every protest does not need to be simply to cave.  The point is to add urgency to solving societies problems.  Recognizing it is not simply the interest group who lobbies the most that needs attention but also the protest that protests the loudest.

[The Minsky Moment]

You gonna give us a time frame?  This year, next year, what?

grallon is too clever to become the Harold Camping of languish. The rapture is always just around the corner.

[Malthus]

So, who to make hapopy? Those who protest the loudest?

The reaction to every protest does not need to be simply to cave.  The point is to add urgency to solving societies problems.  Recognizing it is not simply the interest group who lobbies the most that needs attention but also the protest that protests the loudest.

Hence back to the first point: as lobbying, mass protest of the "occupy" sort is not particularly effective, because as you yourself note, it is easy to dismiss as incoherent, the work of professional dumpster-divers, etc. etc. - basically, the "reactionary reasons".

You may say that this is unfair and that these are voices that need hearing, but life has no obligation to be fair. In the competition of ideas, the inarticulate are at a disadvantage.

[Valmy]

Hence back to the first point: as lobbying, mass protest of the "occupy" sort is not particularly effective, because as you yourself note, it is easy to dismiss as incoherent, the work of professional dumpster-divers, etc. etc. - basically, the "reactionary reasons".

Heh.  I think the past few years have shown that, contrary to what I would have thought, it is pretty effective.

You may say that this is unfair and that these are voices that need hearing, but life has no obligation to be fair. In the competition of ideas, the inarticulate are at a disadvantage.

I have no idea what you are babbling about.  When have I said anything about fairness?  I am just reflecting on what has been going on and the results I have been seeing.

[Malthus]

Heh.  I think the past few years have shown that, contrary to what I would have thought, it is pretty effective.

Really? What effect has street protest had in actually changing anything over the last few years?

I have no idea what you are babbling about.  When have I said anything about fairness?  I am just reflecting on what has been going on and the results I have been seeing.

The "you may say" phrase is intended as a rhetorical response (hence the "you may say" rather than "you have said"). I do not mean to state you have actually said it.