Wall St protest gaining strengh?

[Sutter Cane]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

Interesting thing to me (aside from the substantive) is the superficial idea of protesting being seen as cool again. There is a generational shift going on. Gen-Xers generally looked on baby boomers with cynicism for allowing their 60's idealism to be corrupted, and generally took a detached, ironic view of political involvement. The were helped along in this by a popular media in the 80's that painted the 60's and hippies as uncool (see David Sirota's book Back to Our Future for a discussion of this, I think it has been mentioned here before). The fact that boomers outnumbered Gen-Xers also contributed to a fatalistic outlook.

But for those in their teens and twenties today, enough time has elapsed that I don't think derisively labeling somebody as a hippie is going to have the same effect anymore - might as well try to dismiss them by calling them a flapper or a beatnik. Another factor is that music right now is tired and boring - in the 90's rock and roll or punk rock could still scandalize grown ups, whereas today it does not drive the culture and only the most uptight puritan still gets worried about it.

If going to anti-bankster protests becomes for bored young people in the 2010's what starting a band was in the 1990's - a way to express oneself, attract the attention of the opposite sex, do something a little dangerous, maybe piss off some authority figures - then this could have legs. This may sound trite, but politics aside, a big reason for the success of protests in the 60's was the idea that fighting the system was cool and that it was a good angle for a young man to meet women and get laid.

[mesyn191]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

But for those in their teens and twenties today, enough time has elapsed that I don't think derisively labeling somebody as a hippie is going to have the same effect anymore .

I can't speak for everyone but IME hippies are still looked down upon by most for the reason you already mentioned. There are protesters trying to organize and dissuade people from projecting a hippie image in front the cameras because of this. I don't think that is working out very well since the protesters are disorganized to say the least but the effort is being made by some. People hate the banks and Wall St. in general so much right now that they're willing to overlook that for now, but if the protest is to grow its going to have to ditch the hippie image.

[aaron]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

I was thinking of going downtown to Seattle yesterday, but truthfully, I got scared. When police say they are "ready", etc. I feel like it is not worth it. I guess I already hung my balls up in the cabinet. They will come down when I am unemployed and I have something to lose.

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/ar...st-2187415.php

"Protest spokesman Patrick Bruner criticized the police response as "exceedingly violent" and said the demonstrators sought to remain peaceful."

[lektrode]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

I know that they were two different events, but the were the same day - linked on purpose. The march at UMass in Dorchester didn't make the front page of the USA Today. This is something different.

methinks we need dave stratman to weigh in on this one?
(and this is my way of a compliment to dave)

[reggie]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

Provocateur organisations hitting the streets.

Anyone bother to research the financial backers of this?

In their younger days, acquaintainces in Sacramento used to relish these events, as they got first class plane tix and a 5-star hotel to the "event", and all they had to do was carry a sign and bashing-in a few windows.

I don't recall all the details, but I think it was the former Mayor (or perhaps it was their chief of police) of Seattle's WTO protests who wrote a book spilling the beans about that tragedy.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

New York City officials "thought we were going to leave and we haven't," 19-year-old Kira Moyer-Sims of Portland, Ore., said. "We're going to stay as long as we can."

This is grassroots?

[Slimprofits]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

I know that they were two different events, but the were the same day - linked on purpose. The march at UMass in Dorchester didn't make the front page of the USA Today. This is something different.

Maybe not, but you can bet your ass those protest cages did in 2004. So what? What is different this time?

With all due respect, you sound like someone that actually thinks a few hundred college kids camping in a downtown park in USA 2011 is going to change anything. Why, because the Bullhorn is forced to acknowledge that they exist? On this one subject and one subject only, you seem a bit naive.

[flintlock]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

I'm afraid this whole protest will get twisted into a "blame the rich/ class warfare" thing and end up completely missing the point. "Rich" being anyone who makes more than the protester of course.

People like nice snappy, simplistic, things to protest. "Blame the rich" is a lot simpler concept to understand than "blame the crony capitalist, Federal reserve, etc."

Most sound bites I'm hearing on the radio today go along the lines of this. " If the rich would just pay more taxes, all would be well." If it were only that simple.

[Raz]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
pure unadultered BS Propaganda from Hizonah...
The Bottom Line?

bloomberg is only worried that this 'little movement' might succeed in taking a whack at and chunk out of _his_ action there in lower manhattan!

HILARIOUS!



and oh yeah baybee, and am i pert near GD sick of listening to/reading _that_ salt in the wound of my cratered income...
WHOS HE MEAN "we... all share blame for taking on too much risk" ?

'we' who leveraged BILLIONS ON BAD DERIVITIVE BETS?
'we' who wrote counterparty risk contracts they neither had the capital, nor the legal basis to even write the paper for and then lost yet more billions, soon to be TRILLIONS of debt transfered to The Rest of US?

HOW ABOUT 'we' WHO GOT PAID BILLIONS TO GUT AND SELL OFF THE PRODUCTIVE ECONOMY, got paid billions for that, then lost trillions of OUR money making stupid/greedy bets that it would continue to infinity and _then_ at the brink of bankuptcy, gets bailed out by The Rest of US, and altho they pert near LOST EVERYTHING, the very next year, PAID THEMSELVES YET MORE BILLIONS, for having 'saved the system' ?

is that the 'we' yer talkin about?

FU bloomberg!


how about the We The People who, thru the 'great boom' of the 2000's _didnt_ live beyond our means...
or how about the We The People who _didnt_ buy too much house,
or how about the We The People who _didnt_ wind up our credit cards...
or how about the We The People who _didnt_ buy too much car...

and how about WE the people who actually DONT SPEND more than we make and sacrifice, scrimp, do without some/alotof lifes everyday niceties, never mind necessities, so we might have a _brighter_ future and so we _save_ some of our hard earned _wages_ and then we get the INSULT ON TOP OF INJURY by the banks paying us 0.01% on a 'savings' account?

while ZIRP _steals_ our capital right out the same accounts you bastards are supposed to be holding for 'safe keeping' ???

HUH!!!?

what? we the backbone of the productive economy are supposed to feel sorry for the harried financial services 50grand/year people, while their billionaire employers, aka yer buddies, offer to pay a smidge more to assuage some fawned/faux guilt trip?



what an A---ole, i cant believe he had the balls to make that statement....

methinks we might yet see an 'Occupy the financial district near you' movement goin and thats what ole bloomy is _really_ worried about - why - GASP!!!!
we might even see the return of Populist Politix, american style
i just hope they (we) can keep it going till next november, since thats what it'll really take to have any real effect, wot?

Don't hold back, lecktrode - tell us how you really feel!

[dcarrigg]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

Maybe not, but you can bet your ass those protest cages did in 2004. So what? What is different this time?

With all due respect, you sound like someone that actually thinks a few hundred college kids camping in a downtown park in USA 2011 is going to change anything. Why, because the Bullhorn is forced to acknowledge that they exist? On this one subject and one subject only, you seem a bit naive.

You may be right. [Ed. you probably are] I'll concede that readily [Ed. I'm a sucker for encouraging people who are arguing for what I see to be solutions]. But it seems to me that they're diagnosing the problem right even if they don't have a prescription.

And they are developing one. And the top few items make sense. And they poll well with conservatives and progressives.

These kids may not be a silly and dismiss-able as you think if their demands align with public opinion.

That is to say, assuming that everything is to be taken with a grain of salt, and always acknowledging that it is always likely that nothing will change, why be discouraging towards the group?

[Ed. This doesn't mean I make any solid prediction - never mind a bet - on the chances of success for change. It just means that I encourage the action. I do hope that you see the difference. I also hope that they make a difference. I don't think that these concepts are maligned. I also don't think that meme-management is anywhere near predictable in a chaotic/complex system. It will take - hit the right initial conditions and bifurcation points - or it will not. I believe that none of this is controllable. I also believe that all of it is effected by our actions. Hence mine. To put the concept more simply, a combination of data and raw instinct led me to iTulip in 2007. If it were not for that, I would be poorer as a result. The data looks bad now - only 55% of civilians 16 to 29 are employed here - GINI index is approaching .5. At 45% employment and .55 GINI social science predicts serious unrest. How can I assume that this is happening in a vacuum with any confidence? How can I assume that this is the batte for Seattle 2.0? Who among us knows what lurks in fat tails? Who among us would not want a democratic political solution to emerge before the greater crisis hits?]

[dcarrigg]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

I'm afraid this whole protest will get twisted into a "blame the rich/ class warfare" thing and end up completely missing the point. "Rich" being anyone who makes more than the protester of course.

People like nice snappy, simplistic, things to protest. "Blame the rich" is a lot simpler concept to understand than "blame the crony capitalist, Federal reserve, etc."

Most sound bites I'm hearing on the radio today go along the lines of this. " If the rich would just pay more taxes, all would be well." If it were only that simple.

The bullhorn will slant whatever it wants. Look at their list of demands for congress. It doesn't seem so out of whack to me.

Of course, you may be right too. Maybe it will get twisted that way. That's tired and tried and has been done before.

Also, apparently some of them are aware of the possibility you put forth.

Please do me a simple favor and: Listen to this. Fastforward to 4:00.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

http://williamhogeland.wordpress.com...nance-protest/

as for the lack of an agenda...

“The Tea Party, meanwhile, has taken up founding economic issues from a right-wing point of view, associating itself with the upper-middle-class Boston patriots (often mistaken for populist democrats) who led a movement against overrreaching British trade acts in the 1760′s and were important to the impulse toward American independence. I’ve written fairly extensively about where and how I think the Tea Party goes wrong on the history of the founding period. But at least they’re framing their objections to current policy, and framing the historical roots of their ideas, not mainly in cultural but in economic terms.
“Like it or not, though, it is Occupy Wall Street that has the most in common, ideologically, not with those Boston merchants and their supporters but with the less well-known, less comfortably acknowledged people who, throughout the founding period, cogently proposed and vigorously agitated for an entirely different approach to finance and monetary policy than that carried forward by the famous founders. Amid horrible depressions and foreclosure crises, from the 1750′s through the 1790′s, ordinary people closed debt courts, rescued debt prisoners, waylaid process servers, boycotted foreclosure actions, etc. (More on that here and here.) They were legally barred from voting and holding office, since they didn’t have enough property, so they used their power of intimidation to pressure their legislatures for debt relief and popular monetary policies. Their few leaders in legit politics included the visionary preacher Herman Husband, the weaver William Findley, and the farmer Robert Whitehill.
“They had high hopes for American independence. In the 1770′s, their “out-of-doors” collaboration with the famous elites was critical to enabling the Declaration of Independence — even though none of their names appears there (well, Benjamin Rush’s does, but by then he’d become unradicalized). Their democratic, egalitarian hopes dashed, in the 1780′s, in western Massachusetts, they marched on the state’s armory in Springfield to reverse regressive finance policies that had again plunged ordinary people into debt peonage and foreclosure while bailing out rich creditors (elites called that populist action, reductively, Shays’s Rebellion). In the 1790′s, with the Constitution in force, and Hamilton’s economics the law of a powerful new nation (partly in direct reaction to the Shays action), populists took over the militia and debt-court system throughout western Pennsylvania and western counties of neighboring states, flew their own flag, and tried to secede from the United States and form an economically egalitarian country. Hamilton dubbed that action, again in a successful effort to reduce it, the Whiskey Rebellion, and he and President Washington responded, naturally enough, by occupying western Pennsylvania with federal troops.
“It is my possibly vain hope that reading up on such historical matters might inspire efforts like Occupy Wall Street to greater cogency and a deeper, more solid foundation in longstanding (if embattled and problematic) American values than they now seem to possess. You don’t have to look as late as the 19th-century Populists and the 1930′s labor movement, for example, to find an American left deeply immersed in both economic issues and an ambitious vision of a better country. Those things were present at the creation.”

[Sutter Cane]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

Great history in that article, but still the same criticisms I've seen in a lot of other places. I find it interesting how a lot of the criticism of OWS centers on there not being leaders or a clear list of demands. It seems to me like the lack of leaders is one of the strengths.

As for the lack of clear-cut demands or a manifesto - people are pissed, and are demonstrating on Wall Street. You have to have a sort of willful blindness for your reaction to be "My, whatever are these people going on about? I can't possibly understand why they are angry unless they better articulate their concerns!"

If you yell at your dog when it poops on the rug, it knows it did bad, even if it doesn't speak your language.

[Kadriana]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

I think tomorrow is going to be a big determination on whether or not this movement takes off. The unions and college students are suppose to participate and I'm curious if many them do show up. There seem to be a lot of local rallies popping up too.

[lektrode]

Re: Wall St protest gaining strengh?

Don't hold back, lecktrode - tell us how you really feel!

i would, but fred would get pissed...