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The Warszawa posted:For better or for worse, the leaderless format combined left traditional media with a problem in reporting the beliefs of OWS, because they were unable to figure out who could really represent the views of the protesters. They had the impression they gleaned from hearing a bunch of things thrown out there, but there was no apparent mechanism to filter whose interview would yield a reliable profile. The worst case scenario (and arguably the most likely one) is that they would have picked some random person and wound up effectively appointing them Occupier in Chief, which probably would have been fine for the movement overall if it had been someone whose core issues were bank deregulation and growing inequality or political corruption and an unresponsive system, but probably would have been pretty damaging if they picked Joe Chemtrail as the de facto spokesman. That's probably a really good summation of the movement.
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May 1, 2014 01:50
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edit: poo poo wrong thread
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May 1, 2014 02:07
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ColoradoCleric posted:OWS had some big issues with capitalism being potentially undemocratic. Every single thing OWS has touched has been a loving train wreck. If people want an OWS thread, they can start one. I'm not making an arguement against OWS, I'm arguing against this thread turning into an OWS thread. Pohl fucked around with this message at 02:57 on May 1, 2014 |
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May 1, 2014 02:53
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ColoradoCleric posted:OWS had some big issues with capitalism being potentially undemocratic. How so? OWS was a bunch of people who shared a political position. They wanted other people to agree or vote accordingly. So they set up a demonstration and some outreach. Ultimately, they didn't shift an election. This seems like democracy-in-action. These people are guaranteed a right to vote, and the chance to try and convince other people. But democracy doesn’t (and can't) guarantee a few thousand people the right to win elections. Especially when those few-thousand are taking a position like, "The 90%+ people who vote for a mainstream party are wrong: All those guys are fundamentally wrong and should be removed."
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May 1, 2014 03:20
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Mornacale posted:Ah, okay, well in that case could you suggest something that Occupy would not have been vilified and assaulted for pursuing, if only they gave it as a single unified goal? The Democrats are similarly "vilified and assaulted" for their beliefs and goals. Communists and Libertarians are also constantly "vilified and assaulted" for their beliefs and goals. Liberals, Marxists and every political group in a country with any meaningful degree of freedom of the press and freedom of speech are constantly being are and will be "vilified and assaulted" for their beliefs and goals. And every single political group believes the media is out to get them. Being are "vilified and assaulted" is a part of politics regardless of your political ideology. As long as you are in politics, you will be vilified and assaulted and you guys need to stop being pussies about it. The only circumstance when this isn't true is when you can shut down every newspaper which criticizes your political party and nobody wants that. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. quote:It is impossible for the working class to attain power solely by operating within a system that was designed by the aristocracy in order to benefit the aristocracy. Also, pursuing a successful working class movement is not as simple as a majority of the country recognizing that they share a class interest, because it is also a non-trivial challenge to convince people that change is possible, to actually organize despite political pressure, and then to actually win victory in the face of violence. These two sentences are perfectly consistent and do not represent moving goalposts at all. And no poo poo this is a non-trivial challenge, and it shouldn't be anything but. quote:No, Ardennes is saying that OWS was disinterested in skin-deep appeals to conservative "respectability," any more than Tea Party members are concerned that Democrats think they're crazy people. Movements don't have to "care" about being popular, either they're centered on the public or they aren't.
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May 1, 2014 06:13
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huskarl_marx posted:It was far better for OWS to die in its crib than to creep on as merely another political party in the predatory system we find ourselves enshrouded in. I and everyone with money applaud your zeal at self-marginaizliation
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May 1, 2014 06:15
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Typo posted:The Republicans are "vilified and assaulted" for their beliefs and goals. Again, I'm not sure we're living in the same country or even using the same definitions of words at this point. Having political cartoons drawn about you is not being vilified. I'm not even sure what you're thinking when you say that either main party is constantly assaulted for their beliefs and goals because literally there's no definition of "assault" that would apply to the Republicans or the Democrats.  Here's a little thought exercise for ya, next time either of the main parties has a convention check to see if the people being kicked in the head by the police are inside of the convention center or on the streets outside of it
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May 1, 2014 06:43
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Typo posted:The Republicans are "vilified and assaulted" for their beliefs and goals. Please, when was the last time mainstream Republicans and Democrats had to face government-approved violence in response to political speech? Anyway, you're clearly not arguing about my actual point in your zeal to try to poo poo on Occupy for ideological reasons (see the other half of your double-post where you lump yourself in with "everyone with money"), so this will be my last response to you. e because I missed this: Typo posted:TIL: A "popular leftist movement" don't have to care about being "popular" The word "popular", when applied to a political movement, does not mean the same thing as it does in high school. It refers to a movement that is made of and concerned with the body of the populace, as opposed to favoring elites. Mornacale fucked around with this message at 06:48 on May 1, 2014 |
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May 1, 2014 06:45
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Kid Gloves posted:Again, I'm not sure we're living in the same country or even using the same definitions of words at this point. Having political cartoons drawn about you is not being vilified. I'm not even sure what you're thinking when you say that either main party is constantly assaulted for their beliefs and goals because literally there's no definition of "assault" that would apply to the Republicans or the Democrats. Do you think police brutality hurt the OWS movement?
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May 1, 2014 13:46
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Mornacale posted:The word "popular", when applied to a political movement, does not mean the same thing as it does in high school. It refers to a movement that is made of and concerned with the body of the populace, as opposed to favoring elites. Though typically it has to have an appreciable amount of the populace, not just "we're really the silent majority" poo poo.
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May 1, 2014 13:49
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Ardennes posted:Usually discussions of OWS get especially silly when you hear people complaining people should have worn suits and it was the drum circles that killed it. I think there is a realization that something is going wrong by some of them, but there is very chance of them coming up with new answers. I just love (I mean hate) when liberals than go on about how leftists ruined the moment. That OWS was the one chance to get reform enacted and we wasted it and it's all our faults that the Democrats and Republicans ate working together to cut social programs and not go after the banks. If only we had just blindly supported the Democrats, [insert villain of the week] wouldn't have won.
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May 1, 2014 15:23
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KomradeX posted:I just love (I mean hate) when liberals than go on about how leftists ruined the moment. That OWS was the one chance to get reform enacted and we wasted it and it's all our faults that the Democrats and Republicans ate working together to cut social programs and not go after the banks. If only we had just blindly supported the Democrats, [insert villain of the week] wouldn't have won. That's a pretty sweet generalization, dude. Liberal = Democrat is one of the worst myths of our generation.
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May 1, 2014 15:25
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anonumos posted:That's a pretty sweet generalization, dude. Liberal = Democrat is one of the worst myths of our generation. That's true, you could always be David Brooks.
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May 1, 2014 15:34
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asdf32 posted:Do you think police brutality hurt the OWS movement? Police brutality generally hurts, yes.
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May 1, 2014 15:41
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asdf32 posted:Do you think police brutality hurt the OWS movement? If it didn't work at diffusing street action, cops would stay the hell home. And when you're out there as I was, harassment and dogs and bomb-detection isn't galvanizing, it's just harrassment.
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May 1, 2014 16:03
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asdf32 posted:Do you think police brutality hurt the OWS movement? It's hard to say. That one video that came out early on showing a college-age girl getting pepper sprayed for no apparent reason certainly raised public support for the movement, but there's also an unknown and extremely difficult to calculate chilling effect associated with it -- how many people who wanted to participate in the protest were afraid of the police's seemingly random acts of violence? How many weren't afraid of getting hurt by the police, but would be ruined by legal/medical fees if they were targeted by police with frivolous fines or violence? Besides, the point you're making is completely outside the scope of Kid Gloves' argument.
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May 1, 2014 17:44
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Heavy neutrino posted:It's hard to say. That one video that came out early on showing a college-age girl getting pepper sprayed for no apparent reason certainly raised public support for the movement, but there's also an unknown and extremely difficult to calculate chilling effect associated with it -- how many people who wanted to participate in the protest were afraid of the police's seemingly random acts of violence? How many weren't afraid of getting hurt by the police, but would be ruined by legal/medical fees if they were targeted by police with frivolous fines or violence? I tend to think police brutality didn't hurt the movement. Though I guess if it was completely dependent on actually physically occupying public space, and the police effectively inhibited this, then yeah, maybe it hurt them. Though this would be yet more evidence for just how weak they were if that's all the movement was. Generally I don't think the actual impact of police brutality outweighs the benefits of the publicity in this case. The point is that if it didn't actually hurt the movement then you can't use it as a reason for why OWS failed. You can use it as support for "see everyone hates us!" - but everyone already agrees with that.
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May 1, 2014 17:51
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I'm still not sure why people think OWS failed. It might not have produced any immediate changes, but it's still being discussed today, its themes and rhetoric are still being used today, and New York currently has a decently left-wing mayor who's done quite a bit of good for the city's most vulnerable. Minimum wage workers going on strike directly referenced OWS and cited some of its rhetoric, and now many states, cities as well as the federal government are either working on or have already passed a raise in the minimum wage. The way I see it, it shifted popular attitudes regarding the ruling elites -- financial and political -- and heightened a sense of class consciousness among the working class. If you define failure as immediately putting some suit into office who will immediately execute certain actions, I guess it did fail. Still, I'm perfectly happy with a failure of a movement that laid the emotional and intellectual groundwork for raising the standards of living of the poor a couple years down the road.
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May 1, 2014 18:01
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It wasn't their moment. Not enough momentum to break through the public's reactionary streak. And that was that. Onto the next thing, no shortage of things to organize a protest around. The US' biggest hurdle to organizing is going to be people's distaste for each other. Too many opportunities for, "Oh wait, I just remembered that I hate you. What the gently caress am I even doing here". People's answer to the question, "What is your opinion of an average, random stranger in your country?" is going to be a strong predictor of its propensity towards successful organization. In a country with strong tendencies towards social domination, people have contrived limitless reasons to believe others to be different and inferior. You pit people against each other, and they'll do this I guess.
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May 1, 2014 18:32
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Heavy neutrino posted:I'm still not sure why people think OWS failed. It might not have produced any immediate changes, but it's still being discussed today, its themes and rhetoric are still being used today, and New York currently has a decently left-wing mayor who's done quite a bit of good for the city's most vulnerable. Minimum wage workers going on strike directly referenced OWS and cited some of its rhetoric, and now many states, cities as well as the federal government are either working on or have already passed a raise in the minimum wage. The way I see it, it shifted popular attitudes regarding the ruling elites -- financial and political -- and heightened a sense of class consciousness among the working class. If you define failure as immediately putting some suit into office who will immediately execute certain actions, I guess it did fail. Still, I'm perfectly happy with a failure of a movement that laid the emotional and intellectual groundwork for raising the standards of living of the poor a couple years down the road. Nailed it.
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May 1, 2014 19:30
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Honore_De_Balzac posted:Nailed it. No in that sense it didn't fail. But there is a recent standard of comparison that is rarely used, the 2003 Iraq War protests. OWS attracted much fewer people, though financial crises are more abstract than the promise of thousands of GI fatalities. You can tell me if I'm wrong to, but that's how I judge demonstrations, by the head count. Does a movement have the gravity to make people risk something?
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May 1, 2014 19:36
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OWS is talked about in some circles but so are the 1968 protests. The key point is that in the mainstream consciousness (not even media but just talking with people) you don't hear about either of those.
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May 1, 2014 19:42
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And what did that organized, focused anti-war movement of millions accomplish?
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May 1, 2014 19:44
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OwlBot 2000 posted:And what did that organized, focused anti-war movement of millions accomplish? If you want to judge demonstrations in post-1980's America by their actual efficacy, you are welcome to. I don't because I don't wish to become fantastically depressed. I do not believe that protest works any longer here, because the public is inoculated against it. So I take the number of people that actually showed up, and I divide that by ten million because that's what it would take to budge a damned thing. Barely anyone came out to OWS outside of NYC, the camps were quickly dispersed everywhere else without spectacle. Ripples, but little else. A tepid response to a catastrophe, stark in its total lack of proportion to the imminence and scale of the threat posed by global capital.
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May 1, 2014 20:01
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As a super liberal dude, I have to agree with the above poster: protests don't really do anything in my view. The only real way to effect change in a capitalist society is either through direct violence i.e. breaking into a place and harming or imprisoning everyone that you find to be "wrong" in an establishment, or by getting a ton of capital to change the system from within. The system is built kinda like Game of Thrones. You may want to effect change but if you're not in it to win it, you'll either become corrupted and become part of the problem, or you'll be essentially killed (made irrelevent) because you don't have enough capital to keep playing. In this case You Win or You Die doesn't mean literal death, but politically it absolutely can. So if the OWS types wanted to play the game they literally would have been doing everything they stood against while at the same time the biggest criticism I see is that they didn't play the game. They were protests. And seriously, when is the last time a protest really did something. I mean REALLY did something to change legislation in a meaningful way that wasn't either retroactively changed, or simply steam rolled over. From minimum wage pushes to gun legislation to even tax policy that every poll suggests people want modified to favor mid-to-lower income folks are not changing. THere is a rally, people get pissed off, then the intersts with the most money enact the REAL change and it will almost always benefit them. Hell, look what happened to the public option in the ACA, it was ridiculously popular when it was first part of the ACA and it was stripped out DESPITE IT BEING MORE POPULAR THAN OTHER PARTS OF THE BILL.
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May 1, 2014 20:28
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agarjogger posted:If you want to judge demonstrations in post-1980's America by their actual efficacy, you are welcome to. I don't because I don't wish to become fantastically depressed. I do not believe that protest works any longer here, because the public is inoculated against it. So I take the number of people that actually showed up, and I divide that by ten million because that's what it would take to budge a damned thing. Barely anyone came out to OWS outside of NYC, the camps were quickly dispersed everywhere else without spectacle. Ripples, but little else. A tepid response to a catastrophe, stark in its total lack of proportion to the imminence and scale of the threat posed by global capital.
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May 1, 2014 21:16
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Strudel Man posted:
No. Oligopolic markets have a kinked demand curve. (and many markets in Late Capitalism, after lots of capital concentration has occurred, are oligopolic)  I had some big ol' post somewhere about oligopolic markets 101 but it's saying that the database is unavailable
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May 1, 2014 21:33
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asdf32 posted:I tend to think police brutality didn't hurt the movement. Though I guess if it was completely dependent on actually physically occupying public space, and the police effectively inhibited this, then yeah, maybe it hurt them. Though this would be yet more evidence for just how weak they were if that's all the movement was. Refer again to the example of Move In Day in Oakland. Occupy Oakland sought to turn a building into a community center, the police got there first and fortified it and then drove them away with violence.
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May 2, 2014 00:28
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Mornacale posted:Refer again to the example of Move In Day in Oakland. Occupy Oakland sought to turn a building into a community center, the police got there first and fortified it and then drove them away with violence. Which brings us to the next question - exactly what standards would you like the police to use in regards to random groups taking over buildings and public parks? Like what is your ideal expectation there?
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May 2, 2014 00:56
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asdf32 posted:Which brings us to the next question - exactly what standards would you like the police to use in regards to random groups taking over buildings and public parks? Like what is your ideal expectation there? Did you say public parks? What standard should the police use when a bunch of people come to a public park? Well gosh, I suppose they should assemble an equal number of ex-military guys in riot armor and tear gas the loving poo poo out of them. Break some jaws as well. You're not well if you think a bunch of fucks chanting in a park necessitates a blood offering to the God of Law&Order. If you think this is how a society should conduct itself and people should be monstrous if they're told to be. If you can't think of any better way. Which you apparently can't, and you're asking because you actually can't conceive of how it might have ended differently.
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May 2, 2014 01:04
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asdf32 posted:Which brings us to the next question - exactly what standards would you like the police to use in regards to random groups taking over buildings and public parks? Like what is your ideal expectation there?
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May 2, 2014 01:07
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asdf32 posted:Which brings us to the next question - exactly what standards would you like the police to use in regards to random groups taking over buildings and public parks? Like what is your ideal expectation there? Do you dispute that this is an example of police violence preventing Occupy from achieving a goal?
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May 2, 2014 01:17
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What does any of this have to do with whether or not capitalism is anti-democratic?
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May 2, 2014 01:20
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Best Friends posted:What does any of this have to do with whether or not capitalism is anti-democratic? let it ride, do we really need another goddamned Occupy thread. I also feel like there are three front-page threads with this same basic premise.
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May 2, 2014 01:20
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Best Friends posted:What does any of this have to do with whether or not capitalism is anti-democratic? If attempts to oppose capitalism through peaceful protest and democratic action are met with repressive and excessive state violence, that would kinda make the point on its own.
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May 2, 2014 01:39
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Inequality is actually becoming a part of the national conversation, to the point where the far right feels the need to call its very mention communism. The near right has responded by having its puppet roll out new Herman Cain-esque branding: "$10.10 an hour."
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May 2, 2014 01:41
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chairface posted:If attempts to oppose capitalism through peaceful protest and democratic action are met with repressive and excessive state violence, that would kinda make the point on its own. The OWS protests were wildly unpopular and did not achieve democratic success, so I don't see how it speaks to the OPs question.
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May 2, 2014 01:46
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Best Friends posted:The OWS protests were wildly unpopular and did not achieve democratic success, so I don't see how it speaks to the OPs question. Unpopular with whom?
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May 2, 2014 03:04
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Further why would "popular" or "successful" be necessary qualifiers there. Peaceful protesters opposed capitalism and pigs used chemical weapons, among other atrocities, against them on behalf of capitalism. Sounds real democratic!
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May 2, 2014 03:08
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chairface posted:Further why would "popular" or "successful" be necessary qualifiers there. Peaceful protesters opposed capitalism and pigs used chemical weapons, among other atrocities, against them on behalf of capitalism. Sounds real democratic! You have a bizarre idea of what democracy means. If 51% think the pigs should napalm the camp, that's democracy. What you meant to say was, "Sounds really civil libertarian!"
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May 2, 2014 03:13
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!