Occupy This

[Tom .C]

As is so often the case, I will repeat the wisedom passed down unto me by my Pop about these people who are dropping all their responsiblities to live like panhandlers:

"Get a haircut and a job, hippies."

30,000,000 people need a haircut and a job...it's kind of the point of it.

[dflanmod]

For those who can understand graphs, here's one:

For those who can understand numbers:

and for the few who want to read (I admit I skimmed it) http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declarati...new-york-city/ Oh, and the comments include the get a job hippie stuff.
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

I'm a right wing republican whack job....... And..... I drink your milkshake.

[Vince Tortelli]

30,000,000 people need a haircut and a job...it's kind of the point of it.

And squatting on a street corner is helping them find that job and hair cut...how exactly? Isn't all this take to the streets, grab your pitch forks and torches, and lay siege to the castles of the political princes and corporate cardinals rhetoric the exact same thing that makes the Tea Party a dangerous lunatic fringe domestic terrorist organization?

As for that manifesto....all I see is the same old tired talking points that the left has been peddling for decades:
"You can't hug your kids with nuclear arms!"
"A cow is a dog is a pig is a boy!"
"&^% the police!"

[Azatdawn]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the things this whole thing is supposed to protest the fact that there were basically no legal repercussions after the recent economic crisis and basically the lack of regulations in the banking business which in turn leads to very high-risk and very complex financial products and stuff like that?

I haven't really been following it, but it seems like those things are actually protest-worthy.

[DKJr]

Pat I'm usually on the other side of most arguments than you, but on this one I'm standing slightly with you. CEO's and other high ranking corporate owners are ridiculously overpaid and don't contribute the value that they are being paid (unless of course they are like Steve Jobs and make the company). There is an entire class of Americans who have set up this system and another set of rules. I'm not one to take others ****, and I don't plan on supporting government laws that do. However a social change is in order.

But there are a lot of fucking retarded people out there at those protests to which it is entirely ok to mock them.

[doofaloofa]

30,000,000 people need a haircut and a job...it's kind of the point of it.

I'm opening a barber shop

[Permalost]

I went skateboarding downtown tonight, and they were doing an occupy wall street protest, which I ended up marching with less out of solidarity and more out of curiosity. Small crowd, small impact. The focus was quite varied, with people in sandwich boards about economic reform next to a hippy tent taking signatures for marijuana reeform. Walked by a group reeking of pot that was explaining how flashbangs and teargas work (I really doubt they'll need it).

I've seen a few protests, and have noticed that there's experienced malcontents, who can be easily identified because they conceal their faces with bandanas, wear close fitting clothes and carry a backpack of goodies. There was a good number of these people, ordering with megaphones. So, while this is being presented as a public outrage, it also seems to be experience for the public protesters/anarchists to work on gathering, moving, protesting and dealing with cops etc.

[Tom .C]

And squatting on a street corner is helping them find that job and hair cut...how exactly? Isn't all this take to the streets, grab your pitch forks and torches, and lay siege to the castles of the political princes and corporate cardinals rhetoric the exact same thing that makes the Tea Party a dangerous lunatic fringe domestic terrorist organization?

As for that manifesto....all I see is the same old tired talking points that the left has been peddling for decades:
"You can't hug your kids with nuclear arms!"
"A cow is a dog is a pig is a boy!"
"&^% the police!"

Pitch Forks? I've heard that Fox News version of things and seem to remember that the tea party people could rally and bring their guns and they were patriots. Are the tea party people who are participating in these protests no longer patriots or are they just ignored for some other reason. Protesting is a good way for people to let the people who say "THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN" know just what they are really saying. It seems that their message has been totally missed by the people who think the country needs more right to life legislation and fewer jobs.

[CrackFox]

I'm on a lunch break, and can't research this problem. Here's an article form the Economist http://www.economist.com/node/3518560?story_id=3518560. I haven't read it in a long time, so I hope I've remembered the right one.

Basically there has always been a big gap between the haves and the have-nots in America, but this was balanced out by a high level of social mobility. It was possible to be born poor and make your fortune, and at the other end of the scale, if you didn't take care of your money you could lose it all.

Then something happened, and social mobility dropped. It started to become that the rich got richer and there was less chance of a poor person making it. When the banks were declared "too big to fail" and bailed out after fucking up completely, this really cemented the idea that the system is rigged in people's minds. Hence we get the protests.

At their cores, the OWS people are actually fairly well aligned with the Tea Party. The key difference being that the OWS people think the banks are shits for getting the government to bail them out, and the Tea Party think the government are shits for giving the banks a bailout. There's a bunch of other differences of course, but they're all either superficial, or things that were tacked on by hijackers. The Tea Party has been hijacked completely, and it won't be long before OWS suffers a similar fate.

[Ke?poFist]

I've been debating this with a few friends since yesterday. My initial gripe was the lack of a message the protesters had. The majority were there basically saying, "I have no job, and Bankers have millions of dollars, it's not fair!" Instead of explaining WHY (as Battlefields has been querying) it's not fair, they were essentially pissing and moaning without any real message or goal, which quite frankly is embarrassing and a waste of time.


Anyways, It seems over the last few weeks they've narrowed their gripes in speeches, and have set out distinct goals, the most major of which would be ending the Federal Reserve, which is in a nutshell a fraudulent pseudo-government entity in the form of a bank that chooses when and when not to print money at its leisure.

The other is tightening the lending fraud that banks have been privy to since well..the dawn of banks, which allows them to lend 9 times the amount of money they bank (while paying what? A 2% interest rate at most for those who house their money with them?) These types of lending practices flood the market with imaginary fiat money, and the government sanctioning of it, while can be argued to have led to the economic boon of the 70's to the 90s, also has been the root of it's subsequent bust as inevitably there will be people not getting paid when the money is in fantasy land.