occupy d.c.

[mnaz]

(in cahoots with wall street and others).

i made this call 2 weeks ago, and the next day, it happened ...

[stilltrucking]

Seems to me that nothing much ever happens from the camping out in DC, for some reason I think about Coxey's Army, the Bonus March on DC and the Hoovervilles and more recently Resurrection City

I been thinking about what happened in eastern europe the velvet revolution and the fall of the wall. something like that
I wish I knew, I keep hoping for something like that,
“Wir sind das Volk”
Something a movement that won't get co opted by superannuated ideologies

Sorry I have not read much about it, I got an email from Michael B of studio eight about it, why the occupy Wall Street won't work. But I have not read it but still I agree with it but maybe for not the same reason

Did you get the email from him?

[Doreen Peri]

They ARE occupying DC... they're everywhere! Camping, demonstrating... they've been there for a month.

They're also occupying San Francisco, Boston, Oklahoma City, and every other major city in the US.

I'm going to go downtown to DC to be part of it as soon as I can find somebody to go with me. For some reason, I'm not in the mood to get arrested by myself.

[mnaz]

i agree, jack. as entrenched as the machine is--- hard to see mass demonstrations changing much. but they need to go on anyway--- and persevere. and no i did not get an e-mail from michael--- i haven't corresponded that much with him, though i agree with much of what he has to say. especially his thoughts on "corporatocracy"...

doreen, that's great! if i were anywhere nearby, i would go with you ....

[Doreen Peri]

That would be nice!

Yeah, they planned to occupy all the major cities (and even smaller ones) before they even went to NYC to start the movement.

Anyway, I think they misnamed it. Why? Because it's NOT just about Wall Street and because the misnomer makes people think they don't know what they're doing and have no set purpose.

The word Occupy is a good name to keep but remove "Wall Street". Just thinking on marketing terms because that's what I do.

OCCUPY works well because that's what the US has been doing for so many years, invading, taking over, and occupying other countries and that's what a lot of this is about!

OCCUPY FOR PEACE maybe... OCCUPY FOR EQUALITY .... OCCUPY FOR DEMOCRACY ... something more specific.

With taglines that say, "WE'LL LEAVE WHEN THE TROOPS STOP OCCUPYING OTHER COUNTRIES" .... and "STOP OCCUPYING OUR LIVES AND WE'LL QUIT OCCUPYING THE CITIES"

Anyway, I have a lot of ideas but there's a problem here and the problem is that if they don't get organized with clear leadership, the whole movement will fizzle out or worse, become violent and not move in the direction the people want. The way it is, factions of people with their own agenda could claim they're organizers and change the whole thrust of the movement and its effectiveness.

Just rambling my thoughts. At any rate, it's not only happening all over the US but all over the world. The PEOPLE are occupying the world, saying the financial mess has to be straightened out, that the thieves and crooks need regulations and should be put in prison, that the 1-2% need to start paying their fair share.

We have a long way to go but it's about time for revolution and evolution!

[jackofnightmares]

I was thinking about starting a new thrread on General mish mosh chit chat board but I think it would be better here.

My word of the days is Occupy:

Yet another possible etymology is from the Old High German word pfluog, meaning "to ... Fottere: To jape, to sard, to fucke, to swive, to occupy. Of these, "occupy" and ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck

[mnaz]

fuck wall street

[stilltrucking]

Email from Michael I always liked his tagline

Occupying a “Street” will Ultimately Fail

(originally published at OpEdNews)


I receive daily emails from David Swanson, a fellow I met at a seminar in Washington, DC. I appreciate those emails and hope to continue to receive them.



I have a mailing list and I’m a bit timid about asking people to join my mailing list. People don't want to read the same stuff over and over and over again. They know where I’m coming from. I hardly send out any rants or information anymore because it’s all been said and done. Most of it has, anyway.


Mr. Swanson sends or forwards two or three rants/articles per day. And they all say the same thing. They all urge us to “do something about it.”



While I was attending the seminar, I remember Mr. Swanson saying something similar to, “If you’ve never been arrested for protesting against inequality, you’re not trying hard enough.” Really.


In my thinking, in my feelings, I may be left of Karl Marx. If we lived in a world in which one person says to another, “How many do you have?” and the other says, “None”, so the first person says, “Well, I have two and I only need one, so, here, you have the other”, I'd consider that a religious experience. But we are dealing with brains - literally and physically. I’m not a doctor in any field, including medicine. However, I’ve found that our brains control us, not the other way around.


Mr. Swanson and others, including me, have been trying to change minds for many years. When’s the last time you’ve heard that someone’s received a “mind transplant” or “mind surgery”? The mind is every bit as “real” as the soul.



Hearts, as we know, do exist. However, there really has never been a contest in which the prize is a heart, as far as I know. There are lotteries of sorts for heart transplants, but no contests in which one can “win a heart”. Yet, what Mr. Swanson wants to do is to change people’s minds and win their hearts. I’ll keep my heart, thank you. I need it to live.



We are going after the wrong parts of people. In fact, we are going after parts that people don’t even have.



Who is the 1%? Do members of the 1% get out of bed in the morning (or night), put on uniforms, strap on belts that carry guns, pepper spray and hand cuffs and show up where the 99% are protesting and become caught up in the disorganization and disruption of city blocks? Does this confusion send their blood pressure sky high and cause the brains of some of these people to tell them to pepper spray the protesters? I don't think that the people about whom I'm writing are part of the 1%.



First of all, there are so many of them that it would be difficult to believe that they represent only 1%.



There’s a person who claims to be part of the 53% who’ve been foreclosed upon, who are finding it hard to make ends meet, who’ve lost jobs, but refuse to blame Wall Street. This person’s body reacts to hormones/substances in his brain which tell him to be too lazy to read books like Matt Taibi’s GRIFTOPIA, which explains clearly and in no uncertain terms how Wall Street gambled America’s GDP away; how Goldman-Sachs backed the bets so that the betters wouldn’t really lose, even if they actually lost in reality and how we bailed out Goldman-Sachs and the other losers with our tax money. There are other works in the library or in book stores which corroborate Taibi’s revelations.



We’re now seeing an uprising of what people are calling “the left”, to differentiate them from the teabaggers, and it, at first blush, seems exciting and refreshing to many. However, what about the so called “53%”? Most of the police who are pepper spraying protesters are protected by unions. Those “pepper happy” police officers are protecting the very same people who want to totally de-unionize, if you will, the entire Formerly United States of America. They might be who the person believes he’s talking about when he talks about the 53%. However, those police officers are part of the 99%. Their jobs are on the line daily. Their lives are on the line daily, but it’s their livelihoods, not their lives which the protesters are trying to save. There’s no telling when a Corporatocracy friendly governor will take collective bargaining rights away from the union to which the pepper sprayers belong or even privatize the policing of an entire state with a policing version of Blackwater. Yet, there they are, arresting Mr. Swanson and others who are protesting on their behalf.


The word “occupy” has an interesting meaning as well. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, protesters physically overtook offices of university presidents and actually physically occupied those offices. They didn’t occupy the roads that led to the offices. As long as the action continues to happen out on the streets and as long as half of the 99% are stopping the other half of the 99% from actually entering the buildings and occupying the offices of the CEOs and vice presidents of the greedy Corporatocracy, there will be no change. I submit that the people who are working in those monolithic buildings couldn’t care less how many times David Swanson or anyone else is arrested. Those arrests are between the arrested individuals and the judicial system.

While Mr. Swanson and others are being processed, gambling still happens inside the buildings which half of the 99% is stopping the other half of the 99% from entering. The gambling is happening using whatever mortgages are left with which to bet and are being backed by Goldman-Sachs and this will lead to another bailout, which Congress will approve. Just as the teabaggers are learning that all the tough talk from teabagger supported members of Congress was bullshit and that there are perimeters inside which Congress must work, so, too, will the occupiers learn that candidates will come forward and promise every bit of what they demand, only to either forget about it after they’re elected or possibly pass watered down legislation that doesn't even come close to meeting the occupiers’ demands.


Why the cynicism? Do I believe that the occupiers are wasting their time? Not totally. It inconveniences people to give up whatever it is they do to gather and protest. It must be very uncomfortable to be arrested. However, if one is going to be arrested for something, one should be arrested for more than making a policeman angry who’s too stupid to understand that he’s defending the wrong people. If it stays totally non-physical on the part of the protesters, with all of the offensive physical action being conducted by the half of the 99% who believes it’s OK for Wall Street gamblers to use their mortgages as gambling money, the gamblers can comfortably, albeit not as comfortably as it would be without the racket and disruption outside, count out their bonuses and CEOs and top corporate officers can continue to sign contracts with corporations, something that the very same CEOs don’t believe workers should have the right to do, for multimillion dollar compensation packages. It’ll still happen.


I don't know how one goes about winning the brains of people. However, since there are no minds and hearts are organs that pump blood throughout the body, protesters have to somehow convince the part of the 99% that is pepper spraying them and keeping them as far away as possible from the people who are abusing their money that they are protecting the wrong people. Then, the people have to find away to get into the buildings, which are private property, so they'll be truly breaking the law, and negotiate with policy makers from a position of strength, not from a jail cell. This isn't India and no one in the streets is Mahatma Gandhi.


What I’ve suggested may be more physical, but it doesn’t have to be violent in the sense that anyone gets any more hurt than people are getting already. People like David Swanson have to use their mobile internet devices from inside the offices of the CEOs. They also need to take leadership roles, no matter how proud the occupiers are that they have no leaders. I have not heard that the Occupy Movement is an anarchistic movement which calls for the banning of government in The FUSA. From what I understand, the movement is telling the national leadership to fix the problems of abuse by Wall Street and hold Wall Street accountable for what its done. So, the movement apparently still plans to have government leaders if its demands are met. Why shouldn’t the movement have leadership now?



I am not trying to incite violence, but I am trying to incite more “offense” than is being exhibited now. Training the brains of the part of the 99% that is defending the criminals would be almost impossible, so the occupiers must get past those self-defeating people who have jobs and get into a position from which they can negotiate and not just bring attention to the fact that there is economic inequity in The FUSA and around the world. They need to do the same things with the policy makers that those with money do. They have to get into a position to say, “We have something you want. If you give us something we want need, we will return what you want.”



After all, that kind of “deal” is what got us into this position in the first place.



To frien

[jackofnightmares]

An open letter to Michael in the spirit of friendship.

The reason Occuppy Wall Street will fail is the nature of white boys.

There will always be the lust for power. Someone will always be provoked into hatred,he will throw the first brick through a window, or a rock at a cop.
fucke that shit

What we need to be ooccupying is the voting booth, to friendship
that is a religion for me Michael
after all these years
that is all there is for me
I hope you don't mind me posting your email here.

[Arcadia]

gracias for sharing Michael´s e-mail with us j-of-n-mares!!