NATO Chicago

[Jenksismyhero]

I heard someone this morning on the news that said the protest worked because Boeing basically shut down for a couple of days. Now mind you, the corporate office did, not the factories. So....really nothing stopped. Zero gained.

 

I was also interested in the coverage of all of this. TV media was very pro-police. The print media comes off the other way. Anyone else notice this?

[Jenksismyhero]

I'm aware it was just so hilarious. The same message is repeated when you see half the crowd has a damn starbucks coffee.

 

I'm a fan of the typical occupy protestor - young white males with smart phones/laptops/tablets/video cameras talking about how unfair it is that older white males have lots of money.

[StrangeSox]

I'm aware it was just so hilarious. The same message is repeated when you see half the crowd has a damn starbucks coffee.

 

Starbucks in Chicago was unionized with the IWW!

[StrangeSox]

I'm a fan of the typical occupy protestor - young white males with smart phones/laptops/tablets/video cameras talking about how unfair it is that older white males have lots of money.

 

Yes and?

[Jenksismyhero]

Yes and?

 

It hurts the redistribution of wealth/left behind message when you have trust fund kids at the forefront of the "movement."

[StrangeSox]

It hurts the redistribution of wealth/left behind message when you have trust fund kids at the forefront of the "movement."

 

You don't need to be a trust fund kid to own a phone/tablet, but having some of the wealthy class also on your side of pro-distribution doesn't hurt the cause at all. People marching in and advocating for causes aren't necessarily or most often doing it for themselves.

[RockRaines]

You don't need to be a trust fund kid to own a phone/tablet, but having some of the wealthy class also on your side of pro-distribution doesn't hurt the cause at all. People marching in and advocating for causes aren't necessarily or most often doing it for themselves.

Pretty sure most of those kids dont know WHO they are doing it for. I just got back from a 3rd world country and seeing and talking those people it was clear the two sides couldnt be further apart in their views.

[RockRaines]

Starbucks in Chicago was unionized with the IWW!

Occupy hates starbucks

 

But they'll drink it before a good protest walk....

[StrangeSox]

Pretty sure most of those kids dont know WHO they are doing it for. I just got back from a 3rd world country and seeing and talking those people it was clear the two sides couldnt be further apart in their views.

 

OWS is generally about reforming our financial, banking and taxation systems, primarily in developed countries, so that wages continue to grow and opportunities exist for the 99% instead of having all wealth created over the past few decades going to the 1%.* Anti-IMF/World Bank movements are generally going to be aligned with that, but that wasn't really the the primary focus of OWS.

 

Like I said before there's a huge swath of issues here so you can't really lump all protesters and all views (or the people in developing countries) into one or two simple categories.

 

*this is a quick and dirty summation of what I think OWS most prominently represents, not a statement on the accuracy of this position.

Edited May 21, 2012 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Occupy hates starbucks

 

But they'll drink it before a good protest walk....

 

That's 25 people in NYC. Not sure that can be expanded to a national, disjointed movement.

 

edit: honestly I dropped that in here because I know the guy who was one of the organizers for that. He's a small business owner (the heroes of the right!) who has been active in leftist politics and protest movements since he was about 13 and isn't just some mindless kid protesting to be cool. There's many more like him.

Edited May 21, 2012 by StrangeSox

[GoSox05]

Veterans symbolically discard service medals at anti-NATO rally

 

 

[RockRaines]

That's 25 people in NYC. Not sure that can be expanded to a national, disjointed movement.

Still funny, but once again you bring up the point that the protests going on around the country with Occupy or whatever else is incredibly unorganized without an actual message or stance on anything. It borders on people just being bored trying to find something to do with their time. A "movement" should be much more cohesive and organized IMO and that is the primary reason why its being ignored. I see this even in the brief discussions with individual protesters as they were walking back, getting coffee, and even some beers last night. There was maybe one person who had something they stood for (and it was unrelated to the "movement) and the others were just frustrated with everything in life.

[StrangeSox]

There's messages and stances, but the movement isn't backed by established, national, well-connected political groups so it does lack strict organization and leadership. Those heavily involved with OWS would probably argue that's a feature, not a bug.

 

Whether or not it continues to be relevant remains to be seen, but the OWS movement was at the very least effective in shifting the national narrative away from deficit cuts, deficit cuts, deficit cuts that the media was obsessed with last year.

[Balta1701]

Still funny, but once again you bring up the point that the protests going on around the country with Occupy or whatever else is incredibly unorganized without an actual message or stance on anything. It borders on people just being bored trying to find something to do with their time. A "movement" should be much more cohesive and organized IMO and that is the primary reason why its being ignored. I see this even in the brief discussions with individual protesters as they were walking back, getting coffee, and even some beers last night. There was maybe one person who had something they stood for (and it was unrelated to the "movement) and the others were just frustrated with everything in life.

I get where you're going with this...but think for a second about the other side of that...let's say we had a very strong movement in this country mobilized against Wall Street, that could put hundreds of thousands of people in the streets.

 

Then, let's say we also had a war going on for > a decade. And there was another movement against that war that could put tens of thousands of people into the streets.

 

Then, let's throw in a few thousand anarchists who show up everywhere anyway.

 

Now, despite what could be one, or more than one fairly strong movement, the combination of multiple real solid injustices and a few outside groups makes things get called much more muddled.

 

Good comparison is the crossover between Civil Rights and the anti-Vietnam movement. Groups and people would bounce back and forth between the two sides, and there were stark divisions between groups who even were on the same side politically (i.e. whether to advocate violence in regards to the Civil Rights movement or non-violence).

[DukeNukeEm]

So I took advantage of the rampant disorganization and essentially snuck around with various news teams all day today at the rallies. Got in on the Gerry McCarthy news conference pretending my phone was a voice recorder, talked to a CPD Major and got to hear some of the dialogue between police and protest leaders trying to figure out a route. I already had a feeling the news of huge animosity between the protestors and cops was overstates, but today I confirmed it. They were really just having fun with each other more than anything.