Two weeks into Occupy Wall Street protests, movement is at a crossroads

This is the kind of stuff that gets people out to Occupy Wall Street protests all over the country.

there's a corresponding protest scheduled to start on Bay Street in Toronto on October 17th

You know what would be kinda funny - if there were protests like these in India...at least that is where they have been sending some of our jobs where I work.

The company I work started bringing jobs back a few years ago. As contracts in India end ... they transition the work either back here or to someplace like Australia.

Love that one.

On the whole thing, I dunno. I am naturally more for the marching than against it, as long as it is temperate and preferably steady on (I have been noticeably to me reluctant for students to take over universities) - but as an economics dolt I see some things in a b & w way, re who gets nailed legally in our penal system for what personal choices that affect others, which are the big malefactors? - and also with a view to the legal system itself, that small time offenders are incarcerated toughly and big time shits sail on - I think it is the laws by congress or states that allow all that, so that comes down to the people voting them in or out.

On protesting, the times I protested, it was as a Women in Black - we just stood there in front of the Courthouse, re the Iraq situation, and truckers honked at us, raising fingers or fists or waving. I left work to do that, so not many times.

On the other hand, I knew my assemblywoman and congressman, and they knew what I thought.

Well I did my way of protesting or trying to make a slight change - I signed several petitions to get questions to be put on our ballets that I support.

I do, honestly, have to be careful on certain things though politically. As I have to get any political candidates I would support approved. I do not believe it goes so far as to sign to allow a candidate to get on a ballet which I've done for friends that run for various offices. But I cannot without first getting approval from work to support a candidate as in money/campaigning and stuff like that.

From PDiddie's blog. There is more information on the blog.


Occupy Houston yesterday
Wore my black suit, my white shirt, and picked out a tie that I would be most likely not to be upset about if it got ruined -- you know, mud or blood or something -- and jumped the train downtown early yesterday morning to join the march by 8:30 a.m.

I counted about 200 people at the assembly area, walked over to say hello to Richard Shaw of the AFL-CIO, and gave a lengthy interview to a Bloomberg.com reporter who furiously took notes (no camera). She asked me my age, where I was from, what I did for a living, my tax bracket, my annual income ... and whether that was a Hermes tie I was wearing. I said, "I don't think so," and turned it over to look at the label. Neiman Marcus. *heavy sigh*




The march began at nine and we stopped just a few blocks away in front of the Chase tower, chanted "They got bailed out, we got sold out" and some other things while people in the building came out and took pictures of us. There were about 50 yards of empty plaza between us, with a handful of HPD spaced appropriately between. A good video of that scene from FOX 26:



On to City Hall and the reflecting pool grounds in front, where we scaled the steps and got a little louder at the front door before moving back to the top-step staging area. I estimated the crowd at around 500 by now; several people spoke and more announcements about the continuing occupation were made. Around 10:30 a single conservative disruptor with a sign that said "Blame Yourselves!" waded in to the assembly, was surrounded quickly by maybe six HPD officers, escorted several feet back and maintained his self-appointed police security while a handful of people exchanged vocal pleasantries with him. I left the protest at 11 a.m. with a gritty slime around my neck that was assembling itself to trickle down my back. By the time I made it to the Main Street light rail station in front of the Foley's/Macy's and boarded the southbound, I was whipped. Sore feet, sore back, sweated all the way through the collar to the afore-mentioned neckwear.

I was interviewed by ABC-13, FOX 26, some radio station whose call letters I didn't catch, and the Bloomberg.com reporter mentioned previously (must have been the suit). But I don't appear to have survived any video edits Pardon me. FOX 26 did give me some airtime here (about 1:05 in). I am however also seen but not heard in this one, giving my radio interview starting about the :50 mark.



As previously linked, the Houston FOX affiliate's reporting was thorough and fair and balanced. Really. No, really; they did a good job. More local coverage

Thanks, EB. I have managed to lose his blog link (again - - I tend to lose bookmarks). Will you pm me?

Black suit, yeah.

Linkat, you're kidding? No, of course you are not.
That is ridiculous, but I see you are serious.

It's not just that you would represent the company in your involvement in a campaign, as I assume you would not. But that you could not use your own name?
This is extremely fucky.

Is this common in the corporate world?
I've never been in the corporate world, except an extremely small one.
University world, a lab that started out smart and became very large, ballooning just as I left, and small businesses thereafter.

Tell us more.

Are corporate employees not citizens with rights?

Then what exactly are you disagreeing about with me? We agree the encampments are there 24/7. I didn't say none of the individuals are there 24/7. You didn't say all of the individuals are. So what's left?

Not necessarily the corporate world, but I work in a highly regulated industry. You cannot have any appearance of wrong doing or you and your company can get in huge trouble.

If a client or business associate gives you anything above a certain value - usually lunches or dinners are ok or a sports game, but if it were to be any more expensive, you need to report it.

I think their fear is that the company could appear to give certain favors or receive certain favors from a candidate. The part that seems extreme to me is I am talking local politics. But that is their policy - they are very strict - which isn't all that bad - they really are concerned about their reputation.

It isn't much different than other companies within the industry, although my company is slightly more strict than others I've worked for.

Just that his percipience isn't wrong to assume that these people are not working - because they are not.

Maybe I should have added 'acute frustration' because, seemingly, our leaders don't really know what to do, do they, except debate the issue? I have this creepy feeling that (the protesters) also don't believe any of your quoted "if they believe(s) " will happen.

During the 1980s recession (lasted about 7, 8 years) a lot of unemployed Michiganians moved to Houston TX in search of work only to form "tent city" there. At the same time other unemployed were receiving grants for college, or job-retrain. What happened to Adult Education?

George Romney (MI gov.) created thousands of jobs in Michigan during those years, minimum wage but I later heard many who picked up trash along the highways, etc. say they didn't know what they would have done without that minimum wage.

It's just, DO SOMETHING, DAMIT. Maybe these protestors feel all the money has been spent or stolen, already. They feel they are being ignored, perhaps. Why not try to change that? Yeah, what happened to "CHANGE."

A fairly common theme in discussions about OWS is how close they actually are to the Tea Party.

Jonah Goldberg in his October 7th newsletter does a great job of pointing what the similarities are and where they end:



By now, I'm sure that anyone who supports OWS or who simply would like to understand them better, is feeling frustrated that clearly biased pundits like Jonah Goldberg and Bill O'Reilly insist on portraying them as clueless slackers who have no understanding of any of the issues but who just want someone to give them more money and stuff.

Sucks, doesn't it?

Without, for even a moment, considering whether or not there are similarities between OWS protestors and the first Tea Partiers in terms of behavior, someone with objectivity might think to himself that their initial treatment by the media was similar.

But that person would not be displaying objectivity.

Negative characterizations by opinion providers like Goldberg and O'Reilly could be seen as similar to those of their counterparts like Frank Rich and Keith Olbermann. Of course possibly skewed depictions of OWS tend to be focused on amusing ineptitude whereas the possibly skewed depictions of the Tea Party focused on dangerous racist hatred, never-the-less an argument can be made that both "movements" were subjected to shallow consideration.

Here's where the comparison totally breaks down, though, and the previously referred to person with objectivity is revealed as having very little.

What has an anchor for any of the network or cable news programs said about OWS that would be the equivalent of Anderson Cooper's "Teabagger" comment?

What news reporter has even remotely duplicated the performance of CNN's Susan Roesgen?

I went looking through today's editions of the NY Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, LA Times and CNN to see if there were any OWS stories that might be considered negative, let alone skewed. I found not a one. Now. I appreciate that some may not trust my bias, or that one day of coverage can be expected to stand for the entire body of reporting, so if anyone has seen examples what they consider to be "negative" or "skewed" stories about OWS , I would appreciate it if they would point them out to me. (BTW providing a link to a right-wing blog wherein the blogger rants about OWS doesn't fit the bill.)

I even took a look at the Fox News site, since I figured that if there were going to be examples of biased coverage they had to be there.

Here's what I found:

FOX Story One

I guess you can consider this a bit negative, in that it's poking fun at OWS, but the situation described is ironic and amusing. Not what i would consider a "Hit Job"

FOX Story Two

Sort of obvious and not all that interesting but straight news reporting

FOX Story Three

This is actually a guest opinion piece but with a fairly positive perspective.

FOX Story Four

Practically a text book example of objective reporting.

Again, I haven't read all of the FOX coverage and so if you've found a piece that you believe is skewed, please let me know about it.

It's no surprise that I don't have a high regard for OWS, but I try not to base my opinions on only the "facts" reported in opinion pieces from sources like NRO, WSJ, The Weekly Standard and FOX News. Threads like these can be helpful in terms of feeding each other with different perspectives both personal and sourced.

As indicated, previously, I actually would like to see OWS develop into a serious source of influence. Unlike what a lot of folks on A2K think about the Tea party, I just don't think an organized political group in America can build significant influence without representing positions and policies that don't resonate with a lot of people. If OWS is really only about nilhistic slackers, regurgitated Marxist slogans, and an opportunity to party while feeling socially relevant, it will all run down the drain in another couple of weeks.

If on the other hand, OWS can be organized from the bottom up, and maintain an independent and uncorrupted message that appeals to a wide group of people, it can not only be a player on the national scene, it can be a helpful one.

Regardless of where you think you reside on the political spectrum, you probably have been part of a rough consensus that believes there isn't all that much that is significantly different between the two parties, and government has been an exercise devoted largely to keeping politicians in office. Whatever you may think about it, the Tea Party has provided an effective influence on the Republican party in terms of refocusing it on the issues that matter to its members and, more importantly, making it clear that playing the old get along game won't necessarily get you along anymore.

The Democrat party needs a similar influence all the more because its members tend to a set of mind that the American people need shepherds. If being a Democrat actually stands for something principled then those principles should be clearly evident in Democrat policies and positions.

Of course it's possible that a Tea Party driven Republican party and an OWS driven Democrat party will result in even greater divisiveness and gridlock, but I do think that on some important issues like crony capitalism, the two groups see more eye to eye than they might imagine and that successfully working together on those could open the door to further successes.

If that's all BS then at least we will have the two opposing ideologies meeting head to head with the prize being how the country is run rather than who runs it.

I think there are similarities in the fact that all these people (TP & OWS) feel they no longer have a voice in their government. Even if they do everything right according to the philosophy of this country they are still coming out with little to show for it. They may not agree on what the outcome should be, but they all know they are getting short changed in the American Dream department. To start, I would think both sides would like to see all the DC lobbyists shipped off to North Korea.

What do you see crony about our capitalism? Do you think that it should be a more socialized form of capitalism with regulations or should we take away even more regulations?

To be fair to the people who are participating in OWS, they're not "our leaders," and they haven't been sitting back and doing nothing while the problems grow. Well, at least not to the extent that there was clearly something they could do, that they had the skills and knowledge to do it, and that someone was paying them to do it!

Possibly, this is the first step in them doing something about our problems, and so to that extent I think demonstrations can be an end in themselves, and that it's not necessary that the protestors have a detailed list of demands and recommended solutions.

The most powerful thing they can do is to vote and to organize their individual voting power into a bloc that can actually get the attention of the leaders. This is what the Tea Party has done and very effectively.

The most important thing they can do is to stop assuming the people they vote into office are going to take care of all of the nation's problems as well as all of their own. Even if politicans could achieve such a feat, they never will as too many conlficts arise between that goal and their primary goal of staying in power.

Urging people to take greater responsibility for their lives and becoming more self-reliant is too often seen as simply another way of saying "I have mine, go get your own."

While it's probably safe to say that that sentiment is present, it's unfair to assert that the message is driven only by selfish concern.

The simple fact is that the government can't take care of everyone's problems. Sure, the government can take care of all of the problems of some people but why would it make sense to bet on being one of the lucky ones? The more you can do for yourself, the less you will need to rely on the government and luck.

A large and bloated government that tries to take care of everyone's problems but fails is not the equivalent of a small lean one that never tries to take on the impossible in the first place.

The large government will always fail and so there will never be a "chance" that, through any justifcation, can ever be thought to be worth it.

Not only will the large government fail, but in so doing it will strip the people of resources they could themselves use to solve their own problem.

Of course the argument can and has been made that the government only needs to solve all of the problems of those people who can't solve them themselves. Those who are able to solve their own problems will be left alone to do so.

There are two fundamental problems with this approach which are coming to a head right now in our country's history.

1) Who decides, and on what basis, who the people are who require the government to solve their problems? Can we rely upon the deciders to not only make their choices wisely, but to not allow personal interest to influence their choices? With hundreds of millions of people involved, how can enough time be devoted to determine if each and every one who is selected for government care, is actually incapable of solving their own problems. Furthermore given the attraction of having the government take care of all of your problems what is to stop people from pretending that they're incapable of solving the problems themselves?

2) The government does not, on its own, generate wealth. To pay what is necessary to solve all of the problems of those selected, it must get money from those people who are left to solve their own problems. At some point is it not possible that enough money will need to be taken from those who can solve their own problems, that some of these people will have to join the ranks of those incapable of solving their won problems?

I don't know whether or not all of our country's problems can be solved. Maybe it's too late and we are going to contune to steadily decline until what's left doesn't really resemble what we had.

If OWS leads to a truly grassroots movement on the left that is interested in achieving real solutions, and isn't bound by the knots of interest that bind the Democrat establishment there can be real change, and not the illusory crap that's offered as an opiate.

HOw about that the K streeters employed by the capitalists write most of the bills that our Federal Government makes into law, such as tax law....does that count as cronyism??