The American Fall or the Fall of America

[dweebus]

The Occupy Wall St. protest has garnered worldwide attention.  Below is a link for the first official statement of the protesters, as agreed on by the  NYC General Assembly:

 

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/first_official_statement_fro...

 

Is this something you can support?  Do you think it goes far enough?  Too Far?  Is the lack of a cohesive, specific list of demands and top down organization a weakness or a strength?  Many social advocacy, environmental groups, and unions have declared solidarity and support.  Will this help, or hurt?  A teensy, weensy, bit of research, reveals that the hacker group Anonymous actively supports OWS.  Is this a positive, or a negative?  Do you think this protest has legs, or will it fizzle?  It has gone global.  Within days the number of cities  on Occupytogether with GAs or meetups grew from just a few to over 900.  Do you support them?  Will you participate actively, online, or not at all?  Why or why not?

 

http://occupywallst.org/

 

Regards,

 

Dweebus

 

[julie pritchard]

Certainly seems to be gaining some momentum. I've been watching events unfold since day one, despite limited media coverage. I guess when people feel they are not being heard this is the only option. Whether it will fizzle out, I suppose time will tell. It has the potential to get very interesting. Non-specific enough for ya?!

[Glenn "Lee" Howden]

You have so many questions Dweebus and I have such a small mind, but I'll put down a few of my opinions anyway.

I do not think that these protest will have much effect on the wall street or the financial industry. The so called 1% aren't individuals, they are a personality type.  If 1 or 100 of them are neutralized there are a 100,000 smart psychopaths that want to take their place. The organizational structures that these people thrive in have evolved over hundreds and even thousands of years.

There is a lot of discussion in the States about corporate personhood. I have started thinking of it as corporate zombiehood. Mindless organizational structures that can not be killed because they are not a life form.

But I do think that these protests are a good thing for social reasons. They are a meeting place where the connections with like minded people can be formed face to face.  The opposition to the death machines has become a lot more sophisticated than it was in the 60s and 70s. There are many people smarter than me that are dedicated to creating life supporting cultures. They will become more effective as the zombies self destruct.

Will I go to a demonstration? No, I'm the kind of freaky person that the media would point it's cameras at to discredit what these people are trying to do.

Will I participate actively? Well I try, but am isolated, old and worn out. Not much help I am sad to say.

[Fiona Cooper]

Tend to agree Glenn.  What is interesting to me is the total lack of publicity in this country - except on the internet - I suppose I've always known that the media is mostly bought out but I am left feeling very disillusioned with the beeb.

[OctD'Cassi]

Hello Everyone, haven't really commented on a proper discussion here before, I have seen a little of the problems you seem to be having and with forum civilisation, will probably file a post in the appropriate place later.  You do have a group who understand a forum post is generally longer than a tweet which is a good base. I will apologise for my English I am a native speaker but not a writer.

Regarding the protest I have been involved in a discussion on another forum that and I have feel the protest has generally been working in the correct direction and am currently behind it 100%.

It is a good thing that anonymous seem to be somewhat involved in it, as a structure they have built contains quite a few ego destroying and decentralising aspects that are healthy and beneficial when approaching a modern protest movements. One of the biggest fears I have for the movement is co-option, this can pretty much kill a movement,  The lack of definition of goals and structure seems to be holding at bay any present attempts, though it is a young movement.

I would like it to see it shake the foundations of the irrelevant Left/Right dichotomy, the disillusionment of *party* politics stems from this, and is part of the reason you cannot have any real progressive debate in the current political arena.

The type of diversity that seems to be springing up here, Zuccotti Park, and numerous other places, is where I believe the new ideas that we are in dire need of will grow and flourish, hopefully. and we can get necessary debate going.

There are few interesting write-ups concerning the protest, each with their own bias/flaws some of them large but interesting perspectives all the same.

Matt Stoller: #OccupyWallStreet Is a Church of Dissent, Not a Protest
Independent reporting of #OccupyWallStreet - Posted by Robert David...
Occupying Wall Street Why are the Fed, Treasury, and Capitol ignored?

 

Regarding the financial aspects, Libertarians will have to recognise, as was cunninly missed in two of the articles above, if you accept disproportionate power through wealth it damages individual liberty. This video from last year porbably does a good job of a beginning to the discussion than anything else I have seen.

[Fiona Cooper]

David Harvey is interesting - but he doesn't give any hint of what is to be done.... other than changed thinking (which will be even less effective than #occupywherever if that thinking rests within the skulls of academics).  I'm not sure about ongoing protest; my inclination is that it is a waste of time - we had ongoing protest at Greenham Common against the nukes held there - sure, eventually they were taken away but would they have been taken anyway?  times had moved on from when the encampment there first began.  

You are so right JE about the Arab Spring - Egypt has failed to meet it's deadline and it seems they have replaced dictatorship with some kind of lasting chaos and still no answers.  I suppose this is what worries me slightly about the #occupy movement - they don't seem to know quite what they want and let's face it, this is totally understandable given the vast complexity of the problems.  I believe that we have to reach out to schools and community to help people understand that we have to change as well as the bankers - after all, many of us are sitting in houses that we couldn't afford without credit - partly due to the suppression of wages and partly due to the hyped inflation enabled by easy credit - obviously a vicious cycle.  Our generation has largely lost sight of real values (in every way).  I don't think #occupy will make much difference, but I don't think an extended presence would make much difference either.  I reckon that things will get much worse before they get better and at some point a tipping point will be reached where many more people will become involved in protest - at the moment there are a lot of traditional activists involved and some of the nouveau poor..... when interest rates start to rise and many more people can't afford their mortgage/credit repayments any longer, when it becomes more obvious that oil is finite, when people start to scrabble to pay for their food... then we will see a mass movement in the West of unprecedented proportions.   F

[Gehan Macleod]

I've been doing quite a bit of digging around on this and what I'm reading & hearing is telling me it's foolish to write OWS off too quickly. I sense something that's not been there before and also the timing has a lot going for it with so many people going under with rising debt and unemployment in a context of wider economic & ecological collapse.

There's seems to be some pretty thoughtful planning behind this and also a sense of "creating the space for change to take place" which I think makes this more powerful than protest. I think Naomi Klien's article hits the nail on the head as does this one from David Graeber; "What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible."

Dweebus - thanks for opening up this discussion thread, I'm surprised there's not more of a response. I think the lack of demands is definitely a strength as this video shows http://vimeo.com/29513113 As one of the women says "Demands can be problematic & disempowering actually - this is a model for a new society, it's not a protest in the sense of being against something - its a way to formulate something new" That there is potentially powerful stuff. It's not a bunch of jumped up individuals thinking they have all the answers from which to base a set of demands. It's about creating space first of all. And about saying actually we don't know what needs to happen next but we need to start that conversation. There's also something about it that says we all know what's going on here - just as Dorothy & Toto exposed the Wizard of Oz as a wee impotent guy behind a curtain. As a young black guy says on that video link; "this is something I've been going through internally for a a good part of my life now and to have it externalised in the real world is really a blessing" Another guy says "I don't know how to create collective liberation... but we're here holding space" That's part of the reason why I think this is just so interesting & I share much of your sentiments OctD'Cassi and the need to challenge the old right-left paradigm.

There also appears to be a lot of learning from Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring and from Greece and Spain and there are Arabs, Greeks and Spanish folk helping conduct the General Assembly at Zuccotti Park. Somewhere there was a reference to a broad global tactic of taking public squares as reflected in this website http://takethesquare.net/ Another interesting influence is the popular uprisings in Argentina starting in 2001 and based on principles of horizontalism.

So essentially too much there to write off for me. As Naomi Klien says in her article; "What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I'm not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that's important. I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it's also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult.That is what I see happening in this square." So Fiona, I agree it's absolutely about values. I also think the time you describe in your last sentence could be nearer than you think and what we could be seeing here is the beginning of that mass movement you talk of... 

Perhaps this is our last chance... for any kind of optimism at least.

[dweebus]

Everyone, thanks for the replies. Keep 'em coming. It is encouraging to see a diversity of POV.

Annie-

Good for you. A little rabble rousing is good for the circulation. :)

I will post more from my perspective, later.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Regards,

Dweebus

[Glenn "Lee" Howden]

I have seen that video. He's a nice looking, clean cut, articulate guy.

I'm going to the Kilkenomics event the first part of November to see what the intellectuals have to say. They will be talking about corruption at the top. I'm going to try to get a few words in about corruption in the middle and the bottom. My point being that if you can convince a majority of the population that honesty is the best policy then this country will be in a lot better shape to handle the crisis that the people at the top created.

I have looked people in the eye and said things like this before and they laughed at me. I expect the same thing to happen again.

I don't know if you caught the symbolism of this guy's cap. It is a civil war union cap. I don't know what it meant to him, but to me it is an anti slavery symbol. The confederacy may have lost, but there are still many pro slavery and slavery apologist left in the States.

Annie Fraser said:

Well, Dark Mountaineers, looks like the UK has just shown it's solidarity with OWS:

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/09/8234525-occupy-wall...

I'm going to try my damndest to be there at least some of the time.  For although I hate to be one of those people who declares the sky is falling in, after much research and contemplation, the sky is  falling in!  And even if the protests eventually 'fizzle out', I want my children and any potential grandchildren to know that I at least tried.

And Glen, don't be intimidated by those media numpties - just look them in the eye and do what this guy did:

http://www.observer.com/2011/10/exclusive-occupy-wall-street-activi...

 

[bert louis]

Under the heading :  The fight against climate change is down to us – the 99%.
Naomi Klein writes:  
...
What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I'm not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that's important.

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society.
...

So for Naomi it's about changing some basic cultural values.

That's a tall order, for that means a wide spread change in the way we think about ourselves, about society and about the world at large.

What values is she thinking of?

Can anyone please mention one or two? 

 

[Malcolm Ramsay]

Hi Bert,

"So for Naomi it's about changing some basic cultural values.

That's a tall order, for that means a wide spread change in the way we think about ourselves, about society and about the world at large."

In fact I think we could go a long way simply with some fairly subtle changes to (or clarification of) a few fundamental laws.

As an example, I'm currently looking for a way to put a question to the courts (in Britain) on the underlying purpose of inheritance law: should a landowner's power to bequeath land be regarded as a privilege which the state grants him, or as a responsibility which it delegates to him? (I wrote about this in my first blog post when I came to the site, Passing On, so I won't expand on it here).

In my view, the plutocracy's power rests on some very fragile foundations and it only persists because we haven't yet focused properly on the inconsistencies between a few long established practices, and the values we hold as a society. I think people are continuing to treat inequality as a political problem, when in fact all the necessary political battles have already been won - it's just that the legal position hasn't caught up.

 

bert louis said:

Under the heading :  The fight against climate change is down to us – the 99%.
Naomi Klein writes:  
...
What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I'm not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that's important.

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society.
...

So for Naomi it's about changing some basic cultural values.

That's a tall order, for that means a wide spread change in the way we think about ourselves, about society and about the world at large.

What values is she thinking of?

Can anyone please mention one or two? 

 

[bert louis]

Hi Malcolm,

M.: In fact I think we could go a long way simply with some fairly subtle changes to (or clarification of) a few fundamental laws.

That's great news!  But that doesn't address my question:

What basic cultural values is she thinking of?

[Malcolm Ramsay]

Hi Bert,

I've no idea what she's thinking of, but I did suggest one that is fundamentally important; the way that property law operates in practice seems to me to violate the principles underlying it.

In fact, in the bit you quoted she didn't say anything about cultural values - she talked about the 'values that govern our society', which is a bit different. As I see it, the values which govern our society are at odds with the ones which most of us actually hold - to my mind, those areas of imcompatibility are where the established system is most vulnerable.

bert louis said:

Hi Malcolm,

M.: In fact I think we could go a long way simply with some fairly subtle changes to (or clarification of) a few fundamental laws.

That's great news!  But that doesn't address my question:

What basic cultural values is she thinking of?