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Nov 13, 2011 at 2:27 pm
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
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I don't understand your question.
All I'm interested in here is learning and explaining the history and purpose of the tools, structure, and ideology of the planners and core organizers of OWS.
I've been at it for a while now; have a look at my comment history if that kind of thing doesn't bore you to tears.
I like inclusive social movements. These OS folks are not remotely inclusive--because shouting supporters down is never, ever inclusive.
It's going to take a huge, huge movement to affect real social change, but no one would ever want to work with people who want to constantly engage in a massive shouting match.
A brilliant but evil right-wing political consultant, Frank Luntz, says "it's not what you say, it's what they hear!" He's behind a lot of the right-wing's recent success. This wing of the OS movement acts like children, and does not accept the super-obvious fact of humanity that people are different and sometimes you have to say things differently to different groups. Shouting the same loud aggressive message at everyone is guaranteed to fail.
I've been participating in the Occupy movement from the sidelines, not wanting to directly engage with people like this. There are too many of them, and it would take all my time to even have a chance at neutralizing them. Occasionally I donate food & equipment to my friends in the movement (who are not among the aggressively dumb in the movement), but I have no interest in showing up.
Instead I choose to engage in something that I feel has a far greater chance of social good: I work really, really hard; donate a large chunk of my earnings to shelters and food pantries; and I work at food pantries on the weekend.
I know the movement has helped shift the national conversation from deficits to jobs, but the failure of it to engage with the 99% on their diverse terms rather than act as an anarchic monolith (this does exist!) will doom it very soon.
Or wipe your bottoms after shitting on a sidewalk in broad daylight, just yards away from a port-a-john as we see in this fine video:
youtu.be/Wl1ObUGAoHE
And exactly what police brutality are you talking about?
You are most certainly 100% wrong about that.
It is illegal to use amplification in New York without a permit.
NYPD Permit application here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/p…
ACLU discussion of need for permit here:
http://www.nyclu.org/content/know-your-r…
to wit:
I guess what I'm getting at is that any movement that chooses to not care about the importance of effective communication strategies in dealing with the public and press are simply not going to be majority movements. As much as every movement claims to represent the "majority", it's up to the majority and not activists to make that statement a reality.
No, I am not "certainly 100% wrong" about that.
I believe Zuccotti Park is not, under that ordinance, a "public place." It is private property which has a 24-hour public-access zoning requirement.
I do agree that that explanation was introduced shortly after the Occupation was initiated. I do not at all agree, however, that The People's Mic was introduced as a legal necessity. The organizers made no other concessions to legal niceties.
Much has been made of Zuccotti Park's legal status with regard to camping and/or tents; I fail to see why it should suddenly be regarded as "splitting hairs" when discussing amplification.
From the first days of the NYC occupation, PAs and bullhorns have been available, and sometimes used in addition to The People's Microphone.
Amplification is an easy explanation for The People's Mic, but it fails to explain the fact that from the September 17 start of the protests (and even before, in planning assemblies) the People's Mic has been consistently used even when PA Systems or bullhorns are available, or when no amplification is needed at all (usually indoors, in smaller rooms or in spaces acoustically designed for unamplified performance or speech).
It's a comfortable explanation, and it definitely helps relieve the weirdness when the thing is first experienced, but the story just doesn't hold up when you look into the origins of OWS.
youtu.be/Wl1ObUGAoHE
I was just trying to point out that that what happened at Town Hall was a metaphor for what's wrong with our "democracy". I saw it as the Occupy people trying to do a show and tell. It was dispiriting to see how it degenerated into an us and them, our way or the highway.
Surely the people on the ground need to rethink their strategy, but honestly, I'm tired of representatives walking around like their shit doesn't stink. Pretending to be something you are not might garner initial support, but to me that is just a con. If we have to con our way to justice and equality, I truly believe things will degrade once people get tired of the charade.
We may lose the current ground battle, but the dialogue has started, and the grievances have been clearly identified, and these grievances have resonated with society in a way that can not be undone, can never be lost. Each individual will choose their own way of supporting what they believe in, and the occupy movement will continue to find ways to facilitate a dialogue, and perhaps evolve our nation into a more perfect union.
Watch and learn.
#138 "the republicans have succeeded in creating an underclass of woefully undeveloped, brutish minds." Last I checked, any serious school reform is consistently thwarted by the powerful teachers union, one of the most dedicated contributors to democrats.
#147 "Everyone calling for arrest: I hope someday you are beaten down and pepper sprayed for your opinions" - I haven't seen anyone beaten for their opinion at any of the protests. Well, I take that back. I've seen several people physically attacked by OWS protesters when they went to the park with a dissenting opinion. I've seen prosters arrested for failing to clear parks after multiple notices by the city, and those same people preparing the night before to intentionally defy the law so they would be arrested. Then, the whole time the cops are doing what the protesters both prepared for, and claim as an intentional part of the movement (defying law), the crowd is screaming at the cops like they are evil incarnate. Even the cops being as careful and methodical as possible, are being treated like the scum of the world by people that went their to defy the law in the first place.
#186 "They (OWS) are the first ones to actually get off their couches and try to affect change since the 1960s" - Well, except those rascally teafolk, you mean. You know, the run of the mill working stiffs upset about govt corruption, fiscal irresponsibility, and oppressive legislation. They didn't have some long-nurtured ideologies they were hoping to promote, no new world order, no desire to bring back the guillotine and destroy the worlds economic system. They just wanted to fix the broken parts, and got off their couches to do so. The only difference is, they were focused on results, not enjoying the spirit of protesting.
This incident is a few week's dated, but I hadn't seen this camera before. yeah, there was violence, destruction, and many other protesters trying to prevent it. As one of those 'peace' guys starts to get pounded and stomped by the black bloc, you hear the cameraman or his assistant hurriedly saying "don't film it, don't film it", and it shuts off.
http://www.breitbart.tv/occupyoakland-va…
It's funny how easy it is for anyone, any movement, to slip so quickly into a biased projection, a dishonest accounting of itself. All the same things the MSM is blamed for, and you can see and hear such talk every day on the globalrev livestreams among the protesters. They haven't even formed any govt yet, and already they feel comfortable at spin.
For Christ's sake! Perfection does not, does not, does not exist. OWS is imperfect. So what? Such is humankind. Why is our side of the class war expected to do everything right 100% of the time, while the 1% gets a pass even though it never does anything moral and just?
Go on ya' sheep. Keep giving credence to Orwell's fiction:
"For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. ... Ignorance is Strength" .
Support OWS, however "imperfect" it may be...because it beats whatever crap the 1% is peddaling 100% of the time!
I don't demand perfection, but that attitude is not going to change hearts and minds, much like the event that was described in this post by Dom. If you can't see that (or you can and don't care) then OWS deserves to collapse under the weight of its own hubris.
I was sitting in back. It was hard to hear the people's mic back there - the electric mic worked much better in that setting. We were among friends and supporters. For goodness sakes - can't we agree to use an actual microphone when we're invited to do so?
One great suggestion that was made by a woman who got to the mic - "Why don't people twinkle instead of applauding? It's hard to hear when speakers get interrupted with applause." GREAT IDEA. That's easily learned by osmosis - little or no discussion needed.
Funny, I thought the point was societal reform of our flawed economic system to enact change that would benefit the 99%. Not to undo or challenge "authority" in and of itself.
But now that Occupy Seattle (as reported today) is banning people that dared to suggest Occupy run candidates in 2012 and 2013... the whole thing has gone pointless and has been ruined by the stupid minority.
I agree with commenters #37, 43, 62, 186, and 192.
And I am one of the members of the audience who had never attended an Occupy Seattle protest or a General Assembly before.
I watched Occupy Seattle in fact occupy Town Hall, state their requests,
demand—yes, demand—that they be given the time needed for their request to be
fully considered, and politely, respectfully, and without fuss return to their
seats when the majority of the audience requested to return to the panel
format.
Commenter #62 said:
The problem was Nick Licata's frustrated "moderation" of the GA-style process.
I agree. The most illuminating part of the evening was coming to understand that (a) process is important, and (b) a new process makes people who are comfortable with the current terms of engagement uncomfortable. And there's a point here: the "current terms of engagement" between people, politicians, and corporations have led us to the crisis we're experiencing.
I wish that Dominic had included in his post some discussion of the hostility and patronization toward Occupy Seattle expressed by Frank Greer and Nick Licata as soon as things didn't go precisely as planned. I have sympathy for them. It had to be very uncomfortable. But a lot of the time "wasted" was due to Licata's obvious frustration and inability to engage respectfully from the beginning.
I will also say that after Occupy Seattle's demonstration of their commitment to a consensus-based democratic process, I found the questions Licata posed to the panel to be dry and beside the point. If the panel had been run as originally intended for the entire evening, instead of for only the second half of the evening, I would not have learned
nearly so much.
I agree with commenters #37, 43, 62, 186, and 192.
And I am one of the members of the audience who had never attended an Occupy Seattle protest or a General Assembly before.
I watched Occupy Seattle in fact occupy Town Hall, state their requests,
demand—yes, demand—that they be given the time needed for their request to be
fully considered, and politely, respectfully, and without fuss return to their
seats when the majority of the audience requested to return to the panel
format.
Commenter #62 said:
The problem was Nick Licata's frustrated "moderation" of the GA-style process.
I agree. The most illuminating part of the evening was coming to understand that (a) process is important, and (b) a new process makes people who are comfortable with the current terms of engagement uncomfortable. And there's a point here: the "current terms of engagement" between people, politicians, and corporations have led us to the crisis we're experiencing.
I wish that Dominic had included in his post some discussion of the hostility and patronization toward Occupy Seattle expressed by Frank Greer and Nick Licata as soon as things didn't go precisely as planned. I have sympathy for them. It had to be very uncomfortable. But a lot of the time "wasted" was due to Licata's obvious frustration and inability to engage respectfully from the beginning.
I will also say that after Occupy Seattle's demonstration of their commitment to a consensus-based democratic process, I found the questions Licata posed to the panel to be dry and beside the point. If the panel had been run as originally intended for the entire evening, instead of for only the second half of the evening, I would not have learned
nearly so much.
Democracy, both cumbersome and time-consuming, is not a waste of time. As I said before, it remains to be seen which process would ultimately take less time. For instance, the woman who came to the (Business as Usual) mic to speak, started out so gracefully by thanking the Occupiers for their work, clarifying her reason for wanting the BaU mic (her elderly mother had a hearing aid and couldn't understand the shouting), then digressed into a lengthy and repetitious digression on many things--mostly "off topic".
Did anyone go to the small GA the Occupiers had in the downstairs after the Town Hall event? It was pretty amazing--there was a good amount of reflecting on what had happened upstairs. And people had their say and felt heard. Anyone go to that?
Ask any two people involved with the Occupy Movement this question and you are most likely to get two different answers. What must be recognized when attempting to define the Occupy Movement and when seeking to identify its goals is that we are a movement composed of vastly varying perspectives. “We are the 99%,” but “the 99%” contains people with a mass of different grievances and potential solutions to the current state of the world. We have all come together in response to the same call to action, “Occupy Wall Street.” However, this call to action is only a common catalyst; we have been mobilized by the same target—Wall Street and the vast inequalities in material wealth and power represented by it. What this movement is about then, is creating new spaces for political activity and citizen engagement to take place. We declare the spaces of the occupations as places where an equality of voices may exist; the spaces of Occupation seek to build democracy from the ground up.
Right now, the process of democracy is the most fundamental aspect of this movement and must not be undermined by a sense of urgency for products or other results; because our primary product is democracy itself and we have already begun to take possession of it through the creation of these spaces. Allow this to continue to unfold.
In broader society, outside of the spaces of the Occupations, many people have their attention captured and their imagination dominated by a story being told. This story is continuing to be told in a way that supports those who are telling it and which also controls those who are uncritically listening to it. This story is being told by all of the mainstream media corporations, elected officials, and their mutual friends in the major banks and other transnational corporations. The story says that some people hold power and that the rest of us need to appeal to them or attempt to get more of ‘our own’ within their ranks in order to affect change. This is not actually the case.
What we are realizing with the Occupy Movement is that the power is within all of us—all we need to do is realize this and cease to believe the stories telling us otherwise while shifting our focus to building a better world. The dominant narrative of the world now, the story being told by “the 1%,’ is that only one possible world exists and the majority of people have no power to create it. It is the job of the Occupy Movement to subvert this message and liberate our self from that horror story. All of the laws empowering corporate interests, waging war on the planet and its peoples, torturing people, and putting masses of people in prisons in order to protect the interests of “the 1%,” and even the people who feel trapped into playing their roles within this grand story—the inflexibility of all this goes away once we begin to act as beings capable of telling our own stories. Act as though the world is not doomed to be as it is.
For this movement to continue to gain momentum, we need more people to wake up from the matrix created by the mainstream media and all of its mutually reinforcing storytellers; stop believing that we are powerless to create a better world and begin working with others to create a world in which many worlds fit—a world in which each and every being has agency that is recognized and valued by everyone else. Wake up!
Ask any two people involved with the Occupy Movement this question and you are most likely to get two different answers. What must be recognized when attempting to define the Occupy Movement and when seeking to identify its goals is that we are a movement composed of vastly varying perspectives. “We are the 99%,” but “the 99%” contains people with a mass of different grievances and potential solutions to the current state of the world. We have all come together in response to the same call to action, “Occupy Wall Street.” However, this call to action is only a common catalyst; we have been mobilized by the same target—Wall Street and the vast inequalities in material wealth and power represented by it. What this movement is about then, is creating new spaces for political activity and citizen engagement to take place. We declare the spaces of the occupations as places where an equality of voices may exist; the spaces of Occupation seek to build democracy from the ground up.
Right now, the process of democracy is the most fundamental aspect of this movement and must not be undermined by a sense of urgency for products or other results; because our primary product is democracy itself and we have already begun to take possession of it through the creation of these spaces. Allow this to continue to unfold.
In broader society, outside of the spaces of the Occupations, many people have their attention captured and their imagination dominated by a story being told. This story is continuing to be told in a way that supports those who are telling it and which also controls those who are uncritically listening to it. This story is being told by all of the mainstream media corporations, elected officials, and their mutual friends in the major banks and other transnational corporations. The story says that some people hold power and that the rest of us need to appeal to them or attempt to get more of ‘our own’ within their ranks in order to affect change. This is not actually the case.
What we are realizing with the Occupy Movement is that the power is within all of us—all we need to do is realize this and cease to believe the stories telling us otherwise while shifting our focus to building a better world. The dominant narrative of the world now, the story being told by “the 1%,’ is that only one possible world exists and the majority of people have no power to create it. It is the job of the Occupy Movement to subvert this message and liberate our self from that horror story. All of the laws empowering corporate interests, waging war on the planet and its peoples, torturing people, and putting masses of people in prisons in order to protect the interests of “the 1%,” and even the people who feel trapped into playing their roles within this grand story—the inflexibility of all this goes away once we begin to act as beings capable of telling our own stories. Act as though the world is not doomed to be as it is.
For this movement to continue to gain momentum, we need more people to wake up from the matrix created by the mainstream media and all of its mutually reinforcing storytellers; stop believing that we are powerless to create a better world and begin working with others to create a world in which many worlds fit—a world in which each and every being has agency that is recognized and valued by everyone else. Wake up!
A primary issue that night: As to the camp being occupied by many as a social safety-net (addict rehabilitation and de-facto food bank), it's my hope people really do take account of Alvina's idea to take a cue from Portland and San Francisco to be more active in the day to day activities of Occupy folks. Things like, have a march a day, group activities that get people moving and interacting with each other beyond work groups that meet in the middle of the day. Also, I felt community clean-up was a great idea to engender some good will and give back to the community OS is occupying.
By the way, if you haven't gone to a GA you should, if only so you can form your own opinion of Occupy Seattle. However, please be aware that there will be some who seem to only seek to express wordy pronouncements of vaguely articulated revolutionary/utopian aims over actionable specifics. We all live in a pluralistic society that has the Internet (infodemics and pseudo-information abounds in echo chambers) and there isn't really a social safety-net in America. For some this movement is about expressing a cathartic rage, which optimistically one would hope is able to be channeled constructively.
My own personal hope remains that the movement actually stays focused first and foremost in forming a broad and effective counter force to the immense concentration of wealth and power that has impaired the effective functioning of the government of the United States of America.
This movement started out with a relentless focus on corporate corruption. There have been cover stories on national magazines about wealth disparity—something I've never seen before. The folks in the middle were really starting to hear the message, and liked it. Even the corporate media were forced to pay grudging attention.
Then, like always, people with "enough free time and emotional problems" to devote to the cause took over. And suddenly we're not talking about a crypto-fascist oligarchy, we're whining because the cops won't let us camp in the park. Go home, take a shower, and come back when you get over your own narcissist victimology and go after the real enemy.
#241:
Why are people criticizing this story for talking about body odor?
Because it's petty.
#241:
Go home, take a shower, and come back when you get over your own narcissist victimology and go after the real enemy.
Sadly, some of these people don't have homes to go to for showering. Yes, this movement has been a magnet to the disenfranchised. Some of them even have BO. Horrors!
She is right, that is what they are trying to do. If you don't believe in war or bank bail outs you won't be voting for Obama. SEIU has come out in support of him. So fuck union bureaucrats!
And before you start your damn flames, I AGREE with the message of OWS and I SUPPORT the goals of OWS. I just wish they would articulate them and start working on a plan to make them happen instead of just shouting at the rooftops. Be effective, or don't bother.
We should recall that the initial protests, Occupy Wall Street, had a very specific focus as expressed in their name - Wall Street, the emblem of a financial system that since Bush's administration exorbitantly enriches the few at the expense of the many and produces nothing substantive but precisely that movement of money.
In these times when there is such widespread economic distress accompanied by social distress that affects millions, not every "occupier" will share the same insights.
Different strokes for different folks.
Not every protest must contain within itself the solution to the problem. We should appreciate these efforts to resist and call attention to economic oppression.
Existing organizations, including unions and progressive political parties, rather than trying to prescribe for OWS the path they should choose, can adapt themselves to this new element of protest against the enemies of democracy and use whatever organizing skills they may have to focus their own groups on the economic issues that gave birth to the protests.
I have been calling from the very beginning that the OWS movement should be the ones to coopt the Democratic Party and work to replace those elected officials who are not acting in the interest of the 99%. As a leader in the local Democratic Party, I have NO INTEREST in taking our message where it is not welcome. But our doors have been open, and everyone is welcome to bring their views and energy into our processes to help us make change. We're not coopting anyone. WE WANT TO BE COOPTED!