- Dominic Holden
- Christina Purington has been occupying Westlake Plaza since Saturday.
I just left a general assembly of Occupy Seattle at Westlake Plaza, where protesters are expecting Seattle Police to forcibly eject them from the park tonight.
Standing in a circle, the protesters addressed a number of agenda items, including an offer from Mayor McGinn’s office to occupy City Hall instead (the mayor’s requirements—that protesters not be allowed to set up tents and that they not be allowed 24-hour access to the premises—elicited scoffs from just about everyone). They also ridiculed a demand from the parks department that they take their tents down this afternoon. Someone asked, “What would we do without the tents?” “I think we should stay,” someone else said, adding, “That’s the whole point of an occupation.”
Over the course of the assembly, the crowd of somewhere between fifty and seventy-five protesters—the other half of the protesters flyered passing crowds and kept an eye on their tent city—realized that action was probably going to be taken tonight. Someone read a message from the group’s legal counsel, who said that the police would probably wait until the neighboring retail stores were closed for the evening. “If you do not want to be arrested, you need to be off park premises,” an organizer explained.
Conversations turned to getting more protesters to show up. “Our best bet is in numbers,” a young man said to applause. “I am here to stay,” an organizer announced to the crowd, “I’ll be honest. I am fucking scared.” An older man added, “If we stop now, everyone will be sleeping in the parks in the future!” Protesters suggested drawing some of the crowd from the nearby Sounders game to Westlake to help shore up their numbers. “Call everyone you know, and tell them to get down here,” everyone said to everyone else.
Great, just what we need, another Tent City in the works.
I suppose I’ll start a shitstorm for pointing this out, but the Tea Party didn’t have to “occupy” public spaces in order to wield significant power in the Republican Party.
Protest. Organize. Pick a few issues to focus on. Show up at precinct caucuses. Attend state and local level party meetings. Do all that boring shit.
And then vote, and convince your friends to vote, too.
Getting arrested is part of a whole ‘nother formula.
Pick up that can, citizen!
@2: What’s your point? The Tea Party is astroturf.
@4 So is this Occupy Party.
LOL @ libtards
@5, we know who’s paying for the Tea Party astroturf. I’m curious to know who you think is paying for the organization of the OWS crowd.
Honestly, you guys are missing the point. Put up or shut the fuck up. I’m on the Internet and Communications team—it’s going to be larger and more organized than you guys are expecting. 😀 I see an awful lot of bitching and snarky comments (typical Seattle hipsters, I suppose) in these comments, but not a lot of useful comments.
I see an awful lot of hipster bitching in these comments, but not a lot of useful suggestions.
I’m on the Internet and Communications team for #occupy. 😀 I’ve done more in the last few days (including camping there Sunday night and being there all day Saturday and helping with the meeting on Friday) than I’ll bet any of you have done.
Call Mike McGinn.
Link up with the Sunny Jim homeless camp and merge to form a new Student-Vagrant Occupacracy.
Vagrants = Squatters = Foreclosed Property Owners.
Windows 8 Mobile makes the living room come to your tent.
Clear Wimax brings the Internet to every sidewalk square.
That the police think it is alright to do this anti-sovereign act of discrimination, is a clear sign that this Occupation needs to be happening.
@11 “anti-sovereign act of discrimination”? What? Could you use words that make sense, please?
The parks close at 10pm. After that, it’s trespassing. They’re lucky the cops didn’t arrest them days ago. There’s a permit process they can go through if they want to protest. The parks department is not going to turn them down, but they have to go through the right channels.
Of course I would expect no less from the “Occupy” movement. They have no goal, no plan, no demands. They’re just pissed at what they were told to be pissed at, and don’t know how to go about getting anything changed.
I hate to be cynical, and I hope I’m wrong, but I just don’t see these protests accomplishing anything.
@2,
It’s a valid point you make there. I’m headed out to watch some baseball right now (and down in portland anyway, so wouldn’t be able to join regardless) but I’ll just state that I think you sort of illustrate the point right there.
The underclass has been so undermined, and so disenfranchised, for so long, that they simply lack the resources and/or fortitude to put in the kind of efforts you suggest. The tea party morons are largely middle class (and admittedly, a fair amount of lower-middle class) white people, and haven’t experienced anywhere NEAR the level of oppression and exploitation that lower class blacks & minorities have. Granted, we don’t see the effects of it the same as we do back on the truly impoverished and sprawling ghettos on the east coast (where I spent the bulk of my life) but it’s a horrific and self-perpetuating cycle.
Honestly, such is the overwhelming nature of that cycle that I can’t help but remain sadly pessimistic that these protests will be able to foment the type of change we seek. But I’ll be out in Portland come Thursday, better or worse.
#13
correcT.
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don’T
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I saw them today when I was waiting for my bus (I saw you, too, Paul. Sorry I didn’t say hi), and I just kept thinking that to make a bigger impact–that is to say any impact at all–they need to disrupt something, by, say, clogging I-5 on either or both sides of Mercer Island. They’d need a lot more people and some balls, but it would certainly get some attention.
In his Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Hutcheson foreshadowed the Declaration of Independence, stating: “For wherever any Invasion is made upon unalienable Rights, there must arise either a perfect, or external Right to Resistance. . . . Unalienable Rights are essential Limitations in all Governments.” However, Hutcheson placed clear limits on his notion of unalienable rights, declaring that “there can be no Right, or Limitation of Right, inconsistent with, or opposite to the greatest publick Good.”
WE are the 99 percent!