Today, I’m working on a story that has to do with how local government uses oil and oil filters for its automotive fleet. I called the city a few minutes ago, and the operator who picked up said: “Well, I have some ideas of who you can talk to—I gotta list, but I want to make sure I get you someone who’s still working here and hasn’t been laid off yet. The list just can’t keep up with the layoffs.”
Food for thought for those of you at Occupy (not everyone at Occupy, but you know who you are) who think any government employee (cops, Parks and Rec, etc.) is The Enemy and that The People can do for their own selves—maybe volunteer to change some oil filters for a fire truck or two. It sounds like city mechanics are being laid off, which is a pity, and it’d be a double pity for a firetruck to throw a rod while rushing to extinguish the fire at your house. Or at anybody’s house.
Government workers and the services they provide (fire, police, homeless shelters) are also part of the 99%. If you really want to smash the state, realize that we’ll have to extinguish our own fucking house fires.
Meanwhile, Occupy can’t even settle on one goddamned campsite—Westlake, City Hall, SCCC, wherever some faction decides to camp next week—much less put out a house fire. If you want to be taken seriously (and Lord knows, so many people in Seattle want to take you seriously), you must get your shit together.
And if you don’t, and if you fall on your own self-righteous sword of rhetoric, The Man won’t have killed you. You will have killed yourselves.
A timely point to make. The right is busily dismantling ALL worker protections, which include benefit packages and the right to strike for state and municipal employees everywhere. here in WA state workers have had a wage freeze in effect since 2007. It was announced a few weeks ago that this will hold until at least the end of fiscal 2014. 7 years with no raises and we’re the bloodsuckers?
It sounds like city mechanics are being laid off in droves? Maybe you could ask a reporter to find out for sure.
Rather than arbitrarily slamming Occupy you could see if you just got a dumb employee or one who was end-running any bad news you might report.
Nice to see that the revolution has begun eating its own children.
@1 and @2 for the wins.
My expanding franchises of Torches, Pitchforks, and Guillotines … well, it’s just my Third Job ™, after my 2nd one of Looting Mansions and Yachts ™.
Yeah, personally I’m pretty excited about not having to extinguish my own fires, or work 16 hour days in horrible conditions without overtime pay, or filter my own drinking water. I’m happy there are regulations on the sanitary conditions of restaurants and on what ingredients can be used in food. I’m also happy that there are regulations on drugs and pills and that these drugs and pills have to go through extensive tests before they can be sold to the public. And the list could go on and on…
Don’t you worry, the republicans are busily drafting up a jobs plan for the 1%-ers to create private sector mechanic jobs to replace the government workers. Just wiithout any pesky worker protections or safety or environmental regulations. Just eviscerate the middle class and transfer more and more public assets up to the wealthiest private equity managers and we’ll have more American liberty and freedom. Too bad if you get laid off or fall behind or lose your health insurance or retirement nest egg, that’s the price of freedom and liberty, and if you complain you’re waging class warfare. Just don’t get sick, and if you do, hey, like the great freedom-loving patriot George W. Bush said, you can always just go to the ER.
Hey, you know whose pay and benefits shrink when 1%-dictated policy cuts government revenues?
Public employees! Like me! Who don’t get paid for shit!
But yeah, this was an ill-considered slam on Occupy, Brendan. You’re only helping silence the message and preserve the status quo when you paint the entire movement as naive anarchists and rhetorically push them into the fringe.
Has the Stranger done a story yet on the huge state budget cuts that will take effect November 1st — the cuts that will eliminate “basic need” money for thousands of the most
fragile citizens in our communities???
Yes, you’re right — we ALL need to be doing more for one another. Especially the most basic things, like providing food, shelter, clothing, basic medical care. Fair warning to all: this will become even more necessary once the dreaded budget cuts take effect.
Jesus you sound like a hysterical child.
SDOT has a budget of $310 million dollars per year. They laid-off 31 workers we were doing reimbursable road project for independent utilities. For a department that has ballooned in the past 10 years, that’s hardly a dent.
http://publicola.com/2011/06/20/more-tha…
It’s not like a 3% cut in budgets is going to noticeably disrupt services, and if the operator can’t keep track of that logistical blip, then maybe that’s indicative of the poor quality of services government gives for the money.
Considering that 1-in-5 city workers now earns more than $100,000, I’m disinclined to think the city bureaucrats are really concerned about making room for the common man in their payroll plans.
Nice straw man Brendan. No wonder you are worried about fires. (Rimshot!)
A little harsh, no?
Occupy is more than any one group. There are people down there who want to “smash the state.” There are also people down there who want reform within the state. And there are a lot of folks down there who just know that Something Is Really Profoundly Broken and aren’t sure yet how to give a voice to that. I know there are problems; I’ve seen them. I know that it is often a hot mess of confusion, that tempers flare, that there are power struggles. I know that sometimes it can look like a really messy battle with people just yelling, often at the police. But sometimes things are messy. The world is messy Brendan.
You have been down there enough to also see that sometimes it is good. I hope you have seen that, anyway. Sometimes it is people really trying to take care of each other. Sometimes it is strangers handing out food to anyone who is hungry, blankets to anyone who is cold, water to anyone who is thirsty. Hell, sometimes it is down right biblical.
Everyone is in a rush for the movement to get its shit together. I’m in a rush for the movement to get its shit together. But this is something new. And it is going to take time. And a lot of hard work. It is really easy – so so easy – to stand on the sidelines and critique what is happening. It is much harder – so so much harder – to actually try and participate in a new kind of dialogue, a different kind of system. We could become something else; we could easily shift right back into the existing power dynamics, with a few privileged in charge and everyone else on the sidelines. We could become a group where a few in power get to dictate the result and the message to the rest, where a handful make the decisions, where the voiceless remain just that – voiceless. And certainly sometimes we do. But we are at least trying.
I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated with the movement. I’m frustrated with the city. Currently, I’m frustrated with you. But come 5:00, when I leave work, I will still walk down to Westlake. I will stand in the cold, shivering (and let’s admit it, probably chain smoking), until about 2:00 or 3:00 am, when I have to go home so I get get a few hours of sleep before going back to my actual job. I will talk to people who just need to be heard. I will answer questions when I’m able. I will go to GA, and no matter how long and tedious it feels, I will stay and raise my hand and vote. I will use my voice and speak out when I disagree. It will be messy. I will get mad. I will want to leave about fifteen different times. But that’s just a part of the process. It takes time.
Maybe we can’t change the city fire trucks’ oil filters. Maybe we seem unproductive, like a bunch of petulant children bickering. But what do you expect? We will grow up. But it will take more than three weeks.
I hardly think the occupiers deserve the ire for this. No one pays attention when anarchists scream about smashing the state. It’s when right-wingers talk about cutting taxes and privatizing – which effectively smashes the state – that the message gets taken seriously. Take aim at what’s effective.
Holey crap, why do you think we are Occupying in the first place? When the wheels fall off the bus it’s time to get out in the street and direct traffic for a while until something is done. Believe me, I know infrastructure is falling apart and it pisses me off that the budget makers in Olympia are on this Austerity tear, too chickenshit to turn on their corporate masters and demand taxes from them. Like Kieth Oberman said: “you don’t have to be a dirty hippie to destroy the government, republicans are here for that”.
Our occupy is mostly made up with classic progressives, who to use the state to fix the economy: more taxes on the 1%, more stimulus, more spending here in the country where it will do good, less spending and aid to wall street “investments” that only benefit the people pushing money around.
We have the support of our local and state government as well as our police force. Here (Lincoln NE), the police are protecting us, and our right to occupy our own capital. Of course, it is probably hard to oppose people who want to give you more money, and we are dealing with a much smaller force in a much smaller and more peaceful city than most places.
I feel awful for what’s happening in Oakland. At the same time, if people at my occupy started trying to vandalize and throw stuff at police or banks etc, I’d leave. Even if my tent was torn down and trampled on by police horses first. I’d just get another tent.
I don’t want to be a part of violence. Our point will be made by staying through the cold and supporting each other.
PatriciaLegalWorkgroup, yes, it is wonderful when it is working. We’re heading into serious cold over here, but I’m thankful we won’t have to deal with much wet. I just hope we can keep it up as it gets below freezing, not just at night but in the day as well.
I’m not talking about everyone at Occupy. (Those post said “those of you at Occupy” not “all of you at Occupy.”) And as Patricia said, I’ve been down there enough to see that there are many factions. I’m just talking to the faction that gets all heated up about wanting to smash the state—and they’re certainly there.
I can only speak for myself and a number of my friends, though I’ve heard the same from countless others and seen a ton of letters to the editors. We support the message of the Occupy movement. We support what they’re trying to do. We want it to get organized and succeed. We are not willing to sit on the ground for 6 hours shaking our fingers in the air to get through some parliamentary BS deciding whether we should shake our fingers or wave our hands. We’re also not going to wait while we try to come to 100% consensus among the group deciding whether we hate police.
I’m well aware that not everyone at the movement is an anarchist but I know that coming to reasonable consensus with the anarchists in the group is about as likely as coming to reasonable consensus with a bunch of teabaggers. Until this movement finds a way of, at the very least, minimizing the dominance of the anarchists you’re never going to get buy-in from the vast majority of the middle class and without them the movement will die.
So, get those extremists under control. Make sure they know that the more extreme they are the more they drive away 99% of the 99%. 99% of the 99% want well regulated capitalism and know that the idea of eliminating capitalism is equally as destructive as eliminating government, as your teabaggy counterparts suggest.
Get the extremists under control and you will double your numbers, I guarantee it. I will come out and join you myself. I’ll even sleep outside with you. I’ll even try not to wake anybody up when I get up for work in the morning.
If “so many people” in Seattle want Occupy to succeed, get off your arses and get down there. Help to steer the movement in a moderate direction, instead of sitting back and complaining when it fails due to radicals taking over.
Expecting “someone else” to “do something” is exactly why the world is the way it is; because the people who’ve done something have done it to suit themselves, and only themselves.
Hey Root, Brenden, if you think it’s such a bitch to get the extremists under control, trying talking to your elected representative. I went to Olympia with my Union for lobby day last January, with dismal results. My state senator, Adam Kline, basically told me and the PAID LOBBYIST that works for my union that the 2/3 majority needed to raise any new taxes prevented him from doing anything other than the bidding of the Austerity Class. After being shown the door, the thought to myself; “this is the last time I will be walking in here without a lit torch and/or pitch fork”.
If the budget makers cant be bothered to listen to balding white men who have worked for a living all their lives, imagine how a young person with no job, no education and no future feels? Extremists aren’t born, they are made from the circumstances given them. When our 1 1/2 party system demands “shared sacrifice” from the poorest of the population, and rolls over the same benefits to the richest as before, what else do you expect?