About 40 tents are set up right now and a trickle of new campers are arriving on the south lawn of Seattle Central Community College in Capitol Hill, where Occupy Seattle is staking its new base tonight. Here’s an absolutely terrible photo of the scene:There are easily 150 people—but it’s dark, so it’s hard to count them or take a clear photo—and they’ve built a pretty groovy little village. Some people are ladling out hot soup and one guy is making tea, while others are drumming and shaking maracas, and other folks are smoking cigarettes in the “designated smoking area.” I made the mistake of setting up my tent in the designated smoking area and failing to set up my tent in the designated “do slugs of whiskey from a flask” area, because there is no such area, unfortunately. Drinking isn’t allowed. In other news you probably won’t find surprising, I’m not very skilled at setting up a tent.
They’ve scattered lots of straw about so it’s sort of like being on the set of a play that takes place in a medieval barn, only the cast is wearing Gortex and tight denim.
The sentiment I’ve heard from campers is that, while a community college isn’t what they’re protesting (it’s an icon of what many of them support), this a good place to send down roots. From here, they can focus on protesting banks, exposing runaway corporate control, and focusing on what matters—instead of expending energy on a squabble with cops down in Westlake Park. As for how they settled here, college president Paul Killpatrick has given his tepid welcome to the Occupiers, and today the American Federation of Teachers-Seattle, Local 1789 (AFL-CIO)—the local teachers’ union—declared its support. Protesters give the teachers a lot of credit for cranking cogs behind the scenes to neutralize opposition. I saw a couple cops earlier, but they seem to be on low alert.
I was supportive! So proud of your tent.
“This is the LAST tent you’d want on the edge of a glacier!”
Oh good, so only Capitol Hill denizens will have any idea that there is still any sort of Occupy Seattle movement. 😛 City Hall would have been 10x better.
Here’s some footage of Seattle’s OWS leaving Westlake Park.
http://youtu.be/_W_u4UTvk9w
This is good.
@3, I agree. Does anyone know the reasoning behind turning down City Hall in favor of SCCC? Is it only b/c the Mayor invited people there and this is some kind of gesture ‘sticking it to The Man’?
If you’re afraid of second-hand smoke, you should also avoid cars, restaurants…and don’t even think of barbecuing.
here are just some of the chemicals present in tobacco smoke and what else contains them:
Arsenic, Benzine, Formaldehyde.
Arsenic- 8 glasses of water = 200 cigarettes worth of arsenic
Benzine- Grilling of one burger = 250 cigarettes
Formaldehyde – cooking a vegetarian meal = 100 cigarettes
When you drink your 8 glasses of tap water (64 ounces) a day, you’re safely drinking up to 18,000 ng of arsenic by government safety standards of 10 nanograms/gram (10 ng/gm = 18,000ng/64oz) for daily consumption.
Am I “poisoning” you with the arsenic from my cigarette smoke? Actually, with the average cigarette putting out 32 ng of arsenic into the air which is then diluted by normal room ventilation for an individual exposure of .032 ng/hour, you would have to hang out in a smoky bar for literally 660,000 hours every day (yeah, a bit hard, right?) to get the same dose of arsenic that the government tells you is safe to drink.
So you can see why claims that smokers are “poisoning” people are simply silly.
You can stay at home all day long if you don’t want all those “deadly” chemicals around you, but in fact, those alleged 4000-7000 theorized chemicals in cigarettes are present in many foods, paints etc. in much larger quantities. And as they are present in cigarettes in very small doses, they are harmless. Sorry, no matter how much you like the notion of harmful ETS, it’s a myth.
If you’re afraid of second-hand smoke, you should also avoid cars, restaurants…and don’t even think of barbecuing.
here are just some of the chemicals present in tobacco smoke and what else contains them:
Arsenic, Benzine, Formaldehyde.
Arsenic- 8 glasses of water = 200 cigarettes worth of arsenic
Benzine- Grilling of one burger = 250 cigarettes
Formaldehyde – cooking a vegetarian meal = 100 cigarettes
When you drink your 8 glasses of tap water (64 ounces) a day, you’re safely drinking up to 18,000 ng of arsenic by government safety standards of 10 nanograms/gram (10 ng/gm = 18,000ng/64oz) for daily consumption.
Am I “poisoning” you with the arsenic from my cigarette smoke? Actually, with the average cigarette putting out 32 ng of arsenic into the air which is then diluted by normal room ventilation for an individual exposure of .032 ng/hour, you would have to hang out in a smoky bar for literally 660,000 hours every day (yeah, a bit hard, right?) to get the same dose of arsenic that the government tells you is safe to drink.
So you can see why claims that smokers are “poisoning” people are simply silly.
You can stay at home all day long if you don’t want all those “deadly” chemicals around you, but in fact, those alleged 4000-7000 theorized chemicals in cigarettes are present in many foods, paints etc. in much larger quantities. And as they are present in cigarettes in very small doses, they are harmless. Sorry, no matter how much you like the notion of harmful ETS, it’s a myth.
The businesses in downtown Seattle’s retail core would like to thank Occupy Seattle. With their surrender of Westlake, we are able to once again prepare to set up OUR park for the upcoming holiday shopping season. Soon our decorations will be up, the tree risen and lit up and the carousel twirling around in circles.
You see, the LAST thing us folks at Barneys of New York, Nordstrom’s or Tiffany’s want ANYONE to think about while shopping over the next couple of months is the growing income inequality that is destroying America. And with Occupy Seattle’s decision to move out of site of those shoppers, without much of fight no less, we are able to ignore reality and in turn allow our shoppers from Laurelhurst and Madronna to ignore reality and do what really matters…SHOP.
So again, thank you Occupy Seattle, your inability to stand your ground helps us have a profitable Black Friday.
Shouldn’t the headline read:
“Finger wiggling pussies move Tent City 8 to out of the way, unseen corner of Hipster Town where they can spend a week debating whether second hand smoke is bad for the 99% without being hassled by the media. America’s elite tremble at sight of community colleges turned in urban camps. “
Welcome to Sorta-Occupy Seattle.
Good to know Holden isn’t even man enough to know how to pitch a tent. ANy one want to bet he’ll be gone in 2 weeks?
“City Hall would have been 10x better.”
But ten times less cool than Cap Hill!
Is Radiohead coming?
What Cato said.
Harley, you are taking the designated smoking area awfully personally.
And Cato, they aren’t leaving Westlake at all. They are only on SCCC campus at night.
Try showing up to a rally or General Assembly sometime, you might be surprised at what you see.
Explain to me again what the advantage of camping in the city is in the first place?
In a Fnarf-controlled world, “drumming and shaking maracas” in a public place would be a capital offense. So would be Harley-riding, @9.
Not to worry, Cato. They’re only camping overnight at SCCC. During the day, they decamp and re-occupy Westlake (or whatever bank they’re pissed off at that day). So plenty of opportunity to harass shoppers.
This is a good step. I thought the whole insistence in camping at Westlake was a pointless distraction over the worst camping spot in the city.
If the idea is to be a commuter occupation, still going to Westlake by day, then why is the campsite needed? And if it’s a commuter protest is it really an occupation?
Cato hates Santa.
It’s not about where people are camping. If you obsess over that, you’re missing the point.
@18
OK. But it’s definitely about camping, isn’t it? Because no-one in the General Assembly is suggesting that they just protest during the day, and then go home at night, right?
What @18 said.
Well, we want Westlake shops to have a good retail season, don’t we? From Nordstrom to Talbot to independents, they might need to hire extra help, e.g. protesters day jobs. Or do we want everything to come to a screeching halt and let the Bolsheviks take over?
This is exactly why it was such a public service to make light of OS people distracting themselves for weeks over their struggle to decide where to camp. Their relocation to en-tenterate the nightlife district gives OS yet another chance to focus their energies on something more than cat and mouse games with Parks Department cleaners and bored cops. Whether they do anything with this chance is another matter.
On the other side of the country eastern seaboard Occupy campers are getting the snow of all wet snows – bleaugh – can you imagine? At Wall Street the Guardian found a sodden group.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct…
@19: You’re missing the point. Go visit them.
Fighting for Democracy? That’s a laugh, let’s read straight from Occupy Seattle’s website why don’t we:
“we prioritize the involvement of indigenous sovereign people in the redesigning and rebuilding of a new way of living on their ancestral land in the context that there is one mother of us all, our earth mother”
So apparently the Natives will get two votes for every white man’s vote, or some such arrangement, and we are all to worship the “Earth Mother” who will apparently have a constitutional role.
Doesn’t sound like the secular, American representative democracy I love. Sounds….fucking cuckoo.
Enjoy the shitty weather finger wigglers.
@19
Perhaps I’m missing the point, perhaps not, but you’re avoiding the question: is this about camping, or isn’t it?
@4, wins the “missing the point entirely award” for today
That was supposed to be @24, not #4.
And @25, it isn’t about camping out, it was supposed to be (at least in other cities besides Seattle) staking out a place, holding onto that place and making a viable point about what amounts to the “Haves” vs. the “Have Nots”. Most places figured that out.
But Occupy Seattle has turned into a traveling camping show that has started to lose it’s visibility and viability. The fact the conversation can even turn into a discussion about “camping out” indicates that OS hasn’t kept their eye on the bigger picture and stayed on message of the economic inequality that should be their focus.
Aww, isn’t that cute? The widdle bitty pwotesters are playing homeless on a college campus now, with designated smoking areas and straw and all.
It’s kind of nostagic and amusing to watch these children of whatever actual age grow up. Well… sort of grow up. Well… never mind.
An adult man who can’t set up a dome tent is maybe more amusing than the emotionally immature folks who make up the Occupy ‘movement.’ There are about 2 moving parts to the thing for goodness sake, and that’s if you consider a folding pole a moving part. Maybe someone should set up a facebook page or I-phone app with directions and a youtube video on tent set up. You could sell advertising on the site, charge a subscription rate for the app, do all sorts of revenue stream stuff with it! Maybe these halfwit Occupy folks have some limited value after all.
BTW, can you call it a movement when the whole idea is to become homeless in public parks and by doing so alter the whole course of Western political and economic life!!!!! ‘Cause the bankers in their 70th floor offices really care whether some lunatics sleep in parks never seen on the way to and from work and annoy bank tellers in the lobbies 4 blocks and 70 floors down!!!!! A seriously delusional squatting maybe, but a movement?)
Some niggling memory of how we actually change the system in a democracy is teasing at the back of my mind…. Starts with a ‘b’ maybe? Or a ‘v’? Now I remember- voting.
@27: Please. You hounded them over Westlake, then City Hall and now Seattle Central, a place with reasonable legal standing — something strongly advocated by OWS.
Now that they aren’t going to get hounded, what are you going to complain about? They are on a campus that has hosted dozens of income inequality protests in the past 20+ years and welcomed by faculty, neighbors and even the Farmers’ Market association everyone was wringing their hands over.
You don’t give a fuck that people are actually doing something, you’re just pissy that they aren’t doing things exactly as you want them to. All you “old school” protesters, curmudgeons and establishment types need to recognize that your way has failed. You were outmaneuvered by the Tea Party, for god’s sake.
Game over. Pick a team or get off the field.
@29
If the game’s over why would anyone bother picking a team or staying on the field anyway?
@27
That’s exactly what I was driving at. Camping is supposed to be tactic, the purpose of which is to create and then expand spaces in which the current sociopolitical order can not exert control.
If that’s the goal, then the location of the camping is definitely important; if you’re camping in a space where the current order already allows camping, then you have accepted the terms that the system has set for you.
If location is not the point at Occupy Seattle, then camping is the point. And if camping is the point, then OS has mistaken a tactic for a strategy.
Actually, new revenue stream idea-
Using the irritating motion of a dome tent in the wind plus the water running off the thing in the rain, power a turbine for recharging the $500 phones these poor helpless protestors victimized by The Man all carry.
Boy, if these idiots are gullible enough to believe half the crap they say, all sorts of scams- sorry, legitimate business ideas- could be run by them!
@31
Tactics? Strategy?
Really? These are folks who quite literally haven’t the sense to get in out of the rain.
I think Sesame Street is probably beyond them, never mind ‘The Art of War.’
@29, then what other city is doing what Occupy Seattle is doing ? Seriously? Tell us which one? And what have YOU brought to the table besides keeping “group think” alive? Sorry if being critical bothers you. Perhaps you should explore why it bothers you so much?
And the real colors of the American “left” come to light. Just look at your idiots tearing into each other. Truly a sight to behold. Attacking what others are doing and counterattacking anyone critical.
If anyone had any doubt as to why the liberals in the United States aren’t taken seriously by even their own political party the proof is right here in this comment thread.
I wonder how many 7 and 8 figure bonuses will be given out at the end of the year to the corporate elite?
@33
The people who planned and initiated OWS are a lot smarter and better organized than all too many of the followers they’ve attracted. It’s not an accident that all of the satellite protests sprang up at the same time. It’s not an accident that the same internal system of control, the General Assembly, was established and continues to be socially enforced at each and every OWS site.
The core organizers have their shit together. And anarchists who have their shit together, it seems, confuse the crap out of many OWS supporters. And all of its detractors.
@34: Occupy Wall Street chose Zuccotti Park for its lack of strong police action since it has pretty strong legal protections. They formed a solid base before all those famous things we know them for. As we see, they’re pretty stable. They formed a community first.
So there’s that.
As far as citing “groupthink” goes, don’t wave unoriginal and unstudied criticisms in my face and tell me to rethink things. Pot, kettle, etc.
@37
OWS chose Zuccotti park because their first choice, Bowling Green (the park with the bull statue), was barricaded off by police. Zuccotti Park was something like #5 on their list. The fact that it’s not a true city park was incidental.
Also, that “solid base” they’ve got was formed in meetings from August 2 to September 16th– in the six weeks before the occupation was initiated.
So it’s all about camping rights?
@38:There was no accident in their ultimate selection, though. So much process that struck gold.
For OS, parallels abound. They just happened to put some of their carts before their horses. It happens.
How will Ride the Ducks be able to include the new OS camp in its tour?
@40
Um, unless you’re implying divine providence, then yes, the fact that it’s Zuccotti park, and not one of the other spaces OWS scouted in advance, is in fact accidental.
What OS is doing isn’t putting the cart before the horse. It’s hanging a sign that says “CART” around the horse’s neck.
Can anyone at OS explain how this proposal, voted at a GA, will be put in place once they succeed?
“we prioritize the involvement of indigenous sovereign people in the redesigning and rebuilding of a new way of living on their ancestral land in the context that there is one mother of us all, our earth mother”
Source: occupyseattle.org
@43
Via consensus-based direct democracy. In other words, the society they want is the one they’re creating in miniature in the General Assembly.
I can’t tell you how the General Assembly at OS is currently prioritizing the indigenous whatsit etcetera earth mother, but unless you’ve got some evidence that they’re not doing that at all, we should probably give them the benefit of the doubt.
“Via consensus-based direct democracy.”
OK, but how will it work in a practical way? Will Indians be allowed to raise both arms at once when votes come in? Will their ideas be voted on first, non-Indian people’s last? OS has proclaimed that the Indian’s power will be prioritized – as will the Earth Mother – does OS have a working group working on the logistics of establishing this system of government? If they do, I’d really like to join.
And regarding the Earth Mother, once consensus is reached, what role will she play? If the prioritized Indians tell us the Earth Mother wants a casino built in the Lincoln Memorial, will there be a mechanism in place where we can possible question the Earth Mother?
OS sure has its work cut out on this whole prioritizing the role of Indians and their Earth Mother; if it took two weeks to vote themselves off Westlake Island and runaway, how long will this INdian thingy take?
@45
There is no voting necessary in consensus-based methods. You only proceed with a thing when nobody objects to it and “blocks”. OS has already established this system of government, there’s no need to re-establish it or work out its logistics all over again.
The earth mother will presumably be a non-blocking observer.
As I said, unless you’ve got some evidence that they haven’t already implemented that daffy resolution, we should give them the benefit of the doubt.
“the borders of the United States of America are a colonial construct based upon the violent destruction of indigenous land across the continent and therefore illegitimate in our eyes”
If we are squatters on stolen land, is it OS’s position that the USA is an illegitimate nation and we must return everything to the Indians?
Seriously, how is a camp filled with people shitting into buckets in the freezing rain going to sell this to the actual 99% of us?
“you’ve got some evidence that they haven’t already implemented that daffy resolution”
The statement passed by the GA on Oct. 19th as the “Declaration of Decolonize/Occupy Seattle”
Now, maybe they were just pulling the Indian’s legs? What do you think?
@47
Yes, the position of OS is that the USA is an illegitimate nation. However, it is also their position that *any* nation is illegitimate, including any kind of hierarchical injun government. So they wouldn’t “return” the land to a Chief or Tribe or anything like that, they’d just set the land free.
I realize this anarchism stuff seems weird when you’re coming at it fresh from your 8th grade civics class, but it’s actually quite simple in principle.
They’re shitting in port-a-johns in Seattle, not buckets. And they’re not going to be selling the 99% anything at all, at this rate.
“they’d just set the land free.”
As a home and land owner who just did a fabulous refi with at 3.9% for a 30 yr fixed, how would this affect me? Should I have done the 15 year at 3.25%?
I’m kind of nervous I may lose my house and my land once you ‘set it free’ to the natives and their Earth Mother.
That’s quite a circle jerk you have going on down their. Have a fun winter.