You can test the limits of Seattle's free speech zones soon. Check out OccupySeattle for more information. http://www.occupyseattle.org/

Sitting at home.

Nor is it surprising that much of the most vocal criticisms of the Wall Street protests has come from some self-identified progressives, who one might think would be instinctively sympathetic to the substantive message of the protesters. In an excellent analysis entitled "Why Establishment Media & the Power Elite Loathe Occupy Wall Street," Kevin Gosztola chronicles how many of the most scornful criticisms have come from Democratic partisans who -- like the politicians to whom they devote their fealty -- feign populist opposition to Wall Street for political gain.

I read the whole thing.

Did you?

While it is true that dual citizens who actually have Rights, like say those with dual citizenship in Canada and the US, or the EU and the US, it is not true that American citizens have the Constitutional Right of Free Speech.

Only Corporations, which rule you, are permitted to have Free Speech.

You're all serfs. You just don't realize it yet.

If life were a book, I'd be really interested to see what happens if the popular dissatisfaction on the left and right comes together in this election year, to take back the country from the oligarchy.

On the other hand, in real life I'm a bit worried about the social consequences if "the 99%" manage to work together and effect real change. Not sure that I want to actually live through such interesting times...

I agree that big business and the tax structure needs to change. That doesn't mean I'm not supposed to think these protests are stupid and a waste of time. I'll eat my shoes if anything worthwhile comes of this.

You and Dominic are trying pretty hard to make this a story. There's a faint whiff of your desperation to make this action relevant.

Having just come-back from NYC, this experiment in urban camping is bunch of:

1) Whiney hipsters -- who are unprepared to work if the economy was booming.

2) Stoner lefties who want to infringe on the liberty of individuals, to compel us all to some half-assed global village.

3) Emotionally self-indulgent Boomers yearning to be part of something.

The entire motivation is to bait NYPD into misbehaving, while Twittering it into the echo chamber of alternative media. Not. Serious.

Check-out these illuminated minds and ask yourself if this is the kinda' thing you want to square-up with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwzWInp75…

99% of America has no fucking sympathy this, like the guy (at 6:50 in the video) that sponged-off student loans for too long, and now has to pay-back the money so that SOMEONE ELSE has opportunity.

Let's move on to something important.

The problem with progressives (or whatever you choose to call them) is the mentality of our dear Sgt Doom - that there must be 100% ideological purity within our ranks, yet everyone has their own idea of what that ideological purity should consist of, and is disgusted with everyone else.

But back to Dan's point: I listen to the Citizen Radio, and while I adore them, they can be very dismissive and condescending of things (actually, I think that's part of why I adore them. Plus, they swear as much as I do). A few weeks back, they heaped plenty of scorn on Occupy Wall Street, and for the usual reasons: Street theatre, incoherent messaging, etc. (which I agree with - a protest needs to have a focus, and not get dilluted by other liberal causes) But now they are very supportive.

Joemygod was pretty lukewarm as well, but has since come around.

Holy shit, are we really playing the "I WAS FOR OCCUPY WALL STREET BEFORE YOU WERE" game? Who gives a shit. If you're actually pissed off, GOOD, you should be, EVERYBODY should be.
And @3 is dead-on, whether you recognize it or not NPR, MSNBC and CNN are full of left-wing Breitbarts and Becks. If you ask me, they are MORE dangerous because they DON'T come off as crazy and people who might be especially political think they can trust them.

If you support stupid things like "anti-bully laws on the internet" or any form of censorship, you are against the first amendment anyway.

@9 For christ's sake Catalina, would you please stop making such lazy generalizations about progressives?

Here, how about "The trouble with Democrats is their short-sighted pragmatism has completely replaced any objective standards & principles they once held. The only thing Democrats stand for anymore is "Democrats are better than Republicans.""

Is that a lazy generalization? Yes it is and so is yours.

-This message brought to by the committee to elect Jamison Kilstein & VP Cats

@8 Street protests from the motley few who can manage to take on the risks... Or rage riots once vast numbers of people can no longer get by and have nothing to lose. Which would you prefer?

umm - does anybody else remember the WTO protests and no protest zone? So I got arrested then (not on purpose, like some people) and in jail one of the guards said they would let me out if I signed something agreeing to not be downtown unless I had a good reason. His example of a good reason was if I had a shopping bag from the Bon with a receipt. Fuck that.

I don't think protesting is a good idea all the time, but sometimes it does make a difference. The protests after Prop 8 passed were awesome, even if they didn't directly lead to dismantling DOMA.

The fist logo on occupyseattle.org is terrible though. I'm sensing old dogmatic socialist involvement.

While I think some of the protesters' "official" demands are worth hearing, anyone that paints me as an "establishment-serving institution loyalists" for making fun of people trying to convince me that congressional families all get their student loans waived (and so should we!) can suck it*.

*"it" has to be something said person does not like.

asteria @14, I totally agree about their logo. I see that and I think "irrelevant anarchist." I also saw a flyer on a pole this morning mentioning the Occupy Seattle protest tomorrow starting at 10am and it mentioned "revolution." That's also a bad sign. I'm a big lefty, and under the appropriate circumstances (say, a 30-year dictatorship in Egypt) revolution is something I can get behind, but there's no way that anyone but the most radical 1% of the 99% is going to react favorably to that word.

This is why the unions need to get involve, so they can broaden the appeal of the movement while focusing its tactics.

Whenever you see an anarchist, light their clothes on fire.

Anarchy rules.

It is my God-given right as an American to make lazy generalizations, Outer Cow. And during the workday I don't have the time to get all nuancy, as I have stuff to do. And now you're making me waste my lunch. But I'm too fat anyway, so no big deal.

Besides, I think I'm right on this. Coalitions are groups of people coming together over one or two principles, and liberals/progressives/whatevers spend way too much time sniping at each, to build coalitions.

As for the Democrats, The left (generically) could take a lesson from the right in organization and discipline. The right took over the Republican party, why can't the left do the same with the Democratic party? If you get enough rank and file in the precints (or whatever they are called) they can sway a state's nomination process and platform. Get enough states, and you can make a big difference nationally, and actually get the candidates people want - or an approximation of that, as money still is the final arbiter. But we spend too much time bashing each other for being not left enough, or too left, or doing things like obsessing over Dan Savage's ten year old ndorsement of the war.

As I have said before, I think Barak Obama was just a foot in the door. A levee against the flood of stupidity and greed that was the Bush administration. We need to build on that, and elect someone who is better, then someone better after that, and focus on getting good peole in Congress. It is a fight that never, ever ends. But everyone wants to prove their the smartest kid in the room.

I'm not the smartest kid in the room, but at least I know it. And I'm voting the Allision Kilkenny/Dangles ticket. (Jamison Kilstein had a great schism, now there's two parties. Time to choose up) )

Asteria, the way I got into downtown from Capitol Hill during WTO was to show the cop my business card and let him look in my bag. The last day, when we went through our silly ritual for the last time (it was the same cop everyday. I think he fancied me) I had a suprise for him. I put a huge (and I mean HUGE, and quite realistic-looking) sex toy on top of a shocking - even by my standards - porno mag, lovingly arranged so it would be the first thing he'd see.

The look on his face was priceless. We've been together ever since! (OK, just kidding on that last part. But his look was hillarious. I thought he was going to pass out)

I don't know...I admit I'm less afraid of "highly militarized urban police forces" than I am "barely funded urban police skeleton crews." If that makes me a right-wing asshole, so be it.

@20- While neither is appealing, the first is more likely to be used as a tool of political oppression. Neither actually helps stop crime.

@13

Most Americans don't blame Wall Street fat cats alone for the economic mess we're in. They understand it was a systemic failure -- or individuals, gov't and corporations -- to manage risk. Businesses lost sight of their fiduciary obligations; Government was inept (in the spectacular way that gov't is able) at oversight; and consumers voluntarily signed-up for too many credit cards and home finance deals they had no hope of re-paying.

The fallacy of the Left is that they assume that Americans hate the rich. We don't. Most of us want the fair opportunity to be rich -- not the redistribution of someone else's property.

(At this point, avoid the temptation to cite some example of a banker-thief. I can show you scores who refinanced over and over to buy an ever-widening array of shit they new they couldn't afford.)

The problems with out economy have less to do with fat cats stealing pensions, and more to do with a decades-long flood of low-interest capital trying to boost economy that's lost its competitive advantage in a global market. Don't blame Wall Street. Blame the Fed and policy-makers and bureaucrats who haven't been honest about addressing what has become a nation of unemployable imbeciles.

Fact is, we can't just spend our way out the problem any more.

As a result here's the real tension in America today:

- The Left wants the government to save them from problems that government can't ever solve.
- The Middle has a slight suspicion of the Right, and an abject fear of the Left. And for their tax dollar will always take independence & autonomy -- over "programs."
- The Right is worried that in the course of procuring more resources for the gov't to lavish on the dolts, their individual liberty is infringed.

And since high-demand capital (intellectual, financial, human) can be moved-around the world easily now, don't think for a moment it's going to be constrained and subjected to confiscation by "the masses" on the Left and the government.

If the Left insists, then please go ahead a have a revolution. Atlas will merely shrug – from overseas. And then you're really fucked.

@23 That's right, grass-roots movements never lead to anything good. Why, feminism, the civil rights movement, the labor movement, the environmental movement and the gay rights movement -- none of them have ever done a lick of good. Thank goodness our overlords occasionally decide to let us have some positive social change, or else we'd still be coughing our lungs out in the dark polluted cities of the Industrial Revolution.

@18 Really, Catalina? I do all my harping about say, Obama letting Bush and all his cronies off the hook for torture because I want everyone to realize how smart I am? Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that it’s just a no-brainer to draw the line at acquiescing to government corruption and law-breaking with their open admission to authorizing torture, and trying to convince other people to see it that way? It can’t be actual moral outrage at the hundreds of innocent people we’ve allowed our government to imprison and torture and murder in our name, but how smart I think I am? Wow, I must really be an egomaniacal piece of shit in your eyes.

I AGREE that the left could learn more than a few lessons from the right regarding organization & discipline. We should Coffee-Party the Dems and swing them as hard left as we can manage. But part of how you do that is by say, HAVING STANDARDS. There is no litmus test like a Tea Party insanity litmus test. And just for the record, I forgive Dan.

Yes, I get it, Outer Cow. You're outraged. I'm outraged too. The whole world, it seems, is outraged.

The question is, what to do about it? Evidentially, protesting is ineffective. Getting pissy on Slog is the very definition of ineffective. Do we just keep out-outraging each other to prove our moral superiority, or do we develop a game plan?

I have never understand why you Americans call "civil disobedience" to legitimate public manifestation. Chaining myself to the white house should be no crime. I allways get surprised about how your country calls itself so much for liberty, but you insist in starting wars, in not supporting Palestine as a free country, etc.
The United states in the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto any substantial resolution is a monkey with a knife, as we say here. A public enemy.

dissent is no longer tolerated in america. that's just who we are as a people. bummer.

Seattle was way ahead of the curve on this - our cops have been cracking skulls since the WTO "riots".

That's a great story Catalina! I should start carrying my dildo around, just in case I get arrested again.

@22 It's good to know that you speak for everyone in Amurrka (except, of course, we fools on the Left).

People like you are funny because you're more wrong than you'll ever have the privilege to understand. Funny and sad.

We finally got a protest in NYC that’s gaining steam, who knows where this might go if we support it. And “getting pissy on Slog” has made me friends, has made me feel like I’m not totally fucking alone, has made me consider things differently, and has even pushed me off my futon and into the streets on occasion. If talking to each other, shaming each other when we deserve to be shamed, praising each other when we deserve to be praised, helping to spread good ideas and kill bad ones, if that ever becomes pointless, then there’s no hope. But we aren’t there yet.

And for the love of Galactus, stop lying to delegitimize my POV by saying that progressives like me care more about proving our moral superiority than improving things. We’re talking about these issues because we want things to change, Catalina, and I don’t see that happening while most of the people that consider themselves on the left still disagree with us. Do I think I’m morally superior to people who are ok with torture? At least in that one area, obviously I do. I don’t want a pat on the back for it, what I want is to stop being in the minority on this.

@33

Yeah, I'm wrong because the evidence is STACKED against me. After nearly three weeks, the largest city in America has drawn a few hundred smelly, noisy flakes into a park, who are re-Tweeting the same shit to each other. Yeah, Amurrka seems PISSED right now!

Except she's not.

Clearly you're pissed. And you're pissed that others aren't pissed. But most of us are simply dismayed that the same thinking that got us into this mess over 12 years, (loose credit, deficit spending, mass consumerism), is the same plate of crap reheated in the Obama Stimulus II.

And Amurrka's dismayed that the apparent "solution" of the Left is to take (taxation), rather than to produce (education, investment, policy-reform). Hey:How's that working for Greece?

The Left's desire for collective action doesn't trump everyone's right to simply be left-alone. Even a casual understanding of the Constitution would lead you to understand that the principle of liberty – to be left alone – doesn't come from the Gov't. It is an inalienable human right, whose protection is government's primary responsibility.

Thankfully, you're free to be pissed. It's your right, but not anyone's obligation to join you.

The Left's plan is great, until it runs out of other people's money.

I think the article makes some excellent points about current challenges in progressive discourse and the contemporary state of public protest in America...it's just unfortunate that the author is trying to apply these points to a fairly bullshit protest movement where those aren't the real issues.

I could give a crap that these protesters don't have a polished media message or completely lock-step talking points. I'd settle for the ability to actually say what the fuck they're protesting in a way that makes any kind of fucking sense. If you can't basically communicate the problem, you are not a protester. You are an unusually angsty sidewalk sunbather. If you can't put together a group of more than a couple hundred disorganized participants who are comically incapable of refraining from words or actions completely antithetical to your assumed (maybe?) shared viewpoint, you are not a movement particularly worthy of high level national media attention. It's not a conspiracy. You're just impossible to take seriously and your effort isn't particularly noteworthy.

Reminds me of when I protested in D.C. in 2005. Last time I checked, sea to shining sea was supposed to be the free speech zone.

Some reasonable restrictions--don't damage private property, don't block people who want to get in the door--are okay, and of course other citizens should be allowed to say what they like to and about these people, but when the government restricts free speech itself, we have a problem.

Yeah, what the fuck? I thought we were supposed to be done with this bullshit when Bush was done. I guess I didn't find it surprising that our Republican autocrat of a governor here in WI was trying (and largely failing) to do the same thing with our ongoing protest/occupation at/of the capitol, but this is really continuing to be absurd all over the place. Hooray for civil disobedience/non-compliance!