Occupy Protests???

dpodblood

Diamond Member
May 20, 2010
4,020
1
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So I haven't been keeping up with the news lately, but all the sudden I am hearing about all these different "occupy" protests all over the world. What is the point of these protests? From what I can tell a bunch of people show up in a public location and go "arr greedy corporations! I can't afford cereal! rable rable!" I don't get the point of these protests. They don't seem to have any clear objective. They don't even seem to be protesting anything specific. Anyone care to explain what these are about?

/confused

Moved from OT to P&N
-ViRGE
 
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gorcorps

aka Brandon
Jul 18, 2004
30,736
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You've got to be shitting me... there's many threads here and I'm sure P&N about this. You only have to search "occupy" to see them all.
 

bbhaag

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2011
6,606
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They are protesting the fact that corporations and politicians are in bed with each other and that they are essentially one in the same.
That leaves us...we are the 99%.
If you still don't understand try this link http://lmgtfy.com/?q=occupy+wall+street it will give a better understanding of whats going on.
 

CPA

Elite Member
Nov 19, 2001
30,322
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They are protesting the fact that corporations and politicians are in bed with each other and that they are essentially one in the same.
That leaves us...we are the 99%.
If you still don't understand try this link http://lmgtfy.com/?q=occupy+wall+street it will give a better understanding of whats going on.

Not so simple. You left out that they are being funded by the unions, are anti-semetic and for the most part target Republican donors and politicians.
 

db

Lifer
Dec 6, 1999
10,575
292
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they are being funded by the unions, are anti-semetic and for the most part target Republican donors and politicians.

That statement is so completely wrong that I really have to wonder where you get your information. Your statement has nothing to do w/ reality.
 

dpodblood

Diamond Member
May 20, 2010
4,020
1
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Yeah I did a quick search of "occupy" in P&N, but nothing that really explains what the purpose is. Still not really getting it. In order for a protest to be anything close to effective they need to protest something or someone specific. Right now it just seems like big mobs of angry people with no real direction.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
110,512
29,099
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So I haven't been keeping up with the news lately, but all the sudden I am hearing about all these different "occupy" protests all over the world. What is the point of these protests? From what I can tell a bunch of people show up in a public location and go "arr greedy corporations! I can't afford cereal! rable rable!" I don't get the point of these protests. They don't seem to have any clear objective. They don't even seem to be protesting anything specific. Anyone care to explain what these are about?

/confused

I agree.

I think if we just released the supply of Cap'n Crunch, they would go away.
 

db

Lifer
Dec 6, 1999
10,575
292
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I think people have just reached the saturation point, about so many things. But it all seems to have one thing in common: big business and the very wealthy own congress. Congress pretends to serve us the citizens, but their actions say otherwise. The laws have been re-written for the benefit of big business and the very wealthy. The illusion that one political party is the good guys and one political party is the bad guys is just a drama to keep you distracted.

But it's not enough: they want more.
 
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Icepick

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2004
3,663
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There is no point in paying attention unless you are a communist.

LOL. Are YOU a communist? Do you know what a communist is? If you're comparing what's going on with communism then you are way out of touch.
 

Icepick

Diamond Member
Nov 1, 2004
3,663
4
81
Not so simple. You left out that they are being funded by the unions, are anti-semetic and for the most part target Republican donors and politicians.

He's out there. He's really out there...
 

KingGheedora

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2006
3,248
1
81
So I haven't been keeping up with the news lately, but all the sudden I am hearing about all these different "occupy" protests all over the world. What is the point of these protests? From what I can tell a bunch of people show up in a public location and go "arr greedy corporations! I can't afford cereal! rable rable!" I don't get the point of these protests. They don't seem to have any clear objective. They don't even seem to be protesting anything specific. Anyone care to explain what these are about?

/confused

Why don't you just google this? Seriously, that would be less effort than typing up this post.
 

Patranus

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2007
9,280
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Yeah I did a quick search of "occupy" in P&N, but nothing that really explains what the purpose is. Still not really getting it. In order for a protest to be anything close to effective they need to protest something or someone specific. Right now it just seems like big mobs of angry people with no real direction.

Pretty much.

The closest thing they have to a demand is that their student loans are forgiven because they over extended themselves and picked stupid majors.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
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The political culture in the US is one that has been preventing the 99% of people from fighting against the taking of their wealth, by splitting them into phony 'red' and 'blue' teams and being encouraged to not deal with wealth issues, while the top 1% has created a false economic crash for the 99% by taking effectively all the new wealth as the economy has over doubled after Carter.

This has made the people ready for political organizing around their interests.

The corporate media doesn't discuss the most important political issue, this massive taking of the wealth of the people of America.

If the 'rising tide' still 'lifted all boats', the 99% would have far more wealth and less debt instead of a false 'economic crash' while the top 0.1% are up hundreds of percent.

The people have had their democracy taken by making all candidates who can win usually need the donation of the rich, so they have false choices of the 'red' candidate who the wealthy have selected to fund or the 'blue' candidate who the wealthy have chosen to fund; other candidates can run but won't win, keeping the false claim of democracy.

These protests are an attempt for the people to fight for their interests outside the corrupt political culture.

It's said all political movements need their own media - the internet makes that available, just as with the Arab Spring where it was essential to the people uprising.

The protests are about the start of this political movement to organize to counter the corporatist political culture pushed on people to not notice the taking of their wealth.

It's not known how it will go. The other side is already attacking it, with the talking points you see the usual parrots parroting in the posts above.

The wealthy have had a great run for 30 years; the question now is whether the US will swing the pendulum back to democracy, or have a new normal towards plutocracy.

The movement now needs to organize more and build a political movement off the streets that counters the corporatist divide and conquer of the 99%.

It took women's rights centuries to form, civil rights a century after slavery, workers' rights decades after the Industrial Revolution - we now have the 99% to form.

The protests are people organizing around the issue the corporatists have prevented.

This is the first real political movement of the people of the US since Vietnam. The political organization of the 1% will do what it can to cause the movement to fizzle.

Save234
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
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One of the attacks the corporatists launch against the 99% movement is that it 'has no demands'.

When civil rights leaders marched for years in the late 50's and early 60's, what were their demands?

A strike over worker issues here, the right to ride in the front of the bus there, the right to pump gas or eat at a lunch counter or enter the state university.

Tell me what the demands were of the protestors:

17withers.600.1.jpg


That's not a protest with demands - it's a protest against an injustice.

It took years for these issues to result in a specific agenda and set of demands, the Civil Rights bills proposed by JFK and passed by LBJ.

The movement is about the injustice of the 1% taking the wealth and political power of the 99% - the demands will come later. The first ones are already under discussion.

Here is one set of initial policy demands suggested by Matt Taibbi - this is like an early demand to let blacks eat at a lunch counter:

1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.

5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.

Another demand under discussion is for a constitutional amendment to take the money that gives the 1% control of our elections out of politics.

When Carter and Reagan ran for President, they accepted no donations for their campaigns. They campaigned on the $2 donations from taxpayers to campaigns.

This year the sides each hope to raise a billion dollars IIRC, largely in anonymous donations from the 1%.
 

monovillage

Diamond Member
Jul 3, 2008
8,444
1
0
I think people have just reached the saturation point, about so many things. But it all seems to have one thing in common: big business and the very wealthy own congress. Congress pretends to serve us the citizens, but their actions say otherwise. The laws have been re-written for the benefit of big business and the very wealthy. The illusion that one political party is the good guys and one political party is the bad guys is just a drama to keep you distracted.

But it's not enough: they want more.

You forgot to mention big unions and other special interests that own Congress, you just can't limit yourself to the rich and big business.
 

Karl Agathon

Golden Member
Sep 30, 2010
1,081
0
0
Whats a little troubling is the amount of anti-semitism thats been going on at the NY protests. its just now starting to get reported on.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
You forgot to mention big unions and other special interests that own Congress, you just can't limit yourself to the rich and big business.

First, the unions represent a lot more people than the '1%'. They are much more aligned with the '99%', directly and indirectly.

Second, labor does not influence policy - much less disastrous policy - anywhere like the corporate interests.

Dismantling/crippling the EPA, de-regulating the financial industry so that it becomes a huge drain on the wealth of the nation - these are not the labor agenda.

The 'oh so powerful' union donors you raise aren't exactly the ones dominating policy, at the same time the finance industry has increased its take from 10% to 40% of profits:

unions1.jpg


CEB049.gif

http://www.economist.com/node/10881318?story_id=10881318

So, while the unions are included in the rules for corporate donations being suggested, they're not what you suggest with your false equivalency.

That's a talking point designed to get people not to treat the corporate donors as the danger they are to the public by pretending they're not as powerful as they are.
 
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