OCCUPY WALL STREET

[Ciaran]

Originally Posted by AtLast

I have to speqk up about the fact that not all OWS demonstrators have been non-violent. Although, the case in SF wherein a woman slashed 2 officers (one in the face) with an exacto knife (which she stole from an artist showing at a street art fair nearby) was not peaceful assembly. Now, it looks like she and the guy she was with were hanging out at the SF encampment and not really OWS people. Most of the attacks on police with bottles, etc. all over the US have been done by anarchist groups or people just there to party. They do not represent the core of OWS demonstrators at all.

As someone who is admittedly and openly sceptical about the Occupy movement, this is one of the aspects that I struggle with. On the one hand the Occupy movement tries to portray itself as representing all, or almost all (99%) of society, uses rhetoric and, on occasions, imagery that attracts anarchists and, worse, those with no sense of social responsibility ... and, yet, distances itself from the consequences that result.

The desecration of St Paul's Cathedral here in London is the perfect case in point.

[atomiczombie]

Originally Posted by Ciaran

As someone who is admittedly and openly sceptical about the Occupy movement, this is one of the aspects that I struggle with. On the one hand the Occupy movement tries to portray itself as representing all, or almost all (99%) of society, uses rhetoric and, on occasions, imagery that attracts anarchists and, worse, those with no sense of social responsibility ... and, yet, distances itself from the consequences that result.

The desecration of St Paul's Cathedral here in London is the perfect case in point.

Funny, I think Occupy is calling on the world to be more socially responsible. Social responsibility is really it's core message.

I think it is really important to understand that Occupy is about peaceful protest and non-violence. Any riff-raff elements out there who do cause trouble don't represent Occupy. I don't like it when people look at those few anarchists and trouble makers who show up at peaceful protests and cause trouble, and assume that they represent the protestors. The Occupy movement doesn't actively try to attract anarchists. Anarchists just see an opportunity to make trouble so they show up. Desecration of property is not in any way a goal of or condoned by the Occupy movement.

[SoNotHer]

I'm stealing this from Ruby Woo's post on another page. I hope you all here in the States had a good holiday today. :-)

[Kätzchen]

AZ,
thank you for the nudge about my participation in this forum thread.

I've been very quiet... When I'm quiet, it can mean a number of things but most generally, my being quiet in this instance (OWS, et al) concerns knowing certain people in my region who play instrumental roles, publicly.

When I see them make particular decisions that do not square with my reality, I sit up and take notice and listen with an acuteness to detail. I try to gather as much information as I can - verbal, non-verbal, hidden elements in various fields of interest, so that I am able to gather some sort of meaning that makes sense not only to me, but helps me to understand them better as well. Sometimes I am able to understand better and other times my own trained incapacities limit my ability to see a fuller picture of what is transpiring.

I'm not happy with some of the decisions made by key officials in Portland.

I'm not able to deliberate on those feelings or things I am privy to or what kind of meaning-making I am getting from everything that transpired in our city.

What I can say this morning is more along the lines of a comment and thanks to Diavalo's recent post on organizational culture, I am able to say that Diavalo's observation on key elements in organizational culture illustrate a key principle in Organizational culture: Organizational culture (no matter if the culture we speak about resides in the OWS movement, institutional houses of power, familial, community, workplace or such) mirrors problematics in tangible or intangible ways with respect to how values, decisions or a sharing of goals culminates over time.

Whether an organization succeeds, stumbles and recovers, or fails, we can examine what elements of culture within the company and community it resides in and take note of what elements contributed to success or failure or a stalling of growth necessary to bring all elements together to produce an orchestration of success or failure.

IMO, the most successful organizations resist isomorphic elements and utilize sets of data key in determining the breadth or depth in order to orchestrate and administer successful mission priori.

Thank you for your observation and comments Diavalo.

One thought that has stayed with me since the inception of the OWS movement is that greater care to detail of organizational success might be worth a closer fine-toothed examination for clues on maintaining strength and equilibrium at optimal peak performance to withstand isomorphic tendencies that impale organizational success. A field marshalling of logistical detail.

That's all I've got today and I wish each of you a beautiful holiday weekend,

~D

[Ciaran]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

Desecration of property is not in any way a goal of or condoned by the Occupy movement.

Who actually speaks for the Occupy movement? Who decides or articulates what its goals actually are? I'm struggling to identify who or what does this.

Desecration of property is certainly what has happened at St Paul's Cathedral in London. Rightly or wrongly, the "Occupy" movement has been perceived by many here in the UK as either participating in or supporting that desecration or, alternatively, standing back passively and enabling it to happen.

As a result, sympathy for the "Occupy" movement has fallen, certainly here in London, in recent weeks as this protest continues directly outside a place of worship.

[Ebon]

Originally Posted by Ciaran

Who actually speaks for the Occupy movement? Who decides or articulates what its goals actually are? I'm struggling to identify who or what does this.

Desecration of property is certainly what has happened at St Paul's Cathedral in London. Rightly or wrongly, the "Occupy" movement has been perceived by many here in the UK as either participating in or supporting that desecration or, alternatively, standing back passively and enabling it to happen.

As a result, sympathy for the "Occupy" movement has fallen, certainly here in London, in recent weeks as this protest continues directly outside a place of worship.

They decide by general assembly. The people speaks for OWS and the people make the decisions.

http://occupywallst.org/

"Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society."

[Gráinne]

Still not trying to stir up shit, but what happens if the members of the general assembly disagree? Majority vote? I don't see how that will go on forever before the dissenters will form their own splinter group, because they are not heard. Did that make any sense?

[Ebon]

Originally Posted by guihong

Still not trying to stir up shit, but what happens if the members of the general assembly disagree? Majority vote? I don't see how that will go on forever before the dissenters will form their own splinter group, because they are not heard. Did that make any sense?

They have had that issue. Majority vote wins. When John Lewis wanted to speak at OWS in Atlanta majority vote said no, but for the people that wanted to hear him they agreed on him speaking at the end of the general assembly. He didn't want to wait so he left. They came to a compromise.

[persiphone]

Originally Posted by guihong

Still not trying to stir up shit, but what happens if the members of the general assembly disagree? Majority vote? I don't see how that will go on forever before the dissenters will form their own splinter group, because they are not heard. Did that make any sense?

to get a full understanding of how the decision making is done, you might try attending your local Occupy general assembly. they are open to anyone that wants to participate and should you decide to show up and participate in the voting on of anything your vote will be counted. you'll even get an opportunity to be heard just by using a few hand signals. refreshing, actually, how effective...if not a little long.....this process actually is. everyone gets to be heard and all points voiced are discussed and voted on. it's quite fascinating.

[RavynTuqiri]

In the past 6 years I have had a house foreclosed upon and was laid off. I've seen my daughter, 20, struggle to find a job at minimum wage places that just aren't hiring.

In this experience, I discovered that:

* There is government assistance programs for people losing their homes, but they are geared towards helping the banks, not the people. Banks often will not work towards short sales or loan modifications because, depending on how much you owe vs. how much your house is now valued at, they stand to make more money from the government to let it go into foreclosure.

* I had a FHA Housing counselor tell me that I didn't qualify for assistance because I wasn't behind enough in my payments. Come back in 6 months. And don't pay your mortgage during that time frame. Really? You're telling me not to pay what I can and get further behind in the hopes I qualify then?

* I had an attorney tell me to just walk away, I would be more likely to qualify for bankruptcy. In principle I had issues with this as the only thing I really owed to anyone was the house and while I could make payments, I needed the loan modified to fit my budget. He told me probably wasn't going to happen and that this would be the best solution for me. I had a moral issue on defaulting on a commitment I had made, I just needed the terms of that commitment modified.

* When I was laid off, I had to pay for health insurance through Cobra. The cost was equivalent to half my unemployment checks. I soon was without health insurance.

Long story short....the Government system doesn't work unless you are already rich and really don't need the system to begin with.

The company for which I work now, recently gave the CEO a whopping 37% increase even though the company has not seen "profitable" days since 2000. We've had a rash of lay offs with more projected in the future. How did they derive on the new pay for our CEO? On performance? No. They bench marked other CEO's in other companies to see what their CEO's were making to set our CEO's wage. A common practice. The rich get richer when you're at the top. The rest of us? Lose our jobs in "reductions" due to the poor economy, of which the rich helped create.

[SoNotHer]

I'm wondering how many times we need to delay any kind of social and human progress by continuing to swirl with these kinds of comments which have been abundantly perpetuated, vetted and responded to clearly, succinctly, tactfully and with hope in many other ways besides violence and how long some need to continue to focus on the small exception to the otherwise preponderance of nonviolent, focused and progressive action and thinking that has been taken place.

Originally Posted by Ciaran

Who actually speaks for the Occupy movement? Who decides or articulates what its goals actually are? I'm struggling to identify who or what does this.

Desecration of property is certainly what has happened at St Paul's Cathedral in London. Rightly or wrongly, the "Occupy" movement has been perceived by many here in the UK as either participating in or supporting that desecration or, alternatively, standing back passively and enabling it to happen.

As a result, sympathy for the "Occupy" movement has fallen, certainly here in London, in recent weeks as this protest continues directly outside a place of worship.

[Ciaran]

Originally Posted by SoNotHer

I'm wondering how many times we need to delay any kind of social and human progress by continuing to swirl with these kinds of comments which have been abundantly perpetuated, vetted and responded to clearly, succinctly, tactfully and with hope in many other ways besides violence and how long some need to continue to focus on the small exception to the otherwise preponderance of nonviolent, focused and progressive action and thinking that has been taken place.

All well & good but I walk past St Paul's Cathedral every morning and evening.

That's my closest "real" experience of the "Occupy" movement and, especially very early in the morning when I walk by, I see a lot of rubbish and streams of human waste. The gathering has prevented some acts of worship from taking place and, more generally, tourists are now avoiding the historic site. I cannot blame them - I would too.

So for me it ain't about these kinds of comments which have been abundantly perpetuated, vetted and responded to clearly, succinctly, tactfully , rather it's about what I see and experience 5 days of the week and it ain't positive. In fact, the opposite when London's already stretched police resources have to deal with the crowd control and petty crime that this has attracted.

Apologies if my personal experience isn't to everyone's liking or if it's viewed as biased (which it undoubtedly is but you got the diplomatic version) but that's how I call it.

[atomiczombie]

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality


Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 November 2011 12.25 EST
Article history

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

Right on Naomi Wolf.

LINK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...cupy?fb=optOut

[SoNotHer]

I'm sorry to hear that's been your experience. It hasn't been mine.

I think most people want redress for the loss of their homes, businesses, savings, jobs and lives in the most peaceful, civil and satisfactory manner possible.

Originally Posted by Ciaran

All well & good but I walk past St Paul's Cathedral every morning and evening.

That's my closest "real" experience of the "Occupy" movement and, especially very early in the morning when I walk by, I see a lot of rubbish and streams of human waste. The gathering has prevented some acts of worship from taking place and, more generally, tourists are now avoiding the historic site. I cannot blame them - I would too.

So for me it ain't about these kinds of comments which have been abundantly perpetuated, vetted and responded to clearly, succinctly, tactfully , rather it's about what I see and experience 5 days of the week and it ain't positive. In fact, the opposite when London's already stretched police resources have to deal with the crowd control and petty crime that this has attracted.

Apologies if my personal experience isn't to everyone's liking or if it's viewed as biased (which it undoubtedly is but you got the diplomatic version) but that's how I call it.

[Ciaran]

Originally Posted by SoNotHer

I think most people want redress for the loss of their homes, businesses, savings, jobs and lives in the most peaceful, civil and satisfactory manner possible.

I know plenty of people who lost their jobs as a result of the "crisis". They worked in banking (as do I - and I won't apologise for that) so it wasn't just a loss of a job but, also, any equity they had built up in the company (profit shares, annual bonuses, monthly saving schemes etc) over periods of time up to 30 years. Some lost it all.

Although they're very frustrated by the crisis, by aspects of regulation of the financial sector and general incompetence, none of these folk are members of the Occupy movement.

If it's about redress for loss during the crisis, that's understandable (I lost much more during the crisis than most) but if they want to do it in a civil manner then, certainly, in the city I live they are going about it the wrong way. Furthermore, it has distanced them from the middle ground which has been angered by how they've turned the grounds outside St Pauls' into something resembling an itinerant camp. 99%? I'd be surprised if they have the support of 9% of the people here in London.