Forum Post: Can we be a little more positive and less violent?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 6, 2011, 12:19 a.m. EST by Jolibear
(47)
from Greenfield, MA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I've been feeling so empowered the past week or so, but reading this forum makes me feel discouraged. There is too much anger and violent sentiment, I would like to see us become more unified and calm. The calmness is what will set the media on edge. Violence and angry crowds is something they're used to covering. Let's make them squirm through peaceful non-action.
how organized you are is the only strong factor you can control which plays into how "positive" things thus are. if we have the solutions handy we can always deliver them with a smile. do the homework; and everyone stays happy. The core problem is ; when you don't have the answers and get put on the spot. or when you try to make believe and run with some ideology.. which.. is what most people do.
I'm on my way down Monday or Tuesday with a couple friends, if I can figure out transport. I hope I can help to encourage the peaceful non-actions that I see as being the positive force in this movement.
How close are you to a Chinatown bus?
Far enough away that I don't even know what that means. I'm from rural Western MA, which is really not that far from NYC, but parking vs. buses, vs trains is all so difficult and I don't really have enough money to be doing any of this. Taking a week off work means I will be emptying my savings account just to pay rent next month. My friends don't have a penny to their name, so I need to help them as well. I'm not a city person at all, so it's very overwhelming.
25.00 from Boston. Fung Wa bus. But Boston is the other part of the map for you, huh?
It would cost about that much in gas, as opposed to that times 3, for my friends coming as well. I'm guessing I can find parking and train that would add up to less than the bus.
You can park in the boroughs for free, but mind the street cleaning signs, and leave nothing of significance in your car. In Brooklyn, the safest neighborhoods to park in are Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, & Brooklyn Heights. You can catch a Subway to Zuccotti Park for about 3 dollars a ride. (That's 6.00/person if you just go from your car to the park and back when you leave. Buy a 20.00 Metro Card). The closest Subways to the park are the 4,5 to Wall St, the E to World Trade Center, and the N,R to Rector. Once you get to the park there are plenty of places to volunteer if you are so inclined.
If you can get here there are plenty of supplies. Food/water/music.All donated.
If you can get to Boston, check out the BoltBus or Megabus. They're really cheap and have wifi and all that good stuff.
Amherst has the megabus, but for 3 people, so last minute, it's going to be too much. Boston is not much closer than NYC to me. My best bet is finding free parking in southern CT and taking a train in. I have a lead on some friends of friends where I might be able to leave the car.
frankly i have little to be positive about. you are all off protesting instead of doing anything even remotely useful. There is no wiki, there are no sub forums and the whole thing is flushing down the toilet out of simple entropy and chaos and lack of organization. Nobody seems to have the first clue what they are talking about. Abusive admins are booting people from the chat for completely biased reasons. Etc. Everything so far is epic failing- those of us out here trying to get sense and lucidity going are being ignored. Etc. I'd like to see more unification and calm- that would best be attended to by 1001 sub forums for different topics and a nice sensible meta process instead of adminatrolls.
Read our declaration and start helping out:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/first-official-release-from-occupy-wall-street/
How can you be so arrogant and egotistical as to call yourself "gawd" of "truth?" I agree there needs to be more info online, but protesting IS what is useful. I have been so focused on doing "useful" and "important" things for the past 4 years that I have been a responsible adult, and it has gotten me no where. Because the system is wrong and needs to be changed.
i am information incarnate. 20 phds worth of it and then 20 more lesser degrees worth of it. Thats not arrogant, thats simple fair warning and clue in to the opportunity. How is protesting useful? It will not make meaningful change happen. It will not make a paradigm shift happen. It will not make anybody change their minds on this issue. It will not bring to light a single real world solution. Its noise. In fact its merely the way zombots run away from the WORK a REAL revolution would require of them.
It will bring awareness to the problems our society faces. Something that has been ignored for far too long. I don't care how much education you have received, it is still arrogant to call yourself the god of truth.
awareness to whom? the echo chamber of people who already know there is a problem? most of the demonstrators still think they are fighting capitalism and don't even know that corporate oligarchy is the real enemy. Ignorance is not bliss. Knowledge is power. If they had enough of it they would realize there are smarter and more effective ways to be heard.
Creating subforums is not clearly more useful than protesting. And no one is preventing you from creating your own forum, correct? Couldn't you create another forum online where people could go and discuss things? The techs of this forum are working on the subforum features now, but things take time. If you think you can do it faster then please do.
i'm sorry, but from a games and systems theory and even marketing perspective, thats simply ludicrous. without the organization to back it up and make sense protesting is noise without substance. Sub forums are hundreds of times more crucial than protesting and at this point you are losing probably thousands of potential allies every day because of the lack of organization. Most of those people will not try to come back should things get fixed. It takes time. But jart traveled out to join the protest- instead of being an admin. So most of her time is now wrapped into the scene. Any good admin techie should have been able to put up sub forums in a few hours. Its not on the list of priorities- clearly- its not the most important thing. And it should be. But 101 other people are asking for random crap from her and prioritizing that ahead of whats important. Occupy New Orleans. Shes not finished on this site and they have her working on making assorted mirrors for other protests. Epic fail. Those other sites need their sub forums also. Etc. No, I can't help with that I'm not a techie, just a book worm.
Okay, I agree that these subforums need to be up, and they needed to be up yesterday. But telling people who don't even have the tech access that protesting is not useful is clearly not being helpful. Even if Jolibear was a freakin' internetz wizard she wouldn't be able to set up the subforums for us, so taking it out on her makes no sense.
look, at this point, considering the mess i see in front of me, any person i talk to is a representative of the giant clusterfuck and is fully in NEED of the information i am trying to share. your right. nobody deserves to have me hot an annoyed and frustrated and chatting with them. I'm sorry. Now. Can we all fooking get lucid and actually get a revolution on? You want us to be positive- understand that organization is fundamental and critical to this. I can't be positive any more my patience and time and energy have been wasted and the only rational course left to me is to simply hit the alarm bell full throttle until i'm either booted off the site or the shit gets done. this is not a moot matter. all he protesting in the world will mean squat without that wiki. only a paradigm shift puts over a revolution. protesting is frankly absurd compared to all of the work which everyone is just merely avoiding. You want a revolution plug 30 sciences into 30 political and 30 economic issues. You want a forever culture war between your new far left and their new far right.. ? (then) keep up the good work...
It's not about what we're fighting, it's about awareness of our problems. Knowledge is power and instead of going around being dogmatic, let's try to spread KNOWLEDGE and not "truths." Please tell me what a more effective way to be heard might be.
I apologize to anyone reading if I am just feeding the trolls, but I would really like to promote discussion and don't want to write everyone off just because I don't agree with them.
i am so behind the movement and these are my allies or would be if they had sense. I agree with their problem definitions and complaints.
But if you want real change you must be agents of change not merely compounders of the giant social noise. A paradigm shift stands on the legs of the sciences it makes relevant to the political issues. Protesting then is merely something that feels good but which does no work. If you understand what a paradigm shift is and why one happens and how much the very definition of a real revolution is a paradigm shift- then you understand that work in real terms. I have been fighting the corporate oligarchy for 20 years now. No real allies. When will those of us who have been working on this get heard? The protesters want to be heard and find their voices to be desperate and know if only the world would listen it would change. Ironically, Here i am- in the same relationship with them as they are having otherwise elsewhere. Day after day giving the evolutionary truth; day after day its ignored. Passed by. Drowned out. argued with by trolls and idiots. covered up and shooed away by adminatrolls. From my perspective, so far all you guys have done is stack up a long list of epic fails. I'm still on your side and on your team... but ... over all this pearls to swin game must break or i have to eventually cut my losses. Pretty much everybody whos got serious education is in that boat. We woud love to help you. But. Your not listening in the same way as the world is not listening to your protests. See it as a scalar field effect. Listen to us and get the power and knowledge you need to address the world with authority.
The change is coming, but the first part is bringing awareness and unity. We haven't fulfilled that part of the movement yet. Be patient, it will get there. And in the meantime, try to use all your knowledge to help educate some of the less educated protesters, in a patient and non-dogmatic way.
yeah, look, I'm at the end of my rope. I'm probably not staying involved. You guys can't get anything done and are wasting my time. Your advice is to keep throwing my time away when nobodies really valuing it in the first place. Keep trying to educate people? you know i put my life on hold to try to help and then i wake up and realize... nobodies listening. A weeks gone by since i asked for a wiki and sub forums. Etc. I have been patient. How patient am i supposed to be? When does your movement start taking meaningful responsibility instead of just complain about the system? When does it stop repeating the same mistakes by allowing corrupt people to be in charge of the chat? etc? honestly... anybody in my shoes would have quit yesterday. see? don't tell me to be patient; show me you GET it. Because thats the only currency that matters to me.
You can't move such a large group of people just by using your time. They move on their own. You can influence them, but not with the negativity you're using. If you are so dogmatic and arrogant that you are unwilling to truly hear me and realize that I am not arguing with you, simply offering some other ways of thinking about things, then perhaps you are wasting your time, and my time, and should go back to your everyday life.
sorry i unloaded all my frustration in your direction.
Trolls, undercovers and agents provocateur are the ones who will come here spouting violence. Keep firmly reinforcing that we are non-violent. This is a peaceful protest.
I agree. Although don't get discouraged from what you see on the internet. A lot of anti-movement people come here and try to spread garbage, as well as kiddies sitting in their mom's basement overcompensating and trying to act tough.
If you are calm and treat others with respect, you will encourage others to do the same. And that's actually a big deal =)
Thanks for being here.
I agree, those who suggest violence are trying to usurp the movement for their own ends. It may take time, but staying peaceful will bring about a more productive change.
It's not just the suggestion of violence. The feeling I got from watching those videos was not a crowd of people wanting open dialogue and positive change, but people screaming and rebelling for the hell of it. There is misdirected anger and that is not going to benefit anyone.
Joli,
People respond to things in many different ways, and each way might have its own usefulness. Don't assume that just because people are yelling or "rebelling for the hell of it" that they feel the issues less than you do. It could be that they feel it more, or it could be that they feel it differently. It could also be that they don't know what they're doing, but then it's your (collectively speaking) responsibility to engage them in discussion and convince them otherwise.
Thank you for putting it so nicely, and that is exactly why I'm heading down there beginning of next week. I think nonviolence is most important, but I would like to hold real discussions with others about their ideas. I try to be as open as possible, but I am an easily discouraged person.
You sound great. It's easy to get discouraged, but the hard part of political change is to not let that happen. Creating democracy isn't going to be a cakewalk,but it may be possible within this movement.
Thanks for being involved.
agreed 100%