Forum Post: Is Occupy Wall Street a Liberal movement?
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 23, 2011, 6:07 p.m. EST by ScrewyL
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Simple question.
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12 comments 2 years ago by BrentWeirick81
The OWS movement is not about Left or Right, Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative. It's not about Your political viewpoint or mine. It's not about Obama and it sure as all hell is not about Ron Lawl !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The OWS movement is about a corrupt government that is bought and paid for by the Banks, Corporate America and multinational corporations. It's about taking back our government and country and putting it back into the hands of ALL American Citizens.
In The United States of America, that is done through elections.
Not right now it's not... I'm not advocating not voting so please any one that reads this, Don't go there.
What good will it do if we vote ? Do you really think anything will change if we continue to allow our politicians to be bought ? Do you really think that large corporations wont buy the new politicians if we vote others in ? Do you really think that our politicians will ever give a flying F** about you if all they do is pander for campaign donations from the rich ?
Like i said, I'm not advocating not voting but let's be honest. It doesn't matter who get's voted into office. Until we take the money out of politics nothing will change. We, the average American Citizen will continue to get screwed at every turn.
Very true, although I actually do advocate non-voting :/
The occupy movement is trying to do what they are condemning everyone else from doing; control the government.
The government is it's citizens or should be...it's gotten away from that now it's just a corporation. We don't want them to control US, it's our America and the corrupt liars and thieves can bug out.
It is progressive. It has strong liberal undertones. That said, I've found that as you move off the extreme to the left or right, that you meet an amazing number of people who have reached the same place coming from the opposite end.
My strong feeling is that everyone who is halfway aware of the world agrees on the basic problems. The solutions are where the various politically aligned parties disagree. I think that if we acknowledge the problems, we can find compromise on the solutions that we can all more or less live with. We have to celebrate that tradition of debate, compromise... more debate...
Just my feeling on the matter. The 99percentdeclaration has something for everyone, and some things that need more thought. But, compromise doesn't require us to give up our liberal or conservative nature, it demands us to be cooperative human beings. Hope that helps.
That said, I've found that as you move off the extreme to the left or right, that you meet an amazing number of people who have reached the same place coming from the opposite end.
I've been surprised by this too, lately.
I am an unabashed liberal. I understand that many of the participants of this movement are staking positions beyond the boundaries marked by left or right. Such a position has advantages.
There are those engaged in forms of corruption that would attempt to shift their focus, and if this movement as a whole stakes a position on the left, then using the bulwark of repelicanism even as it crumbles allows for the possibility of corruption to spread its tentacles leftward in ways it may not have been able to do thus far.
Short term solutions, or solutions that result from the creation of new rules that push us away from transparency, in exchange for job creation are not solutions.
That said, I do focus on repelican lies. I've been doing this for awhile. I'm not paid for it. That should be clear - between my website:
http://zendogblog.net
and what I've posted here, linked by my profile, should demonstrate that no one in mainstream politics is going to align themselves too closely with me.
I might just be rabid.
I can definitely respect a straight answer.
I'm curious - why did you ask such a question? Surely if you are a supporter you have already answered the question for yourself and moved on?
Some of the initiatives that have been proposed can be found at these two links:
https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/
The Ninety-Nine Percent Declaration Post Office Box 190 Red Hook, New York 12571 the99declaration@gmail.com
and here:
http://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-please-help-editadd-so-th/
I'm sure you can sort out if these kinds of proposals fit your concept of left or right or even if they fit the proposed reach into some new dimension beyond the political dichotomy of mainstream dialog?
I wholeheartedly support the movement in general, but not all of its goals, nor all of its members.
so when was the last time you were in a group of five or ten people where there was unanimous agreement on anything?
shrug
TBH, I actually wrote this posting intending it to be my final-blaze-of-troll-glory before I left you all to rot in a stew of your own vehemence, however...
The revelation that this posting has actually recieved rational, well considered, even warm responses -- and no personal attacks...
Has won me over.
Not everyone has . . . um . . . embraced my ideology either. So what. I'm committed to ending corporate influence on our electoral process. It is one point of agreement between my views and that of the movement as a whole.
I haven't been booted yet.
I don't know what to call "it". Republicans and Democrats aren't parties in Egypt last time I checked. This is a global movement, not just here in the USA. We all better be helping each other when and if they bring in the global euro. That means control beyond what we can even imagine.
Nope. The movement was started by anarchists fighting back against wall street who extended an invitation to all people, regardless of their political affiliations, to join the struggle!
We'll convert you eventually. ;)
You underestimate anarchists.
I simply respect the aging process.
I may be banned for this. That's ok. It will be nice to retire from the paulbot troll wars.
I'm 26 :P That's past the age when the brain fully matures so I doubt I'm going to stop being an anarchist at this point. But being an anarchist isn't anything to be ashamed of. I'm in good company :) Examples: Emma Goldman, Noam Chomsky, Peter Kropotkin, etc.
Also you're not going to be banned for calling anarchists immature >_>
And an attractive 26 it is! (I think everyone's seen your pic, thanks to my favorite sophist)
It is good company, I'll admit. However, Noam is an anarchist that happens to support all the hierarchichal institutions of state that I support as a liberal - at least given the status quo. If he's an anarchist, then so am I. I know what he calls himself, of course.
I wouldn't have said immature, not at all. Passionate and idealistic, perhaps...
A sad pragmatism sets in at 30-35, in my experience. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, nor can I offer advice on preventing it. Some, of course, manage - and I wish you the best. :o)
"you're not going to be banned"
Aww! There goes my excuse to enjoy the 4-day weekend. :p
I'm very much a pragmatist. If I were an idealist, the front page of this website would have animated gifs of anarchist flags, embedded videos of this guy (well to be honest, we actually have tweeted him a couple times lol) and every article would talk about overthrowing the government. I think it's more accurate to say that I never became jaded. This regrettably happened to far too many of my friends who I tried to bring on board back in July, but naturally I was met with little more than cynicism until the movement became mainstream :\
But don't get me wrong. While I'm an anarchist, I don't have too much of a problem with certain institutions within the context of the current system that help to minimize suffering. Like the welfare state, free health care and the regulations that actually reduce corporate power. For the most part, anything that reduces suffering for oppressed people is good in my eyes as I view the liberation of humanity as an asymptotic struggle to empower people and abolish power.
While I support the efforts of others to do those things, my activism has been somewhat more ambitious in the sense that I've always had my sights set on helping to ultimately end state capitalism. I hope I've been doing an ok job and have been going in the right direction so far :\ but one can never be sure.
<3
LOL @ "I despise each and every one of you!" :D
I think you sell idealism short. Some of my favorite people have been idealists. RFK for example. Too much pragmatism and not enough idealism is the problem with, for example, Obama (the generous interpretation, that he wasn't a lie from the start).
I think, in my case, it comes down not to what's desirable (ideal), but to what's possible. The right balance of pragmatism and idealism is needed to balance a worthwhile vision with a realistic strategy to achieve it. I've studied quite a bit of history, and thought long and hard about the options available to us. I don't think utopia is in the cards. Sure, we could probably engineer (or hasten) a collapse, but we would have little say in what followed. Have you traveled around this "great nation," by chance? Do you really want to bet our future on a new formulation of government, given the current majority? Beyond shooting for downfall, incremental change is the best we can realistically hope to achieve.
I don't know any liberals who wouldn't do away with the cruel injustice that is capitalism in favor of something fair and humane. It's just a question of what course will produce the maximum utility given the world as it is. For me, that involves yanking back hard on neoliberalism and restoring something close to the postwar liberal consensus. We (speaking for liberals as far as I can) think it's a doable compromise, and history agrees, so that's what we fight for. Not because we think it's the best of all possible worlds, but the best we're likely to achieve.
Your philosopy lines up well with my reading of Chomsky, so I deem you an acceptable anarchist. ;)
Beyond all that, have a good one jart. <3
BTW: "I hope I've been doing an ok job and have been going in the right direction so far : but one can never be sure."
I may not be all onboard with anarchy, but you can't argue with results. Look around.
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Daughter - still condescending, but at least gender-accurate.
No it is not a "simple question", you use a word with a wide definition and a loaded one at that,. at least for those people that have been mind fcked by the AM hate-radio and their propaganda.
"Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis) is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights."
The political spectrum is not a straight line it is a loop, and the ends meat and cross. I consider myself a social liberal and a financial conservative, however not in the way conservative is commonly known today. The words has been misused for so long and in so many ways as to lose most meaning.
No. We are against corporate puppets, regardless of whether they are labeled "liberal" "conservative" "democrat" or "republican"
http://october2011.org/blogs/kevin-zeese/democratic-party-and-occupy-movement-are-oil-and-water
I can understand where you have been confused. The Democrat controlled corporate media (like MSNBC) has been trying to hijack OWS. And the Republican controlled corporate media (like Fox News) has accepted this attempted co-optation and basically perceive us as the liberal version of the Tea Party.
Naturally they are attacking/smearing us as though we were simply an extension of Obama's re-election campaign.
With both factions of the corporate media repeating the same lie, it's understandable that you would ask this question.
A more accurate label would be "radical left movement" or "revolutionary left movement"
Hope that clears it up for you.
I'm referring primarily to the postings on this site, as I don't glean any of my opinion from those sources -- since I don't even observe them!
Amen on the no corporate media.
@OP It's not liberal. It's liberalish.
Is that OK?
It clearly is not a conservative movement!!!! It is a Progressive Movement, the Republicans clearly do not believe in what the movement is about, if fact, it is clearly everything that the Republicans do that started the movement in the first place! The corruption and greed in Wall Street, Corporations, Banks and the greedy and corrupt Congress have become puppets of right-wing extremists lobbyists, special-interests, pac's, associations and organizations that push laws and legislation that Republicans support because they receive millions if not billions from them! Democrats and Independents are much more closely aligned with the beliefs of Progressives and the Democrats and Independents in this movement. Find me a Republican or Tea Partier that supports this movement and I will show you someone who is either lying or has something financial to gain from it!
It is a revolution for progressive change.
OWS is a 99% social movement. The 1% are at the margins and will be acclimatized to a world without greed. their guard dogs need re-training to be nice to humans. Find yourself! Come out of the shadows and support OWS.
It is an ecnomic movement, not social. And this is why this is the biggest challenge any movement has ever tried to conquer.
You are messing wit their MONEY.
This movement works on a much more updated direct action form of governance. Terms like lib or con aren't very meaningful compared with fair, equitable, noncorrupted, nonviolent for an example.
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Amongst the apparently "golden" insiders, I see virtually unanimous calls for things like:
And other highly partisan comments, which seem contradictory to the official position of OWS.
Note that, while I understand that it is a diverse group with numerous views, the ones I have described above recieve virtually unspoken across-the-board head-nodding support, while any contrary views are summarily dismissed and viciously attacked.
Again, it causes me to ponder the sincerity of the movement's self-described non partisan nature.
Here's my take on this. When you get a bunch of people together, you're going to no doubt get a shit-ton of different ideals, different opinions, etc. The OWS movement as a whole "averages" all of these opinions under one stance that I think we can all agree on, which is to end the corruption that is ruining our lives. When a handful of protesters say they're against capitalism, it's just their individual opinions, which they are entitled to. But not necessarily the movement's opinion as a whole. Our GENERAL purpose is pretty damn obvious, and anyone who says otherwise is just buying into the media propaganda that wants to make us seem like we don't know what we want. Another thing too is that our movement is still young. We may not have all our shit worked out just yet, but look at what we've accomplished already. We've brought unprecedented attention to the corruption in our government and our corporate overlords. We're just getting warmed up!
As an individual who supports the movement I can honestly say I am non partisan. I personally do not believe in the political division of our country, we are all Americans. What we need to do instead of getting one party on our side or stomping out another party, we need to remove the labels from the human beings and join to form the American party. All for one and one for all. I am not in support of this movement because I think the government should help me by supplying me a bail out, or providing me entitlements. I am in support because I want my government to stop raping my country. I don't need help I can do it on my own, but not when I have so many special interests climbing in and out of my pocket. So I don't know who the golden insiders are but if that is the message you are receiving, it is not the one that represents everyone here.
Hear, hear!
With Obama and the Unions saying how supportive of the movement they are, there couldn't be a bigger shot in the foot for OWS. It looks to me like OWS is in the administrations pocket. I'm trying to be objective.
It is a progressive moment, pure and simple. It has many adherents to many different aspects of the progressive movement. Though we each have our own ways of thinking in how things ought to be done, most of us are advocating a form of progressive values in some form or another. It's a solidarity movement, really, in that we are striving to stick up for those who are otherwise left out by the powers that be.
We are starting a new political party. Dont think totally liberal think rational party
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You may be misinformed and uneducated, I myself am not.
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I'm not interested in the OWS background, I don't care how or why the message is finally getting to the people, I'm just happy it's finally happening. I will collaborate with the people who show an honest exchange of ideas. I do not listen to people who tell me why my ideas will fail. I only listen to people who can help me figure out how to succeed. So unless you have something constructive to say I will no longer engage in this conversation.
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No, it's a fascist movement.