Forum Post: Is this all working?
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 13, 2011, 10:51 a.m. EST by hivemind
(131)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
OWS has been at it for months now but I don't hear anything about it. It doesn't seem that government or businesses want to talk to the OWSers to come to a conclusion. It's like they are just waiting till they get bored and go home. I really support the OWS movement but I wonder if it's really doing anything to get through to people.
OWS is a part of American society, just doing it's thing.
We are still at a very very early stage, a stage where our primary activity is winning people over and winning them to activism. We have been at this a very very short time. The US occupations of Germany and Japan started 66 years ago and are still in place. The transition from feudalism to capitalism took 500 years. This may take years, decades or even centuries. Patience is a revolutionary virtue.
I don't know if people will want to camp out on concrete for 500 years, haha. Is there any talk about people setting up a more stable place of operations, one that is possibly in doors? I figure donation money might help to bolster the OWS movement into a position like the TEA party, right? I guess all this is tough as the movement has no leader, not that it should have one.
The whole point of the Occupy movement is to occupy open, public spaces and more broadly to reclaim the commons, extremely important in an age when everything is being privatized. So staying outdoors is important, though the name of our movement is Occupy Wall Street and we have yet to do that. Especially with regard to homelessness and the underutilization of resources an effort might be to occupy abandoned government buildings and factories. Though in a more immediate sense I suspect that a next step for the Occupy movement will be the occupation of public universities. There also has been some discussion of occupying media centers. In most revolutions against totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, seizing the state run TV station headquarters is at the top of the list for freeing the press. I think the same is true in the United States today with regard to its privatized media. I also think that the Occupy movement may inspire working people to replicate the sit down movement of the 1930s when half a million people defied the notion of private property rights and sat down on the job, refusing to leave until the boss negotiated with them, only this time we will stay until the boss leaves---forever! Regarding money OWS is already taking in donations at a rate faster than it can spend them given its decision making mechanism. But I just wasted a lot more time than I intended talking to a troll.
If it's going to take centuries, which it very well might, I hope you will be opening a primary school in Zuccotti for the protesters' children. You should also start planning a retirement home for when the protesters grow old.
Personally, I'm 68 years old. Zuccotti is clearly a temporary home, a "target of opportunity," a way station. The title of our movement is occupy Wall Street and we have yet to do that
Be careful. Take care of yourself, it's dangerous to sleep in the cold, especially at your age. My father is 70 and he got pneumonia last year from cold weather. Just stay safe. we care about you.
The Democrats have been at it for decades already...
What is there to talk about? They haven't made any demands because their goal is not to ask for modifications in the system. They want a revolution.
I think they say "revolution" but I think they mean it in the 60's way. You know like, "it's a revolution baby!". I mean what they what to do seems pretty simple, make some kind of regulation to make the people top priority. Our leaders shouldn't be bought and our business leaders shouldn't be able to feed their greed so easily. It seems like most of our problems stem from that.
How about a simple solution for radical times If, or once, The Occupy Nation agrees on one vision, it should be imperative that they find candidates that will agree to ask for a Constitutional Convention. This convention, through the internet, will become the forum for debating with the opposition. Because that debate will be accessible by all—and easier to hotlink—anyone who chooses not to participate abdicates their civil rights to the New American Consensus. This simple act, I BELIEVE, is the only way to change course. But a new deal has to be struck and agreed on before it can co-opt the government. I implore anyone who takes this occupy thing seriously to tell me why I am wrong.
Sincerely, Jesse Thomas Heffran