Forum Post: Next Step: Organize local work groups. This forum has become pointless.
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 5, 2011, 12:55 p.m. EST by readytogo
(80)
from Brooklyn, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
While this forum looked promising as a place for real discussion of issues and strategy, over the last few days, it has quickly become flooded with posts. Some are heartfelt concerns or discussion points, but as you may have noticed, we have been overtaken by a flood of provocateurs, agitators and haters. People are no longer commenting and listening to each other. It is just a long string of posts with no comments or discussion.
I can't help but feel this is an intentional effort to confuse and defuse. I think the answer is to make concerted efforts to reach out locally and talk with your fellow neighbors face to face. Simply posting a flier at coffee shops, universities, churches or book shops that suggests a weekly meeting place/time/day could allow you to find like-minded people that are also excited about Occupy Wall Street. Maybe your answer isn't to occupy your town hall, but you may come up with equally powerful strategies that help organize larger groups of people around issues of financial abuse and inequality. Even a study group can be very powerful.
We will never be able to use the internet to do this work because there is no way to protect against continuous attack from those who want us to stay disorganized as citizens. The power of people is in face to face connection and cooperation. We have all been trained to see our differences and now is a time to come together and help each other through the rough process of finding our common ground against a larger enemy. Love has always been the most radical act a person can use against the state.
I like the idea of local groups of people who do not live in the big cities protesting some where local during the week (like the local Bank of America branch) then gathering up to join the big protest in the city for the weekend.
I think this could have a large impact, and increase the visibility of the OWS movement.
That's a great idea. I live in NYC, but I see from a lot of these posts that people want to participate so badly.
my friend gets his unemployment check from Bank of America
now that's a firm hand shake from public government to private industry
I've seen a lot of what readytogo is referring to. Just read one decrying the involvement of George Soros and the Unions. (Hey, that sounds like a good name for a band!) Seriously, sometimes wealthy people care too. What about John Lennon? We should heed his advice and "come together". I doubt Michael Moore is hurting for money either. Rich and poor alike have been. victimized by Wall Street. But I agree that this movement needs to stay above party politics. Blind partisanship, along with its partner greed are what got us into this mess in the first place. "The People" are comprised of all classes and political persuasions. I feel the internet, especially social networking, is a valuable tool, although no substitute for real "feet on the ground" community involvement. Imagine if we'd had Facebook and Twitter in the late 60's and early 70's?
Yes, what is this about Soros? Trying to figure out what the problem is with him. I've always admired his example of exceedingly generous philanthropy.
It's a conspiracy theory, a right wing meme that's been making the rounds for some time now. Glenn Beck used to trumpet this on his show all the time.
Philanthropy is nice but it doesn't solve structural problems. The ruling class has made it clear that discussion of structural problems is off the table; we are to consider the economic status quo an immutable part of the natural order of things (i.e. "God's will" and all that). As Dom Helder Camara put it, "When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint; when I ask why they are hungry, they call me a communist."
Ah. Okay, thanks. Agreed on the role philanthropy plays. I always explain why I left the nonprofit field by pointing out that if compared to a business model, the customer a nonprofit is concerned with is the funder, not the clients served. Root problems are of no interest and not even acknowledged. Everyone's struggles are personal, familial, economic, but not structural.
I think OWS opponents seek to imply Soros because he's a (Gasp!) Liberal. I'll bet OWS has the Tea Party shaking in their jackboots. They try to imply that we're just a bunch of twenty-something neo-hippies when nothing could be further from the truth. What about the guy who's been a truck driver for 25 years in Nashville? I've done three pro-OWS videos on YouTube, and when I check the Insight stats, their largest demographic is the 45-54 age group. A bunch of crazy kids? I don't think so! The far right is running scared. Have you seen that fake OWS site at http://occupyparty.org ?
Soros made too much $$ off of Haliburton for my tastes
Same here. We should all be past idolizing rich people.
Categories coming soon. We're also in the process of recruiting a whole team of moderators to drastically improve the signal to noise ratio.
I don't have a tremendous amount of free time, but I am a web-developer so if you can use a donated hour or two here or there, please let me know.
Thank you so much for offering to help out. Right now our site is pretty spartan in terms of design but as we start tackling new projects I'll keep you in mind <3
Good thoughts. I think one of the most important things about this movement is that it is an effort to get OUT there, be there, have a presence and as you said, connect with like minded people in our communities.
The real discussions are taking place on the ground. The forum here...well, I'm not really sure what it's here for anymore really, same with the chat room.
readytogo...
I'm so sorry you don't see the point.
Hmmm...what if...I love the sound of that.
What if...
You can say I'm a dreamer. Call me what you want.
What's in a name?
We have 10 years to fix this. Let's hope it happens.
Goodnight. :)
Oh...by the way...I'll be back in the AM after I've done my...gardening.
:)
Please keep this forum going with as much freedom and as little censorship as possible! I agree that local action is useful and necessary, but this doesn't mean that we have to abandon the internet or this impressive (and on the whole, constructive) forum, with people participating from all over the world.
I believe we have to use ALL the means at our disposal, we really can't afford to dismiss them as "pointless".
I very much agree with the statement that "love has always been the most radical act a person can use against the state". Unfortunately there are not many people who understand this.
how about a sub section for tax debates ?
You guys have to stop sweating the lunatics. What's happening is bigger than any one mind or group of minds. Don't engage/argue with the crazy's/provocateurs just trust that this phenomenon has a wisdom of it's own. Don't respond to them. Stay focused on what brought you out into the street in the first place and just keep expressing that in this forum. The world is watching. The tone of what's happening, and why, is emotionally apparent. The movement has a soul even if it's voice is still in it's infancy. Trust it. Keep going. Even if you ultimately lose momentum and dissapate, what you are doing matters. It is a step that must be taken towards building something new in the world. No one can possibly know yet what that new thing will be.
Beautifully stated and true. Thank you.
Are there online tools out there that could facilitate this kind of local meeting. I know my wife found her book club through meet-up... does anyone have other discussions.
In that vein I think a specialized tool for helping to coordinate and connect geographically close political "study groups" and help people find a group in their area would be very valuable. Having a tool specialized for that purpose would create a space in the public mind for such a thing, as opposed to just using Facebook or meet-up which only draws people who already know to look... not sure if what I'm suggest is clear or not
I think that's a great idea...I think it should be connected to this site tho...to avoid confusion and keep things centralized.
Social media and Wikipedia have taught us that there are powerful ways to leverage public voice. And you don't necessarily have to be exclusionary to do so. I think a simple way to make the forum more powerful would be to have a simple up-vote down-vote mechanism, maybe label it with "is this relevant" since while you may not agree with the point made, you may think it's a relevant discussion. Then people could sort the forum by the most relevant discussions. Or, for people who want to look at the most recent or rising posts you could sort by something like (score +10) / (time) to get the most recent things that are being favorably reviewed.
That is how the reddit page is working and it is much easier to read and follow. I've started to read that one more and just check this forum occasionally. The forum only seems to do the up and down vote on comments, not on the original post. From Jart's post, it sounds like they are working to improve the forum page.
Just checked out reddit and...just my opinion...I like this format better, it just needs some fine tuning.
Haters? You mean anyone who has a different opinion than your own? The only hating I have heard discussed is a hatred for the rich, corporations, white-collar workers, Wall Street, etc. etc. Does the word "hypocrisy" mean anything to you?
Please see above comment for a wonderful example of my point. Thanks so much for your help MikeInOhio! You rock.
This forum would be a lot more useful if it were more closely monitored and the provocateurs, agitators and haters were warned prior to possible removal. Would take a couple of dedicated people. Secondly, a lot of people have differing opinions and deserve to be heard. Let them have their say, they will be judged by other readers on the merits of their arguments and applauded or booed, depending on their input and social skills. @Readytogo mentions a couple of good second track activities, why not use those as well?
I agree.
I hoped for more monitoring too, but I thought of two hurdles to that -
I wouldn't worry about changing user names...eventually they will get tired of having to do that everytime they are banned.
And frankly, I don't think there are that many people that will do that. I think for the most part, people will be genuine.
That's what I meant, get a couple of dedicated people to monitor and organise the forum, so that other organisers can do other stuff. I'm not particularly worried about venters and ranters, it's more the people who drop random articles and stupid comments that have no bearing on the discussion, or people deliberately trying to sidetrack issues. They stick out after a while and can be booted quickly and quietly by the appropriate moderators. Also, the face-to-face method is still the best when real organising needs to get done, but input can be delivered by any of many means nowadays.
I agree...
This movement should have several venues and a central meeting point.
Just get them dancing in the street and the world will join in. We the people..
I agree that some people need to get off the internet and into their community. Others, however, have learned to multitask!
I didn't say anything about getting off the internet.
At risk of being labeled a hater, i'd say the forum is a good place for synthesizing many opinions and suggestions. The "movement" simply needs to capitalize on the vast amount of thought being placed at their feet. Labelling opposing views as "agitation" is small, and is exactly the type of closed-minded control that OWS professes to be against. Social media worked overseas, you can make it work here.
Why in the world would you say I'm labeling opposing views as agitation?? I certainly am not. I would personally define agitators as people who are trying to incite violence and racism on this forum. I clearly said our work is to find our common ground against a larger enemy. That means working through differences of opinion together. That is the point of 99%. It isn't about just talking with people you agree on everything with. That gets us no where.
I am not getting off the internet