Forum Post: Not once...NOT ONCE have I heard these words mentioned on OWS "Small or Local Business and Capitalism"
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 5, 2011, 8:48 p.m. EST by PeoplehaveDNA
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So I really think it is time to clarify are you anti-capitalism for everything includes: small businesses, mama and poppa shops, small firms, main street capitalism, large mega corporations, mega banks, hedgefunds, wall street capitalism, medium size businesses, medium size corporations, medium size banks, mid size capitalism. So what is it are you against all capitalism or just against Corporate America. not small businesses or some mid size businesses. Believe it or not small businesses actually do create new jobs and they often are the hardest hit by recessions, corporate crime, and bad economy. So my question is what exactly is the sentiment of the OWS majority, I know you have a bunch of fringe groups out there giving the media a run for their money. It is time to settle this one once and for all. Are you anti-capitalist or are you anti-corporatist? If you are anti-corporatist please put that on your damn signs and stop scaring honest small business and local business owners. Answer honestly.
Here is the answer from me -
and many ( but not all ) of the OWS people I speak to.
We are not anti-capitalist. Or anti-corporatist.
We are against capitalism and corporations controlling our political system.
benefiting the 1% & costing the 99%
government of the people by the corporations for the rich - MUST CEASE!!
You must know - l'll just list a few
wall street bail out + bonuses
privatizing wars and prisons
increasing profits by firing Americans, poluting environment
buying politicians
yes - some of us would label ourselves "anti-capitalist"
but unlike other recent "movements" we are not monolithic and in lockstep
with the entity that created us.
I would back any CORPORATION that put Americans before its stockholders.
but that would be un-natural
It may be difficult to re-instate control and regulation of
American corporations FOR America BY Americans
that is MY path - but others in OWS see things differently.
I believe that we in OWS must not just make demands for change -
I think that the get corporate money out of politics is the right direction for OWS but why is this not an official motto of OWS yet. Answer me this. I think that they will get a strong consensus among the American people. Why does OWS still dick around on this issue.
This is what I'm doing ---
We have a large number of great, well thought out, COMPLICATED ideas that will require a huge amount of "selling" and “explanation" and will garner GREAT OPPOSITION.
Every one of our goals can only be achieved by cutting the incestuous link between washington and money - we MUST start here:
ACTION ----> JOIN US
We need to be realistic & pick an issue that is simple – and that is proven popular -
that 83% of Americans already agree on -
That even 56% of TP already agree on -
that will bring together the people in OWS with the people outside of OWS.
Everybody wins! ACTION ----> JOIN US
Our only immediate goal should be to pass a constitutional amendment to counter Supreme Court decision Citizens United (2010) , that enable unlimited amounts of anonymous money to flood into our political system.
“Corporations and organizations are not a persons &
have no personhood rights”
We don’t have to explain or persuade people to accept our position – we only have to persuade them to ACT based on their own position. Pursuing this goal will prove to the world that we, at OWS, are a serious realistic Movement, with serious realistic goals. Achieving this goal will make virtually every other goal – jobs, taxes, infrastructure, Medicare – much easier to achieve –
by disarming our greatest enemy – GREED.
ACTION ----> JOIN US
THE SUCCESS STORY OF THE AMENDING PROCESS The Prohibition movement started as a disjointed effort by conservative teetotalers who thought the consumption of alcohol was immoral. They ransacked saloons and garnered press coverage here and there for a few years. Then they began to gain support from the liberals because many considered alcohol partially responsible for spousal and child abuse, among other social ills. This odd alliance, after many years of failing to influence change consistently across jurisdictions, decided to concentrate on one issue nationally—a constitutional amendment. They pressured all politicians on every level to sign a pledge to support the amendment. Any who did not, they defeated easily at the ballot box since they controlled a huge number of liberal, and conservative and independent swing votes in every election. By being a single-issue constituency attacking from all sides of the political spectrum, they very quickly amassed enough votes (2/3) to pass the amendment in Congress. And, within just 17 months, they were successful in getting ¾ of the state legislatures to ratify the constitutional amendment into law. (Others were ratified even faster: Eight —took less than a year. The 26th, granting 18-year-olds the right to vote, took just three months and eight days.)
If they could tie the left and right into a success -
WHY CAN'T WE ??????????
ACTION ----> JOIN US
I feel that we should stay with this simple text to overturn CU:
”corporations are not people”
for four simple reasons and one – not so simple:
1
83% of Americans have already opposed CU in the ABC/Washington post poll and the above
IS THEIR POSITION ALREADY.
2
We don’t have to work to convince people on the validity of our position.
3
Simple is almost always better.
4
This simple Amendment is REQUIRED to overturn CU.
And all other electoral reform can be passed through the normal legislative process.
5
OWS and these pages are chock full of ( mostly ) excellent ideas to improve our country.
All of them have strong advocates – and some have strong opposition.
None of them has been “pre-approved” by 83% of Americans !
Pursuing this goal – without additional specifics is exactly what Americans want.
What do we want? Look at that almost endless list of demands – goals - aims.
Tax the rich. End the Fed. Jobs for all, Medicare for all. So easy to state! Can you imagine how hard it would be to formulate a “sales pitch” for any of these to convince your Republican friends to vote for any of them?
83% of Americans have ALREADY “voted” against CU. And 76% of the Rs did too.
All we have to do ask Americans is to pressure their representatives – by letters - emails – petitions.
Wanna take your family on vacation?
Convince the 7 year old and the 10 year old to go to Mt Rushmore.
Then try to convince them to go to Disneyland.
Prioritizing this goal will introduce us to the world – not as a bunch of hippie radical anarchist socialist commie rabblerousers – but as a responsible, mature movement that is fighting for what America wants.
ACTION ----> JOIN US
I feel that using the tactics of the NRA, the AARP an the TP – who all represent a minority – who have successfully used their voting power to achieve their minority goals - plus the Prohibition Amendment tactics – bringing all sides together - is a straight path for us to success that cannot fail to enable us to create and complete one MAJORITY task.
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SEE NEXT POST FOR RESOLUTION DETAILS
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Based on three fundamental facts
therefore-
The General Assembly supports a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood.
i agree 83% of the population oppose Citizen's United if this is the sentiment of the majority than something needs to be done.
This reads like some propaganda pamphlet......all of words that really say nothing.
First you say that OWS has a lot of "complicated" ideas and then you go on to say that OWS should stay with a "simple" message......... ?????
I think that even the 83% of the US population that opposes the Citizens United decision (and I am one of them) are looking to see what OWS is actually going to do about that decision. Right now it appears that they intend to do nothing but make flea bites at the corporations. And while that makes for good 30 second news spots it does nothing to the Corporations.
Then you really haven't been reading much on this forum. It all about supporting small business, small farms, buying local. When the fed gave out 7 trillion in bailout money to the banks how much of that do you think went to small business? Think about these numbers, there were 1.4 trillion in sub prime loans. Due to all the "systemic risk' created by the securitization and side bets on those loans the fed gave 7 trillion $'s of cheap loans to banks and the taxpayer spent a few trillion more to pay off wall street's gambling debts. What if the fed had given 1.4 trillion in cheap loans to those home buyers and another 1.4 trillion in cheap loans to small businesses instead of 7 trillion to pay off a bunch of bad bets and insure that wall streeters would be able to write themselves giant paychecks, secure in the knowledge that they can take whatever risks they want and the taxpayer will pay for their mistakes?
I didn't get the sense that in Burlington small business owners were concerned with the distinction. They generally supported us.
Until a gunshot echoed in the park, heralding the suicide of a young man who was, it seems, homeless.
That's when they got nervous.
You should join a local Occupy, become part of the movement. Then you will know who we are and what we believe.
Stand with us I say, and end the corruption of both Congress and Wall Street.
Well, I keep stating my views over and over--I want to see an end to crony capitalism and a return to true capitalism. We need to get the money out of politics once and for all. And of course we should support small businesses and banks. I am all for that.
Others in this movement may have different views. However, I full support this movement. It is time for change.
NOT ANTI-Capitalist. I support small businesses, shopping local stores and using credit unions. These are the people that I support. I support my community, who turns around and supports me. As should everyone else the best they can.
I know it is hard to see through the B.S. being thrown at you every day, but people, really, this is NOT a NEW concept.
Supply equals demand. Money is our voice. Pick your products wisely. You can choose to buy local. You can buy gas. You can shop at the corporation. Boycott or Buy.
Speaking just for myself, I'm anti-corporatist and anti-big business. You could have done a search for "small business", here's what I wrote in early November:
"No, not by regulation, but by economic structure. We'd have to shift to a true small business economy (which the RATpublicans claim (i.e., lie) to be loyal to). This would also prevent the hyper concentrations of economic power that now override our 'people are sovereign' democracy. It would also reignite competition, which is the genius of capitalism, and which would reignite innovation, but which degenerate capitalism (unrestrained dog eat dog, with only mad dog colossuses left standing) hates. It would also require economic national borders." http://occupywallst.org/forum/fdrs-2nd-bill-of-rights-should-be-the-demands-of-t/
Agreed.
I have heard and read SMALL BUSINESS AND CAPITALISM many times in relation to OWS.
I think it would be best if Small Business were defined in relation to your question...
When it was coming up on 'Black Friday', these pages had a great many posts about buying local from the small businesses, even if it meant 'not getting those great deals' in the Walmart madhouse.
I've read a great many posts suggesting the support of the local cafes and restaurants instead of eating out at the 'chains'.
Multiple posts pointing out that local business is also capitalistic, yet also middle class.
It's the mom and pop shops that OWS encourages the member and those who support OWS to frequent. Sorry we can't name them all, but since this is a large country both in land mass and population, we'll just have to refer to them all as local businesses.
Sadly the terminology so often used has made some small business owners nervous...
How about this for an example? When ordering pizza order from Poor Gary's Pizza instead of Godfather's Pizza.
If you are a small business then you are just as vulnerable as all the rest of us and all small businesses should join the fight and make a difference.
Yes but OWS need to recognize the small business factor in the fight against corporate greed. They should have meetings, protests, and discussions about small businesses. They were all about discussing credit unions during Bank Transfer Day now it is time to tell people to buy local for real.
Small businesses are a good thing. But they shouldn't be used to divert attention away from the elephant in the room if you know what I mean.
There are a few people who are anti capitalists, but realistically I think most people just want our country to be more stable and dependable. So yeah I'm anti-corporatist.
No my suggestion is not to divert attention away from the elephant in the room. However, OWS is pretty capable of multi-tasking it is pretty obvious when I went down to the NYC protest one Saturday and I had my choice of 12 different protests to go to at the same time. Why can't OWS small business support be on their agenda as well. If OWS supports Small Business Week they are helping the public,( in a sense screw over large corporations), get comfortable with buying from local businesses. You have no idea how small businesses are being messed with by Washington regulations and the mega corps. It is time to tell those mega corps to fuck off. People have consumer power in this country and I believe that they should use it to protest. It is a win win situation.
Love this post.
But good luck nailing them down for an answer. A leaderless movement with a mindset of "it's whatever you want it to be" leave room for much confusion.
I'm still waiting for an answer to the questions I posed months ago that were much like this one in nature. I just don't get it. They hurt the little guy with their strikes, they refuse to hold Washington accountable for the state of our economy, they hint at smashing capitalism (but never outright claim it)...
I'd love to see meaning come from all this, I really would. I want a cause I can get behind... but this movement, as is, isn't it.
I agree with you independantmind this is why I posted here I want clarification. Time to clarify OWS.
OWS is not anti-capitalism for any one. Fox News Lies !
So the street-wide "Death to Capitlism" banner at the Oakland march was just a joke? Guess what? If you march behind a banner that says "Death to Capitalism," the rest of us, including Fox News, are going to assume that you are...oh, I dunno...anti-Capitalism.
This is a perfect example of why i think the OWS movement will accomplish absolutely nothing. To many people are trying to inject their own personal political agenda into the OWS movement and ignoring the real problem. Most people can't even tell you what the OWS movement is really about.
I agree. Too many crazy people distorting the message.
This link is in the bottom-right corner of every page of this site:
https://github.com/jart/occupywallst
Go there and tell me; what does it say for the project headline, under the orange line labeled "Code"?
And do you even know what that website is ?
Sigh... I've been a software developer for over 20 years. Please, tell me, WHAT IS THAT website, oh master?
More to the point, what does it say for the project headline?
It says "Stomping out capitalism, one line of code at a time"
For someone like me who isn't a software developer......... what IS this website and what does the above sentence mean?
The word "even" in your question mislead me into thinking you were being sarcastic. My bad.
GitHub is a website where progammers can release the source code for their software projects. THIS website has had it's source code released by the author, Justine Alexandra Roberts Tunney ("JART"), and that is the "motto" of the project "occupywallst.org" -- which would tend to contradict claims that this website is not motiviated toward the goal of eliminating capitalism.
Excuse me... but I didn't use the word "even" in my post..... I am not the person who posed the original question.
Yes it would seem that way wouldn't it. Is JART the person who wrote the code for this site we are using now? (occupywallst.org) Because you realize that this site is actually "owned" by Adbusters and not OWS...
It gets very convoluted when there is no organization structure, no one at the helm of things so to speak, to even know what is actually the truth when something is attributed to OWS.......
You're right; tr289 did. I'm kinda distracted atm.
Yes, JART wrote the code.
No problem......I get distracted very easily! LOL........
Well then, I guess I would like to know what role JART plays in OWS now.... or if she is just with Adbusters....
Justine is on this website from time-to-time. (I've talked to her here.)
She described herself as a "feminist communist transgender anarchist"; in that picture, she is the brunette on on the left.
It is my understanding that Adbusters proposed the original idea for OWS, then a "veteran labor organizer" concurred it should be done, then Justine registered the domain name, and now she continues to develop the code (based on the changes submitted to the GitHub repository)
That is pretty much what I had read and I think I saw that article you linked. So do you know how involved Justine is in the NYC OWS?
It's hard to say if the "stomping out capitalism" is really OWS's goal or if that is something that Justine would like to see happen. There are so many different "political" persuasions in OWS
Actually some people have said they think we need to get rid o capitalism.
People say a lot of things... It doesn't mean they are true.
OWS movement is about taking back our government from those who spent $Billions buying it. Sadly even the majority of people that support the OWS movement can't figure this out.
I would like to point out the below photolink below(V) by confused guy.
Listen, most of the people that support the OWS movement don't even know what the OWS movement is about. This is why you get these idiots, sometimes in large groups like the entire Occupy Chicago movement, to march around with giant signs that say stupid shit.
The OWS movement is not about anti capitalism. It's about taking back our government from those who spent $billions buying it. That's it. Nothing more. Any one that tries to tell you otherwise is ignorant.
A leaderless movement is about whatever is most important to the majority of those who show up on any given day. That's why so many of us are still scratching our heads and trying to figure put what this thing is all about. Conflict between words and deeds are common, as well as between words this week and words last week. It's why the movement has lost traction, and I think will be one of the reasons it fails.
Saying that people do not deserve what they have earned is in part anti-capitalism.
Here's a link to a picture in case you missed it. It's not on the fox news site. http://www.google.com/imgres?q=death+to+capitalism+oakland&um=1&hl=en&tbo=d&tbm=isch&tbnid=fJfD-4Tdj0y1_M:&imgrefurl=http://www.occupyarchive.org/items/show/1506&docid=b_DaYL6DzK7GvM&itg=1&imgurl=http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6105/6312446029_eb9a638197.jpg&w=500&h=334&ei=2HrdTqW1HMmWiQKKw9XTAw&zoom=1&biw=1024&bih=660
You are a spokesperson for OWS?
No one is ...
The message of the OWS movement is clear. Sadly, even most that support the movement refuse to listen to that message. It's why the OWS movement is a total waste of time.
Maybe someday a leader will emerge and drill the message into the heads of those that support the OWS movement, and that's every one in this country. Until that day comes, the OWS movement is nothing more then a bunch of people banging on drums and crying about the injustices of the world.
Banks are anti-small business. The bailout money was given with the "promise" that banks would invest heavily in business. This did not happen and they just enriched themselves.
Walmart is anti-small business. They specifically set out to undercut and destroy them. Of course, you could insert any other big corporate chain there as well.