Forum Post: Occupiers, Get a clue.
Posted 12 years ago on Feb. 5, 2012, 12:18 p.m. EST by mbonem
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I gotta ask you. Do you want to be effective or do you want to get your emotional rocks off?
Are you really thinking you represent all of America? Who gave you that mandate? Please get some perspective.
How can you be arguing tactics, when they don’t even have clearly stated goals, let alone a strategy?
How can you contemplating violence as a tactic, without considering the consequences? Violence will turn most Americans away from your movement. Also you can’t win. The other guy will always have a bigger stick. Think of King, Gandi and Ushiba. Make the police and the FBI your friends. Treat them with the same respect you want. You have nothing to hide (right?). There are even people in the financial industry who support you. Reach out to them. Now is the time to build bridges.
Do you understand the causes of the (economic and political) of our problems: lack of financial regulations, too much money in government, and a poor tax structure. If you’re really serious, look at the causes of our debt and the structure of corporations.
Are you really promoting “revolution”? Yea, look how well that worked for Egypt. Remember the prophetic words of the Who: “Meet the new boss…..Same as the old boss.”
Can you really think anarchy is the answer? (Well it did work for Hitler.) Please see that financial anarchists caused all of this. Regulation would have prevented it. Rules can be good things.
Are you ignoring steps towards real change? You should be shouting from the hill tops and organizing a tsunami of citizen pressure for the House to pass the no-insider-trading bill. Send a message!!!! Then build on that momentum.
This is not just you, but, (almost) nobody is taking responsibility for our part in how we got here. After all, who elected George W. Bush? Twice?
If you really want to be effective in affecting change, study how other social movements got things done. Study the mistakes of New Left. Study the Civil Rights movement. They are an awesome example of how to succeed.
Honestly, I'd like to see OWS move beyond simply protesting and occupying things, and look at means of changing the political and economic landscape as best it can. To begin with, we should look at setting something up along the lines of Politician Market (which started out as a joke but has a hell of a lot of potential to get things done) to allow for crowdsourced lobbying on the part of OWS participants and sympathizers.
Beyond that, we need to start looking at the 2012 and 2014 election cycles. 2012 is coming up way too soon, and I'm not particularly happy with the fact that we haven't started moving on that already. For the most part, we should be working alongside and providing support and publicity for the 99% Declaration in the hopes of developing a document that we can use as our own Contract with America in the hopes of making it a litmus test for politicians running on the state and national levels. If we release the thing in 2012, then it will most likely have little effect until 2014. Generally speaking, you get about half the turnout in off-year elections that you would during a presidential election year, which means that any group that can get warm bodies in voting booths has a seriously disproportionate degree of say in who actually gets elected. That's even more true on the primary level, but if we want to take advantage of it we need to look at how quickly we can get funds and from where so that we can be prepared.
Come 2014, we need to pick races in which nobody really likes the incumbent much and try to find challenger candidates several months in advance (say, January or February) so we have time to set them up properly with a strong campaign staff (if there's one thing this movement has it's activists by the ton so as far as I'm concerned that should be the easy part) and a fairly strong source of funds, with all of this support being contingent on adherence to 85% or more of the content of the 99% Declaration.
Once we have our people, we're going to have our work cut out for us running the campaign for them. Ad blitzes, door-to-door campaigns, money bombs, push polls, the works. Trying to run a non-corporate campaign with crowdsourced funds from small donors is hard as hell, but if the Paulites can do it, then I'm pretty sure we'll be able to as well (if we're willing to work both hard and smart to see this through).
In order to make this work, we're also most likely going to have to rebrand the movement. "Occupy Wall Street" worked really well in the first month or so when coming out against rampant abuses by financiers was all we had to do. By now the whole world knows what we're against but now we have to figure out what we're for. The answer is sitting right in front of us: the 99 percent (slogan-wise, at least). If we become the "Defenders of the 99 Percent" then we have something less tainted to build an ethos around than the images of the tent city in Zucotti Park.
There are simple things that we could start doing now to turn our image around and pull this movement back into the field of view of most of mainstream America. First off, set up a PR workgroup composed of sober, articulate, clean-cut moderates who are capable of appealing to people fairly far outside our standard political and socioeconomic demographics to convince them to vote for people we trust. Shell out a few hundred bucks on a suit and tie and get them some public speaking lessons and see how many talk shows you can get them on.
While we're at it, we're going to need to start coordinating and planning protests and rallies better. People shouldn't be getting notifications on here about "Occupy this!" or "Demand that!" two or three days before the event in question is supposed to happen. We need to pick a few big events at least three or four weeks in advance and go out of our way to hunt down people, organize rallies, clean ourselves up, and once we're actually out on the street avoid unnecessary trouble with LEOs. That means for God's sake, someone keep the goddamn black bloc out of anything we do. We should be prepared to put our best face out there and our best foot forward, and we should be looking for unity and discipline when we go out there.
it doesn't matter what tactic are chosen by people. to be like Gandi or to be like a Kings. to be beaten like homeless dogs or fight back with rocks and bats - either way not to be scared to turn up in the cell. that is why it was really hard to deal with radical Muslims in Afghanistan, to fight with their beliefs
public healthcare
direct democracy
no war
so much to address in this post.... I'll start with this...
----> "...Make the police and the FBI your friends..."
can't you see how 1%er that sounds ? WE are after Solidarity... which is everyone uniting together reaching for the same goal ... the finding & demonstrating of "truth"....
"making someone your friend" is far different than bringing someone into solidarity with you reaching for the same goal...
"help the police and the FBI realize that they are with us",,, is better
you know... I might of over-reacted to this post... I hear a lot of biz plans... where someone states making someone their friends... ie... buying them off.. paying them.. giving them stock etc... in return for their support...
so mbonem, if you were sincerely wanting to include the police and the FBI in the movement... I apologize for jumping to conclusion
How about 'getting them on your side'?
yep... that works too....
In setting yourselves AGAINST the police, YOU are destroying any chance you have for solidarity WITH them. Think about it for a moment.
Someone joins the POLICE because they value LAW and ORDER and want to defend THOSE things. They are, by very job description called "LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS". Their job description is to KEEP the peace, enforce the laws, protect persons AND property, and investigate crimes. When OWS disturbs the peace, breaks the laws, shows disregard for other citizens or their property, and engages in civil crimes, it demonstrates with full color evidence to those police officers that OWS has GOALS that are the complete opposite of theirs.
Voicing your frustration with society is one thing, but when your frustration results in treating police officers like trash, like lesser human beings, like "pigs" -you prove that your behavior is no better than the behavior that you keep assigning to the "1%" as evil, selfish, and destructive. You place yourselves on the 99%'s "enemies" list right along with the 1%.
You will NEVER get everyone in this country to UNITE with you if you insist on acting in a manner that is just as destructive, just as violent, just as disrespectful to a MINORITY of THE CITIZENS who live here-as the behavior of the 1% is.
So, what does Anarchy have to do with this? People stated the same thing you have stated about the Civil Rights movement. Many protesters died in that process, both black and white, died in the process. What makes you think this is any different with trying to annihilate protesters across the globe?? The laws of this nation had to be changed in the same manner back then as they have to be changed now. You think the Supreme Court agreed with Civil Rights? They turned their backs, kept segregation on the records and condoned sending in the dogs in the south...Get real!!!
You all need to push your noses outside that bubble you are living in and get a whiff of the real world!!!
Actually, the Supreme Court did agree with the civil rights movement when they ordered that schools be desegregated in 1954. (Brown v. Bd of Education). In fact, that ruling appears to have been a spur to much greater activity in the movement.
Yet it did that stop the killings, the lynchings and everything else tied to why there existed civil rights some 10, 20 years after wards? Or any other protesters, the Vietnam War, you name it...this country has had protesting since its inception One Supreme court ruling did not cure the ills that still run rampant in this country by the rich and powerful and truly spurred up nothing since nothing has truly changed! My God...I don't believe 1954 was that long ago...so my question is...what took them so long? How many are going to have to die even before this world movement has its issues addressed? You all justify everything with some law that peoples blood has had to flow for...so is it any different now? Your thinking and reasoning is flawed and actually does not permeate the true problems of this nation, so let OW move on to solve its problems since on one else seems to have any answers!!.
There's a term for your particular style of thought, but reason isn't part of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion
Perhaps, but then again what reason does anyone have to bash OWS when one is not in their shoes or living their life? How is it people are so quick to judge OWS, but yet pretend to have no understanding of the "reasons" why OWS exists?
And then again what is the real reason why people are upset with what OWS is protesting?
Reason: The basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction.
I justified nothing so please don't pin that on me. I corrected your erroneous statement of fact.
Thanks...lets move on here...the subject sickens me!! I cannot believe that the freedom to protest or assemble is not a right in this country or that violence is needed from any group that does not agree with that constitutional right!