Forum Post: Occupy Thanksgiving Parade - A Call for Consumer Protections Agency, Boycott Holiday Shopping, & General Labor Strike
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 18, 2011, 11:34 p.m. EST by jmk650
(0)
from Brooklyn, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I think that our next mass mobilization ought to be injecting ourselves into the Thanksgiving Parade calling for the development of Elizabeth Warren's idea of a Consumer Protection Agency and also to call for a general boycott of holiday shopping and general strike. We need a nationwide dialogue on protecting working class and poor workers and an agency could help in this respect. What do you think?
If you want to lower public opinion of OWS the injecting into the parade is a great idea.
I don't believe I would or should be the only one to strongly disagree with any plans for #OWS to disrupt the Thanksgiving Day Parade. I don't believe it remotely fits into the direction of the movement to put focused effort into such an action. ALL PRESS IS NOT GOOD PRESS! The backlash would most likely paint the movement in very bad light with most supporters, since it is widely viewed as a family oriented event, especially for children.
Based on a "consumer" oriented directive, it would be more sensible and strategic to focus on a Black Friday blackout of some sort. Actions could range from calling for a "no shop" day, "cash only" purchases and/or maybe even supporting local or small businesses. The strongest voice the 99% consumer has to speak to the corporate 1% is to speak with their dollars. However, it must also be taken into consideration that a multitude of the 99% will work on Black Friday to put food on the table.
I stand with #OWS in its core ideals and root for its continued success. In my opinion, the movement's continued success greatly hinges on a ongoing self audit and scrutiny of its strategies and goals to avoid any miscalculated wreckless action. To even have the "idea" of disrupting the parade is bad enough, but an even bigger misstep to actually do it.
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I landed at this article from a FB post that said if this happens his support of OWS will end. I totally support the core idea, but I don't want to hurt mass support of OWS.
Sorry this is a horrible idea. Thanksgiving is not political and it will only hurt the people who have been supportive OWS.
Occupy Elections!
By standing up and speaking against the existence and rise to power of the 1% and the flaws of the present system that allowed such occurrence, the OWS Movement is instinctively demanding the equal distribution of wealth, or the vertical 50-50 where every American family enjoys equal abundance and no upper class and lower class exist, a social calibration which can only be done when the People takes State power and State has assumed complete control of the economy by taking possession and management of the nation’s means of production. In other words, by establishing a Socialist order, and, by corollary, abolishing the existing capitalist structure—a radical and total transformation of the American System, which is clearly not and cannot possibly be in the agenda of either Democratic or the Republican platform, both parties being fundamentally ideologically anti-socialist.
So long as the Movement recognizes and maintains the establishment of Socialism in America as its ultimate goal, participation in Elections 2012, which promises virtually nothing but the mere continuation of the very system the Movement wishes to dismantle, is not only self-contradictory but an outright admission of defeat.
Thus, the call Occupy Elections! As a political action, its passive expression would be in the shape of boycott and the tearing and throwing in the air of the voting franchise. The more aggressive expression would be the disruption of the whole electoral process with the purpose of rendering it invalid. If we, the Movement, are not ready to do this, then we should disband now, go home, and declare this whole thing a mere baby-cry.
The Movement simply cannot participate. Elections 2012 is the Damoclean sword of our spiritual suicide. We do not want to have anything to do with it other than to expose its hypocrisy and vanity.
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