Occupy Wall Street – Are you with it?

[Claudia Chalfa]

Hi Josh! 

I support it, as long as they remain peaceful.  I’m glad they have sorted out a general common vision now, in the beginning they really did look like a disorganized bunch of deadheads – not credible at all. 

I work in a government job right now so obviously I can’t participate, but they get a thumbs up from me. 

As for giving up on my profession because I can’t find an LA job, never.  I will never ever give up.  Not until they pry my dead hands from my portfolio.

[Jordan Lockman]

[Steve Mercer]

I prefer John Smith of the Jamestown era… “if you don’t work you don’t eat”

 

s.

[Anonymous]

Trace, this is a response to your post addressed to Jon that you removed.

 

It’s better yet the same. I’ll just say it’s different for African Americans since the 60’s. Back then more black folks had businesses and owned their own land. We were more self sufficient and united because we had to be. My father, cousins, aunts and uncles permanently established themselves into the middleclass without any college education while working for companies like LTV Steel, Budweiser, Ford Motors, Goodyear and Raytheon. Now just about all of their kids and grandkids are college educated from good schools yet for the last 10 plus years struggle to stay out of poverty.

 

The main difference is that blacks aren’t as visibly alone on the bottom as we used to be. There are more Latinos in the country and recently a lot more white folks have been added to the poverty roster. I can’t forget the recent people from South Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, China and other places that are catching hell in this country everyday. As far as the surviving Native Americans are concerned, most of them are stuck out on reservations where we don’t get to witness their pain. A few of them are cashing in on the casino biz though. I wouldn’t say better… just different.

 

This is why people of all colors and occupations should be out protesting in the streets.

[Trace One]

Craig, yes, I see what you are saying..I removed the post because sequentially it seemed lost, in the thread. Your perspective def. adds  to thoughts on oppression. 

 I geuss it may seem like it was better in the sixties,  but not for women who needed abortions or wanted to tell people their husbands beat them. Not for clean air or clean water, or access to as much..Not for people who  were drafted into Viet Nam (many African americans,  proportionately more so, as I am sure  you are aware..)..I geuss you could say the oppression the underclasses experience now is different..But don’t idealize those days, of rivers on fire, of no contraception, of thalidomide babies ‘because the (Male) doctor said it was a good drug for you..”

 I geuss what I was most reacting to was the concept that  that ‘white people’ have not experienced oppression. Who is a ‘white person’ ? Some Irish kid who attended catholic church and was vicimtized by priests?  Muslims living in Serbo Croatia in the nineties ( they may look white to him..).. Or just go to west virginia – those coal miners came over on the Mayflower, and none of them have health care or teeth. As for Native Americans, just now on NPR they are arguing about whether the Feds can go in and take children off the reservation, with everyone calling in to say, “Well if the whole family is a bunch of drunks..”…

It believe it is a deviation from the OWS idea to focus on race, to worry that there are ‘not enough african americans participating’, and it is an absolute canard to call the OWS ‘anti-semitic’ – good old Bill Kristol’s change the topic tactic…

so perhaps we agree – there are many underclasses, we are all the 99% basically..

[Jon Quackenbush]

You have way too much faith in the system man and I am not sure why.  My “cynicism” has been cultivated over many years, as I have witnessed the whole sale purchase of our government.  That story you mentioned about your congressman is touching, but politicians are gifted as selling a narrative so I would observe caution.  Are all politicians crooks?  No, but enough of them are and on such a scale that makes me absolutely furious, which is an emotion well past cynicism.

Politicians aren’t working for us, the system isn’t working for us.  It is as clear as day to me.  You don’t like my cynicism, but that is fine, I am still fighting for you man.

[David J. Chirico]

Try this one, just give yourself about 2 hours, but worth it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZU3wfjtIJY

[Jon Quackenbush]

will do.

[Anonymous]

I still say it’s just a different kind of oppression. Women might be able to get abortions and have their husband thrown in jail for beating on them, but women are presently being exploited sexually on the internet and sold as slaves. Clean air and water – the Cuyahoga River isn’t on fire, its people’s faucets from fracking for natural gas. Don’t forget about the oil and chemicals they just pumped wholesale into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not DDT and 2,4-D anymore it’s other stuff.

 

OWS isn’t about, who’s oppressed, who isn’t, who’s white, and who isn’t and so on. I agree with you that race should be of little significance with OWS. It’s about working class people coming together and saying they’ve had enough.

 

“…we are all the 99% basically.”

 

Amen to that!

[David J. Chirico]

That wasn’t directed at you by the way Jon, this was just the most active place to post at the time.

[Boilerplater]

“Systemically dangerous Institutions”  That’s great!  I’ve been saying for years now that the way we indebt ourselves to educate, house and transport ourselves was unsustainable.  You can’t build a house slowly over time as you can afford it like pioneers did and how some people still do in “less advanced” countries.  Building codes essentially enforce that.  They have to be completed within a given time period and there is no way they will let you occupy a partially completed house as its considered unsafe.  Compared to living in a tent or your car, I think its pretty safe.  How much would houses cost if mortgages were not available?  Would the entire housing industry have to change to accommodate such a reality? Would they have to radically simplify and pare down their product?  What would we do for transportation without car loans?  Drive old beaters? Walk?  Take public transportation?  Could taking the bus become a form of protest?  I think this guy’s on to something with this debt freedom idea.  They make so much money off of our debt while we are fed a constant stream of messages to pursue a lifestyle filled with major purchases paid for with loans.  To uncouple yourself from all that..is a new kind of freedom.

[Trace One]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-marie-antoinette-moment-20111103

 

another must-read from good old Matt Taibbi.

[Steve Mercer]

Hi Guys!

 

I thought of you when I saw this today 🙂 !

[Les Ballard]

The London protest started just outside St. Paul’s Cathedral and it closed for a while losing £20k a day income.  I think the scale of the income shocked a lot of people as did one journalist going inside for the first time, when it opened again after health and safety fears were addressed, to see priests on the tills in the shop taking the cash.  With increasing charges for having your union, baby or new washer blessed, at least the money was going into a better device than the vicar’s pockets I guess.  Anyway, that was the shock quotient whereas learning some were not in their tents at night, but had gone to their nice middle class homes, or only appeared after work, or that numbers had been swelled by homeless and other folk seeking food from the free kitchen stall, or that the camp site had spread to a couple of other spots nearby, just had folk going “hmmm”.  I think someone proved that the majority of homeless in London are ex services with inadequate aftercare, some going back to the Falklands war around ’82 or maybe just Afghanistan.  There is a lack of mental and other care but the sight of a scruffy person drinking very strong beer and holding a dog on a piece of string while begging, has been well outdone by the Roma often posing as Muslims and other beggars these days.  

The Wall Street campaign came as a bit of a shock and sure proof to me, at least, someone was making a profit somehow and they probably aren’t a Farengi delegation – aliens they may, however, be.  I saw the tents in NY disappear for cleaning, supposedly, putting the hardcore demonstrators on their uppers and having me thinking that our authorities might have wished they had thought of that first.

The fact is we are not and never have been a true democracy, here in the UK or there in the US, but the right to protest is protected to try and imply it is so.  It is a shame that no-one seems able to admit this or explain that we vote for folk supposedly with greater nous than us to represent our wishes, or the wishes we should have if we were as clever and generally deal with the flak and slings and arrows, etc. of politics and that, in our interest, they will set aside areas and methods of protest that cost us all less and avoid the protesters piles and a nasty tummy.  In London, meanwhile, the authorities are discussing the likelihood of channelling protests away from the Olympics, as did the Chinese but not to side streets not on TV.  Those who make a peaceful effort are likely to be both tolerated and seen – but not in stadia – as, of course, should be the case in a free democratic state as it would interfere with everyone’s coming and going.  Finally, there is the rub – I believe in the right to protest at Tibet’s hardship, the lack of bankers having any hardship or anything else but not to more than mildly interfere with everyone else.         

[Roland Beinert]

This clip from Bill Moyers sums up my thoughts: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/19/372809/bill-moyers-plutocracy-and-democracy-dont-mix/

[Author]

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