OWS after two months

"it is too soon to say..."

repoll with quotation marks as option.

hard to see how momentum will keep from grinding to a halt at this point, enough people seem optimistic & seem satisfied w/ the influence it's had so far & have faith that it'll stick. personally find it a lot less powerful as an ~idea~ than as a real occupation or protest. if anything the movement made a lot of people (myself included) less cynical about a lot of the ideas, which idk sometimes seem dumb & poorly expressed or too radical or idealistic. altho the precedent is now set & there's for potential for something cool to reemerge once the euro collapses

idk if the euro collapsing is gonna make anything cool for anyone really

well, lotsa hedge funds prolly

Considering the many, many conversations (arguments) I had with people during the Arab Spring who took the position of "Nothing remotely like that could ever happen in the US! Everyone just wants to watch TV and ride their lawn mowers!" I'm leaning in the direction -- in relative terms -- of fuckin' historic.

is ows remotely like the arab spring?

angry unemployed youths on tv

both despised by fox news

will eventually disappear from prime time and further updates will be relegated to two minute public radio news bits

Major problem was lack of a unitary message so simple it could not be distorted and so obvious it marginalized those who sought to derail it. Give me a few hundred hours to think and I'll tell you what that message should have been.

(thinks)

OK. Here's my first cut: "Bring back the 40 hour work week."

went with 'fuckin historic man'

what will it mean to history, not sure yet

was listening to the first draft of our declaration of occupation tonight and was kinda thinking "port huron statement" in that detail might be important to curious future radicals but for most people will be kinda swept up into tea party as "social movements that grew out of the great recession and made an impact on our politics back before we all started eating each other"

like i think in the short term we really are gonna make a difference--nat'l conversation has already changed, though of course the national conversation has the attention span of a stoned hummingbird, so

moderate success but let's not kid ourselves

(tho i'm grateful for the enthusiastic hooses and hoping to be proven wrong)

moderate success and thats p great!

i mean good job few thousand people hanging out in tents!

you punched way over yr weight

^^^past tense

I voted 'total utter success' cause I think control of the narrative is pretty huge. one ("it's too soon to tell") way to judge the success will be the frequency of the term "99%" in the 2012 campaign.

but ultimately I think it's mostly going to be historic in its precedent w/r/t what a 21st century 'protest' is.

ice cr?m is right, the next thing I was gonna say is, it's amazing *how small* this really was in terms of # of people protesting in nyc compared to how much press it got

Moderate success or too soon to say.

I appreciate the life as carnival/create the society you want aspects, but that feels like it could have come in a lot of other avenues.
Politically, I don't know that it's focused enough. The national attention span moves so fast, if something doesn't appear to change right away, it's hard to get people to care.

i couldve voted utter success, i guess it depends on whos standards youre playing by, like no one got anything they were demanding on their signs (at least not yet) but at the same time the message def hit home for a lot of people and the media and politicians took notice

I was holding a sign that said "let's control the narrative for 2 months"

lol

polling for the hippies has already peaked

but somewhere i saw a graph of the frequency of the words "income inequality" over the last couple months in the media and yeah cr?amy otm in that the media impact, at least in the short term, has been beyond anyone's wildest dreams

imho ows was effective because wealth inequality is an issue a lot of people care abt that almost no one in power even acknowledges, the cat is to some extent out of the bag at this point, its a winning issue that the dems will ride this election

as to whether that has any real long term impact we will see

lol hoos is listening to rage against the machine on spotify

also ows has struck an idealistic chord that's momentarily drowned out (some of) the pessimism in Our Morbs, so

lol hoos is listening to rage against the machine on spotify

― ice cr?m, Thursday, November 17, 2011 5:07 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol

lol

voted 'moderate success but let's not kid ourselves' - the shift in narrative is important but i think it's time - or maybe it's too late - for a leader to emerge, like once you see poll numbers saying more than half of the country has your back that's the time to start planning some real shit imo - the right has done pretty well over the past couple weeks pushing the BS violent/rapist/pooping angle too - just having a difficult time figuring out who that should be, feingold? warren?

also feel like the changing of the seasons is going to dampen turnout & by extension press coverage

cat out of the bag is a good way to put it. people can talk about being poor and blame rich people instead of themselves = a new era in america.

so I mean, in a world where adbusters didn't come up w/ the initial stunt, in a world where zuccotti was just a normal park w/ normal hours / etc. - would something have happened?

during the london riots I was super close to starting a thread 'what would it take for street riots in america?' I'm disappointed I didn't because it would give me an awesome predict-OWS trilogy w/ my generation limbo and public-private space threads.

it's not crazy to suggest that *something was in the air*, and *something* would have happened pre-2012 election. or maybe post-2012 election. in some ways I'm surprised that this incarnation turned out the way it did, because I sorta figured we were gonna have the long-term unemployed-who-lost-their-benefits type people play a bigger role than the youth.

I mean there are a lot more people in truly fucked economic situations in the nyc metro area than people in zuccotti park

total success, in terms of driving the narrative, which is more than any of the US-leftish establishment has achieved in the epoch of my political awareness.

What remains to be seen to what extent the narrative will be taken up by the Democratic party. (Or Mitt Romney.)

"social movements that grew out of the great recession and made an impact on our politics back before we all started eating each other"

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, November 17, 2011 4:41 AM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark

do ppl think this is a rly optimistic statement cause i feel like that's some measuredly nonidealistic shit

this isnt the revolution or whatever

but small victories seem very within reach to me

i feel like the camping out in parks thing has prob played itself out at this point, as far as leadership how the message get carried further id feel a lot better abt the chances were it not for the structural shortcomings of our government

its funny i kinda doubt there wouldve even been an #ows if the filibuster didnt exist, because we wouldve got a bigger stimulus, better financial regulation, better healthcare reform and environmental regulation that rivals anything in europe, but because of this stupid based on nothing rule it didnt happen and now the moment has passed

^ bummin me out

hey all things are subject to change

it's not actually bummin' me out I took a double dose of benzos so I don't think I can have feelings right now

Moderate success in that we all knew the media was going to smear it but by sticking to certain principles it's a really inspiring thing. But then again we have Obama on the list of 'official supporters of OWS" and he's the politician who has been funded the most by Wall Street, so it really doesn't seem like anything is going to change.

Dammit, I can't find my copy of Milan Kundera's _Slowness_, but there's a bit in there where he talks about Planetary History News Events are slow-moving and only have the spotlights of cameras on them for the first couple weeks, but they continue on regardless.

Need to find my copy. It's somewhere in the section with the Czech scientist.

change seems impossible until its inevitable or whatever the quote is, i cant recall it verbatim but i do think its true, things change all the time, i mean ffs gay people didnt even used to be able to marry each other in vermont

it'd really be better if we could keep this in the news tho

tbh direct political action may be even more necessary than it was 50 years ago - given the current composition of congress nothing remotely resembling an OWS demand will even be introduced; in the short-term at least altering the narrative is not going to be enough

then consider that the narrative has been slipping from our grasp over the past couple weeks

the tea party sure got a lot of goddamn milage; it's too bad it's not a midterm election coming up actually, since I bet it would be a lot easier to organize this energy towards gotv and stuff for congressional races than having to be like "yeah, we occupied wall street, now reelect obama!"

the tea party got a lot of news coverage because it was created and organized by the news

this had a much more difficult path

but I don't think the electoral effects of 'the tea party' were as important as most people do, 'the tea party' being the organized events/interest groups vs. just the normal radical republicans who take up a decent % of this country and were hanging out waiting to do some batshit stuff regardless of 'the tea party'

tea party was much bigger too

partly because the hard right is magnitudes larger than the hard left

yep

wish this was happening a year from now or closer to a relevant election, frankly, so too soon to tell.

watching rober reich speak at cal (well, online) i was kind of disappointed that the points seemed kind of generic, it wasn't very inspiring, etc. I know this is an anonymous movement but I also kind of want some kind of leader to come out of it. but I suppose it's still early. all kinds of people might run for office out of this movement. and then they can get corrupt and rich like pelosi and boehner and fuck us all.

its hard to say it was really a failure but i dont really think it was a success either

guess im in the wait & see camp

Actually, yeah, keeping these issues bopping around the mental real estate of people helps. Rightwingers spent the 70s & the 80s pouring millions into continually reinforcing their bullshit narratives into the popular consciousness until they could change conversations. OWS doesn't have to lift that heavy a load; most people face these economic problems like daily and it's only the merest of pushes to get folks to remember "....oh yeah, that's why"

reich is a policy wonk w/ his heart in the right place, not an inspiring speaker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

this guy for leader imo

well yeah, I didn't think reich would come out as a leader, but still, he was boring. but people seemed to like it. I put it on FB and everyone was like, "oh yes oh yes!" and I wanted to say "BORING. NEXT!"

there is no single person w/ better credentials coming out of this than graeber, despite this I'm pretty sure most people casually involved w/ ows have no idea who he is. and he would be the last person to call himself a leader. still, def in a position to step his public figure game up.

an anarchist, srsly

i would guess that having 'raised awareness' the best next step would be some sort of moveon.org-type organization? which would require formal structures and leaders and inevitably alienate some portion of the movement -- but perhaps not the vital parts. i mean, the drummers won't be happy until they can drum 24-7

1. someone tell the drummers abt the pros park drum circle
2. ???
3. profit

an anarchist, srsly

yeah yeah I know

he's actually pretty sensible and a million times less embarrassing as a representative for the hard left than chomsky, klein or zizek

and ows was is actually pretty anarchist fwiw

imo

that imo was supposed to be after zizek

ows was effective for sounding a message that resonated across the political spectrum, no - can it hope to have any future as a hard left organization - srsly asking i mean i have no particular idea where this thing should go - other than maybe keep it up w/the wealth inequality stuff

i nominate caitlin e. curran for ows . . . cowboy.

srsly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

this guy for leader imo

― iatee, Thursday, November 17, 2011 5:49 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

otm

http://www.funny-city.com/photos/captain-america-on-integrity.jpg

whoops wrong thread

u sure?

here's some graeber http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/what-is-debt-%E2%80%93-an-interview-with-economic-anthropologist-david-graeber.html

e warren is kind of the natural democrat for the 99%-sympathetic

graeber is definitely a baller tho

somewhere between "fuckin historic" and "too soon to say". don't see any reason why the end of the physical encampment should mean the movement is over - in fact getting away from occupy just being a physical space thing is probably a positive in the long term. entrenchment in terms of constant action is important though.

think about how short a time occupy has been going, though, and how much it's achieved in that period - no protest movement can be judged on its first two months! and think how many unexpected turns there have been - eg in london no one could have predicted the ramifications for the church.

it seems to have complicated the inexorable advance of the apathetic libertarian armies of the internet and i didn't think anything could do that, so big fuckin success in my book

yeah as rushkoff put it at zuccotti on monday--"the day you no longer occupy zuccotti park is the day you spread out, the day you occupy the world"

moderate success but let's not kid ourselves, they have all the weapons and will use them. More strikes and actions needed, bodies on "the gears" etc.

hmm

dc celebrated our 3 month anniversary yesterday.

also J17 is a thing that is happening

http://occupycapitolhill.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/crearresistir-014.png?w=640&h=1024