Let's Be Smarter this Time....

The New England region has a particularly large hippie population. A lot of people at the Occupy movement are dressed like hippies or else using similar tactics (such as running around topless ) While it is clear that some of them desire a resurgent hippie movement, please do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Any new movement needs to be better organized with better meaning leadership. It is important to avoid the over dosing on drugs and any wreckless behavior. Any new movement needs to have a more solid intellectual foundation, because many of the protesters do not strike the camera as very articulate.

That said, we have the makings of a neo-hippie movement, or else something like it. We have growing unemployment, and young people will find it especially hard to find work. All these unemployed youths might turn to protesting as a way of asserting themselves.

The original movement, while colorful and great for free expression, was marred by self-destructive behavior and general wastefulness. As long as there are more people than jobs in a society, there will be room for a bohemian, but try to be better organized and to invest time in constructive nonprofit activity. This will lend credence and help to build a lasting community.

 

Some people have looked at it, but what do you think? Should the counterculture be impromptu and disorganized as always, or have real structure and a permanent community?

 

I agree with much of what you say. The only thing I see is if Occupy produces leaders they will be locked up...... Better that the movement be leaderless, but it does need cohesiveness.... To many kids that really don't know why they are there, are interviewed, get put on the news, and the media spins with that making everybody look bad. (that's the media for ya)

'Tis a problem with such a wide based movement. There's so many "ills" with society and the politics behind it that confusion sets in and the media has a heyday with it....

 

Eventually the movement will have to become a little more structured, maybe occupying abandoned buildings or even going ligit and renting offices or whatever. But I think a key in all of this is going to be getting out and helping in our local communities. Helping less fortunate people in the community, cleaning and sprucing up cities, holding food drives even just finding places with lots of trash and cleaning them up would go a long way in building public support for the movement. These public works could be forms of protest in themselves, let the community know who is behind doing these things. Kind of being the change we wish to see.

 

A protest movement, like any other organization, is constantly evolving, whether anybody wants it to or not. It's an inevitable process, with its own natural rhythm. This group's membership will shift somewhat over the next few months, and the core participants will learn from their experiences and make various changes that seem appropriate at the time.

In every town and on a national level, the Movement will gradually become somewhat more organized, but they were smart not to rush in that direction in the early weeks. Leaders need to emerge naturally, by showing themselves to be of great value to the group, over a significant period of time. Otherwise, group leaders end up being the ones who talk the loudest, driven by ego. Job titles may remain unofficial for a while, but an unofficial organizational structure is still an organizational structure. People learn who they can count on to get things done.

Protest movements and other organizations have to evolve when they encounter problems that nobody thought about in advance. A lot of people had concerns about how camping outdoors in winter was going to go, but not about local homeless populations trying to merge themselves into the occupation groups, for their own benefit. Now you have local police departments moving to disband campsites using various laws against vagrancy, because there really are vagrants camped out in a lot of these locations. Those laws were passed to control urban crime and sanitations issues, and the public wants them enforced.

Clearly, the only long-term solution to this problem is to establish a better-defined concept of local group membership; something more than expressing verbal agreement with the basic ideals of the bottom 99%. Membership has to include some specific expectations for behavior. Otherwise, the camps will continue to attract folks whose reasons for being there have nothing to do with our purpose, and their behavior will increasingly reflect badly on the group. It isn't going to be an easy problem to fix, because homeless vagrants also have a first amendment right to free speech, including public assembly and protest.

You might say that the OWS Movement is evolving into a representation of the middle 98% of society, because we have been recently reminded that the bottom 1% can be just as hard to deal with as the top 1%, for entirely different reasons.

All this is still only the first teetering steps of a newborn movement. We have a long way to go, and a lot to learn together.

But one thing will never change. Detractors will always claim that the worst behavior they can find among us is profoundly informative as to what we are all about, and the mainstream press will continue to put microphones in front of them. Intelligent people will simply have to keep in mind that there is no such thing as a perfect organization, where everyone is the kind of person they should be or claims to be. Human nature does not allow perfectly homogeneous organizations to exist. We can work toward perfection and get ever closer, but we can't reach it.

 

i somewhat agree, only because the other day my mom had Fox News on and it was just laughably ridiculous, claiming so many deaths and vandalism and whatever and anything that'd make it look bad.
to give no reason to the opposing parties to oppose is an good goal to me.

 

I've been watching the live feed. These guys may be keeping themselves busy, but they are not the peace and love variety. They cuss and yell like New Yorkers. It also strikes me how limited education is about the subjects they are protesting. Is it publicity for major liberal groups?

 

I posted my last message before the raid. Wow. They threw away all their crap because they were camped out on private property. They wanted to clean up the mess, and residents were complaining. I can roughly see the police's perspective, but this is definitely a propaganda victory for the protesters. A lot of young people are going to be excited to participate in this.

 

Absolutely! This kind of publicity, you can't buy with money. I couldn't write a better script for the police to follow and show themselves as bullies who are out of touch with the times. They could have walked through the camp and confronted individuals who were causing problems of one sort or another, but they chose to use the actions of a few as an excuse to move everybody out. The public is not so stupid that they cannot see this.

Since I posted here yesterday, I've been thinking a lot about the overnight camping aspect of this whole thing. Why has that become so important? In any serious protest movement, the methods are never more important than the message. You can't get too sentimentally attached to one way of doing things. When something stops working for you, you have to dump it.

Because of the sanitation issues and other hard to solve problems caused by the homeless population, I think overnight camping by protesters may soon be brought to an end by the authorities pretty much everywhere in the US. But does that change anything that is important? Do any of the daytime activities have to change in any way? Does the energy level or the focus or the message have to change? Absolutely not!

Trying to think about this from the other side's viewpoint; if thousands of people were protesting against me or my company, all day long, every day, I wouldn't be too concerned about where they were sleeping at night, or about any of their other arrangements for meeting their daily physical needs. That would be the least of my worries. I would care 1000 times more about the size of the group, their message, how much support that message might be gaining with the general public, and how that might affect my future.

Pictures of rows of snow-covered tents in January might be an impressive sight on TV and online, but bigger and louder and more active crowds in the daytime are going to get more attention. The US civil rights and anti-war movements got the job done with daytime protests, and this one can too.

I'm sure I'm not by any means the only female who could never see herself sleeping in a city park all night, knowing what kind of shit goes on after 3AM on the streets of any urban area. Even before the homeless invaded the camps in a big way, that particular sacrifice didn't seem to be worthwhile, in terms of what it might accomplish.

Well, I would assume that most of them are New Yorkers. We can't have them running loose in the rest of the country.

 

I'm beginning to doubt this.

(sarcastically)
...because we Americans are groomed to expect instant gratification.

Oh really? got the job done huh? I think our civil rights are eroding as we speak!...
...
for example, there just happens to have been a road-block in my city recently, checking for not just drunk drivers or seat-belts, but insurance, registration, drivers license and plate#'s checked for outstanding warrants. In short "let me see your papers" gestapo shit. Very few complained or were even aware of the blatant unconstitutionality of it all... Orwell, roll-over!

...and last time I checked the US is still conducting false and illegal wars and racism is alive and well, right to the top.

We've lost ground if anything.


The statement of the occupy movement is now its numbers...:2thumbsup:

I feel that if the numbers can reach a certain threshold, it's not impossible a paradigm shift in the collective consciousness could occur... :daisy:

...hopefully one that will ease gracefully mankind into the burden of our undeniably certain future of perpetual over-population/environmental degradation.

ZW

 

I was talking about the 1960's civil rights movement that ended separate laws, rules, and public facilities for blacks and whites. It achieved all its main goals, but of course you can't stop people from acting on their racist views 100% of the time, so there will always be more to be done. I don't see our biggest problems today as being anything racial. The economic elite are mostly white, and more than half of their victims are white. And we all share the same planet.

The first 24/7 occupations were a creative and novel twist on the old standard methods of protest, but as far as I know it hadn't been done on a large scale before, so nobody really knew if it would work or not. If the police start saying that OWS can't protest in the daytime, then you will be able to make clear comparisons to how similar things have been handled in the past.

I'm not in love with the police, but let's get real; your car is "showing its papers" whenever it is outside of a garage. All the cop has to do is drive behind you and call on the radio to have your plate number checked. They've been doing that since the invention of radio.

 

sure thats why incarceration rates in the US are over 8 times greater for black and hispanic than that of European descendants... (I love this emoticon, don't you?)

.. only with reasonable suspicion m'lady.
The presumption of innocence is one of the pillars of a free society.
we've certainly lost sight of that in our new fear-based society I'm afraid...
So you don't see a roadblock asking for papers as wrong?

ZW

 

Anybody who can't see drastic improvement in racial equality in this country needs to spend more time learning about how pathetic things used to be. I could give you three pages on that subject off the top of my head, but that's a topic for another thread, and another forum section.

Do you really think anybody follows that rule? I doubt it. 'Reasonable' is a very plastic word.

Among the many serious problems in this world, it does not make my top 20. I have the right to move about freely, but my 4000-pound killing machine has fewer rights than its owner, and I'm okay with that.

But we're getting off topic. Right now, I'm only interested in the OWS Movement, and how it can learn from our collective past experience with protests.

I wanted to avoid spelling out the obvious, but what the hell. OWS got its basic concept from Egypt, but the USA is not Egypt. Nothing is the same here. We have a constitutional right to free speech and free assembly, but the constitution does not give a lot of details. Various laws and a large number of court rulings have more or less spelled out what those rights consist of. The immediate problem is that the people who hammered out all those details were not thinking at all about 24/7 protests. Law enforcement people and folks in the legal system have no idea how to deal with this new twist.

Obviously, free speech and assembly cannot mean absolute freedom to disregard all sanitation codes, building codes, fire codes, etc. A semi-permanent tent community could easily deteriorate into a horrible place of filth, disease, and crime, like you commonly find in the poorest parts of third-world countries. That might fly in Egypt, but not here.

I know a thing or two about camping. Camping equipment was made to be used out in the middle of nowhere, not downtown. You pitch a good tent by driving the stakes deep into the ground, so the wind won't pick it up. You go out into the woods to do certain personal business. If there is no campground shower, you take a bath in a lake or mountain stream. You gather fallen limbs and build a campfire in the dirt to keep you warm at night. You don't need a door with a lock, because your food is much more likely to be stolen by a bear than a human. The park or national forest closes to camping before winter sets in because the snowstorms will surely come, and the winds will blow your campfire out, and your ass will freeze solid. I don't see how you make any of this work long-term in the city.

I worry that OWS is on the verge of letting its methods overshadow its message, and that would be a huge mistake. OWS was not formed to fight for our right to sleep in public spaces.

 

A post is like releasing a stray cat. Once you let it out of the bag, it will run down any alley it pleases.

 

Wow I didn't think you were that cynical...Not anybody huh?
I like to think there might be a few following the rules, its the ones that aren't we are protesting about, no? politicians, law enforcement, judges, the military...
The movement's not just about bankers 'n wallstreet ya know. It's much bigger than that. Its about the influence the elite have on all those previously mentioned entitys and how it equates to oppression of the common people.

What?
Oh I getcha now. you feel these actions are justifyed by your perception that you need to be protected from the the "others".
I don't personally drive a 4000 lb killing machine, but I do drive a car and I don't think just because my papers aren't all in order I need to be treated as a criminal.

you really cannot see how this is all connected, can you?

Oh please...

Occupy missoula was one of the first to have portable sanitation on site even before NY or WS. Its beyond me why other occupy encampments weren't using donations for san-o-lets from the beginning.

"CAMPING" is not the method, it was a means to occupy...occupying is the method. Simply seeing people enduring the conditions was an inspiration that increased the numbers, I think. It was a way to get attention and a little respect. I mean who's gonna take seriously a protester against corporate greed that goes home to a snug coal, oil or gas heated dwelling every night? ya gotta suffer a little, ya know? I mean something short of starving yourself or setting yourself on fire...

It should have been obvious from the beginning that camping out is not a sustainable way to protest (in north america anyway) and that occupy sites would eventually be over-run by the homeless and riff-raff especially in the big city.
It happened here too, but the cops were more than happy to let us babysit the over-flow from the homeless shelter, mostly drunks and chronic street people that couldn't get a bed because of thier alcohol or drug problem. ( there is no "rehab" in Missoula..lack of funding) some of these are native people that can't help their addictions and could die from DT's if they don't have a drink every 3-4 hours (believe me, I did my share of night security at the encampment)



It is difficult for me to see any differently than the conclusions drawn by at least one of the exasperated activists of the '60s I know personally.
"Protesting by itself is fairly futile...If you want to help people, the only thing you can really do is open a soup kitchen, or become a politician!"

Peace Karen, I know you mean well.


ZW

 

Most cities do not allow them for protests.

Asheville, NC was among the first locations to have a severe problem with this. Unfortunately, the protesters had to ask the police to get involved.

 

What can you expect when you want to do something illegal to protest, because you feel the problem calls for it? Most towns set laws that marginalizes protest potential.

 

This. ^^^

Exactly what I'm trying to start in my 'hood. One step at a time. :sunny: