Occupy Wall Street Movement Spreads Across the World!

I know a month is a long time, but things on the ground, at least in Buffalo is pretty chaotic. I cant say for Wall St. itself but things here are moving along at a rapid pace with new protesters showing up, trying to organize donations, weather, and so on.I really think its too early to expect us to be able to unify everyone already, shit we just got our live feed up a day or two ago. Phase two starts in November and I suspect alot of these problems will be solved by then. But I will bring it up at GA tomorrow as I have to speak anyway and see what is said.

 

Actually, that is only true in some places and even there, those same people that are sitting at home that can't come out, would do it for the occupations, if there was any co-operation on it from the people on the ground.

 

I know there are things that will need to happen that aren't happening yet. What I see happening right now is that attention is being drawn to the issues and I think that is a good place to start.

I've heard a saying that I like:

"Remember, this isn't a race; it's a marathon."

 

Just checking in with you all. I've been working pretty much 24-7 on OccupyGreensboro activities. Man, I am exhausted.

One thing we are having trouble with is new participants. Orienting them, finding places for them to volunteer etc.

And then there are the working groups, whose membership changes every minute. It's hard to create accountability.

If anyone's interested, check out www.occupygreensboro.org

We had over 600 people at our Solidarity March last Saturday!

 

The more focused the message becomes, the more people that will be lost... This is something that is already known, and it is why there is so much discussion about what the 'demands' are... because getting them altogether, is difficult.

However... How is it different, having a group of people in James Park making decisions on my behalf, and people in Queens Park doing it?

See the point?

There is NOTHING that should be more important then bringing everyone who wants and can help, both online and off, into making this happen.

edited to add, Queens Park refers to our current government...

 

The funny thing is that I keep hearing about how difficult it would be to do this...

Like its a new thing that has never been done before...

Which of course, brings up the question of if it worked, and if it accomplished something good....

I think it did;

http://stjornlagarad.is/english/
http://stjornlagarad.is/other_files/stjornlagarad/Frumvarp-enska.pdf Full Version

edited to add:

BTW, the 'Althingi' part confused me, so I looked it up, figured I should share it...

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

 

Tom, I think this is in its very early stages and I am optimistic that the ways to include more than just the people "on the ground" are being considered.

 

I can certainly support the anti-business/anti-Wall Street sentiment of the occupations. Unfortunately, many of the protests appear to lack focus and have turned into little more than unfocused rallies that inconvenience the masses (e.g., shut down streets, parks, disrupt access, etc.) with no effect on the targets of their frustration. Occupying government buildings and/or bank/investment office buildings seems more appropriate. One newscaster said it will be interesting to see if the protests continue once the weather turns colder. Sadly I think that's true. I support the spirit of the movement, but it appears to be more of a cause to rally and party than an effective way to voice displeasure.

Just my 2-cents.

 

Again, I'll say that I feel like the "inconveniences" and "rallies" have done a good job of drawing public awareness to a movement that the mainstream media has tried very hard to ignore.

As far as the "party" comment, I sincerely doubt that sleeping on the ground, often in rain, often with no tent; using the toilet at a fast food restaurant; having no where to shower or launder clothes; standing on a food line to get meals, etc. would be considered a "party" by anyone who is actually participating.

 

I don't think weekend participation is worthless. If I was a bank CEO who was trying to get a feel for the strength of this movement, I would be more interested in the size of the biggest crowd of the week, not the smallest. And when a businessman looks out his window and sees folks filling the streets, why should he care much where they spent the night? The People can make themselves heard on weekends, with TV cameras and internet feeds rolling.

I'm not saying that 24/7 occupation is unimportant, just that it isn't the only thing that matters.

I've heard that you people have been doing a fantastic job! :cheers2:

That will be the first big test. If the movement can keep going strong through December and January, it will earn a mountain of respect.

At first, I thought it was a shame that the whole thing didn't get started in the spring, when we would have had many months of good weather in front of us. But then I realized that would have made it too easy, and skeptics would have questioned the seriousness and the commitment of the participants all through the summer.

I also think hanging with the same people 24/7 can't be anything that I could think of as a party. I don't know anyone who is that fascinating. Even if there was free beer and a live band every night, a week is a lot of hours to fill. I don't think my attention span is that long.

The bathroom issue is a huge problem in some places, especially Charlotte. Years ago, all their downtown business stopped non-customers from using the public restrooms because the large population of street people was doing so much damage and making everything filthy. Occupy Charlotte is going to have a tough time dealing with this. The city government isn't going to let them bring in portable toilets because Bank of America is too important to the city's economy. Everybody knows which side the City is on.

The group in downtown Raleigh seems to have solved all their issues with living 24/7 in front of the old Capitol Building. I'm sure there are some sympathetic businesses on Fayetteville Street, and the city government in Raleigh is not going to be nearly as hostile to the cause as Charlotte has been. Not every local government is equally in bed with the big banks.

 

I'm not disagreeing with the motives, but I think they're targeting the wrong spots with their demonstrations. There's a fine line between increasing public awareness and pissing off people. In many cases, they've done the latter. In the process they've created confusion about the cause.

As for my partying comment, I can only report what I've observed. Again, I agree with the underlying sentiment, but one can't help but notice these are poorly organized protests. They appear to be a place to go for those who have little else to do. Sorry if I'm stepping on toes with that comment; I'm just stating what I see. I think the reporter's comment that it will be interesting who's still around once the weather gets cold will be telling of who's committed to the cause and who's just looking for something to occupy their time.

 

the u.k government are presently discussing the option

of having a referendum regarding european union membership

the european union costs us billions

maybe instead of fighting bankers redundantly

'protesters' could advert their attention and their lobbying

to an area of realistic and eventual change.

david cameron is trying to regress

and thus pressure is needed and instead the hippies are out

dancing for the death of an imaginary enemy

do they know what they're even fighting for???

 

The majority supports the idea of this kind of cause. They are seriously beginning to understand the welfare roles are true in their dim future.

Teaches them and all how to talk to the personnel manager whenever.

 

Most of them were risking death. I have a lot of respect for people who will protest in a place where the government might shoot you at any moment, without warning. Most of us are probably not going to face anything more scary downtown than an aggressive wino wanting cash. And even if a few people get arrested, it won't be anything like Egypt or Syria or Iran. We still have it good, compared to so many other places.

Funny thing is, the conservative Republicans were the leaders in this kind of thinking, but now the government is more or less synonymous with Obama, who they hate. It has to confuse the hell out of them! So it goes, when you try to make everything in life much simpler than it really is. Reality keeps intruding on your fantasy world.

You bet it would get bigger! And even if the police don't do anything like that, you can count on the Wall Street crowd to keep passions high by continuing to treat the rest of us like dirt. They don't seem to be able to restrain themselves lately.

I see a certain amount of desperation in their actions. If you look at any major stock index, you'll see that it isn't much higher than it was in the first half of 1999. So Wall Street hasn't been able to produce any real, lasting capital growth in 12 years. GDP growth has been taking place almost entirely in the small business sector, which is a game that stock traders are not able to play. I think their frustration with this trend (which they created) has led them to make a lot of bad decisions. They now focus only on capturing an increasing percentage of all corporate profits for themselves; a revenue growth strategy that is doomed to fail because you can't go beyond 100%.

It's like they got addicted to massive, easy stock profits in the '90s but now, to keep their addiction fed, they have to resort to unwise things that they were not willing to do in the past. Long-term addicts can be very dangerous when their supply is threatened, like a wild animal that has been cornered. They don't think about anything except what they want right now.

Wall Street's group thinking is very sick. I wish we could send them all to rehab. Know of a good 12-step program for overly self-confident, narcissistic, greedy jerks?

 

Businesses used to be run by ethical management who looked out for the good of their employees as well as of their enterprise. People invested based on the long-term viability of the corporation, not because they were looking for short-term gains. These days businesses are managed with the goal of attaining quarter-by-quarter expectations set by some man behind the curtain on Wall Street. Investors, from the common person to financial institutions, are largely day-traders looking for a quick profit. Rather than running companies responsibly, companies are now managed to hit these expectations no matter how realistic or unrealistic they may be. CEO's now openly state they are responsible to the shareholders, not the business. I blame management for succumbing to the will of Wall Street rather than having the backbone to be responsible to their business.

My comments about the current protests are more about how and where they're being staged. Rather than targeting financial institutions (e.g., investment houses) and/or government, they're taking place in city parks or as marches along busy streets. This may increase awareness, but does nothing to inconvenience those who are at the heart of the issue. The Spirit of the 60's was to hold peaceful sit-ins where they had the most impact, not to run off to a field to be interviewed by reporters.

 

Absolutely. Those who are looking for solutions are those who have been stripped of their jobs and their homes; those who have little else but time, will be the ones you see doing the 24/7 occupying and protesting of a system that has failed them.

 

youre gonna need politicaly neutral people to help with this.good way to treat the tools you will need to succeed.

 

...plus the interests of the local community, customers, long-term suppliers, and society at large. One of my business professors used to say that the real art of running a business was learning how to balance all those conflicting priorities properly. When you stop caring about anything but quarterly profit, the decisions become easy. Not much skill or judgment is required.

I often wonder what the big-name business schools are teaching today, and if anybody is paying attention.

Fortunately, small businesses and mid-sized companies that don't issue common stock can still operate the old way. Nobody pressures me to value next quarter's bottom line above everything else. I plan to need money next year, and the year after, and five years from now, so I'm not going to sacrifice the future for the present. That means I want to keep some employees around who know what they are doing, and have a good attitude. And I plan to need customers and service providers five years from now, so I don't want to piss them off either.

If my old corporate employer could offer me my old job back (impossible - the company is gone), with a big raise, I wouldn't go back to all that bullshit and chaos. I'm not even sure anymore how much life that way of doing business has left in it. Though I didn't think so at the time, they did me a favor by showing me the door. They thought they were so smart to do all this outsourcing, but all the little spin-off companies have outlasted them. How smart do they look now?

...and the first sit-in of the Civil Rights Movement was in Greensboro, NC. The site has been preserved as a museum. I read that Saturday's march passed right by the front door.

Then, like now, the strategy was to simply show up and wait for the other side to provoke an incident. For some reason, people who are on the right side of these controversies always seem to have more patience than folks on the other side. Those who want to control others in a bad way seem to feel compelled to act swiftly and firmly, even when there is nothing that needs to be done. Then the world gets to see what they are really all about.

I guess the bank lobby of today would be our equivalent of the '60s segregated lunch counter. I'm not sure a mass of people could walk into a big bank to hang out all day. They tend to have pretty good security, since they always have to worry about bank robberies. If you wanted to do something authentically parallel to the old sit-ins, I'm not sure where you could go or what you could do. A peaceful protest group sure as hell can't march into an investment brokerage company's main trading room, or into the executive suite of BoA in Charlotte. It would be hard to get even one person past security.

Maybe the protesters are doing all they can, for now. Hopefully, somebody will think up some other feasible options at some point. Meanwhile, patience is needed. This thing is one month old. You know how much the Civil Rights Movement had accomplished by the end of its first month? Nothing.

I don't see much point at protesting government as long as government is controlled by corporate money. The corporations (primarily banks) have to be the starting point, because they are the root of the problem.

Well-said. :cheers2:

 

We have several protesters who have lost their jobs, then their homes, the lucky ones still have vehicles to live in. But a few others were pretty much stripped of everything. Their children are now living with friends or family. As far as going the distance through the cold weather, I live in Buffalo and we are not planning on leaving till spring or later. We are planning on getting ice fishing huts and have already received 2 propane tanks and heaters to go with them. If we can do it here, it can be done anywhere.