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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA reminder...IF OWS disbanded tomorrow, we wouldn't HAVE any Hope for Change at all in this country.
We wouldn't even have much liberalism.
We'd be back where we were in December 2010...with two parties both putting the rich before the people, with no one talking about corporate dominance and how to fight it, with nobody trying to mobilize the dispossessed and the powerless, and with the leaders of "our" party telling everyone to shut up and just take what we're given.
That's what dissing OWS and demanding it's extinction means...it means wanting to go back to the era where there was no resistance to oppression and injustice at all in this country.
The fact is, there was no polite, well-mannered, well-dressed, clean cut alternative to OWS out there that was doing a damn thing. And we all know it. It was all dead.
Why the hell would ANYONE who claims to be progressive want to go back to that?
If you want to RESPECTFULLY critique OWS, fine. If you want to offer helpful and positive suggestions for what they might do better, well and good. But it's right-wing and defeatist to actually look forward to OWS going extinct-because the struggle for justice would be over in the U.S., then, and over for good. Nothing would emerge that would be better.
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Huey P. Long
(1,932 posts)who said occupy rhetoric is old and tired. They want us to bow down to rich folks and the elite.
We should be thankful for their crumbs. I wish I was joking, but I'm not. I can post the thread!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=921317
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)We have too many people in this party who are the political descendants of the Bourbon Democrats(the 19th century forefathers of the DLC).
For reference, see post #3 by one of the typical posters from the corporate lackey wing of the party.
TheWraith
(24,331 posts)OWS is a dead "movement" which has zero real effect on change or liberalism in this country, and would have continued to have zero effect if it had thrived. Liberalism preceded OWS and will be thriving long after OWS is an asterisk in the history books. You cannot have a non-political solution to a political problem. Trying to tell people otherwise, and that sitting in a park is a valid alternative to voting, is a joke.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)those were the days when a "liberal" president was preserving the Bush tax cuts-an act which meant total surrender to the right-wing agenda for all time had nothing like OWS emerged.
Your kind of liberalism never stood up to corporate power...and thus could never really win. If you accept corporate dominance of politics and life, you give up on change.
cali
(114,904 posts)and OWS has not been much of a presence here. I appreciate Occupy for the coining of the 99% but I disagree that without them liberalism would be dead. Bernie did exist before OWS, you know.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Vermont was and is a fluke by U.S. standards, though.
You'd have to concede the validity of my point for most of the rest of the country.
longship
(40,416 posts)Then have all your OWS friends run for precinct delegate. Repeat in every precinct you can.
Then, when the county convention convenes you may have enough delegates to get a majority at the district convention. And if you have the majority there, you'll get the majority at the state convention. If you repeat that in all the states you can have the majority at the national convention.
That's how the Moral Majority (Jerry "If he had an enema he could have been buried in a matchbox" Falwell) and the Christian Coalition (Pat Robertson) took over the Republican party, recently added to by the teabags. They didn't do it by camping out in parks; they did it by hard work at the local level, taking over one precinct at a time until they had it all.
That's how it's done these days.
BTW, it is easy to run for precinct delegate; and it's easy to win.
If you want to occupy something, start with the Democratic Party at the precinct level.
You've got four years to get er done. In the meantime, help us all get the vote out for Obama.
Thanks for your support.
patrice
(47,992 posts)parting company with a load of Libertarians who were fucking with us, just to fuck with us. They all went off and became part of a drug house and the rest of us are busier than ever on women's issues, LGBT culture, local gardens, legalization of hemp, and Bradley Manning.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Last edited Tue Jul 10, 2012, 05:30 PM - Edit history (1)
On edit, corrected misspelling of TheWrait's name. My finger want to skip the i. No disrespect intended.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)I'm so glad the Founders of this country didn't believe as you seem to; trying to vote our way out of British control back then would have been almost as useless as trying to vote our way out of control by the 1% today.
The Founders wisely realized they were never going to get anywhere within the political system of the day, just as Occupy realizes we'll never get anywhere within the political system of today.
Desperately clinging to the past, to a failed system that has become a deadly joke - - yeah, that's gonna work, just exactly like it didn't work 10 years ago.
Abra
(45 posts)MIC CHECK!
What do we want? Something! When do we want it? Whenever! Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Gimme a job Mr Ceo! Hey Hey! Ho Ho! I'll even take a job mopin' yo' flo'!
On the other hand, they did manage to inject at least a bit of liberal dialog onto the national stage. Unfortunately, few, including the disenfranchized youth from places like 4chan, took them seriously. And really, who can blame them?
Does anyone think that the Mitt Romney's of the world care about a bunch of kids marching around in a park carrying cardboard signs? Why would that matter to them? Here's a scary OWS drum circle working it's magic:
Here is the kind of protest that scares the hell out of the rich:
This is how they are getting attention in Greece. I can only assume that some banker repo'ed their drums.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
GarroHorus
(1,055 posts)
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)OWS coined the 99% phrase AND (this is muy importante so pay attention) IT BEGAN A DIALOGUE in this country that previously did not exist. Nadin and others have been regularly posting their ACTIVITIES so you don't even have to navigate away from your screen to keep informed. You CHOOSE to ignore all of the readily-available information because it doesn't fit within your narrowly-defined political party's agenda. Bullshit indeed!
pintobean
(18,101 posts)that we have your permission to "RESPECTFULLY critique OWS". Are you going to write that into the TOS - caps included?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)"don't tear down the only hope we have"?
Clearly, it's useless to do "OWS sucks!" posts. And you can't seriously be interested in social change and WANT OWS to die out.
The alternative is settling for useless shit like writing Congress-which is the same thing as surrender. since Congress never cares about what we write them.
pintobean
(18,101 posts)you stating your opinion. Not everyone shares that opinion and you don't get to tell anyone how they can or can't state their opinions. Your post comes across as if you think you have some kind of authority over the conversation. You don't.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)right pintobean? Change is scary. And we dont like to be scared.
His post comes across like some kind of authority, how dare he. We know who is the authority around here dont we pintobean?
FirstLight
(13,360 posts)RESPECTFULLY agree 
I have heard that OWS has "no right" to disrupt others' quiet little lives in servitude... and many of the sheeple want it to go away so they can continue with their heads in the sand. At least OWS is shining light on the dark corners of what we know to be wrong on so many levels...and I pray that if something happened to the 'movement' that we would still continue to question and shine that light where needs be. Too much backroom dealing and pocket lining, let the TRUTH come out! (that's why many hard live dems probably hate it, because they knoiw their hands are just as dirty...)
pacalo
(24,721 posts)I mentioned in a White House survey sent to me recently that I supported OWS wholeheartedly as a 99 percenter.
NashvilleLefty
(811 posts)Although I support OWS, it is not the "be all and end all" of Liberal movements. It was only a glimpse of things to come.
OWS is only the BEGINNING!
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)But there are a lot of people on this very board actively calling for Occupy's demise. And almost all of the ones who want Occupy to die out want that because they want the political discussion to move further right and get blander and more meaningless.
Almost nobody who wants OWS dead wants that because they want a MORE radical direction. And those that do want it dead have no real alternatives to propose to it...other than for the group to just fall in line with THIS party, which would automatically make Occupy's continued existence pointless(just as it would have made it meaningless for Cindy Sheehan to claim to be an antiwar activist any longer if she'd done what some demanded and endorsed HRC).
pintobean
(18,101 posts)actively calling for Occupy's demise."
Who? I don't see it. I see people disagree with their tactics, or say that they're pretty much useless, but I don't see anyone calling for their demise. Do you have actual examples, or do you see any criticism as wanting their demise?
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)I think you are overgeneralizing a bit. Not everyone is as disillusioned as you and other OWSers
treestar
(82,383 posts)Many people can do many different things. We are not limited to one movement or one group of people. How limiting.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)
Sid
GarroHorus
(1,055 posts)It's already extinct.
patrice
(47,992 posts)I've always been more or less like this. It's good now to have a new context for that. I look forward to our work together as something called the Occupy, but the work itself will never be over. And I know plenty of people who have been doing it their entire lives.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I was talking about any movement, nationally, of any real strength. It's hard to think that anything that focuses on being "not Occupy"
that is, puts on suits, lobbies Congress, and talks quietly-which also means talking without passion or conviction) could do anything that mattered.
The ones that focus on being "not objectionable" never seem to get anywhere.
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)Pure distraction bullshit. OWS tore the conversation from those liars and put in back in the hands of the people. Ah, blessed stretch of time not dominated by the republican noise machine....
dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)The anti-OWS contingent around here makes me sick.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's not possible to be hardline anti-OWS and still care about social justice, workers' rights or any alternative to corporate dominance...none of those things are going to be achieved by being "mainstream"-being mainstream means giving up.
pnwmom
(108,977 posts)like the tea baggers are doing.
I know some of them will be, but it's a shame that so many others seem to want to maintain a distance from the political process. If Obama is to accomplish the change OWS wants, he has to have 60 votes in the Senate and a House majority.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)An evaluation I tend to agree with.
Sixty senators isn't going to cut the mustard, there will always be a Lieberman or some other Blue Doggish sort to piss on any liberal victory..
I don't even think seventy Dem senators would get actual liberal bills through the Senate..
ETA: The Teabaggers are Koch instigated and funded, they are really not the rightist equivalent of OWS on the left, OWS is bottom up, Tea Party is top down.. Of course Teabaggers are going to be able to effect politics, they're pushing in the same the direction big money already wants to go and it's not at all by accident.
dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)"Of course Teabaggers are going to be able to effect politics, they're pushing in the same the direction big money already wants to go and it's not at all by accident."
pnwmom
(108,977 posts)political muck and get their hands dirty. I disagree that they were formed top down. I think they started out in the grassroots, and then the Koch people saw their opportunity.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)The nation has been drenched in Teabagger style rhetoric for at least a couple of decades now. From Limbaugh to Hannity to O'Reilly to G Gordon Liddy to Oliver North to the Savage Weiner..
When a group is spouting rhetoric that billionaires have been flooding over the commercial airwaves for decades it's a bit myopic to claim they are "bottom up".
ETA: Also too, if a left winger proposes using anything remotely like Teabagger tactics the pragmatic moderate centrists all have to retire to the fainting couches en masse..
Teabaggers play for keeps within their own party, piss them off and they'll primary your RINO ass.. I've seen the arguments over primarying Blue Dogs plenty of times here on DU, I already know what the pragmatic moderate centrists think of those tactics, they'll be screeching at the top of their lungs how we're destroying the parties chances..
karynnj
(59,503 posts)Majority party.
The fact is that in 2010, the Republicans could have done even better - as we did in 2006 when we took nearly every remotely possible Senate seat ( the only loss I can think of is Tennessee - and that was a real real longshot. They could easily have won Nevada and Delaware with sane candidates.
They DO have the same mirror image arguments on the right.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)They've ALL become ultra-right nutjobs. Why doesn't Obama get that?
karynnj
(59,503 posts)Unlike someone on a message board, he needs to work with the Republican House and a Senate with just 53 Democrats. Even if he considered all the Republicans ultra right wing not jobs, that would not change that the fact that a President is not a dictator - the other two parts of government have power too.
The fact is that they are not all ultra-right wing nutjobs. Not to mention, that the fact that they have primaried moderates - like Dick Lugar - sometimes hurts them. They could have made the senate 50/50 last time if Castle ran in Delaware and Republican moderates in Nevada and Colorado. Had they done this, there would be almost no chance of keeping the Senate this year. (Partly as this is the cohort elected in 2006 when we took almost everything that could be taken.)
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)Brrrr....that Reagan now seems reasonable, in comparison...!
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)And I was pointing out that if OWS actually *did* act like the Teabaggers then the moderate centrists (which I believe the poster to be) would have a collective conniption fit the like of which has not been seen in a long time.
No, what the poster wants is for OWS members to vote for Democrats in the general, that's the sum total of what's wanted. If OWS were to try and get involved in Democratic primaries to push Dems to the left the same people who complain that OWS is not involved politically would be screaming their heads off in rage.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)going into full alignment with the Dems automatically means going into a subordinate relationship to the Democratic leadership, and means ending up losing your dignity...as labor, women, the poor, the LGBT community and the Rainbow were forced to by Clinton in the Nineties, when they gave him full loyalty and got nothing but contempt in return.
I think you'll see them work in local politics and through the initiative process. Those are about the only ways to work without diluting your agenda down to nothing in this country.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)has had any real effect on mainstream public debate in the real world. If not OWS, it's a tough job and somebody has to do it. And I don't see any other force that has had anywhere near a comparable impact within at least the last 40 years, anyway. The simple reality is that since 1972 no candidate for the nomination of any major party who actually proposed real and permanent fundamental structural change has come within a snowballs chance in hell of winning the nomination of any major party. There hasn't even been one single old fashioned New Deal Democrat who still ran at a New Deal/Great Society platform that has been taken seriously as a potential party nominee for more than 30 years. If there is an alternative to OWS as a progressive vehicle - it sure hasn't materialized for almost a generation. Just as the Democratic Party - with all of its failings - is the only available vehicle in the real world to block the Republicans - OWS -with all of its failings - has been - at least up to now - the only vehicle in the real world that has had a credible impact on mainstream thinking.
Summer Hathaway
(2,770 posts)In other words, "Our (OWS) way or the highway. If you're not with us, you're against us. If you don't believe what we believe, you obviously WANT oppression and injustice."
Too many OWS adherents are sounding more and more like Fundies: "The only path to salvation is through accepting OWS as your lord and savior. There is NO other way!"
Here's a helpful and positive suggestion for OWS: Stop telling people that if they aren't on-board with your particular brand of religion, they are carrying water for the 1%, have no desire for positive change, can only prove themselves as 'worthy' by hating all the same people you hate, and are giddily happy with all of the injustices in the world.
And I've yet to meet anyone who is 'demanding' OWS's 'extinction'. However, I have been told, repeatedly, that if I'm not an OWS participant, that means I want it to fail and hate everything they stand for - as though there is a logical connection between the two, which there is not.
I've no doubt that many groups under the Occupy banner are doing positive things. Unfortunately, the self-proclaimed Occupiers on message boards who insist that "Occupy is the ONLY hope" serve to distance the very people they otherwise might appeal to.
"But it's right-wing and defeatist to actually look forward to OWS going extinct-because the struggle for justice would be over in the U.S., then, and over for good. Nothing would emerge that would be better."
Just another example of WE ARE THE ONLY WAY. It smacks of the same Evangelical fervor that predicts the End of Times - repent now and join us, before it's too late! - not to mention the added touch of coyly (but blatantly) suggesting that those who aren't OWS adherents are "looking forward to OWS going extinct" and are "right wing and defeatist".
Again, I don't know anyone who is looking forward to OWS going extinct - unless, of course, you count anyone who is not an active supporter as being the enemy, hoping for the worst as opposed to simply being indifferent.
Quite frankly, it's all become a little too lock-steppy for me. And THAT is the biggest turn-off of all.
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)"Occupy didn't do what most of us had hoped. There are a lot of things about it that stopped being cute real fast. It's a trite consolation prize, but lessons were learned, including one that doesn't bode well for the power structure: the public can surprise you. This time, it settled into its comfortable habits, and that's what fucked the enterprise, IMO. But that thing that happened, in thousands of cities -- a lot of people never saw that coming, believing people too cowed and apathetic. You can't unring that bell.
Things will either get better for some reason (unlikely), or they'll reach the next level. There was a threshold that prompted people to get up, and about, and scream about the elephant in the room. There are other thresholds, and other reactions we've yet to see.
I think it's perfectly fine and healthy to cut our losses on a name associated and method that became impractical in a police state. But holy fuck, we're entering a police state, and now people are getting a whiff of that bullshit. If nothing else, we got the enemy to bare its ugly teeth.
From a personal standpoint, I have no regrets. Some of the proudest moments in my life were catching glimpses of awareness in people, or even hints of uncertainty that the empire is permanent. Even supposing that people had that much chutzpah in them was something I wouldn't have done in, say, August of 2011.
. . . .
In other words, Occupy's goals outpaced the dedication and resources of many, but the real effect, that I can't/won't deny, is that it trained a minority of people in skills that will become relevant as time progresses. And that minority means substantially more than the helpless Daily Show Democrats we had at the vanguard of, at least in America, political awareness.
I acknowledge that I may never take up the responsibilities I'd hoped for in building a better society, and could just sink into a comfortably tedious sort of life. But then, looking at the future, I find that hard to believe."
****************
When I read the passage above, I found myself saying to myself, "That's it. He's caught it in a few short paragraphs. And the 1% should be very, very worried. They ain't seen nothing yet."
cbrer
(1,831 posts)And join them, I'm sure they could use the backup.
That was pretty damned presumptuous. What makes you think that he/she hasn't? And there are a lot of ways of becoming involved that doesn't include "getting off your ass."
cbrer
(1,831 posts)No presumption when you understand I was speaking of non specific person. I don't know the OP and they could be a leader as far as I know.
My point, is that with a movement as potentially significant as OWS, with it's possibilities for real social change, it will stand a much better chance for succeess if people get involved. And that includes a verb. And it means doing something besides making internet posts.
And please explain to me how one may become involved without action.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)In my area, they went dormant for awhile.
cbrer
(1,831 posts)Beyond debate. My current situation won't permit it.
However that, at some point in the future, will change. I congratulate you on your action.
NNN0LHI
(67,190 posts)karynnj
(59,503 posts)While it is undeniably true that OWS raised issues to national prominence that were not getting the attention needed when they were being addressed just by scholars, pundits and some politicians making elegant cases in Senate speeches covered just by CSPAN, the very nature of OWS made it hard to see how it could work longterm. The longer OWS stayed in a city, the greater burden on the city and the more likely that there were problems.
As there was no real structure or organization, there was no way to claim victory when they really did succeed - so it was doomed to continue until it was either thrown out of areas (a defeat) or people lost interest (a defeat). If they would have declared when they started that they would occupy Wall Street for some fixed, finite period of time, followed by say a week camping out in DC where they hoped that they could speak to Senators, Congressmen and their staffers, they could have raised the same points and awoken the same people to the economic problems. The difference is that they could have ended their encampment victoriously - maybe with musicians who shared their values. The second phase could have allowed liberals in Congress, who shared their values, to hear them out.
This feeling may come from the 60s where, in my opinion, the most productive opinion changing anti-war efforts were those that had that focus and organization - like the Moratorium, which was huge, and the vets going to DC (led by Kerry).
As to both parties being the same in December 2010, I strongly disagree. The fact is that the economy was very very fragile - even worse than it is now. The Republicans were refusing to extend unemployment benefits or any other aid to those most hurt. The deal, which extended the Bush tax cuts also included the payroll tax cut that went to everyone. This was the ONLY stimulus that Obama could have gotten passed at that time and the economy needed a stimulus. (A bigger one would have been better, but there was no way to pass it.)
