Matthew on 30/9/2011 at 11:05
I think the legislation is heavily influenced by the old technique used in Northern Ireland, which was basically: use information, presumably including photographs, to trace police officers back to where they lived, then murder them on their doorstep/put a carbomb under their personal vehicle.
Aerothorn on 30/9/2011 at 15:33
Yeah, many if not most of the major city police forces are way out of line in the USA. I'm most familiar with Seattle, which is (generally speaking) a quite nice, low-crime area, and yet the police had a bad habit of beating and shooting people without provocation on a regular basis. What's great is that, according to their union, the "oversight" department (ha, ha) and a good chunk of the populace, they are ALWAYS in the right. It's really awful.
The worst thing is that, if a police office starts assaulting you for no reason, you can't even defend yourself (that's "resisting arrest" or "assaulting an officer" and apparently it goes back in time and makes their initial assault justified in a court of law, which makes no goddamn sense).
Rug Burn Junky on 1/10/2011 at 22:16
Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky
Yeah, I saw (
http://www.usdayofrage.org/) this the other day.
Not that I disagree much with the sentiment, but it's really a bunch of ineffectual, toothless ninnies, impotently expressing inchoate rage. Street protests are ridiculous to begin with, but Wall Street on a Saturday? It's a ghost town. All you're doing is disrupting the German tourists from taking pictures of Federal Hall.
Never mind the fact that there's a huge difference between the "corporations" and "bankers," and the problems caused by each are markedly different. An effective "protest" would understand and clearly delineate these differences. What they're screaming about is better served by a protest at GE, or ExxonMobil.
So ummm, yeah, bongo players, get on with your bad selves.
I'll almost admit that I was wrong. This has coalesced into something much more impressive than it was at inception. It may be born out of a (
http://www.dnainfo.com/20110930/downtown/bloomberg-says-wall-street-protesters-blame-wrong-people#ixzz1ZZJNoetV) misconception of the problems - "Wall Street" and "Corporations" really are not synonymous, only symbiotic. But it's enough of a shared misconception that that it's been an effective rallying point. And even if the early participants lacked coherence, as it has grown (or ebbed and swelled), it has gained some.
I've obviously been watching it from up close physically - I'm 50 yards from Liberty Park. But also because several of my friends have made their way down there, and I've been following their updates. For the first week, it was barely a couple of hundred people, but after the (
http://www.dnainfo.com/20110928/downtown/nypd-lauches-probe-into-pepper-spray-incident-as-new-video-surfaces#ixzz1ZRoH9H4S) pepper spray incident, more and more people have participated (though the crowds seem to grow in evenings and weekends - as those with day jobs pop in and help). Starting this week, you could see something different - as union participation started adding to the crowds (I actually marched with the airline pilots - it was single file coming up Exchange Place when I went out to get my lunch).
The real problem they're solving? The sentiments. It has gone from rambling incoherence, to the beginnings of a message. The problem of course is that this energy still has to be shaped into something productive long term - something that will actually shape institutions rather than simply (
http://youtu.be/kxEcXmmRb2k?t=5m30s) get media attention. I see that starting to happen, with attention finally being drawn to the "(
http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/) We are the 99%" manifesto, and especially the Van Jones (
http://rebuildthedream.com/) Rebuild the Dream movement.
So yeah, maybe I was a little too cynical too quickly. It didn't just die out in a haze of bongos after one day. It didn't even die out after monstrous rainstorms each of the past two fridays. Even if it was a bunch of ninnies at first, it's led to something more.
Let's just hope that the left's version of the Tea Party doesn't devolve into the same inanities, and can do something productive with it.
Tocky on 2/10/2011 at 00:52
It WOULD be so nice if the people could show the ultra rich that their political manipulations and subversions of the electoral process have gone for naught but I fear not enough have lost their jobs and health insurance to make them wake up to the shear money grubbing evil of the republican party yet. Sure, the democrats are influenced by various unions and segments of business but not to a degree anywhere near what corporations influence republicans yet.
And yeah, it would be nice if the rich would get a jolt of fear from this enough to back off from it's media blitz CLASS WARFARE WATCH THIS HAND WHILE THE OTHER MERGES GOVERNMENT AND BIG BUSINESS INTO ONE ENTITY but it will work the other way around. They would rather bankrupt themselves creating more rabid Becks and Limbuaghs 24-7 blaring newspeak on every corner than do the decent thing and join with the nation in rebuilding it by paying more.
demagogue on 2/10/2011 at 02:49
It seems this thing does keep puttering along, but I can't buy (yet) the 99% part nor that it could become any serious counterpart to the Teabaggers. There's a Tea Party chapter in practically every other town in the whole country, well the chapters don't matter compared to the sheer number of people that self identify with it, and I remember the big rallies they had in DC that just kept going and going with floods of people... All of them thinking politics.
I mean, that by itself wasn't as impressive as them being from every part of the country, and me going home to Texas where everybody seems to identify with the movement. This thing in NYC, for everywhere else in the country, is something you see a 30 second blip on the news, but it's not like people are going to school board meetings saying the Wall Street marches speak for them and what is the local school board going to do about it. Teabaggers do that.
CCCToad on 2/10/2011 at 17:03
Quote Posted by Tocky
It WOULD be so nice if the people could show the ultra rich that their political manipulations and subversions of the electoral process have gone for naught but I fear not enough have lost their jobs and health insurance to make them wake up to the shear money grubbing evil of the republican party yet. Sure, the democrats are influenced by various unions and segments of business but not to a degree anywhere near what corporations influence republicans yet.
The Democrats are rapidly catching up, if they haven't managed to do so already. Here's (
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/business/14schumer.html?pagewanted=all) One example amount countless more.
On a related note, I almost feel bad for the original Tea Party supporters. Fox News and co. did an amazingly good job of diverting the anti-cronyism rage that defined the first rallies into "vote all them evil lefties out".
Surprisingly though, the mainstream Tea Partiers seem to be mostly supportive of the protest movement. The "dirty hippy" angle is one that mostly exists on right wing media. Of course, it helps that the current party-alignment leads the tea-drinkers to perceive that the marchers are mad about Obama's cronyism and thus side with them.
Rug Burn Junky on 2/10/2011 at 17:19
Will you just shut the fuck up, please?
CCCToad on 2/10/2011 at 17:21
A touch defensive about party loyalties? There's no reason to be, they both suck.(though one party is a good bit more obnoxious than the other.)
Rug Burn Junky on 2/10/2011 at 17:23
No, just sick of listening to you concern-trolling.
