Occupy Wall Street Protests

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Occupy Wall Street Protests

Post by Pasquar » 10 Oct 2011 17:25

https://occupywallst.org/

So some of you guys must have an opinion about the recent "Occupy Wall Street" (OWS) movement. It's pretty nuts, it's already lasted longer than I expected it to and is only growing stronger:

http://www.occupytogether.org/

It has influenced over 1,200 other cities to start their own occupation, whatever that may be. Some if not most of you probably know of one that's going on pretty close by...


Thoughts/opinions??
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Post by Tsiangkun » 11 Oct 2011 14:40

Millions of people without jobs will be finding occupations near them.

100% support.

#FreeBeer for #OccupyOakland and #OccupyBerkeley.

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Post by Tsiangkun » 13 Oct 2011 15:25

SIXTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS given to the banks.

$50,000 handed to the banks for every child in American.
$50,000 handed to the banks for every woman in America.
$50,000 handed to the banks for every man in America.

Or, if you prefer
$210,000 handed to the banks for every family counted in our census.

Maybe you this will help you visualize 16 trillion dollars.
Imagine a rogue ATM spraying ten $100 bills a second onto the ground. For five hundred years.
10bills * $100/second * 500 years * 31556826 seconds per year dollars.
The banks were given more than that.

Imagine every minute from 9-6, the banks randomly chose one million American citizens and sucked a hundred dollars from their account. Every minute, every day, for a whole year, from 9-6 they pull $100,000,000 out of our accounts. Yeah, it is like that, except they took more.

And the media focuses on the lack of demands. Demands ! Demands ! Demands !

You know what is funny about demands ? Demands only work when presented to an authoritative power with the will, capacity, and ability to help the people making demands. Our government has made it clear that the people are not its concern, thus, demands would be grossly misplaced.

Growing.

OCTOBER 15 this movement escalates.

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Post by worldbound » 14 Oct 2011 02:40

In New York right now. Going to check out the protests in a few hours.
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Post by Pasquar » 15 Oct 2011 06:50

Tsiangkun wrote:You know what is funny about demands ? Demands only work when presented to an authoritative power with the will, capacity, and ability to help the people making demands. Our government has made it clear that the people are not its concern, thus, demands would be grossly misplaced.

Growing.

OCTOBER 15 this movement escalates.
Couldn't agree more. Though that was the biggest criticism from my end about these protests when they started (that there wasn't a solid, tangible list of demands), this movement is in a sense far beyond that. I think it speaks volumes that people from all walks of life, the majority, indeed the 99%, have what Marx refers to as "class consciousness". People cannot deny any longer the inequalities, misrepresentations, and flat out nonsense that is our economic system, political system, and the shoe-goo-like adhesive which binds them so intricately together.

THE MOVEMENT IS GROWING!

Occupy Columbus starts TODAY in about a half hour, going down soon :)

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Post by Tsiangkun » 17 Oct 2011 12:41


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Post by Pasquar » 26 Oct 2011 05:42

DUDE. What's going on in Oakland currently??

It's all over the news, shit's going down apparently 8O
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Post by Tsiangkun » 26 Oct 2011 07:55

The police are trying to incite a riot.
they are bombing the camp every few hours with chemical weapons to prevent the assembly of the people.

The police have shot demonstrators in the head with rubber bullets and bean bags to break up assemblies of people reading the first ammendment.

THe police tear gased an assembly of people reading their bill of rights.

We are regrouping and meeting up at 6pm tonight for another round in the town.

The people are peaceful. We are not fighting. We have our hands in the air. Bullets are only flying one direction.

Tensions between the police and the people in Oakland are very high.

It most definitely is going down.

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Post by Pasquar » 26 Oct 2011 10:43

People power > Police power


keep going strong man! You're making history!!
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Post by Tsiangkun » 26 Oct 2011 14:18

6PM tonight.

Everyone in the streets is well aware the police are using deadly force against us.

Scott Olsen's condition is deteriorating. He may be the first veteran to die in this struggle.

Things don't feel safe here. Very uneasy about the march tonight.

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Post by Pasquar » 26 Oct 2011 19:50

Solidarity from the Midwest. straight up.

This movement is getting serious. I was in Cleveland this past weekend for a environmental organizing conference called Powershift. A couple hundred of us marched from there to Occupy Cleveland at 10pm on 10/21 because that's when their permit expired. 12 people were arrested.

There will be an action this weekend in Columbus that will most likely result in arrests.

But most importantly, what is going on in Oakland is an absolute crackdown. How many have been arrested total?? I've heard anywhere from 100-500+

I heard that Occupy Baltimore is experiencing a similar crackdown.

I totally understand your feelings of nervousness about this. You're most likely in a battle zone as I type this.

Just know that this is pivotal in exposing how the system currently operates and the inherent contradictions in creates in our society: unarmed, peaceful, non-violent protestors are answered with an armed, organized, militant response.

This is what is wrong with society. It is absolutely deplorable that a man who served 2 tours for our country is in critical condition for peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights.

These are exciting times, but this movement will only resonate if people keep mobilized. This is the pivotal moment when the power dynamics in our society are truly exposed and this can be used to either silence the masses or make them stronger.

Not to say that there is a benefit to having people seriously injured or potentially killed in this, but historically, it has required the violent response by police to mandate federal government intervention. The Civil Rights Movement targeted highly segregated areas such as Birmingham precisely because they expected a violent response. As "soldiers of change", many were prepared to be injured and jailed, but this elicited a national response.

Similarly, if (and when, as I predict against how I would like to see things happen) there is a fatality as a result of this movement, the dynamic will overwhelmingly shift to even more overt support. We take for granted in our country that government cannot kill us. In other revolutions happening (Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, etc), possibility of death is a known risk at any protest or demonstration.

Again, cannot emphasize this enough. You're changing the world, man. We could be seeing the revolution and I hope with all my heart we are.

The only thing that bothers me is that on this forum (and much like mainstream society in general), this is not the #1 topic of discussion. People are still deaf/blind to what is happening, but momentum is continually growing rather than the other way around.

Solidarity forever.
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Post by Tsiangkun » 26 Oct 2011 22:22

In Oakland tonight, thousands showed up. Many with goggles and masks.

A general strike was voted on, and passed with 96% YEA.

A group of marines led the removal of fences the city erected around our land.

A group of activist recovered the porta-pottys that were stolen from us and brought them back to our square.

The first tent just went up at Oscar Grant Plaza.

General Strike set for Nov 2.

Tomorrow at 5 we have a meeting to discuss what to do if/when the national guard shows up. Kent State is on a lot of minds out here.

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Post by Tsiangkun » 27 Oct 2011 09:48


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Post by Pasquar » 28 Oct 2011 11:30

8O Amazing
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Post by Tsiangkun » 03 Nov 2011 18:36

About 100000 people yesterday at the general strike in Oakland.
Zero arrests. From 8-11. Zero arrest with the occupy demonstration.

After, police from San Mateo, Concord, Richmond, alameda, San Francisco, South San Francisco, Belmont, Walnut Creek, and more launched tear gas without warning.

The fire in the street was done after to neutralize the tear gas.
The fire was not about a symbol of anarchy.
Occupiers set the fire.
Anarchist went ape shit once the riot police started the action.

Notice OPD is not on that list.
Berkeley PD not on the list.

We don't know who ordered the strike.

OPD showed up later and fired rubber bullets.

We are the strongest we have ever been right now.
I loved chanting 'I,, am,, Sick of this sht !"

Film at the developers.

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Post by h0ag3yb3atZ » 14 Nov 2011 21:11

nothing against you guys but having shredded next to and walked through occupy boston it looks like something out of a bad episode of its always sunny.

College kids in tye dye shirts with anti corporation signs with stuff spelled wrong and homeless dudes holding 9/11 conspiracy signs seems to be whats going down.

The US needs to change but i'm not sure that sitting around in tents all day in a leaderless movement is the way to go. I'm all for bringing the ruckus but from what i have seen this is the most hypocritica,l backwards ass shit thats gone down in awhile. NO ONE i talked to with my girlfriend as we walked threw occupy boston could give us a sensible reason to be there. I understand why this is happening but sleeping outside in south boston (of all places) won't help anything and its easy for any wanna be hippie to loiter.

i think that if you want real change you gotta be durastic. don't be a fox news hating elitist, break your iphones, ipods and stop giving corporations money. leave your aeropostle, nike whatever clothing at home and go to the white house naked and fast. no facebook event, don't make your own youtube vids just get a few thousand people and fast. it's peaceful, you get your message across, theres power in numbers (like nick said people>police) and that way your not uploading facebook photos of the anti corporation movement.

props to you guys for believing what you believe in and you can rash on me if you want as my judgement is only based off my surroundings, but like i said all i've seen so far is a pretty much just styley loitering.
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Post by h0ag3yb3atZ » 14 Nov 2011 21:13

also fuck those west coast cops. All the footage of seen is crazy and is the exact type of thing that just adds fuel to the fire.
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Post by Jeremy » 15 Nov 2011 00:28

So you dislike bad spelling on protest signs hey?

Interesting...


My limited understanding is that these protests are an expression of anger at the current issues, rather than some kind of planned strategy to create change.

What bothers me, is that there is a direct cause and effect from the shenanigans that led to the initial GFC, and my state being about to replace a shit government with an even shitter one, due to the population being to stupid to understand that not having any money means you have to cut spending. Clearly America needs to get it's shit together so that I don't have to put up listening to Will Hodgeman speak.

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Post by Jeremy » 15 Nov 2011 00:37

I wanted to add, that I've heard a lot of people making fun of the Occupy protesters and their use of corporations, both for technology and clothing. I think this is a pretty retarded and simplistic view of the issues. When you look at countries like Australia, which is yet to go into recession, has the second highest life expectancy in the world, and apparently has the wealthiest citizens in the world, there's obviously a large amount of "social reform" that could occur in the US without turning the country into a communist state, while still improving people's standards of living, and wealth distribution.

Having better regulation of Wall Street and stricter requirements on what private corporations do with financial bailouts are hardly radical ideas, and it's silly and irrational to think that there is some kind of hypocrisy in making those kinds of demands, while using iPhones. It wasn't corporations like Nike and Apple that led to the GFC, it was the regulation (or lack there of) of financial markets.

And frankly, if you think Fox News isn't worth hating, I can only imagine that you've never seen intelligent journalism.

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Post by Jeremy » 15 Nov 2011 00:38

Also could a mod fix Pasquar's post near the top so that margins of every post in this topic aren't so fucked?

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