Opinion of "Occupy Wall Street"

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

They got the slumbering behemoths known as the unions to react and get on the streets, so they aren't all bad. Lean FF.

The vast majority of them are certainly idiots though. I just hope that the Russ Feingolds and Robert Reichs of the world can capitalize on this moment to politicize them properly.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Sure are a lot of class warfare apologists in this thread (and I mean the class warfare that's actually happening, against the working and middle-class, not the other definition, of rich people whining that some people want to raise their taxes).

Political protests accomplish little beyond dragging in flocks or starry-eyed tourists that crowd the streets, ignore traffic lights, slow the public transportation, and wander around shouting inane slogans and making a mess of everything.  I feel sorry for the people of New York.  Go the f**k home and leave people alone.  I don't care what they're about, they're disruptive annoying grandstanding that wrecks ordinary city life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_in_France
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Civil_Rights_Movement_%281955%E2%80%931968%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Israeli_social_justice_protests
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chilean_protests

These people would like to have a word with you.

I don't care if you're against the motives of the protesters but it's idiotic to dismiss all forms of political protest when it's accomplished social change and huge results in the past. If OWS can move Obama's rhetoric further to the left, shift the political paradigm somewhat and provide a great opportunity for politicizing the youth/dispossessed into organizing for the left, they'll have succeeded. 

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

a useless and misguided street theater, centered on unoriginal, inane class warfare slogans.

Any Democrat who seriously uses the term "class warfare" should be banned from the party.

These protesters are morons who I wish were supporters of some fringe party.

These people are morons?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_West
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders

They all support Occupy Wall Street. Last time I checked, it doesn't matter how intelligent the protesters themselves are but how intelligent their leaders/goals/institutions that support them are.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

These people are demonizing the financial industry.

The financial industry that has been protected by the government while the working poor and unemployed were largely ignored? The industry that continued to pay their CEOs and employees huge bonuses regardless of the political consequences? The optics of this situation are awful and I have no sympathy for them as these fools continue to be delusional. As far as I'm concerned they deserve to be demonized for having their head up their ass.

Demonizing the financial industry normally annoys me, especially because there's a good chance I'll work for a financial firm but this has the potential to produce long term and worthwhile results.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

a useless and misguided street theater, centered on unoriginal, inane class warfare slogans.

Any Democrat who seriously uses the term "class warfare" should be banned from the party.

These protesters are morons who I wish were supporters of some fringe party.

These people are morons?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_West
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Reich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Jones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders

They all support Occupy Wall Street. Last time I checked, it doesn't matter how intelligent the protesters themselves are but how intelligent their leaders/goals/institutions that support them are.

I don't see the need or have the desire for most of what these protesters advocate and I find it antithetical to progress as well as a recipe for economic retardation and stagnation. Left wing tea party is indeed left wing tea party. A bunch of kooks and ideological demagouges.

It's a broadly left wing protest that is too populist for my tastes but clearly they're against income inequality, against austerity measures and for another stimulus package. If you're opposed to these ideas, why would you bother having a red avatar?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Sure are a lot of class warfare apologists in this thread (and I mean the class warfare that's actually happening, against the working and middle-class, not the other definition, of rich people whining that some people want to raise their taxes).

Political protests accomplish little beyond dragging in flocks or starry-eyed tourists that crowd the streets, ignore traffic lights, slow the public transportation, and wander around shouting inane slogans and making a mess of everything.  I feel sorry for the people of New York.  Go the f**k home and leave people alone.  I don't care what they're about, they're disruptive annoying grandstanding that wrecks ordinary city life.

Ah yes, how dare people are momentarily inconvenienced! The buses are running five minutes slower today because people are demonstrating for a cause they strongly believe in... this is an outrage!!

Set aside a day and keep your protests within a certain area.  They are now just being disruptive and draining an already strained city budget.  Downtown has a pretty big bulls eye on its back and this is just not helping.

I agree to an extent that the tent/"occupation" part of the protest is unecessary but after witnessing what happened in Israeli, I can't blame OWS for trying to mimic a clearly successful demonstration tactic. This never would have picked up any interest to begin with if it was just a planned march.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Pin a medal on that man for he is a champion of the people.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I hope the President and Dems continue to embrace the Scumbagger movement - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047168/Occupy-Wall-Street-protesters-make-love-class-war-sex-drugs-tap.html

Of course they also love Soros, Buffet, etc. but "hate the criminal bankers".. Joke movement. Unfortunately I have family and friends falling for this nonsense.

What are you talking about? Occupy Wall Street threw a fit when Soros and Bernanke said nice things about them. As to Buffet, I have no idea what most OWS protesters think about him.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The Teabaggers are also a joke movement. They have been since being hijacked in 2009. Although at least they were around a couple years before that.

The Tea Party was around for a couple of years before 2009? That's news to me.

Well really there had been sporadic Tea Party protests since the early '90s but they had a revival in 2007-2008 thanks in large part to Ron Paul supporters. Of course given the hatred of the 'Patriot movement' and how young the internet was it makes sense such things were more underground during the '90s.

I thought it was quite clear that the modern/visible Tea Party that we know today started with Santelli? Just because a movement shares a name with another does not mean it is one and the same. The name "tea party" has probably been used a number of times by the far-right in throwing temper tantrums over tax increases.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I hope the President and Dems continue to embrace the Scumbagger movement - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047168/Occupy-Wall-Street-protesters-make-love-class-war-sex-drugs-tap.html

Of course they also love Soros, Buffet, etc. but "hate the criminal bankers".. Joke movement. Unfortunately I have family and friends falling for this nonsense.

What are you talking about? Occupy Wall Street threw a fit when Soros and Bernanke said nice things about them. As to Buffet, I have no idea what most OWS protesters think about him.

Soros funds AdBusters through his Tides Foundation, which was the primary organizers of the protests. Of course "progressives" like the MoveOn crowd love Soros and were in high attendance. And they've been very ecstatic about Buffet and his tax plans (which the 99 endorsed early on in their website) even though he.. well do I really need to explain this to you? I mean I would to them, but I don't think you're a dumb.

Well I obviously don't like Soros or Buffet but I'm not going to be angry that they lend their support to "liberal" causes. I haven't met any MoveOn.org members so I wouldn't know how they feel but the OWS twitters that I'm following disparaged Soros heavily for saying kind things about them (basically telling him to f off). Anyways I don't see why I'd want to turn down Soros' money dumps into legalizing marijuana and defeating Bush because he's a disgusting insider trader.

I don't think Occupy Wall Street support the Buffet tax plan specifically, they support raising taxes in general. I know why Buffet has an interest in raising the Estate tax. I have no affection for him.

Having questionable donors does not make think tanks and advocacy groups on the wrong side. Just because the Koch brothers donated millions to PBS, doesn't mean I'm going to stop considering PBS credible.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

the funny thing about a movement that is protesting income inequality is that in every single interview I heard with someone who said what neighborhood (this is in the NY one) was they from from some left wing rich neighborhood (Chelsea, Park Slope ext.) and not one was from NY's many Middle Class or down neighborhoods.

Link? I find this to be doubtful seeing as most protesters are unemployed or poor. There's no way they could afford to live in those neighborhoods unless they were living with their parents (which doesn't mean that they're evil leeches, it shows the state of our economy for college grads).

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

As we approach the ten year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, I'd like to take the liberty of bumping this thread to give new posters the opportunity to voice their opinion on a short-lived movement that exerted a powerful influence on contemporary political discourse. To this day, it is typical to hear people refer to "the 1%" and this turn of phrase derives from this rag-tag movement.

Another reason I'd like to bump this thread is to give new posters an opportunity to muddle through the archives of this forum to get a sense of its blindspots and weaknesses. The typical left-leaning poster here was unusually dismissive of Occupy Wall Street while also being worshipful of Obama - this was not a typical viewpoint of young people in 2011. This forum continues to be biased towards the political class and distrusting of social movements and popular politics, a failing that made the forum less able to understand politics in the second half of the decade.

In retrospect, I have a very favorable view of Occupy Wall Street (I participated in a few "Occupy" demonstrations), even if it was an organizational catastrophe, lacked ideological discipline of any kind and was mostly dominated by various rubes. I see both Occupy Wall Street and the revolt against Scott Walker as forming the kernel of the Sanders campaign in 2015. His rhetoric and platform did not emerge out of nowhere, they appropriated much of the language of these movements.