This began with a comment I made on a diary last night http://www.dailykos.com/.... It went a little further than I really intended but however since it did. I would like to open it up to those who have their own thoughts. I have long considered Kos a market place of ideas and would like to hear from fellow Kos members. The current arguments are below the fold.
OWS had a real opportunity (1+ / 0-)
to become a political force. I became disenchanted with it all as they did not engage minorities and I will probably make someone angry with me with this next but the whole movement looked like young white people who were disenchanted with how the world was suppose to be after college but wasn't. I really thought that the movement would change society but they only engaged with themselves to continually reaffirm how bad Wall Street was and that was it nothing changed. Wall Street is still doing the same thing the 1% are still not paying the taxman and no one knows where OWS is.
This cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions twists all our arms collectively, but if sweetness can win, and it can, then I'll still be here tomorrow to high-five you yesterday, my friend. Peace. ~The Gingerbread Man - Adventure Time
by live2learn on Fri Oct 11, 2013 at 06:12:08 PM MST
Start your own movement (2+ / 0-)
base it on hierarchy, electoral politics, appoint leaders of your friends who can be the elite members at the top, and make it all about goals that are important to you.
The we will all watch and see if thousands in cities across the US come out to support your movement, who quit their jobs to sleep in the rain and cold and be pepper sprayed by cops...
Think you can do that? No?
That's what Occupy did.
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." -George Orwell
by ZhenRen on Fri Oct 11, 2013 at 11:33:05 PM MST
ZRen, umm well you (0+ / 0-)
simply did not address anything I commented about. Starting with this:
Start your own movement... The we will all watch and see if thousands in cities across the US come out to support your movement, who quit their jobs to sleep in the rain and cold and be pepper sprayed by cops...
My reply would be--SO? There was still no point to it all. I have been stopped by cops for no other reason then walking, driving, shopping while Black, but you seem to think I should give accolades to OWS because the cops picked on them? Really?
None of what you state means anything in the long run. Where are they now? What if anything changed? Are they even a blimp on the historical radar? My guess would be not. If one is putting that much energy into a movement I would expect that there would be a goal that lead to tangible results. Revolution by definition implicitly means change.
This cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions twists all our arms collectively, but if sweetness can win, and it can, then I'll still be here tomorrow to high-five you yesterday, my friend. Peace. ~The Gingerbread Man - Adventure Time
by live2learn on Sat Oct 12, 2013 at 09:38:04 AM MST
If you want revolution (1+ / 0-)
Revolution by definition implicitly means change.
Go out and see if you can make it happen. Is "revolution" really what you want, or is that just a specious polemic you're using as a cudgel?
That's the point, not that they were poked by cops. Gee, did they fail at completely overwhelming the system to the point that they overturned the established status quo? And if not they failed?
LOL. No one really spoke of that as the goal. It was mainly an enormous protest to draw attention to Wall Street hegemony. And by that metric, they did succeed.
What they did in getting the 1% meme spread around the world is an enormous accomplishment. The international hegemony of the 1% in our time is more substantial in scope than ever before in our history.
No group, today, would find making changes easy. If it were easy, other traditional, pre-established activist groups would have already made it happen. In the context of the political climate today, OWS was enormous. They broke through the media refusal to cover protests, and managed to get the entire planet talking about the 1% exploitation of the 99%. Other groups have tried that, and they failed.
The attendees of OWS are not magically removed from the planet, they're all still here. I think more of this will happen, its just a matter of when.
But critics strike me as whiners. Most of them could care less about overturning the system. They aren't out in the rain and cold because they don't want to be. They can't be bothered. And when others go out and protest, the whiners whine, but otherwise they continue enabling the Wall Street hegemony with tacit support of the status quo approaches.
Rather than offer criticism, start your own movement, structure it the way you think movements should be structured based on your criticisms, set goals, do all that you think OWS should have done, but didn't, and let's see if your ideas work as well as you think they would.
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." -George Orwell
by ZhenRen on Sat Oct 12, 2013 at 10:43:29 AM MST
I Recd your response in the Spirit of... (0+ / 0-)
Debate. Now I got a few Goodies for you. :).
1. Shall we agree that we will not personalize this. examples as follows:
If you want revolution...
Copied your emphasis Is "revolution" really what you want, or is that just a specious polemic you're using as a cudgel?
2. No name calling as it is the poorest forms of argumentation.
But critics strike me as whiners.
3. I hold my self accountable to the above and also will only respond to the meat of the claims that you argue.
4. Should we agree to continue. perhaps we should a agree to step out of this thread and take it to a new diary so we do not hijack the authors intent of her/his Diary.
your claims:
Claim one:
That's the point, not that they were poked by cops. Gee, did they fail at completely overwhelming the system to the point that they overturned the established status quo? And if not they failed?
Response:
Yes they failed.
When you mobilize that much energy according to the laws of physics Energy in motion stays in motion. I was so jazzed by OWS I stood out there in the early days feeling fucking good that I was sending a message that would eventually result in a systemic change about to take place. I understood that that change would not be immediate or happen magically deliciously over night.
I knew that there would be discussion and compromise.
I'm pragmatic in that way. I suspect I am not the only individual here who participated and had a feeling of incredible hope for OWS. I am not mad at OWS at all I think its a damn shame that it is not competing with the T-party at the national level.
Claim two:
LOL. No one really spoke of that as the goal. It was mainly an enormous protest to draw attention to Wall Street hegemony. And by that metric, they did succeed.
Response:
Most informed parts of the population have been aware of Wall Streets dominance of capitol for generations. The Monied establishment has been betting against the working poor for generations. Derivatives have been part of the game since the beginning of the beginning. This is part of the mentality of 1% to keep wealth for their own. Economists have debated this very thing for years in public view. I would argue that a good deal of the populations already had a general sense of the situation when the banks failed and we bailed them out, the auto industry failed and we bailed them out, the housing market failed and we bailed them out. OSW did not make the general public anymore aware then we already were.
Claim three:
What they did in getting the 1% meme spread around the world is an enormous accomplishment. The international hegemony of the 1% in our time is more substantial in scope than ever before in our history.
Response: See my argument above and I agree withe the hegemony argument about the 1%.
Claim four:
No group, today, would find making changes easy. If it were easy, other traditional, pre-established activist groups would have already made it happen. In the context of the political climate today, OWS was enormous. They broke through the media refusal to cover protests, and managed to get the entire planet talking about the 1% exploitation of the 99%. Other groups have tried that, and they failed.
Resonse:
Talk is cheap. We were already talking on a global scale through social media and all that the world wide web has to offer. I stipulated in my first response change is not magically deliciously going to happen.
Claims five and six:
The attendees of OWS are not magically removed from the planet, they're all still here. I think more of this will happen, its just a matter of when.
But critics strike me as whiners. Most of them could care less about overturning the system. They aren't out in the rain and cold because they don't want to be. They can't be bothered. And when others go out and protest, the whiners whine, but otherwise they continue enabling the Wall Street hegemony with tacit support of the status quo approaches.
Response to five and six: Naw-- couldn't do the rain but I burned up in the sun and sucked down carbon monoxide with my sign and a pregnant girlfriend of mine.
Why can't I be a critic? Who said all criticism was designed to be hurtful? "tacit support of the Status quo?" you gotta be kidding most of us saw OWS and immediately Kirk Franklin's "Do You Want a Revolution! just made its rounds in our head. Finally! Change!
Finally, Where is OSW?
Final Claim:
Rather than offer criticism, start your own movement, structure it the way you think movements should be structured based on your criticisms, set goals, do all that you think OWS should have done, but didn't, and let's see if your ideas work as well as you think they would.
Response: I am pragmatic so well aaah... I am open to suggestions here. Any ideas? Kos is after all a market place of ideas.
This cosmic dance of bursting decadence and withheld permissions twists all our arms collectively, but if sweetness can win, and it can, then I'll still be here tomorrow to high-five you yesterday, my friend. Peace. ~The Gingerbread Man - Adventure Time
by live2learn on Sat Oct 12, 2013 at 01:29:15 PM MST
Heh... (0+ / 0-)
My comments were in response to your tone. This works both ways.
Based on your response, I can see any future dialogue about this isn't going to have any impact on you. You're fairly convinced of your assessment, and I think we have ideological differences which lead to different conclusions.
We'll just have to disagree about what success is. I suppose if you thought OWS was going to cpmete with the Tea Party, and it didn't, you would see that as failure. I didn't have those expectations, and I gauge success based on different metrics, which I could write a long essay about, but I'm working, so I can't spend the time to respond point by point, but what would it accomplish if I did?
I will say that the big difference in expectations seems to revolve around electoral politics, and what you think is primarily at fault in the system. If you think OWS should have engaged in electoral politics, as if that would have led to success, I don't think that was the best role for OWS to play. Comparisons to the tea party don't work, since the tea party is astroturf, supported by billionaire conservatives, while OWS was the real thing, an authentically grassroots movement.
Of course the Tea Party has a big impact: It is serving the interests of the status quo, and has status quo support. If you supported OWS with the notion it would compete electorally with the Tea Party and counter its electoral gains, I can see why you would think OWS failed, but such electoral goals weren't what most Occupiers wanted, and since they had different ideas about purpose and strategy, they naturally would also have different measures of success than you.
OWS would never have been able to effect, specifically, electoral politics the way the tea party did, since it didn't get the AstroTurf funding that the tea party did.
Most Occupiers were disgusted with both parties, and placed blame on both. It was not a group which was yet another appendage of the Democrats.
Graeber, one of the key founders of Occupy, attributes the successes of OWS as deriving precisely from the fact that it stayed clear of party politics. People who wanted it to become involved in the traditional electoral approach are missing a big part of why OWS sprung up in cities all across the country.
I'll let David Graeber explain it, with an excerpt from his book, The Democracy Project, A History, A Crisis, A Movement:
Almost every time I'm interviewed by a mainstream journalist about Occupy Wall Street I get some variation of the same lecture:
"How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what's with all this anarchist nonsense - the consensus, the sparkly fingers? Don't you realize all this radical language is going to alienate people? You're never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!"
Asking why OWS refuses to create a leadership structure, and asking why we don't come up with concrete policy statements, is of course two ways of asking the same thing: Why don't we engage with the existing political structure so as to ultimately become a part of it?
If one were compiling a scrapbook of worst advice ever given, this sort of thing might well merit an honorable place. Since the financial crash of 2008, there have been endless attempts to kick-off a national movement against the depredations of America’s financial elites taking the approach such journalists recommended. All failed. Most failed miserably. It was only when a movement appeared that resolutely refused to take a traditional path, that rejected the existing political order entirely as inherently corrupt, that called for the complete reinvention of American democracy, that occupations immediately began to blossom across the country. Clearly the movement did not succeed despite the anarchist element. It succeeded because of it."
The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement by David Graeber
http://www.akpress.org/....
The fact that Occupy is now an international household name, that nearly everyone on the planet is familiar with the phrase "the 1%" vs "the 99%", the fact that for the first time in ages the media actually reported protests, rather than ignore them, the fact that Romney began to lose ground when he began to appear just like one of those one per-centers, indicates success.
I'm interested in exploring and developing more of these mold-breaking, game-changing approaches. Those here who want OWS to emphasis party politics and to get involved in the electoral process are missing a big advantage OWS had in staying out of electoral approaches. It was by remaining outside the system that OWS had its enormous appeal, and any OWS member who thinks it should have been more like other traditional groups is forgetting why OWS steered clear of this.
The concept of the "1%" vs the "99%" is a good example. It wasn't about electing a specific personality, but as a concept it changed the national dialogue. And it wasn't Rachel Maddow, or Chris Hays, or some famous personality or political celebrity who sparked off this powerful theme, but the Occupy movement in parks all across the country.
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." -George Orwell
by ZhenRen on Sat Oct 12, 2013 at 04:31:41 PM MST
ZRen I strive to not have a tone at all. As a matter of fact I conceded that you do have some valid claims. I believe that I presented my self as individual who is if nothing else pragmatic and open to different ideas. so if you want to cast as someone who in your words
You're fairly convinced of your assessment,
instead of having a thoughtful debate on this fine but I surely think of this as another missed opportunity.
To my fellow Diarists I would love to extended the debate by the same rules of engagement as posted previously.