Protesters on Wall Street. Capitalism quakes in fear?

The Psycho-ologist said:

I would personally love to now if any of these protester folks gave money to organizations fighting on the front lines in the halls of congress, in ad campaigns like Move-on, or in actual abortion clinics.

Good god I hope they gave no money to congress outside of about 10 members.

I sincerely hope they gave no money to Obama.

whynot_31 said:

whynot wrote: Mrs Whynot and I just jabbered about the problem.

I basically stated that I would only attend a rally with an intelligent, articulate leader and realistic goals.

She responded by stating that it is unreasonable for me to expect a bunch of neo-leftist, neo-hippie, angry, young revolutionaries to be able to select an articulate leader and goals from their membership, especially if there are Anarchists present.

I agreed.

BG wrote: Sorry, are you guys arguing anarchists don't have articulate members or specific goals?

Do you personally know a single anarchist? Seems not.

Sorry, are you guys arguing anarchists don't have articulate members or specific goals?

Do you personally know a single anarchist? Seems not.

Boygabriel-

As I point out, very few of the protesters are Anarchists, and they alone are not responsible for the ill conceived nature of this protest.

I (and I believe others) are just trying to tell the organizers how they could improve their results. While they might not be ready for the type of training provided by the likes of Move On or the American Friends Service Committee, could they at least establish a fund for them attend trainings at the Ruckus society?

You and/or Mrs Whynot specifically took a cheap shot at anarchists, and you've made generalized ones towards these protesters in general.

especially if there are Anarchists present.

I'd be careful assuming anarchists are inarticulate or not capable of organization.

@whynot_31 wrote:

I would love for the current regulations on trading and banking to be enforced, I am aware that part of the reason government is failing to do so is that there is no such entity as "Wall Street".

I would add to this the fact that national governments have little capacity to subject the market to the level of democratic oversight one might think is necessary for two reasons:

1. Capital flows are globalized. The effort to "fix" capital within territorial boundaries of the nation state has led to the trend toward pop up firms in Switzerland (an office and mailbox as headquarters).

2. With respect to US firms, they hold the leverage of an "investment strike" over would be government regulators.

Finally, a global "consumer strike" (what we basically have now is an involuntary consumer strike) ends up rebounding on employment.

The current financial woes in this country are directly related to the repeal of The Glass Steagall Act. The young people on Wall Street should be calling for Glass Steagall to be re-instituted by Congress. They are not, and its that lack of a real focused agenda which will cause them to continue to be dismissed by people like Whynot (who agree fundamentally that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/25/occupy-wall-street-protest

Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination

The young people protesting in Wall Street and beyond reject this vain economic order. They have come to reclaim the future

"A senior New York police officer accused of pepper-spraying young women on the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations is the subject of a pending legal action over his conduct at another protest in the city.

The Guardian has learned that the officer, named by activists as deputy inspector Anthony Bologna, stands accused of false arrest and civil rights violations in a claim brought by a protester involved in the 2004 demonstrations at the Republican national convention." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/27/occupy-wall-street-anthony-bologna

I was in Union Square on Saturday. During the time the protesters came and went I was blithely shopping in a store. When we came out, the sheer amount of cops was beyond comprehension. The anti-terrorist officers were huddled. there were row upon row of officers lined up, backs to the Whole Foods side of the street. All of Union Square East was blocked with cars.

On the other hand, the officers were telling people walking by to just carry on with their day and not worry about what was going on.

How can the threat be so bad on one hand that you require THAT many cops, but be so mild that kids get to keep playing at the playground.

The protesters would have had to have been swinging machetes to justify the police presence on Saturday. We figured it was a counter-terrorism drill, because except for a few cops swinging their billy clubs, everyone else was standing around chatting, being photographed by tourists and locals alike.

whynot_31 said:

Friends who work in the area state they are completely unaware of the protests, because they don't use the park the protesters are hanging out in.

Actually its a big clusterfuck by where I work. On top of the tourists, there are barricades making a small sidewalk even smaller, the sheer number of cops (which definitely outnumber the protesters 3 to 1) plus some corners you cannot cross at, as well as certain entrances to stations closed. Its more of an inconvenience than anything. The protesters are, in my opinion, very well behaved.

whynot_31 said:

Lose: The protesters will have stinging eyes for weeks to come and be regarded by mainstream Americans as dreamers without a plan. [Z Magazine, The Voice, The Guardian, Mother Jones and the like will claim the occupation was a huge success, of course]

Trying to get anything via "mainstream" aka traditional outlets, methods would be pointless.

Mainstream b.s. is how we got to where we are.

The problem is that non-mainstream methods are likely to be as ineffective as mainstream ones.