Occupy

Originally Posted by Filthy Hockey Beast

My issue with it is that it is woefully scattered in what it's trying to accomplish. I love the idea, I love the approach, I dislike the narrative being everywhere. "Occupy for a while and eventually we might distill our message down to something maybe, but until then we're anti-big farm, anti-government, pro-government, pro-feeding the world, anti-science doing things to feed the world etc..."

They don't have a real mission outside of "we're unhappy." Which is all well and good, but please come up with a mission statement before you expect me to stand behind you.

What I'm seeing more than anything is that the lack of a clear message simply underscores how many grievances are actually being put out in the open in one fell swoop. The main point seems to be about the wealth disparity, but the manners in which this is affecting people isn't as simple as one single issue. As such it can't really be boiled down to a clear-cut message.

The biggest victory that has been achieved so far is the amount of attention the protests have been getting, which precisely serves to get people to focus on something besides the mainstream media's regurgitating of politicians' and bigwig types' diversionary tactics. Though it took a while before people started paying attention, it's happening now, and the people who have benefited from the mess the US (and by extension many parts of the world) is in are actually beginning to pay attention. The best thing that could happen is that this movement doesn't go away until some major changes take place, and judging by the amount of effort that is going into making sure everyone is as comfortable as they can be, that might just end up being the case.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, apparently the powers that be have had enough of this movement.

Just looking at front page news today I saw that at least three Occupy camps have either been evicted or will be shortly. New York's Zucotti park was cleared by police during the night, the Occupy Toronto camp woke up to eviction notices being handed out and posted on tents, and the Occupy London camp is likely to be served one soon from what I've read.

I don't know how much interest remains for this here, but I thought I'd post it anyway in the interest of furthering discussion.

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I guess the question that is on my mind is does this signal a death knell of sorts for the movement?

I'm not convinced that it is, simply because it's pretty clear that a lot of the people in the movement are pretty adamant about adapting to whatever the situation becomes. On the other hand, if police are going to hound them wherever they go and not let them set up camp anywhere, I don't see how people will have any other choice but to leave.

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Though the movement as a whole may not be so clear-cut, the fact that general assemblies are held very frequently in most of the camps means that at the very least there is a well defined democratic aspect to the movement.

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Originally Posted by wvlfpvp

And Pang, don't get me wrong. I'm a firm believer in the idea that big corporations get all sorts of stupid bullshit from the government that doesn't make any goddamn sense. I do not want. My problem with occupy is that it's gotten away from being just that. It's turned into a shitstorm of a bitchfest, and what none of these people seem to understand is that bitching and complaining, by itself, doesn't get anything done. It's the start of something, but there needs to be more happening than just bitching.

I'm starting to lean towards this position myself, but I can't quite bring myself to say that nothing is being achieved, if only for the fact that, no matter what, the events of the last two months have at least gotten people's attention and that certainly is better than just getting news about politicians creative ways of helping people and the latest in sports-related drama.

What came up a lot in what I've read on the subject since I first read about the evictions yesterday was that it might possibly be the best thing that could have happened to this protest movement since yesterday because the press was starting to pile on about the living conditions in the camps. All this talk of drugs, violence and lack of salubrity was partially becoming the image of the movement to a lot of the common-folk who had started paying attention, and by kicking the protesters out in a dramatic fashion, rather than testing the resolve of the protesters to bear the winter, it has given them a means to regroup in a different way to pursue the ideas that emerged from the process, if in a somewhat different fashion.

I know that in a lot of places the camps are still present, so it may be a bit early to say that the protests won't just keep going the way they were, but at least it makes it possible that something more than bitching and whining will come out of this.

I was speaking idiomatically.