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Occupy Wall St.

euroazn said:
Have you actually looked at the blog? As one WSO member put it, "Looks like logic isn't the only thing not going for them..."
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It's ok to be wrong & unintelligent when you are as hot as the girl in that pic.
 
OWS better do something radical soon because it is beginning to become old news. I mean as we get used to people "occupying" public spaces we lose the shock value. Once this becomes back page news the cities will just kick the people out. Freedom of speech doesn't mean permanent occupying of a public park. There are reasonable limits to freedom of speech and I would say a couple months camped out is getting close to that limit.

In other news, Ohio looks like it will repeal the anti-union bill that the governor passed. OWS take note. This is what happens when you have a unified message, reach out for support and partnerships and get something done. Without a focus and an achievable goal you just pretend to be a homeless person for a couple of months.
 
Alexei Smirnov said:
Why wouldn't it? I didn't know that freedom of speech came with an expiry.

You are right in one way - anyone that assumes that these people in some way inconvenience anyone other then themselves is... off...
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Occupying a public space, designated for all free citizens to enjoy, is not freedom of speech. Besides the park in NYC, which is not publicly owned, living in a public space is not speech. These people are free to protest, free to talk on line, free to write, etc. No one is infringing on their speech. But when you basically take over a public space and begin inhabiting it, that is an issue.


I am sure many New Yorkers would like to go to this park, enjoy it with their families. Some where along the lines verbal communication became squatters rights.
 
Alexei Smirnov said:
Is burning a flag "speech"?
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The key difference here, Alexei, is that burning a flag does not ostensibly lower the quality of life of others. Occupying a public area and essentially prohibiting anyone that wants to use it normally (i.e quiet stroll around a park/walking a dog) is quite different.
 
I think more than anything, people are at a loss to speficially target a specific perceived evil or injustice, which makes them appear to have no clear idea or goal. You're in a totalitarian state, you know who's responsible at the end of the day; if you want to rise up and take him down, you can go ahead.

When you have an entire system of government and commerce that creates inequality from top to bottom, and the individuals that should be held responsible are just too many, and obscured and obstructed through many faceless companies and organizations, how can you not appear aimless in your anger, and directionless in your goals?
 
euroazn said:
Oh, well in that case its even more blatant. They are trespassing on private property, and the owners have every right to kick them out.
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Though it does raise an interesting question about the degree to which public spaces have been privatised in the last few decades. Part of the reason there's no public qua public is there are few public spaces for them to assemble in. It seems the powers-that-be want people either as individual worker ants or individual consumers -- but not constituted as a public, as a collective.
 
1) Occupying a park, denying other citizens from its use is not freedom of speech. After a point, which in my mind we have past, you basically take ownership of a public space (this isn't even a public park).

2) The park is privately owned and the owners are being EXTREMELY nice about allowing people to essentially live in and erect a tent city in what is otherwise an open aired park accessible to everyone.

3) Burning a flag is burning private property. It is freedom of expression. You cannot burn a flag just anywhere, just as I cannot burn garbage in city limits or burn a book in the middle of a busy street.

Everyone is bending over backwards for these protesters. Fine, this is America and I enjoy seeing this kind of support for our 1st amendment. That being said, after a point you are no longer voicing your opinion, you are taking over a public space.

See, this is why this whole movement is BS in my opinion. There is no logical end to it. The people who protested the Wisconsin union bill, they had a goal. Their voice was heard, but it eventually went against them. They then left.

What are the goals and objectives of this group? I mean what could happen that would make them go home and feel as if their voice was heard. You can't just say the system sucks, give me something. That isn't going to happen. You also cannot get a bunch of people together and just take over a park.

Everyone wants to talk about the protesters right to freedom of speech, but how about the fact that everyone is afraid to tell them that they can't live in a park because things will get violent. Why is this sector of violence even a thought?

I fail to see how Democracy is not working for these people. Yes, what they want is not happening, but getting what you want isn't Democracy. People were tired of a pro business, Republican administration so they elected a fresh faced Democrat. Obama pushed hard for healthcare, which is a major issue for the left, and he got it pushed through. How is this your voice not being heard?

The reality is that this country is pretty evenly split, maybe a tad right of center. We are also broke. Whether it was rich people not paying enough in taxes or social programs that did it, end of the day we are just plain broke. We have a shrinking amount of people paying Federal taxes, we have a growing Federal government and taxing this mythical 1% isn't going to do anything. We need big cuts in spending and tax increases on everyone.

Problem is, you start increasing the taxes on the middle, upper middle and rich and you will see a decrease in spending, layoffs at small business and a contraction in the economy. Most jobs in this country are from small business owners and most "rich" people are people who own their own business. They are not going to eat the costs, along with a higher tax bill, for the sake of being American or whatever. They will lay people off, hold off on expansion plans or stop investing. This will hurt us all.
 
bigbadwolf said:
Though it does raise an interesting question about the degree to which public spaces have been privatised in the last few decades. Part of the reason there's no public qua public is there are few public spaces for them to assemble in. It seems the powers-that-be want people either as individual worker ants or individual consumers -- but not constituted as a public, as a collective.
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I don't know BBW, outside of the city there are tons of public spaces and public parks. Even in the city there are parks and places to congregate. The issue comes when a group of people basically move into the park and make it their home.

Suppose another group wanted to protest or meet or have a speech in the park. They couldn't because they are denied a fair use of the park. Police are afraid to even kick them out because they will be met with violent resistance. How is this fair or within the spirit of the Constitution?

I think people overestimate how many people truly support them. These protesters are acting as if they are the brave vanguard being silently supported by 330 million people at home. In reality they are either a minority opinion or only speaking for about half or so of this country. Obama pushed healthcare and then lost the House, almost the Senate and many states to the Republicans and the Tea Party movement.
 
Alexei Smirnov said:
The park may be privately owned, but ACCORDING TO CONTRACT THE OWNERS DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO EVICT ANYONE FROM IT AND MUST KEEP THE SPACE OPEN TO ANY AND ALL PUBLIC USE 24 HOURS A DAY. Noone reads these days. Sheesh. And even after I said read the FULL wikipedia article too!
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It says PUBLIC use, doesn't it, not (solely) protester use.
That's just what we're saying; the protesters are essentially being selfish and prohibiting the majority of the public from actually using that resource as IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE USED.
 
Funny thing is the protesters congregated at zuccotti park because NYC knew in advance this was happening, and put up barricades all around wall street and the exchange building. There wasn't that many cops around but it was enough to steer them to an open space to congregate, and that's where we are. It persists more because it's a private property open to the public. NYC can let it go on and do nothing, it's not their space. Brookfield are the ones with a problem, and they can't move them out without the support of Bloomberg, and why would he support Brookfield? It's not his problem, so we have an impasse.

They never sustained an effort to really 'occupy' Wall Street, with the barricades and the cops, that would have been short-lived...
 
Alexei Smirnov said:
Once again, have you actually been to the protest? It's easy to say "hippies annoy me how dare they spend time in my park", but the reality is I can say the same about people in suits or shorts. As a matter of fact, at one point wearing shorts in the USSR in public was taking a risk of getting yelled at by some elderly old woman (the true keepers of Soviet morality...)! You are being the old woman in the USSR.
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It's not the fact that they're hippies, it that there are too many of them for there to be any reasonable amount of free space in the park.
 
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