Occupy Wall Street

If I was in grad school studying political science and trying to impress my professors, then I'd probably care. But I'm not. The most basic definition of 'democracy' remains the same, regardless if you've spent hours and hours and hours studying the philosophy (and not the definition) of the word. To 99% of the world, 'democracy' probably means exactly what was cited. Which also begs the question, by your definition, which current country is a true democracy?

So you're basically agreeing with what I'm saying (people realizing our 'democratic' government isn't working). Except you wanted to expound on your view of democracy. Awesome.

 

If the protest prevents an ambulance or other emergency vehicle from doing what it's supposed to do, that would certainly be a legitimate complaint. Until that happens, it seems a bit like you're accusing them of precrime.

Speaking from what experience I've had, getting a permit to protest can sometimes be a breeze and can sometimes be a nightmare. Generally when I'm involved in the logistics and planning of protests here in the SF Bay area, things go really well. There are a few bad apples, but most of the cops in the area seem okay with protesting. There have been times, however, when getting a permit has been basically impossible, despite the fact that there's no evidence of disruption of traffic or the other normal concerns the police have. I don't see if there has been an attempt to get a permit by any of the organizers of the event. If there hasn't, I can certainly understand how it could have been overlooked as truly the protest doesn't have leadership, however someone should at least give it a shot. If, however, a permit was requested and denied, there could be a problem there. We're living in a time of "Free Speech zones", so denial of a permit due to not wanting the message of a protest to get out is not out of the question. Considering the unprovoked attacks on some of the protesters by select members of the NYPD on site, there's clearly an antagonism at play here that has gone so far to inspire violence. I guess what I'm trying to say is this: if a permit to protest is denied due to the subject of the protest, is that denial of a permit legitimate? If I were there, my answer would probably be no.

I think we need more information on this permit issue to be sure either way.

 

Hey, I went to grad school to study political science (MPM). The focus in most courses put practical pragmatic applications over ideology.

 

i see. consult a dictionary written for high school students and then act as though that settles the matter. that makes me laugh.

on the second, it's possible that i agree with you. i don't have any problem with agreeing with you. i was going off what you wrote in the post. it was cryptic enough to have meant any number of things, so in this case it was an accident. but i'm fine with that.

 

We should send politicians into programs like this.

 

A government mandate!!! The Tea Party would be outraged but I had a blast.

http://gspm.org/about-gspm

 

Maybe it is because I'm not in NYC...but what are they trying to do? Is having a flash mob type protest better than planning a march for months in advance? Where is their media and Internet presence? Are they trying to shut down the market? Harass the traders? Figure out who at the top of these big hedge funds, insurance cos, and banks should be in jail? Protesting how rigged the system is (I have a few hundred shares, CEOs get thousands or more as a bonus). How 401k's will mean that the market will crash every time a large bunch of 60-somethings decide that their nestegg is big enough and need to move it to a safe investment? Do the protesters want us to sell certain companies (big money will make you pay by doing the opposite)? And why didn't this happen 3 years ago?

And if you live in NYC, being inconvenienced and taking notice of the protesters is the whole point.

The police aren't handling this well at all on the other hand.

And this is the big problem I have with the leadership at the Democratic Party. Why aren't the GLBT, Unions, Environmentalists, Minority, Women, Anti-War, and anti-Republican groups showing up? Why doesn't the DNC work with each group to help them become one big force?

 

Back in 2006 there was an episode of Vanguard (that I had forgotten completely about, but that Olbermann mentioned on Countdown tonight) on a group of 50-60 people in Tahrir square essentially just protesting against the state of things in Egypt. This is not to suggest, of course, that Occupy Wall Street will inevitably lead to radical regime change in the United States, but it does underline a simple truth about political movements: often they're vague in their inception. I was there at the genesis of the current generation of antiwar movement in late 2001, and it started not specifically against the war in Iraq because we were being lied to about WMDs and al Qeada links, but because we were so quickly sliding into war. Different people objected to that for different reasons, but what we all had in common was we weren't happy with the prospect of going to war. A few years later, we had the largest protest in human history.

What are they trying to do? They're trying to change things. They're not all sure how things are wrong and they're not all sure how to go about changing things, but they all agree that something is wrong, and Wall Street is profiting from it and is otherwise involved in it.

 

I consider Occupy Wall Street to be equal parts protest and masquerade. If it's a masquerade, they're legally allowed to wear masks in groups in public.

The thing about protesting is it's not supposed to be comfortable. If all protests were comfortable, many of them in the past that succeeded could have very well failed. They manifest to draw attention. Protesting is about connecting to other people, sometimes by annoying the shit out of them. I'm sorry if it's inconvenienced you, but it's certainly more real now that it's had an impact large enough to create an emotional reaction. Do you think sit-ins were polite and comfortable? I can't imagine they were. Do you think women burning their bras in public was comfortable? I'd have to imagine that would be highly disruptive to their environment.

Part of having free speech and the freedom to assemble is that you have to accept that sometimes other people's expression of that freedom is going to make you uncomfortable. If it didn't, if you were never made uncomfortable by anyone else, I doubt things would ever change and America would ever grow.

 

Absolutely! Some of the most important marches in American history have happened in major metro areas like NYC. In fact, of all the protests in the United States in February of 2003, NYC was the largest with several hundreds thousand (estimates range from 300,000 to a million, though based on images it's probably closer to 300k). Did you know that the marching permit requested for that protest was met with a judicial denial? That protest was peaceful, too. And, interestingly, there were also numerous incidents involving overzealous police attacking peaceful protesters without provocation.

Have there been any reports of injuries or slowed-down emergency vehicles from Occupy Wall Street not always being 100% on the sidewalk? Or is it just slightly worse traffic? The latter I can live with, tbh.

 

I don't like that. Back in the 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s it wouldn't be a problem. Now, if I were at this protest, I would be questioned by my employer the next day.

You have cameras everywhere, facial recognition will match it with your DMV, Facebook, or passport photo, and it will go into a database.

Am I paranoid or do I know too much?

Yes, they probably made the law to prevent the KKK from marching in robes and violent anarchists from protesting and destroying stuff. But for peaceful protests...it is easier to protest if your regular life and job aren't in jeopardy.

 

cyn is basically arguing that convenience should over-rule political protest. you don't want the little people getting all unruly and preventing the righteous passages of the deserving, now do we?

that he can appeal to reactionary local laws that put the nypd in the position of determining what is and is not legitimate protests, where it can be and how it can dress, is to me laughable. but i suspect things would run differently were the occupation invoking a political platform he supported.

kirstang: the problem with the high-school dictionary factoid about democracy is two-fold: the question at the center of the occupation, considered at a remove, is whether the incapacity of the present political arrangement to address the consequences of the wreckage that it has made through the sustained application of this free-market illusion is a matter of policy or a matter of plutocracy. if it is the former, then it'd be reasonable to restrict protest to conventional channels (merriam-webster world). if it's the latter---and i think it is (but in a more complicated scenario) then the issue becomes the effects of plutocratic control over a formally democratic system. so the issue is, then, whether the united states is as it claims it is. the answer seems to be that it isn't. what terms are going to get co-opted in order to make the case?

it's likely, judging from here anyway, that one of the central rhetorical conflicts is going to be who gets to control the notion of democracy, who gets to attribute what actions and outcomes to a democratic process. that means the conflict is going to be political and philosophical. and so it makes sense to think in these terms, and not view them as theatrical props that you assemble in order to grovel at the feet of some imaginary grad school professor.

 

As I said before, I don't think we have enough information on the permit issue yet. I don't know if a permit was applied for and denied or if no permit was applied for or even if a permit is still being considered. If you have access to that information, please post it for everyone. All we know now is the current protest isn't permitted.

 

Have they applied for a permit? Were they denied one? Or have they not yet applied? As I've said several times, we don't have that information yet. All we know is they don't have an approved permit as of now.