Occupy Wallstreet, one year later

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**Relapse**

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/16/13891055-one-year-later-what-ever-happened-to-occupy-wall-street?lite

I guess being able to crap in the streets and cost cities and tax payers thousands of dollars in cleanups isn't the draw it was a year ago.

**Palindrome**

Relapse wrote:

I guess being able to crap in the streets and cost cities and tax payers thousands of dollars in cleanups isn't the draw it was a year ago.

I strongly suspect that you have missed the entire point of the movement.

**Melissia**

It 's not like Relapse actually paid any attention to the movement back then, either.

But I'd also point out that the Tea Party itself isn't the same as it was when it started off. It's no longer a grassroots movement unconcerned with political parties, it's basically just a fringe wing of the Republican party now.

**Relapse**

Palindrome wrote:
Relapse wrote:

I guess being able to crap in the streets and cost cities and tax payers thousands of dollars in cleanups isn't the draw it was a year ago.

I strongly suspect that you have missed the entire point of the movement.

You mean people suckering large groups into living in filth on the streets, all the while thinking they were doing something useful? Sorry, saw it with the hippie movement in the 60's which family members were involved with. The whole squatting on the streets looking for a hand out thing is as bogus now as it was then.
Most hippies grew mature and moved on, looks like most occupiers did the same.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's interesting how the article talks about a lot of the energy of the movement was diverted by debates on whether they should be violent or not.

**Jihadin**

If I remember correctly he TeaParty pretty mch obeyed the laws to.

**Palindrome**

Relapse wrote:

You mean people suckering large groups into living in filth on the streets, all the while thinking they were doing something useful? Sorry, saw it with the hippie movement in the 60's which family members were involved with. The whole squatting on the streets looking for a hand out thing is as bogus now as it was then.
Most hippies grew mature and moved on, looks like most occupiers did the same.

I'm still sure that you don't understand the movement. I do find it interesting how you seem to focus on the sanitation aspects of their protest rather than anything meaningful.

**Relapse**

Palindrome wrote:
Relapse wrote:

You mean people suckering large groups into living in filth on the streets, all the while thinking they were doing something useful? Sorry, saw it with the hippie movement in the 60's which family members were involved with. The whole squatting on the streets looking for a hand out thing is as bogus now as it was then.
Most hippies grew mature and moved on, looks like most occupiers did the same.

I'm still sure that you don't understand the movement. I do find it interesting how you seem to focus on the sanitation aspects of their protest.

I had family members in New York that hadtodeal with it. They weren't impressed with the occupiers they met, either.

**Palindrome**

Relapse wrote:

I had family members in New York that hadtodeal with it. They weren't impressed with the occupiers they met, either.

And......?

**Jihadin**

Meaning OWS lost credibilty

**Seaward**

Palindrome wrote:
Relapse wrote:

I guess being able to crap in the streets and cost cities and tax payers thousands of dollars in cleanups isn't the draw it was a year ago.

I strongly suspect that you have missed the entire point of the movement.

If the point of the movement was to accomplish...anything, really, then it failed.

The Tea Party got more than a few Congressmen elected, Congressmen who pursued non-negotiable obstructionist stances. Which is exactly what the Tea Party wanted them to do.

On the balance, the Tea Party was a more effective movement.

**Relapse**

It's interesting to note the change of tone NBC news has towards the movement. A year ago, they were lionizing the Occupiers as opposed to their current tune that reflects what Fox's attitude was back then.

**LoneLictor**

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.…

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bs, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that…

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote this about the hippie movement. It's also applicable to OWS. Though their hearts were in the right place (and I agreed with what they were yelling about), ultimately they accomplished nothing.

**whembly**

Where's the OWS in this?
http://reason.com/archives/2012/09/13/occupy-the-fed

Quantitative easing—a fancy term for the Federal Reserve buying securities from predefined financial institutions, such as their investments in federal debt or mortgages—is fundamentally a regressive redistribution program that has been boosting wealth for those already engaged in the financial sector or those who already own homes, but passing little along to the rest of the economy. It is a primary driver of income inequality formed by crony capitalism. And it is hurting prospects for economic growth down the road by promoting malinvestments in the economy.
...
...
To put it simply: More quantitative easing is not going to move the dial much on the growth meter.

Taken together, the crony capitalism and negative wealth effects of quantitative easing should clearly give pause. The fact that QE promotes activities that led to the housing bubble should have stopped its progression as an idea a long time ago, especially since these problems are greater than any gain that would come from this now perpetual pace of money creation.

If there is a time to head down to Zuccotti Park and raise some cardboard in opposition to the continuation of such a devastatingly failed policy, it is now.

**Relapse**

LoneLictor wrote:
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.…

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bs, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that…

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote this about the hippie movement. It's also applicable to OWS. Though their hearts were in the right place (and I agreed with what they were yelling about), ultimately they accomplished nothing.

I remember as a kid on the family farm in Northern Maine waking up in the mornings to the smells of incense and Petuli oil with Cream, Moody Blues, or The Doors playing in the background as I got ready for school. My father wasn't a big fan of my sisters hippy friends that used to come visit the farm and camp out, but he always made a place for them at our table and came to like quite a few of them.
During one of those summers a couple of cousins that rode with Hells Angels, but weren't members came out from California and with the aid of friends and family, painted up my sisters bedroom in 60's psycadelic that became the scandalized talk of the town.
It was an interesting time and enviornment for a kid like me, with my views, to grow up in.

**Frazzled**

I don't know much about Dallas except the Cow Palace is there, and a certain book depository. Going to that Plaza feels weird though.
Barbeque and honkey tonks I am sure.

If you can go to Austin. Six Street (drunken college street), and don't forget Barton Springs. Thats where the topless coeds hang out.

Don't go to Hippy Hollow though. Again thats just weird.

**Relapse**

Frazzled wrote:
I don't know much about Dallas except the Cow Palace is there, and a certain book depository. Going to that Plaza feels weird though.
Barbeque and honkey tonks I am sure.

If you can go to Austin. Six Street (drunken college street), and don't forget Barton Springs. Thats where the topless coeds hang out.

Don't go to Hippy Hollow though. Again thats just weird.

Fraz, I think you took a wrong turn at Wall Street. The Texas thread is two blocks over.

**Frazzled**

Woops sorry.

**Melissia**

Jihadin wrote:
If I remember correctly he TeaParty pretty mch obeyed the laws to.

Plenty of Tea Party members broke the law. Many times during protests as well.

**sebster**

A while ago, when people thought The Tea Party might end up being anything other than the craziest wing of the Republican Party, there were a lot of stories about prominent Tea Party people doing and saying all kinds of crazy, offensive nonsense. I love that lots of the same old right wingers were so quick to jump and point out the Tea Party was a diverse all the people and the actions of one crazy couldn't be used to discredit the whole movement.

And yet those same folk don't see anything wrong with dismissing the entirety of the OWS movement because of the actions of a few.

whembly wrote:
Where's the OWS in this?
http://reason.com/archives/2012/09/13/occupy-the-fed

Quantitative easing—a fancy term for the Federal Reserve buying securities from predefined financial institutions, such as their investments in federal debt or mortgages—is fundamentally a regressive redistribution program that has been boosting wealth for those already engaged in the financial sector or those who already own homes, but passing little along to the rest of the economy. It is a primary driver of income inequality formed by crony capitalism. And it is hurting prospects for economic growth down the road by promoting malinvestments in the economy.

That's just nonsense. Lies told to fool non-economists.

Quantitative easing isn't a fancy name, it's the name given to the stance a central bank will take on monetary policy when buying and selling bonds to influence interest rates aren't sufficient for the economic problems in the country. And so instead they will buy a fixed quantity of bonds to pump more money into the economy, and ward off concerns of deflation.

The rallying call you're asking people to fight against can basically be summed up as 'we don't understand how this works but someone made it sound scary so lets tear it down'.

**AustonT**

sebster wrote:

The rallying call you're asking people to fight against can basically be summed up as 'we don't understand how this works but someone made it sound scary so lets tear it down'.

Yeah that's never worked before.

**whembly**

AustonT wrote:
sebster wrote:

The rallying call you're asking people to fight against can basically be summed up as 'we don't understand how this works but someone made it sound scary so lets tear it down'.

Yeah that's never worked before.

Okay... that's a "/thread" if I ever seen one...

@Sebster: all that does is give the banks more "cash" on hand...

What it doesn't do is ecourage the banks to lend "more"... the first two QE really did make that much of an impact... the danger here is that unlike the first two QE, there's no "end date" for the current program... that is, "they'll keep buy bank assets, ie, print money, until things look good". Here's the thing, when would that be?

EDIT: Oh, and commodities market is on a real upswing, this QE seems to depreciate the dollar... which pushes the price in Oil future markets... know what these things can lead to? Higher inflation...

**Frazzled**

Palindrome wrote:
Relapse wrote:

I guess being able to crap in the streets and cost cities and tax payers thousands of dollars in cleanups isn't the draw it was a year ago.

I strongly suspect that you have missed the entire point of the movement.

As soon as they can find a point, please illuminate us.
In Houston we had difficulty telling the homeless from the Occupymyassers. According to people inside City hall, they asked to use city power and be supplied bottled water. Denied.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:
It 's not like Relapse actually paid any attention to the movement back then, either.

But I'd also point out that the Tea Party itself isn't the same as it was when it started off. It's no longer a grassroots movement unconcerned with political parties, it's basically just a fringe wing of the Republican party now.

It was always concered with political parties. Thats why (for good and ill) it pushed many candidates. Many of them won.
How's that Occupysomedeodorant work out again?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Palindrome wrote:
Relapse wrote:

You mean people suckering large groups into living in filth on the streets, all the while thinking they were doing something useful? Sorry, saw it with the hippie movement in the 60's which family members were involved with. The whole squatting on the streets looking for a hand out thing is as bogus now as it was then.
Most hippies grew mature and moved on, looks like most occupiers did the same.

I'm still sure that you don't understand the movement. I do find it interesting how you seem to focus on the sanitation aspects of their protest rather than anything meaningful.

They didn't do anything meaningful. There were some assaults, rape, etc. but I don't think thats what you mean. On the positive they allied with unions, which gives unions a further bad name.

**Peregrine**

Frazzled wrote:
It was always concered with political parties. Thats why (for good and ill) it pushed many candidates. Many of them won.
How's that Occupysomedeodorant work out again?

Well, given that we're posting in a "one year later" thread in September, I'd say that means it's a bit too early to tell. You know, because of that trivial little detail that there hasn't been an election since the whole Occupy thing.

**Jihadin**

If I had a choice between Tea Party support or OWS support. I pick the Tea Party. OWS lost all credibility when it got ugly with law enforcement. Have not heard of democrat that has support from the OWS at all.

**Leigen_Zero**

I'm really not sure what any of the occupy protests were actually meant to do in the first place.

As a protest method, it was fundamentally flawed. Why the hell did they think that going to wall street and living in a makeshift slum outside the offices, which contain multi-millionaire businessmen, in hand-made, tailored, designer suits with expense accounts larger than the GDP of some 3rd-world nations (and that's not even taking into account their own vast personal fortunes), would convince them to give up their massive sums of money made from risky and corrupt banking pratices and live the life of a 99%er.

I mean, they are protesting folks who probably wipe their backsides with $50 bills by living in a tent and crapping in garbage cans. I'm quite sure that those investment bankers really felt moved to submit to their cause as they wallowed in a hot-tub filled with money and champagne...

**kronk**

Leigen_Zero wrote:
I'm really not sure what any of the occupy protests were actually meant to do in the first place.

Neither did they. Do you recall their initial website with their initial "manifesto". It was all over the freaking place. For a time, each of the Occupy (Fill in the Blank) groups had their own. Here is one of them.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice [good start—the bailout WAS mass injustice—I'm still pissed-off about it], we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.

We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence [In some cases, yes], and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

And here is the one for Zucotti Park, also in New York.

A MESSAGE TO AMERICA FROM THE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY IN ZUCOTTI PARK

Dear fellow Americans,

We are assembled in Zucotti Park — which we’ve renamed Liberty Plaza — in the financial district of New York, because we believe that the American economy is heading in the wrong direction and we have a few ideas for what to do about it.

There is a feeling shared by a growing number of people on the streets of the world that the global economy has become a kind of Ponzi scheme, a global casino, run by and for the benefit of the 1 percent.

We believe that it is possible to inject justice into the global economy. We have come up with the following list of things that can be done right now to rejuvenate democracy and economic justice in our country:

• Halt foreclosures for the unemployed, sick and elderly

• Increase funding to public services by taxing the richest 1 percent

• Forgive all student loan debt

• Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act in order to control speculation

• Work with the other G20 nations to implement a 1% “Robin Hood” tax on all financial transactions and currency trades

• Ban high-frequency ‘flash’ trading and bring sanity to the markets

• Break up the “too big to fail” banks that threaten our future

• Arrest the financial fraudsters responsible for the 2008 meltdown and bring them to justice

• Ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence corporate money has on our elected representatives in Washington

If you agree with any of these demands, then join us! We will stay here in our encampment in Liberty Plaza until President Obama responds to each of these demands. This is just the beginning, there is more to come as we work together to reshape America.

— The People’s Assembly of New York City

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/17/occupy-wall-street-the-draft-manifesto/#ixzz26jRllOdr

I love how they all want their student loans absolved. Please. No one forced you to take out $120,000 so that you could get your B.S. in Classical Literature from Harvard. Suck it up, buttercup.

**Frazzled**

Kronk you're not being nurturing. How would they know those classical degrees in basket weaving wouldn't pan out?

**ShumaGorath**

Relapse wrote:
Palindrome wrote:
Relapse wrote:

I guess being able to crap in the streets and cost cities and tax payers thousands of dollars in cleanups isn't the draw it was a year ago.

I strongly suspect that you have missed the entire point of the movement.

You mean people suckering large groups into living in filth on the streets, all the while thinking they were doing something useful? Sorry, saw it with the hippie movement in the 60's which family members were involved with. The whole squatting on the streets looking for a hand out thing is as bogus now as it was then.
Most hippies grew mature and moved on, looks like most occupiers did the same.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
It's interesting how the article talks about a lot of the energy of the movement was diverted by debates on whether they should be violent or not.

Yep, you pretty much missed the bus there. Like always.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jihadin wrote:
If I had a choice between Tea Party support or OWS support. I pick the Tea Party. OWS lost all credibility when it got ugly with law enforcement. Have not heard of democrat that has support from the OWS at all.

Here I thought the teaparty lost all credibility when the people it elected fethed up the budget ceiling debate and got our credit rating downgraded. I guess they didn't deadweight in some protests at least. That's the important thing.

**AgeOfEgos**

LoneLictor wrote:

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Man, some of his stuff is tough to digest--but HST could write.

**hotsauceman1**

kronk wrote:
[

I love how they all want their student loans absolved. Please. No one forced you to take out $120,000 so that you could get your B.S. in Classical Literature from Harvard. Suck it up, buttercup.

I agree, sure there are a few things i agree with them, but yeah, there are ways of going through school w/o incuring dept, like what i do, fill out financial aid, and i got up to nothing for my units.
And then there are scholorships or grants.