The OWS thread, part II

Care I say... what happened to this thread??

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The protests are still alive even if they have been overpowered by the police, thus is a topic worthy of discussion.

OWS, insofar as I can tell and until any new developments, has effectively failed...

I think it went off topic and got locked? And that other thread turned into the place to discuss OWS? In any event, there haven't been many upsets lately. With the media blackout in effect, it's kind of hard to get the message out. *shrug*

In any event, there's only so much protests can do; actions other than just parking yourself in front of buildings need to be taken. So... I dunno, we'll see what happens.

I was there a few weeks ago and it was smaller than I expected. Also, where I'm from, parks have grass and other vegetation. The number of police vehicles in the area was truly astounding, though.

I did get a copy of the Occupied Wall Street Journal, though.

What exactly was in this newspaper? I'm curious.

I haven't got around to reading it because I was ill at the time and busy reading Ciaphas Cain books.

OWS is in the process of shifting strategies from long-term occupations of particular sites, to more short-term occupations focused on particular issues, like home foreclosures. Probably not much will happen that is newsworthy until spring.

it will become more relavant as the electoral cycle puts on edge just about every political entity in the country.

Yeah, they seem to be doing that Occupy homes thing lately. I'm... not sure how legal that is, actually. Is it in any way helping the people it's intended to help?

• shrug* Anyway, at some point they have to move from general protesting to more focused action. I'm not saying stop protesting, but someone's going to have to name a specific goal to work towards. I know there's already a list out there that most can agree on, but it's like... are they going to run for office, do rallies, what?

Whatever. I hope they keep Occupying foreclosures. That shit needs to be done.

[[Here http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/01/06/occupy-wall-street-from-zuccotti-tents-to-political-primaries/]] is a Time Magazine article speculating on the future of OWS, mostly in New York.

And some analysis on OWS's decision making process.

edited 6th Jan '12 11:16:12 AM by DeMarquis

I'm close to an Occupy...

Could you tell us something about it rather than make an empty post? Like what city? Or what they're currently doing?

Seattle, and I don't know, but my brother is one of the medics...

To be fair, that doesn't particularly matter anymore. The legal process for protesting stifles it beyond any usefulness whatsoever, so you kind of have to break some kind of rule en masse just to get off the ground. To have any real leverage against the ivory towers of the law itself, you really do have to make Occupy Jail a very possible consequence of their continued action.

why am I now imagining how this would work

Not much to think about. You can only arrest so many people before you don't have anyplace to put them.

Well, see, occupying a home that's being foreclosed on is a different thing than occupying a park. There's a very specific intent behind occupying the home that I agree and sympathize with, but somehow I think that's much more outright illegal than what went on in Zuccotti park. Course, I don't know how foreclosures work and I know that banks can bully people out sometimes, but there's a slippery ground there.

@Ace: Foreclosures work differently in different states. Generally speaking, they send you notices, and if you don't send them money, they seize your property and eventually put it up for auction.

The problem, however, is that there is very little in the way of regulation and oversight in the foreclosure process. Depending on the state and the bank, they may even go so far as to seize and auction off personal possessions to pay off the money owed.

There's also not a lot of regulation as to how far in debt you have to be before foreclosure proceedings can happen. We started getting foreclosure notices while we were in the middle of refinancing negotiations because the bank was refusing to fully process our payments, for example. The money was coming out of our account, but it was going into a holding pool instead of being applied to the mortgage, and they tried to seize our house.

edited 6th Jan '12 7:27:34 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

Sounds like that whole thing needs reform. Yikes.

Banks in general need reform. another one of their more famous banking exploits is what caused so much legislation over overdraft fees. because some banks would quite literally wait till you were about to overdraft..then process fees and hold money at the exact right steps to turn what would logically be a single overdraft, into 4 overdrafts.

edited 6th Jan '12 8:10:07 PM by Midgetsnowman

Occupy Prison actually gives me an idea, because there is a simply massive prison lobby in america. Privately run prisons which give prisoners appalling living conditions on the cheap then charge the government extra for the privilege of housing prisoners in their privately run prisons. They pay the guards shit as well. Then they take the money and go back to the government to lobby for harsher laws, which increases their population, increasing their profits.

And the lobbying isn't all that hard. A lot of private prisons are a part of the American Legislative Exchange Council, and every business representative has a veto over a new law which cannot be challenged.

There's a difference between prison and jail. You're not particularly likely to end up in the former for something as minor as trespassing.

Which is a very good thing, mind.

edited 6th Jan '12 9:25:44 PM by Pykrete

Occupying a park and occupying a foreclosed home actually break the exact same law: trespassing. If the owners want you out, they have the right to ask the police to remove you. The thing with occupying a foreclosed home is the extremely negative PR that would occur if a bank asked the police to forcibly remove occupiers and the family they are protecting. So far, I dont think any of them have actually taken that step....

I know, jail is small time stuff, for a few days or over a trial, I think. Prison is long term punishment.