The Occupy Movement in 2012

The point is that being obnoxious doesn't fly. If you want to be verbally obnoxious while you get dragged to a squadcar, go right ahead. But being physically obnoxious is going to get a physical response.

I'm sorry that you can't get away with being obnoxious, but most people in life can't.

Although my favorite response to someone pulling the whole dead weight trick was something a partner of mine did a few years ago when I was new. A contractor got fired at his workplace on base and was shouting obscenities and refusing to leave. When we showed up, he turned those obscenities immediately on us, and we started to pretty much carry this guy to our squadcar. Right around the time he said "Fuck the military, you're a bunch of fascist savages!" my partner promptly dropped him on his head(We were still inside, it was cheap government carpet, not concrete or anything, but it still must have smarted) and went "Oops, slipped. Sure you don't want to get up and walk out quietly?"

I stood him up and he decided to walk the rest of the way.

I just can't say I'm unhappy with the rules providing a means to not let the people who want to be obnoxious to get the last laugh. If you want to try that bullshit, good luck, we have obnoxious bullshit that isn't illegal that we can use too. We have more practice.

Anyway, to shift this back to events that have happened with Occupy: The reason the police use certain crowd control tactics such as tear gas and the like is because they don't usually have the manpower to safely just arrest everybody, either by virtue of not having enough officers or not having enough space in the back of squadcars to get everyone out of there. Plus, police departments really don't want to arrest a ton of people. An arrest can really fuck with your life, your job, and your family. The ideal outcome is for people to disperse, and the safest and best way to make a crowd of people disperse is to chuck a bunch of tear gas into the mix so the area they are staying put in is so uncomfortable that they make the conscious decision of their own free will to gtfo.

It just isn't feasible to arrest an entire crowd, so you have to use options that effect the entire crowd. That's either through gas, or through doing things like thinning the herd by arresting a few people, which might also intimidate others to leave out of fear of being arrested. If you're on parole and at a protest and people start getting arrested, you'll be one of the first people to think twice about sticking around.

The reason for riot gear with shields, batons, and lines, is officer safety in the event that the crowd turns violent. Shields repel thrown objects, and with a cohesive phalanx of guys with shields and batons who are working as a team, the numbers disparity doesn't mean as much to police officers. It also works towards demonstrating that the officers are in control of the situation by showing that level of organization. If you want to move a crowd of people, you pop some CS gas into said crowd and use a riot line to push them off the site they are camped out at, preferably by funneling them into an area that has other groups of police officers who are ready to handle people on a more case by case basis where they can single out members of the herd who are being violent or disruptive. Also, riot masks do a decent job of keeping tear gas off of your face once said gas starts to settle.

As mentioned, all this could be avoided if the court system would rule on squatting and protests more specifically.

edited 15th Jun '12 11:54:26 PM by Barkey

Well, this, ladies and gentlemen, is why there's no recourse left for average Americans.

You can't strike. Most unions are weak, destroyed, or hostile and conservative.

You can't protest. The militarized police will laugh at you and you'll never win an excessive force argument in or out of court.

You can't riot. The militarized police will again laugh at you.

You can't vote. It doesn't really matter.

You can't petition. They ignore it.

What's left? Yes, Barkey, we get it, squating is against the law. Who the Hell cares? This isn't about the law, this is about the system being both broken and generally useless. But really, at the end of the day, it doesn't actually matter anymore, because basically anything anybody wants to do isn't going to make a dent in said broken system.

I mean, honestly, when was the last time a successful mass movement happened? The '60s? The Seattle protestors in the '90s and OWS were brushed off like flees. The Democrats are beyond useless and the Republicans are the enemies. The unions are dead and the advocacy groups are mostly for niche social issues (gay marriage) or against almost everything worth advocating for (things like the Cato Institute).

So, let's change the question, because this discussion is circular and kind of boring. Squatting is illegal, Barkey. Alright. That is factually correct. So instead of attempting to debate the rightness or wrongness of this (who gives a damn?), let's instead ask you, as a police officer, what you expect the people to do to change the system. Well?

The only way you'll change the system is to wait for another generation of Politicans to come through (and make sure the Occupy ideals are part of it) — or bring down the whole system, by means of a outright Revolution.

You'll start a Civil War, but if you want to change the system, how far is the Occupy Movement willing to go? All the way to Civil War?

An outright revolution would be very bad, but the next generation of politicians is unlikely to be much better in any tangible sense.

Taking those points in order:

• Strikes
  • Strikes are not working for two reasons
    • The unions were mostly for the production workers and we are now a service economy
    • High unemployment. There are so many people looking for work that anyone who strikes is fired and someone else takes their job.
  • The people who most need a union are the ones in low-end service positions. The store workers. The problem is most of the people in those jobs see them as an intermediate step, not their final job. Can you imagine the power of a union that represented the workers of Sears, Wall-Mart, etc.?
• Protesting and "excessive force"
  • What Barkey is saying is what most people are seeing as "excessive force" is just ordinary operating procedure. And the reason that it has become operating procedure is because there is no other way for the police to do their job. Do you have an alternative to suggest? Don't say just standing by and letting the violent protests and squatting happen because that means they are not doing their job.
  • And there are tons of protests that don't have any violence/arrests that are harder to hear about because they are harder to make "news" out of. It is not the news reporters' fault that they have to report on violence/arrests to keep their viewer/reader-ship and ignore other news reports.
• Riots
  • What is the point of rioting? What most people in the Occupy protests have realized is that the protests are quite disruptive enough if there are enough people. Destroying people's property just turns the rest of the population against you unless the authority's response is even worse (looking at Seria).
• Voting
  • Tell me, how did so many "Tea-party Republicans" get elected? By people voted for them. True, we do not have good options right now, but if you don't vote, why should the elected officials listen to what you have to say?
• Petitions
  • Petitions only really work in combination with voting power. That is the main recourse the public has if the politicians ignore the petition.
  • There are a number of laws that get on ballets because of petitions/signatures. How can they not be working at all?

Please note: I do agree that most of those options are not working like they used to/should. But to fix those options you have to understand why they are not working.

edited 16th Jun '12 8:31:28 AM by Belian

Well, I vote whenever possible, and I also spread awareness to anybody I know by talking politics when I get the chance. You don't have to spread awareness by breaking the law, hell, one of the best things you can do is walk around talking to people, handing out fliers, and just in general trying to spread the word and awareness.

Voting would count if people weren't so goddamn stupid about it, they either go "Man, it isn't worth it. My vote doesn't matter, so I just won't vote." which is extremely counterproductive if people start behaving this way en masse.

Making an ass of yourself while a public spectacle isn't the answer, it's through political education of your fellows and spreading awareness.

The only reason this system thrives is because Americans are apathetic, uneducated, and lazy. If our society would pull its head out of its collective asshole, we would be able to actually accomplish something. But no, they would rather sit around and watch the Kardashians on TV.

I've often said that if Occupy would put the energy into changing the system that they have into disrupting it, shit would get done. Protesting in the streets is inherently a risky game; cops will beat you, media will demonize you, and people who don't agree with you will hurt you.

It feels cathartic to wave a sign and shout about how angry you are (I know, I did it, it felt great), but beyond making people aware that "something is going on", it doesn't do anything. If the Occupy movement really wants change, they are going to have to work for it the old fashioned way.

That means voting, it means petitions, it means researching the issues, it means getting involved in the system. The system is broken; instead of whining about what we all already know, let's roll up our sleeves and fix it.

EDIT: that said, I think Occupy Homes is truly doing good work. It turns every foreclosure proceeding into a public event, instead of the nice quiet procedure the banks want. Which is good, because the banks are committing out-and-out theft in some instances, and making this public knowledge is good for everybody - except the banks, who deserve the bad press.

edited 16th Jun '12 9:44:20 AM by drunkscriblerian

It's easy to complain about the average person not being motivated to work within the system, but is there any practical way to motivate people wholesale that doesn't involve the same kind of corruption, dishonesty and emotional manipulation that we complain about Fox News and the GOP using on a regular basis? A team sports mentality might pack people into the voting booths, but it also exacerbates things that I'd like to see us, as a species, grow out of.

Barkey, from another thread I know you're not super-approving of gambling. Why, then, are you advocating that people must work within a system that is rigged significantly worse than a casino?

As far as spreading education on the issues goes, education is a form of leisure, albeit one with a payoff. You can't ask for people to partake of leisure if they're too busy working their asses off just trying to survive, that's cart prior to horse.

When the answer to 'How do we make the world a better place' becomes 'Change human nature,' we have a problem.

edited 16th Jun '12 10:20:23 AM by Karkadinn

... I thought by the way I was talking in that thread I was showing that I gamble often, and enjoy gambling? Rambling about Blackjack strategies for a few pages should have shown that.

To keep going with the gambling analogy, here is what I think:

We're working within a rigged system because we're rigging it ourselves. There are two groups, essentially, in politics, that make up the majority. The first group are people who don't know anything about the game they are playing. They are sitting down at a Blackjack table with barely any real understanding of the game they are playing. Blackjack is a game where the odds of the player or the house winning are almost even, and when you take different strategies into account, you can actually turn the odds to your favor so that the house is at a disadvantage. You wouldn't sit down at a poker table and start throwing money around without knowing the rules to the game whatsoever, why would you do that with voting for how your country is ran? Then there are the other folks who simply choose not to play, and while it doesn't quite fit with the gambling analogy, lets just say that by not playing, they are missing out on "winnings" that could improve their quality of life.

Then, we have the other group of people. The established political system of the US and the sports team mentality driving unwashed masses to vote for them. These established political groups are basically master gamblers, ace blackjack players who have figured out a way to put the house at a disadvantage, and have the odds on their side. The people who vote for them aren't doing it because they know the game, it's because these politicians are saying "Play with my simple formula and strategy, and you'll win." and these people do. It's like following stock market decisions of a prominent and wealthy stock broker, you can have a bunch of idiots with no clue what the stock market is all about, but because they trust the broker, they'll buy shares in YGE just because the broker says so. These are the people who vote Democrat or Republican, not because they know jack shit about the issues, but because they've been manipulated into doing so by the institutions and misconceptions of the established political system.

What I advocate is everyone doing their part to educate everyone else on the rules to this "game" so that they can choose how they want to play intelligently, and know the rules involved. Talk to your family, talk to your friends, if you really want to advocate your cause, stop doing stupid protests for attention, and start sending people all over the city armed with pamphlets, fliers, and actual knowledge about the injustices of our political system, and just start talking to people. It's not like every OWS supporter knows all that much about politics, there's a lot of folks in the movement who only make the contribution of knowing that they are unhappy with the system, knowing that they are angry, and not knowing why. Any idiot can shout slogans with a sign about how pissed off they are, but idiots aren't going to change anything, people who educate themselves and educate others are the bar none best way to accomplish something in this country.

Be constructive and be proactive, spread the gospel, so to speak. And don't do it with stupid ass taglines that are meant to provoke an emotional response, do it by looking at the complex problems our country is going through, and breaking down and explaining why they happen and possible ways to fix it to the common man. Even established politics is too lazy to do that, instead they go for the heartstrings and try to stir people emotionally with social issues, because apparently breaking things down into laymans terms and educating the populace is either too much effort, or considered counter-productive.

Ignorance is the enemy here, not the system. The system is benign and static, a tool that gets manipulated and used by people. Learn how the system needs to be manipulated to make this country a better place, and then educate other people on that knowledge.

I'm not saying people need to sit through classes, 10 minutes of someones time who is walking around downtown is something that isn't too hard to get. Say "Hey, what is it in this country that contributes the most to making your life harder than it needs to be?" "Well here's how that works, and why it's the way it is, how do you think we should try to get it changed?"

Community outreach on a massive scale is what Occupy should be doing, not camping out and yelling while holding signs, that's stupid as hell and counterproductive.

edited 16th Jun '12 10:41:49 AM by Barkey

Yes. It would be highly miniscule, because we live in a globalized world. What is a single, likely regional, union going to do to a transnational corporation with multiple governments in its pockets?

I want the police and firefighters to be out there protesting with us, Goddammit.

Even Barkey knows that the US populace is an apathetic waste of any political activist's time. You can't get their attention to educate their idiotic minds because they're too busy watching stupid daytime television and wasting their days away as wage slaves.

Well, if you can't get their attention because of the system, you tear down the damn system and grind it to a halt and you take their attention.

It's not solely the reporters' fault, no. Ray Bradbury and Aldous Huxley saw this coming in the '40s and '50s, for God's sake. Education is worthless if the people cannot and will not be educated. Our own technology has numbed us to anything that matters anymore.

Practically speaking, nothing. Rioting is not a desirable tool anymore than revolution is. But in a situation where there is not simply a negative response, but more a lack of response, anything that can force a response is better than nothing at all.

If they won't listen to you sitting on TV 24/7 explaining what's going wrong, maybe they'll damn well listen when you come and set their TV on fire.

The Tea Party is a manufactured political movement that had the backing of billionaire businessmen when it was actually relevant. That is why they succeeded. The moment the billionaires pulled their support in favor of the new toys—the super PACs—the Tea Party fell apart. Progressives don't have billionaire supporters. They can't mount that kind of campaign.

Oh yes, because we're so happy about all the gay marriage bans they've been getting on the ballots for State constitutional amendments.

I comprehend why they're not working. My point is that they cannot be fixed.

If the situation is one where you know why your tools aren't working, and also that they cannot be made to work again, it's time to find new tools. The days of general strikes and mass movements is over.

Except they do, all the time, because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the electorate is in fact incompetent and generally worthless for progressive causes.

And how do you suggest we educate a population that can barely have its attention held for five minutes for a slew of daytime soap operas and reality shows? When your audience's eyes glaze over at the mere mention of simple statistics there's no point in making an argument to them.

You note that our society is apathetic, uneducated, and lazy. What I am arguing is that it's to the point that there's simply nothing more we can do for the populace for that problem. At least, not for the foreseeable future. We can't afford to wait twenty or thirty years for the populace to, as you say, remove its head from its collective ass. We need to pull an essential 180 at this moment, because there are quite a few problems that cannot actually be addressed in thirty years time—primarily in the realm of environmental protection.

Again, how? You mention Occupy Homes. That's great. Do you see politicians passing laws to regulate banks properly? Hardly. Occupy Homes is treating the symptoms, not the disease. It's nice to spout platitudes about changing the system, but one must realize that we currently have no viable method of doing so.

I am of the opinion that, if push comes to shove and the only way to get anything progressive done is to turn the Left into a mindless voting bloc like the Right already has, I am fully prepared to do so. Intellectual liberation can come after physical liberation.

edited 16th Jun '12 11:07:54 AM by DerelictVessel

Sorry if I got the wrong impression from the Gambling thread; I'd skimmed it last night and hadn't bothered to look at it again this morning to refresh my memory.

I'm not saying that what you're saying is a bad idea or that it's not something that we should be doing, but it's just one piece of the puzzle, not a magic tonic to fix everything or something that's morally superior to every other solution. if it ultimately comes down to calmly explaining the facts versus relying on emotional manipulation, the party given to emotional manipulation will ALWAYS win. That's just human nature. That's why the Democrats have lost over and over again, laboring under the delusion that if they just EXPLAINED things for the nth time, people would finally UNDERSTAND. But you can't beat human nature, it is what it is under given circumstances.

The ideal isn't order or law, it's justice, and justice is sometimes achieved through illegal means as well as legal ones. You use every possible means because that's what's required to win against overwhelming odds, nothing less, and because if you really believe in justice then nothing should be subservient to it.

By placing so much emphasis on people bettering themselves and learning to play the game, as it were, it seems to me that you also implicitly place disparagement on those who don't. While it's unfortunate that we don't always attack oppression where its head is raised, or inform ourselves before placing judgment, these things are broadly speaking inevitable, and those who submit to oppression still aren't worthy of being oppressed just because they're human.

Everyone here is thinking too big. You have local politics, don't you? I pay far more attention to county initiatives (and the action of my state Senators and Congressmen) than I do to things on a national level. Your vote carries far more weight at the local level then it does in, say, the Presidential race.

A small group of progressives trying to impact federal politics is probably not going anywhere, you're right. But a small group of progressives attending a town meeting or trying to get a local law changed works and works well.

And with the Internet to keep all the small local groups organized into an at-least-vague national agenda, things could get done.

Occupy has already proven its ability to stay connected, share ideas and keep motivated in the context of protesting. What could it do if it shifted its focus to actually making things stick?

You do?

Most people I know on the local leve never know jack shit about whats on the local ballot unless a political group runs pro or against ads for it. Otherwise its just something they read the summary on at the voting booth.

edited 16th Jun '12 11:13:05 AM by Midgetsnowman

I do. I'll admit that staying on top of initiatives and their text can be somewhat difficult, as the language they use...well, I assume its English but sometimes I'm not sure. Sometimes I think law school isn't about law but learning to write in a language no one but a graduate can read.

I also find I know more about what the laws will affect, because hey...I live here. It's easier to make an informed choice.

Local level politics aren't going to fix issues surrounding foreign policy, transnational corporations and globalization, or environmental issues, and those are what really matter in today's politics for the long-term.

I can grasp the idea of local level politics having potentially significant influence on the national scale, but only if you live in a swing state. Which is, of course, part of the problem....

I mean, look what Florida did for Bush.

But if you're not in a swing state, I can't see how it would make a big difference.

Yeah, I mean of course you have more power over local issues, but the local issues aren't the ones that are eviscerating our economy on a transnational scale.

@ Derelict:

Neither will National level politics. And international-level politics? See the Eurozone, or Syria? Nobody can agree to do anything right now.

Nobody's in control here. Neither the politicians, or the media, or transnational corporations — if the Euro falls, what will happen to the corporations? The leaders of the corporations can't save the Euro, since the politicans won't listen...

There isn't going to be a solution for any of those issues any time soon.

EDIT:

In other words, you're basically asking for a Supertanker to turn on a dime? Well, that isn't going to happen. And think beyond America — would you say the same about world society, in general?

Exactly.

Derelict, nothing will happen if people don't do anything — if that means being an Internal Reformist, so be it. Like everyone else has said here, understanding a problem and why it happens is step towards answering it, even if the answer isn't one you'd like or want. One must understand the system and be playing it to win, and be reasonable — not every battle will be, can be won.

But most of all, what is needed is a charismatic leader, one that will energise people worldwide to do something. That's the only chance you've got.

edited 16th Jun '12 3:04:07 PM by Greenmantle

I think Derelict is so determinedly negative about the whole thing that there is no convincing him that anything can be done at all, as evidenced by his giant rant about how ignorant the populace is. Never mind that that's not even entirely true.

I think the thing to take away from this is that you need to decide to do something, and then do it. It doesn't really matter what scale you're thinking of, you need to pick something and then stick to it, or you won't do anything at all. It's pretty obvious that all areas need to be worked on in some manner, and the problems are too myriad to point to any one thing and say that's the one thing that needs to be fixed to cure it all.

You think that somehow will get positive feedback? I know your angry, but listen to that sentence for a minute. If some asshole comes in and sets your TV on fire, the last thing you think is "Hmm, I wonder what this group is about. I'd better look at what their grievances are with an open mind!"

Then tell people at protests to stop insulting cops and throwing shit at them and acting like they are the enemy. As with the TV example you gave, being a dick gets you attention, but it's negative attention. I don't know a cop anywhere who supports OWS, and it's because to cops, all OWS is is a bunch of hippies who hate cops and result in tons of unbilled overtime for the department.

Then you keep trying and win every small victory over making a person care whenever you can. This is still a democracy, and it isn't a fault of the system if voters are idiots. You either keep trying, or you worry about taking care of yourself and the people you care about and shut up or move. You don't get the right in a Democracy to throw a fucking tantrum and break peoples shit because the majority doesn't care about what you care about. God knows they don't care about what I care about, and most of them never will. I refuse to undermine the Republic on the basis that the majority are idiots. They totally are, and it's totally going to screw us, but being a dick doesn't get good attention, it is completely and utterly counter-productive.

edited 16th Jun '12 3:12:30 PM by Barkey

Actually...if they're idiots because of a self-reinforcing system of the people in charge being bought off to fuck with education and run self-serving media that masks the fact that they're voting in the very people exploiting them, it really is.

edited 16th Jun '12 3:24:02 PM by Pykrete

Well, I would argue that the current sociopolitical hegemony of the United States means that our national politics have a lot of pull overall, but you are right in that dealing with national politics won't necessarily fix international problems. It'll do a lot more than focusing on local politics, though.

I know it isn't going to happen. That's another problem: even if we begin to address, say, global climate shift thirty or forty years from now, it'll be way, way too late and we'll already be utterly screwed by that point. We have to fix things now, and that isn't going to happen. By the time it does, we'd be better off leaving it be and watching the fireworks.

We should have been doing this kind of thing in the 1970s when the United States began to fall apart. It's way too late to be starting now.

If I could go back and do it all over, I would tell them not to do Occupy Wall Street. I think you've misunderstood part of my point. My point is not "we need to do more riots and protests." My point is that those things don't work anymore, and that Occupy Wall Street was a bad idea from the start because it was never going to accomplish anything.

You don't win by protesting anymore. That's been true for thirty years. You win by hijacking the system and dragging it by the ear towards something better. In a country where a lot of people decide who to vote for based on how the candidate looks or what letter is in parenthesis next to his name, that probably will mean disregarding what a lot of people think, too. So be it. A lot of people don't think global warming isn't real; that doesn't mean you cater to them in the name of democracy, that means you ignore them because they're either brainwashed or the people creating the problem to begin with.

Though I disagree that a leader is what we need. We need a lot of leaders. A Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. isn't going to solve the problem. What we need is an FDR or LBJ in every executive and legislative seat we can manage.

No, I think we can do quite a bit yet. It's just going to involve sabotaging democracy and breaking the law in the process. Of course, squatting laws aren't what I have in mind, though.

Well, I didn't quite mean that so literally, but as I said, riots and revolutions are weapons of last resort. Primarily because they involve killing people (and in the case of riots, are rarely productive besides).

I'm not the guy who will tell you a riot is the go-to option. I'm the guy who will tell you that gerrymandering and dirty campaigning definitely is, though.

Do you know what "regulatory capture" is?

@ Derelict:

You're still thinking way too small — you need millions in every single country and territory on Earth, at all levels of society, not just in the U.S.A.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Is it too late not to use the Nuclear Option? I don't mean riots, I mean grinding the world to a halt. Anyway, I'm off to bed.

After what I've said here: Hello Cheltenham!

edited 16th Jun '12 3:39:52 PM by Greenmantle

In theory. In practice, to set a large portion of international policy you only need to grab control of a handful of countries' individual agendas.

Er... no... too big (I was thinking more along the lines of things like voter fraud, actually...), and I don't really like nuclear weapons, as a long-term issue.

Well... I suppose that would technically work. It would just make every other current political issue totally irrelevant and kill most of the people we meant to help. It's also, you know, a terrible idea.

If it involves sabotaging democracy, or voter fraud, it's not fucking worth it. Let's not give the conservatives some actual basis in fact to move against us. Seriously, your solutions are both stupid and unproductive in the long run.