Classism

When is it really "squatting"? Suppose you have rich landowners who deliberately keep large, LARGE portions of their lands unworked, say, as hunting grounds, or to keep the price of food up, keeping many people unemployed and perhaps even starving.

Now suppose those landless farmers gather together, with their tools and the sweat of their brow, and start working the land despite its owner's wishes. Should the landowner shoot them? Should the cops or the army shoot them?

If they refuse arrest? Yes.

What are you, Lawful Neutral?

I'd say yes. However most unused farm land is unused because the US government pays them not to farm to keep prices high.

Actually that's an example from the Spanish Civil War. It was, in fact, land and property law that were among its main causes.

In Islamic countries that wouldn't happen: land you don't work for five years is not yours anymore. It's the law.

Actually that's an example from the Spanish Civil War. It was, in fact, land and property law that were among its main causes.

In Islamic countries that wouldn't happen: land you don't work for five years is not yours anymore and becomes Up For Grabs. It's the law.

Well, there's Squatters Rights, which has been discussed before, as a means of dealing with that. Although it would depend on what they're trying to do with the land. If they're not growing any crops because they want a small forest, I wouldn't say people have any right to knock down the trees to grow their crops. Of course this still extends from argumentum ad baculum.

Moot point: you want to get a popular movement with enough volume and momentum to be impractical for a force like the National Guard to perform mass arrests. Beat the critical threshold, and the logistics of driving that many people off becomes impossible unless they are willing to resort to inhumane tactics (like firing on unarmed nonviolent protestors with lethal force), at which point, the psychological warfare aspect kicks in.

There are currently about 14.8 million unemployed in the United States. According to That Other Wiki, the National Guard's "end strength" is 467,587. If even half of the unemployed in the states were to organize, it'd be impossible to arrest them all.

And the organization would quickly fall apart due to organizational problems of some group that size with little skill sets.

There is an approach to grass-roots organizing called "affinity circles" that is designed to allow large numbers of people to coordinate their actions without a highly structured leadership. It was invented by the anti-globalization groups and is currently being used by many tea party organizations.

Talk about Gone Horribly Right...

A Zerg Rush composed of the unemployed Gone Horribly Right? That makes my skin crawl...

No, I mean a tool invented by alterglobalists being used by Tea Party foolspeople.

Yeah, it's kind of surprising, the alterglobalists managed to invent something that didn't involve a riot or wasn't a novel method of smoking weed.

He's got a point...