REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Growing pains

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Sunday, November 20, 2011 09:42
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Friday, November 18, 2011 7:16 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Quote:

Last night, police raided and evicted protesters from the Occupy Wall Street site. This comes on the heels of recent police crackdowns on Occupy encampments all across the country. But if you think that's the end of the 99% movement, guess again. It's still just getting started.

To be clear, the Occupy camps are for the most part rigorously and passionately nonviolent and, incidentally, much cleaner than most would expect. But there are a few punks in the crowds, mixed in with some who have sought shelter in the camps who bring along struggles with mental illness or drug addiction. In other words, the 99% movement isn't violent; sadly, our society in general can be violent, and that violence seeps into even the most well-meaning spaces. And enemies of the middle class would use any ammunition they could find to attack the 99% movement and evict the protesters.

Nonetheless, the Occupy camps gave urgent birth to a movement that was long-gestating in the anger and frustration of ordinary Americans. Now that it's been kicked out of the house, it's time for the 99% movement to grow up.

Movements are, of course, always moving -- and so it's impossible to predict where they will go. But I expect a couple of key shifts in the coming weeks.

First, look for the 99% movement to move away from the "occupy" tactic. Holding public ground for public protests has captured the attention of the nation in a way few other protests ever have. But behind the scenes, protesters were increasingly worried that the problems associated with the camps are starting to outweigh the benefits. Plus it's getting damn cold out and, even in nice weather, the Occupy sites take a lot of energy to maintain.

No movement should be beholden to a limited set of tactics. The colonial Americans didn't just keep throwing boxes of tea into bodies of water.

The civil rights protesters didn't stop at sit-ins and bus boycotts. Similar to the "Move Your Money" campaign calling on the 99% to divest their checking and savings accounts from the top job-killing banks on Wall Street, I think we'll start to see more experimental tactics that draw on mass action and public engagement without necessarily being rooted in outdoor sleepovers. This will be messy at first, with many misses and few hits, but is an essential next step if the 99% movement is to continue.

Second, look for leaders to emerge. The Occupy camps have been fervent in their supposedly leaderless structures, frustrating critics and media observers alike. But, as keen analysts have observed, the 99% movement is, in fact, leader-full -- creating opportunities for everyday Americans who've felt cast out of the political process to find their voice and vision and work with others to achieve their goals.

The movement isn't anti-leadership but rather pro-leadership to the point where it's investing in building the power and skills of thousands of new leaders. Yet given the practical limitations to an entirely decentralized, consensus-based decision-making process (which, among other things, allows a few vocal yahoos in favor of property destruction to have too much sway), clusters of leaders will start to emerge in the struggle to define the movement's next phase.

But don't expect them to look anything like the "leaders" we're used to. Instead, they'll include single moms and construction workers and recent college graduates and homeless people. Because of who they are and the way they lead in the context of the larger movement, they will redefine our understanding of leadership.

Third, wait for factions to splinter. While we'd all love to keep holding hands and singing "Kumbaya," the reality is that as the 99% movement gets bigger, so do the stakes and various differences and divisions that once seemed trivial become impossible to ignore. The small minority within the protests who are eager to vandalize property and confront police will, let's hope, be sidelined and that their reckless acts will be seen as doing violence to the larger mission of the movement.

Of course, it would be great if these small factions could be educated and transformed, but the reality is that in every movement, left and right, there's a fringe and, ultimately, a moment where that fringe is no longer accommodated but rejected. The raids and evictions may be the impetus for this shift in the 99% movement.

Whatever happens next, it's clear that the movement to make our economy and political system work for the 99% has barely completed the first 1% of its long and vital journey. You can evict protesters, but you can never evict a growing idea. http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/15/opinion/kohn-occupy-next/index.html

I agree. The mayors getting together to unify their efforts to break up the camps was pretty obviously the next step, and we DO need to get more cohesive and not be rooted to one spot, partly because it gives TPTB an easy focus for its efforts to kill us. It's time for the next step, whatever it might be, and I think he's got very valid point on what those next steps should be. OWS has awakened the nation and grown, now it's time to do something with all those who have been awakened.

We're still in our infancy, so I'll be interested to see where we go from here.

ETA: Something needs to be done to counteract the MSM's determination to ignore the movement, too. After their initial interest, followed by their focus on the negatives, their new tactic seems to be to virtually ignore us. There was little on the news websites this morning about yesterday

I mean seriously; there's a movement going on in Americ which may well change the face of our country, and these are the top stories??
Quote:

Police Reopen Natalie Wood Drowning Case. Was Robert Wagner at Fault?

Bella's Breaking Dawn Baby and 9 Other Scary Movie Pregnancies

Is the Obama Administration 'At War' with Catholics?

Why the Party of Mexico's Old Dictatorship Is Poised to Return to Power

Teen Birth Rates Plummet. Thank the Lousy Economy

8 Money Habits of the Happily Retired

The Best Shopping Apps for Black Friday

Those are the "headline" stories on Time's website. Says something about TPTB and the MSM.

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Friday, November 18, 2011 8:02 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


This belongs elsewhere, so I'm deleting the text.

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Friday, November 18, 2011 12:55 PM

CANTTAKESKY


Quote:

Originally posted by Niki2:
Something needs to be done to counteract the MSM's determination to ignore the movement, too.

Contrary to popular belief....

Schools are not there to educate. They are there to indoctrinate.

Military is not there to protect the American people. They are there to invade countries for the interests of American and foreign businesses.

Main stream media is not there to inform. They are there to entertain and distract us from making our leaders accountable for their shenanigans.

So why would anyone be surprised or indignant that MSM is ignoring OWS? That is what they are PAID to do. Hello?


-----
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)

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Friday, November 18, 2011 1:22 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


OK semi-tangent response -


The first time I realized how tightly controlled the media was, was when WNYS (western New York State) had a major power surge around 8PM, back in the mid 70's. It fried - all sorts of things. Major radio stations that went off the air and didn't come back on. Hospital central computers. Bank computers.

You would THINK that such an obvious, widescale, well-observed event would have a mention in the news.

Nope.

The next time I personally observed how well-controlled the US media was was listening to US news, and CBC news regarding the war in Angola, and US involvement. Over the course of 9 or so months, it was a an every-day news item on CBC, and was literally not mentioned on US news. Ever.

The next time I noticed it was driving into work and listening to the news, they reported that a majority of the Arab League had voted for US (GHWB) intervention in Iraq - Gulf War I - except they gave NUMBERS. I spent the next 3 weeks trying to find those numbers again, to no avail.



You really don't get how controlled the media is until there is an important piece of information you have, that you can't find in the 'news'.

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Friday, November 18, 2011 1:49 PM

CHRISISALL


The first time I realized it was during the Iran/Contra affair. The conflicting & contradictory reports made for an interesting & ultimately horrifying puzzle to put together from the endless BITS that 'slipped' out.
That's when I realized that we, as an informed populace, were basically humped.


The laughing Chrisisall


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Friday, November 18, 2011 2:05 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important


Hello,

My realization of the problem was much more recent. I noticed that news sources were getting all of their news from official sources. Then they were parroting each other's stories almost verbatim. This was blazingly apparent when a piece of mistaken information was acquired by one news source and then copied by all the others... only to later have the mistake revealed as embarrassingly obvious. It was at that moment I realized the news sources were no longer conducting any investigations. They were simply repeating what they'd been told. That's how a piece from the Onion can circle the world three times before anyone notices.

Well, if they are consuming whatever they're told and regurgitating it to us, then they have- through their lack of diligence- become a propaganda arm of the government. It doesn't even require active collusion. Just laziness.

I can only hope that the 'Internet Reporter' movement serves to at least make sure we are getting regurgitated news from several different points of view. The pieces might combine into a semi-coherent picture of reality. I have no high hopes of anyone actually investigating anything.

--Anthony


_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner


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Saturday, November 19, 2011 2:32 AM

FREMDFIRMA


Quote:

Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I can only hope that the 'Internet Reporter' movement serves to at least make sure we are getting regurgitated news from several different points of view. The pieces might combine into a semi-coherent picture of reality. I have no high hopes of anyone actually investigating anything.


Bah, you just ain't lookin in the right places - they ain't all as crazy as PN or as obfuscatory as me...

Indymedia, for one.

-F

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Sunday, November 20, 2011 9:42 AM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht


Niki, I agree with your article. I thought it was time for them to move in new directions after two or three nights of camping, but obviously most of them didn't agree. Most of the Occupy protestors I know weren't actually camping at the park, they would go down there and hang out, but they'd go home at night, I think, in my city, most of the campers after the first week were homeless individuals, though I know some active protestors did still camp. But yeah, its time to head in a new direction and for the movement to keep moving with new plans.

I've known for a long time that our news is not complete in regards to world affairs. Only recently though did I realize that our local news does the same thing, they only tell us _some of what goes on. For instance there was this huge shooting right near my older brother's house in which five people were killed. Never mentioned on the local news. There was an incident where the busy street near my house was shut down for 5 hours, the only thing the news said that night was that someone had been shot but they didn't know details yet, they'd be forthcoming, but it was never mentioned again. That bothers me because I'd already accepted that our national media was flawed, but not being able to count on my local news was another story. Disappointing. The only reason my brother knew that five people were killed near his house was because he went over and asked the cops what was going on.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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