Occupy Wall Street list of demands - are you serious?

[Ghost]

Caste system? We're getting there...

[Zach929rr]

I think occupy wall street is ran by a guy that occupies his parents basement.

[Vellos]

If CSC were a country we'd place 160th for our literacy rate. And I'm pretty sure there's nothing a pudgy little nerd could say to offend me. Don't have an asthma attack while you're trying to flame me brah.

[King Nothing]

Don't worry. I'm prepared.

[Ghost]

http://news.yahoo.com/insight-occupy...162336698.html

MIDDLE-CLASS FANTASY?
For all the sympathy it inspires, the movement may struggle to build mass participation.

Edgar Aracena, a New Jersey-based organizer for the Health Professionals and Allied Employees union, has been an activist since he was a student in the early 1980s. He said many Americans have an ideological problem with economic-based protests. "There is a fantasy in the United States that we are all middle class and we will all be the boss one day. People buy into that," he said.

Aracena said as he tries to organize workers he would characterize as the working poor, they question whether they need the protection of a union, telling him, "We are not the working poor, we are professionals."

In Europe, by contrast, Aracena said, workers proudly identify themselves as working class. So when something happens to spark potential outrage and protest, workers are clear which side of the system they stand on.

As the protests enter their fourth week, the size of the crowd has begun to grow. As many as 5,000 marched on Wednesday. Such numbers pale besides the 50,000 or 60,000 protesters who would gather at International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings a decade ago or the more than 250,000 people who marched against the Iraq war in New York City in 2003.

Still, the protest is among the largest in New York since demonstrations against the Bush administration at the 2004 Republican Convention, which organizers said drew 500,000.

But as the nascent movement gathers steam, struggles and problems are apparent. Is their message clear enough? Who is their leader? How long can they last, camped out in a concrete park as the weather chills? Who will control it?

Such questions have sown discord.

POETS AND PAINTERS
The young nucleus of the protest say they remain "in charge." But older activists want more organization and purpose from the denizens of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.

Walter Hillegass, a plumber from Queens who says he can no longer work due to Ground Zero-related illnesses, said new leadership was needed to bring the protests to their full potential. "They need a little help right now to focus them a little better," said Hillegass.

He and some union brethren from New York and Boston commandeered one of the stone tables in the park as their own little area, from which they were trying to spread the message that the movement was about more than just Wall Street greed.

Others worry that unions want to co-opt the event.

Christopher Guerra, 27, complained unions would not allow him to speak at Wednesday's rally. "They were here for their own thing," said Guerra, a paint-splattered artist who calls himself a conservative Republican. "I wanted to give a speech but they wouldn't let me."

Some of the movement's backers also said it had to remain pure and reject outside influence.

"It really depends on the cohesion of this group, not having people come in from the outside and taking it over," said Rev. Brian Merritt, a spokesman for the Occupy DC movement camped out in McPherson Square, just off K Street, Washington's power row for corporate lobbyists.

Georgetown's Kazin said while protesters have not articulated their goals, "If this movement continues to grow and continues to be popular, which is just as important, then the pressure will mount on politicians to do something."

Judging by comments from U.S. President Barack Obama, their message is being heard by some in Washington. "I think people are frustrated and ... the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works," Obama told reporters on Thursday.

At least one top Republican, however, had no time for the Wall Street protesters. House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor referred to them on Friday as "growing mobs" that are trying to divide the country.

[Ghost]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...b_1000157.html

Once Occupy Wall Street demonstrations started to sweep across America, the mainstream media began to pay attention -- and sounded a chorus of criticism. The movement was disorganized; it had no agenda. It wasn't organized like the Tea Party. Fox News trotted out ace reporter Geraldo Rivera -- really -- to charge that European anarchists, paid illegal aliens, and out and out leftists were behind the innocent kids. Herman Cain led disapproving Republicans, calling the movement "un-American," when he should have been celebrating what it was doing for pizza sales.
Virtually everything said about this movement is wrong. Stand back; take a clear look. Every politician should understand one thing: this is coming at you and you must decide. Whose side are you on?
1. Moral clarity
Occupy Wall Street has no policy agenda, but it has utter moral clarity. The demonstrators have built an island of democracy in the belly of Wall Street. The bankers looking down on them would be on the street had not taxpayers bailed them out. And now they are confronted with students sinking under student debt with no jobs, homeowners who are underwater and can't find mortgage relief, workers desperate for work.
No one is confused about the message. Wall Street got bailed out; Main Street was abandoned. The top 1% rigs the rules and pockets the rewards. And 99% get sent the bill for the party they weren't even invited to.

2. Non violent discipline
That moral clarity was dramatized when the demonstrators stayed disciplined in the face of police provocation, including pepper spray in the face. The movement did not begin to sweep the country until people saw the police protecting Wall Street's banksters by assaulting peaceful protestors. Suddenly this wasn't a disorganized, rag tag gathering. These were citizens under attack for exercising their rights. That struck a powerful moral chord.

3. A Rising Protest
Across the country, people have responded to this clarity. Unemployed kids rallied to their side. White-collar workers stopped by for lunch. Suburbanites came in to share. On Wall Street, Liberty Square became a tourist center.

Unions and national progressive organizations marched in support, without pretending to speak for the demonstrators. For progressives, this surge of protest began building months ago, when thousands of people rallied to take over the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin to protest Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to crush worker rights. It built over the summer as thousands turned up at town meetings and sobered legislators with their demand for jobs, not cuts. The Washington Post suggested that unions and national organizers were resentful of Occupy Wall Street, but in fact most were buoyed by the energy unleashed, the moral challenge posed.

4. Political Steamroller
Pundits dismiss Occupy Wall Street for not having a clear agenda. They are told to turn their protests into political demands. Some offer suggestions of what they should advocate -- "infrastructure investment" says Paul Krugman, a speculation tax on banks, home mortgage relief. The press wonders if Occupy will become the left-wing Tea Party and run candidates in elections, as if left-wing Koch brothers were orchestrating the protests.
But this is silly. Occupy Wall Street is already a political steamroller. Without an agenda, without an electoral operation, without a slate of candidates, if it continues to grow, it will force every national politician to decide whose side he or she is on. Are you with the banks or with the 99%? And prove it. Reporters will insure the question gets posed; voters will be interested in the answer.

This is a question that discomfits the White House, as Vice President Joe Biden admitted, since the administration bailed out the banks without reforming them. It is a question that exposes Republicans -- particularly Tea Party Republicans -- the ersatz populists who brayed against the bank bailout in the election, and then have worked tirelessly to rollback any reforms, gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and reopen the financial casino. It is a question, as the demonstrators show, not simply about the banks. The demonstrators demand action on jobs. And they want Wall Street to pay us back -- not cuts in Medicare or student loans or schools.

And these challenges are likely to grow more stark. Mass unemployment is continuing. More and more Americans are losing their homes. More kids are graduating from school into the worst jobs scene in decades. Big banks are in increasing legal and financial peril for their pervasive fraud and abuses in the housing bubble. Independent Attorneys General like New York State's Eric Schneiderman have launched investigations. Investors are collecting on lawsuits.

If this economy continues to stagnate or slow, which seems increasingly likely, banks like Bank of America are going to looking for another bailout. And once more, every national politician, from the president on down, will have to decide whose side they are on.

5. It's Only Just Begun
No one can predict what happens to Occupy Wall Street, but the public protests have just begun. When the Civil Rights Movement took off, it too faced many of the same criticisms. It had too many demands. Its priorities were unclear. Did it want only to overturn legal segregation? Why was King going to Chicago? Why was he talking about poverty, and not just about equal rights? How dare he talk about the war?
But King wasn't the only voice. There were competing and complementary centers of power. There were lawyers and lobbyists. Students in SNCC chafed at King's caution. Black power challenged integration. Riots shook the country.

Movements aren't tidy. They aren't organized. They unleash energy. They inspire ordinary people to leave their daily routines and do extraordinary things. They inspire; they insult; they mortify. They disrupt business as usual. And if they touch a chord, they grow, and they force politicians and citizens to decide.
Historically, when America has reached the levels of extreme inequality and corruption that it now witnesses, popular movements arise to demand change. The populist movements of the late 19th century took on the Robber Barons. Unions, left parties, Huey Long and his "every man a King" movement pushed Roosevelt from the left in the 1930s. And now, even as pundits were wondering where the left was, the eruption is beginning again.

Will this movement be a factor in the 2012 elections? It already is. Will it make clear demands? It already has. Whose side are you on? Wall Street or kids in the street? The top 1% or the 99%? It doesn't get clearer than that.

[Zach929rr]

[Ricky]

Maybe it's a negotiating tactic

Seriously, that shit is fucking crazy.

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

Scary thing is these dolts believe it.

This is your brain on Liberalism. Any questions?

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

Awesomeness!

[Drano]

Awesomeness!

Seconded

[King Nothing]

Seconded

Thirded

[TFOGGuys]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...b_1000157.html

I'm a little skeptical of a Huffington Post editorial, as they have proven a little less than neutral...as has Fox News. Both are as biased as the KKK in their own way.


I am a 53%er. Are you?

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

I'm a little skeptical of a Huffington Post editorial, as they have proven a little less than neutral...as has Fox News. Both are as biased as the KKK in their own way.


I am a 53%er. Are you?

Yep, definately not one of the "99%'rs".

[rforsythe]

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.
Evan Esar

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
Jorge Luis Borges

[ThorsTwin]

Demand Fourteen: We want some winter coats, because our asses will be freezing off in the near future! It's another Colorado College Poly-Sci project. Birkenstock wearing, Daddies Landrover Drivin' Starbuck's drinkin, outta touch mofo's. Get in touch & get a job.......

[tecknojoe]

Just noticed there's an Occupy Denver now. WTF is that about?

also, 99% of those protesters are crybabies that don't know the meaning of hard work

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

Just noticed there's an Occupy Denver now. WTF is that about?

also, 99% of those protesters are crybabies that don't know the meaning of hard work

You just now noticed? Welcome to last week! Actually, I heard they were in place on the second?

[tecknojoe]

haha shit. I've been trying to ignore those assholes since I'm too busy working to stay employed

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

Demand Fourteen: We want some winter coats, because our asses will be freezing off in the near future! It's another Colorado College Poly-Sci project. Birkenstock wearing, Daddies Landrover Drivin' Starbuck's drinkin, outta touch mofo's. Get in touch & get a job.......

So, any guesses as to if these loopy idiots are Liberal or Conservative? I'm betting.....Liberal.

[tecknojoe]

So, any guesses as to if these loopy idiots are Liberal or Conservative? I'm betting.....Liberal.

aw now u turned the thread to

[MetaLord 9]

Not like I'm coming into this thread without reading the previous pages or anything [/sarcasm] but now that these hippies are "occupying" Denver and sucking up my morning news girls' time, just what's the frigging problem?

[Nooch]

People in America watch too much TV. This isnt Egypt or Libya. Our gov't isnt killing the people. I had some guy from Occupy Denver the other day start preaching to me about how we need to rise up and take down our totalitarian government. So I asked him..."What does totalitarian mean?".

Suffice it to say, he didn't really know. Most of those guys probably lack the cred to be dishing out the verbiage. And if thats the case, how could they possibly be attracting others to the movement who actually understand the cause?

[Vellos]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1..._n_997825.html

/cscdramastartshere