Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

from what i've heard: as far as the vandalism of City Hall goes, apparently that wasn't intentional -- it was accidental -- there were physical struggles with security/cops and those items got damaged. The only intentional damage was the flag burning.

Quan is going to "call some of the national leadership of Occupy" to see if they'll rein in Occupy Oakland or disown them. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/30/BAPQ1N0G9K.DTL&tsp=1

right.

mission accomplished!

xp

if that doesn't work, she'll call the protesters' moms and tell them how disappointed she is in them.

picturing Quan calling a payphone near Zuccotti hoping someone in power answers.

lol

I guess I'm not really clear on what Occupy Oakland is trying to accomplish with their tactics. if they just want to continue to fight a running street-war with the cops, well okay you got it, good job. just seems like a waste of resources for an already-strapped City fully stocked with asshole cops.

well, they stated they wanted to open a community center and provide services to the community, so i'd guess they're trying to accomplish that.

illegally taking over a building - a public building that's owned by the city - maybe not the best way to accomplish that

just guessing here, but there may already be some clearly established process for opening a community center, I'm not sure

squatting has a pretty long tradition. they didn't succeed but i don't think that their attempt was the complete failure of tactics you seem to.

explain the clearly established process for upending the current economic system that favors the rich and the rich only and starves our cities of their resources. i think you elided that.

wait I thought the goal was to open a community center

explain the clearly established process for upending the current economic system that favors the rich and the rich only and starves our cities of their resources. i think you elided that.

google+ iirc

seems like the best way to find out what's going on with any occupation would be to go down & ask

why bother when you can argue on the internet.

The first step in upending the current economic system is to hold a dance competition at the vacant building and *poof!* there's your community center. Seems to work whenever an evil developer is trying to turn one into an orphan factory/kitten blood processing plant.

orphan factory/kitten blood processing plant=jobs amirite.

Quan is going to "call some of the national leadership of Occupy" to see if they'll rein in Occupy Oakland or disown them. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/30/BAPQ1N0G9K.DTL&tsp=1
― wmlynch, Monday, January 30, 2012 4:38 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i actually empathize w/ her to some extent but this is completely hilarious.

http://www.thejournal.ie/protesters-take-over-nama-owned-building-and-open-it-to-the-public-339068-Jan2012/

I've been down to OccupySF (back when there was one) - I'm not bothering going over to Oakland, I have other shit to do. But way to not engage with the issue - which is tactics and the efficacy thereof.

just like you didn't engage with the oakland occupiers. i am noticing a pattern

“This is about lifting the veil of secrecy around NAMA and making the buildings available to the public,” Mick O’Broin, a member of the group told TheJournal.ie today.

M'OB RULE

fuckin postrophes

wasn't there a separate thread for occupy concern-trolling?

I don't live in Oakland fyi

xp

honestly not trying to do any trolling, sorry to upset whatever hivemind thing you guys got going here jesus christ

shakey mo will be first against the wall in the glorious new regime imo

I was just asking 'cause my searching was turning up nothing

There's a pretty established way to get the community center thing going. One way is this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNhMjziHgzk

But a more normal way is to, you know, create a campaign, connect with community leaders, etc. Instead of thinking you can change the world with one bold piece of action! And then go home and forget about it the rest of your life.

I'm not gonna cast those kinds of aspersions, Spectrum, but yeah I don't really understand what's so irretrievably broken with the City of Oakland's process for establishing community centers/designating unused property that the only acceptable/feasible response is a riot.

y'know the Panthers built Community Centers and got shot at/firebombed/bricks thrown at them, etc. but I don't recall any instances of them attacking city hall.

march turned into a 'riot' when the cops started firing projectiles into crowds AGAINST THEIR OWN INTERNAL POLICIES and like two days after a federal judge told them (yet again) to cut it the fuck out. don't recall all the uproar about that but ok.

i wonder why the 'one bold piece of action' strategy doesn't work.

taking over the Kaiser building was doomed to fail from its inception, the occupy leaders had to know they weren't going to be allowed to stay. it was a pretty good pick symbolically, but if they really wanted to make it work they probably could have picked a dozen other buildings and made a fair go of it, at least for a little while.

march turned into a 'riot' when the cops started firing projectiles into crowds AGAINST THEIR OWN INTERNAL POLICIES and like two days after a federal judge told them (yet again) to cut it the fuck out. don't recall all the uproar about that but ok.

― wmlynch, Monday, January 30, 2012 5:05 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is true. but it's also true that the police (over)response was prompted (if not justified) by the stated purpose of the Occupy action.

i'm not sure how. violating internal procedures controlling how they use violence is justified because protesters wanted to enter an empty building?

sparkle motion otm.

i'm not sure how. violating internal procedures controlling how they use violence is justified because protesters wanted to enter an empty building?

― wmlynch, Monday, January 30, 2012 5:12 PM (50 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

did you read the part just above your comment where i use the word UNJUSTIFIED?

ha actually i DON'T use that word (heh) but i do say that the police tactics were "not justified"

the police's job is to uphold the law not break it

my point is just that the police were responding to a threat of criminal trespass on private property, which you can see is likely a more severe breach than marching on a public right of way.

that doesn't mean that the tactics the police were using are "justified," but it does mean that a harsh police response could have been predicted. indeed sometimes i think certain actions are taken precisely to prompt a harsh police response. which isn't ALWAYS a bad tactic in every context, but seems like a bad one in this time and place.

cops were totally wrong (as usual) AND ALSO totally predictable

not just trespass but occupation, and not of a traditionally public space either.

now this may be a good idea in the best of worlds (make productive use of vacant buildings) but this particular instance had no chance of succeeding, especially undertaken the way it was. so either the organizers are incompetent or they were seeking an asymmetric police response.

xpost yes

like omg the OPD didn't follow their own policies/the law call the feds oh wait

xp

but yeah I don't really understand what's so irretrievably broken with the City of Oakland's process for establishing community centers/designating unused property that the only acceptable/feasible response is a riot.

Yeah, it would help to know the history behind this.

yeah amateurist i misread (or misunderstood) your comment above. and shakey is right the police tactics were entirely predictable, but still completely unjustified.

the nlg and aclu already have a lawsuit pending regarding opd's violation of their internal policies and their federal overseer has said no more but opd can't stop won't stop.

this is a police department that is set to be taken over by the Justice Dept because of their ineptitude/institutional assholism iirc

frankly I consider it a small miracle that the OPD hasn't killed any Occupy Oakland people yet

can't say they haven't tried.

sparkle motion otm.

this.

the problem w/occupy's tactics insofar as i see them is that a lot of what i'm reading is breathless recitations of events taking place on the street, like they're talking about physical action and the geography of battle, for lack of a better term, and to me all it's doing is showing me something i already know, which is that cops can often act like complete assholes (to put it mildly) when given a single sliver of opportunity to do so. and i'm not sure street confrontations do much good anyway other than prove those already proven points.

i agree 100% with occupy's opinions on shit, generally speaking.