Reminder: Occupy Toronto has about 30 minutes before they are officially infringing upon the city by-law. The cops are probably going to shut it down tonight. If you're interested, the livestream will be going all night (they have equipment to keep it running for at least 24 hours after the cops cut any external power sources).

http://occupyto.org/

being frank: a bunch of jackasses standing around in parks aren't going to do jack-fucking-shit(except, as everyone has seen, is piss normal people off who use whatever-area), until the cops start shooting kids nothing worth happening will happen, and i await this day

call me hard-hearted or sick but i honestly believe it true, such is the nature of the disease called apathy that plagues North America(by extension the western world and then the world itself) and until something truly fucked up happens it will never inflame the people-grannies and kids can be pepper sprayed/baton-ed into the next millenium without so much as a lifted finger but when the full metal jackets start flying.....that's when shit is truly gonna go down

i could be wrong though, the bullets could fly and even less could happen.....in which case we are truly fucked

Four people were shot to death while peacefully protesting at Kent State in 1970.

I believe that was part of his point

I don't believe Occupy Wall Street will go anywhere. That being said, I support it. Everyone should have a role in the government, not just the rich.
But nothing will come of it. No politicians support them. They have literally no voice. The only thing they can do is start a revolution, which I really don't want to see.

I think it is at best a gigantic hyperbole to say that the poor have no voice whatsoever, but they certainly are underrepresented and obviously can not afford expensive lobbyists. As for no politician support, New York City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez was arrested at an OWS protest and more familiar names like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi among others have expressed varying degrees of support for the movement.

I completely disagree with the sentiment that revolution or bullets flying is the only way to get change, is the idea of democracy so naive?

Speaking as an outsider who is not familiar with how OWS is doing things over there (although I don't think it will differ much from what is happening here), I see two possible mistakes in your reasoning:

1.- They do have a voice. Their own. And if it's loud enough (read: more voices join, and those needn't be politicians' voices) someone will hear it. Maybe they won't listen at first, but it's unlikely that they wont' act on the long term, either to do what the voices say or to try to silence them. And either outcome will have an effect.

2.- I believe you meant "violent revolution". They already have started a revolution, in the sense that it's getting people to do something (however useless it may or may not be) about all the stuff they don't like. People that until recently had merely endured unjust situations without complaining are now speaking and acting against them, and that's already something.

Now, I'm not saying it will work. I'm just saying that assuming it will not work because of those two points doesn't look like a very sound reasoning to me.

Oh, and while we're at it, I could probably offer proof of how these things have an effect, however small (but growing): the presidential election held a couple days ago here in Spain. Here, the protests focused, among other things, on promoting the "informed vote" (i.e. don't vote A to prevent B from winning, or because it's what you've always voted; learn what each party is about, and vote for the one that best represents your ideas), and therefore promoted not voting the big parties that always hog all the power, which are the ones responsible for the current situation. And while the two major parties still got the majority of the votes, the party previously in the Government lost around 4 or 5 million votes, of which barely half a million went to the party that won, at best. The rest went to other parties, which has resulted in 13 parties being represented at Congress, the highest amount since the first democratic election after the 40 years of dictatorship that followed the Spanish Civil War.

In this case it doesn't amount to a lot since the winner of the election has an absolute majority in both Congress and Senate[1] (i.e. half plus one of Congressmen and Senators belong to that party, which in practice lets them do as they please even if all the other Congressmen and Senators oppose them), but if things keep progressing like that (and that's the thing some people are missing, that the social change required for the effect that the protests seek to happen will take time), in a few years those two parties will lose a lot of power in favour of smaller parties that are more willing to work towards accomplishing what the protesters demand. Plus it is an improvement from the previous elections (where governments for the autonomous regions in which Spain is divided were elected), in which the votes to other parties didn't grow as much as they have now.

[1] Note that this doesn't mean they got more votes than at the last election. It's all due to how seats in Congress and Senate are assigned. In fact, the party that won this year scored less votes (but obtained more Senators and Congressmen) than the party that was in the government had in the previous presidential election.

Former AIG CEO Sues Claiming Taxpayers Need To Pony Up $25 Billion More

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/1 ... #f308b62ad

The nerve some people have is absolutely mind blowing.

Here is an interesting interview with one of the students pepper sprayed by John Pike. One thing I think people forget is that this is not just a OWS type of protest (which people hate, at least in part because the media has demonized it), it is against a proposed 81% raise in tuition. Looks like the internet is giving it pretty bad to the perpetrator of the police brutality, the memes showing him pepper spraying in famous scenes have gone viral, and the hacker group Anonymous has leaked his personal information.

http://boingboing.net/2011/11/20/ucdeyetwitness.html

also:
http://studentactivism.net/2011/11/20/t ... -violence/

Yes

Yeah, I doubt anything will happen. But with all of these "peaceful protests", you have the possibility of some protester being shot by a cop and a violent riot ensuing- which might lead to nationwide rioting in the right circumstances.

The protests may not be effective, but defeatist attitudes are definitely not effective.

Yeah, the cynicism is getting a bit old. I get it, and some may say they're just being realistic, but it definitely doesn't help anything. The movement has already changed the dialogue, so it's already having a kind of effect on things. Whether or not that eventually translates to something substantive remains to be seen, but to say the movement is completely ineffectual is kinda naive.

Yes, exchanging and codifying ideas through public discourse is never nothing if our society is genuinely democratic.

That´s what they fear

Today the Occupy Montréal movement was ended by the police (peacefully though, only one person placed under arrest)
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/international ... cueil_POS3

I don't feel like finding an English article, but there's this one.

A major occupy movement is happening all around the world today http://anonops.blogspot.com/p/occupy-meetups-find-your-own-city.html No one has signed up for my area. I'm really surprised my town is on the list, it's kind of small in the grand scheme of things.

Hm..nearest meetup for me is Rotterdam, 24 people. I wonder how much of them are actually going to show up.

I'm not going.

Heard Occupy LA survived their eviction day today, which is good, but I actually wanted to post about this:

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-secur ... fine-being

"The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself."

Speaks for itself. Seems unlikely to pass but it's still important that we reject it as much as possible.

https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?c ... rc=fixNDAA

^Link to send a letter to the Senate.

"Even?" What, did the ACLU forget Ron Paul has been on their side for twenty years? He's two parts constitutionalist and one part libertarian; civil rights and civil liberties are basically all he cares about.


Sorry, I'm nitpicking here. Normally I don't criticize the ACLU that much, as their absolutist position on rights and liberties is refreshing these days. But adding that "even (so and so)" qualifier before someone who is more consistently pro-Bill of Rights than 99% of U.S. citizens (let alone legislators) really wasn't necessary.

Sometimes

Nah, its cool, I was thinking the same thing. Makes no sense why they said it like that.

Sure it does. Ron Paul isn't a steadfast supporter of rights for individuals, he's merely a steadfast supporter of the Federal Government not regulating human behavior on any level. If state governments or non-government entities regulate human behavior in the same way he's generally ok with it. Thus, calling him a so-so supporter of civil liberties is accurate.

That said, I think the article is strangely and inaccurately worded. I get the impression that not a lot of Republicans were actively vocal against the bill and that they named him specifically only because he was the biggest "name" republican who was ardent in opposition to it. I don't think they were directly referencing his general stances on civil liberties.

[edit]: the other republican is Mark Kirk, an intelligence guy who presumably understands extremely well the real scope of the concept. Definitely not a well known guy like Ron Paul, but hopefully he'll be recognized as having some meaningful expertise on this issue.

Excellent discussion of police violence with regards to race and the OWS movement. Figured some of you guys might be interested. This is exactly the kind of discussion that needs to be happening and I'm really glad folks are speaking up. I hope more OWS activists take a moment to listen and realize whose allegiance they need to win if they hope to be successful on a broader level.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvJANFwU_zwIf you didn't catch this Occupy Wall Street episode of South Park I suggest you check it out. Not only is it funny as hell, but actually makes some very valid points.

I just thought I'd update everybody and say that the Senate has voted through a new Defense bill which has in it that very thing I posted about previously concerning the power of the military to arrest people and hold them without charge. Therefore, it really will come down to president Obama vetoing it. He's said that he would but its very scary, especially at the present time with all these protests going on, that all he has to do is sign a sheet of paper and this will become law.

Here's a petition to impeach every senator who voted yes for the bill:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/892/peti ... s-without/

I don't have the link at the moment but apparently they also indefinitely suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus the other day too. Fucking ridiculous.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/0 ... _ref=false

"WASHINGTON -- The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities."

This will likely have zero effect on how the US deals with the protests but its good to see nonetheless.

I am a little bit skeptical about whether the US Constitution applies to campus police in this situation. Before anyone flips out, the Constitution only applies to the government, which is why you can have private actions that violate the Constitution (boyscouts keeping out gays, kkk membership denied to black applicants, convents having vows of silence, parents taking away your playstation, etc.). With campus police the issue is fuzzier because they sometimes have the power to act on behalf of the government in addition to acting on behalf of the college. My understanding is that if at the time of the pepper spraying the officers were acting to enforce only a UC Davis policy, then they were not state actors and the student's legal remedy is bringing battery charges. I say I am only a little skeptical because it is also very likely the police were called in for some reason other than UC Davis policy and were acting on behalf of the state.

UC Davis is a public institution.

hahaha, pardon me as I run away with my tail between my legs. Well that makes things easier for a Constitutional claim.

From Boston where a police crackdown is imminent:

Learn by doing...

http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/ ... News_links

Article concerning the ports that were shut down across the west coast yesterday by Occupiers:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... 1670757b2e

"Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at Columbia University and an authority on social movements, said the Occupy movement is highly ambitious and would continue to expand and diversify. He has said that the 1960s anti-war movement grew gradually for years until bursting onto the world stage during the election year of 1968.

"I would assume that the action today is going to be representative of what's going to be happening from now on," Gitlin said. "There will be more of a tendency toward militant disruptive activity. There's going to be a number of coordinated actions and this is going to go on for months."

Pretty cool article about how a protest can essentially render police force useless by way of basically walking around aimlessly. Interesting tactic and I have to say, it does make sense. The only way to stop such action would be through violent force more or less.

http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2011/12 ... cupations/

Radical tactical innovation, MazeofTorment. Frustrates standard police procedure (particularly the brutal Miami doctrine), disrupts business, antagonizes police enough to frustrate them but not inspire violent outbursts. Looks like fun, too. Maybe someone should develop a program that randomly generates march routes through the city connecting various landmarks and points of interest for rest stops which can be run and announced spur of the moment to prevent any leaking advance notice?