Unorganized Moron Protesting Has Gone Global

[Bob Hubbard]

one of the 1% goes undercover to see OWS.

First Impressions: It looks like a street fair to me. If I had been dropped off not knowing what it was, that’s what I would think. People are buying cookies, musicians are singing, people are eating. I talk to people about what they are protesting, but they can’t say. If I had to guess, I’d say that 10% are protesters, 10% journalists, 10% musicians and 70% are tourists. I spoke to people from Switzerland and Israel. I expected thousands of people from what I had seen reported in the media. It was probably 50 to 100 *people, many just lying around.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2011/10/19/billionaire-visits-occupy-wall-street/

For a larger more indepth look at OWS:
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2011/10/independent-reporting-of.html

Some excerpts:

I interviewed the hard-core protesters, those sleeping in the park overnight. I found only propaganda. They could repeat word-perfect the propaganda about the execution of Troy Davis case, but none of the details from the Wikipedia entry on the case. They could repeat the propaganda of Al Gore on Global Warming, but none of the science from the UN IPCC that declares the scientific consensus on the issue. They could repeat the economics of Michael Moore, but not that of Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate, writer of the popular liberal/progressive blog “Conscience of a Liberal” at the New York Times and author of a college textbook giving an introduction to economics. For example, the protesters say “the rich get richer but the poor get poorer,” whereas Krugman says “the rich get richer but the poor go nowhere”. This is due to a profound disagreement about a basic economic concept and the economic data.

The protesters have been settling on the idea that the conflict is the 99% against the 1%. But since the country is evenly divided between Democrat and Republican, they represent, at best, the interests of 50% against the 1%. No matter how poor, Republicans don’t see socialism as being in their own interests. Instead of chanting "We are the 99%" they should be chanting "We are the 50%", but they seem immune to seeing things from this perspective.

I personally experienced this duality between populism and totalitarianism. I had chosen a table in an empty area away from the crowd to type up my notes. I didn’t realize it, but it was near the General Assembly area that would soon become crowded. Members of the Media Team came up to me and insisted I move, so that they could set up a tripod and camera on the table to take pictures of the General Assembly. I refused. I tried to do this as nicely as possible, with a pleasant demeanor, but of course, I was being a jerk. I didn't like they way they insisted, but also I wanted to test them, to see what would happen when somebody didn't go along with their demands.

Of the three people, one was nice. He smiled, shook my hand, and said “peace”. I’ll bet he’s been to Burning Man. But the other two were nasty. The second guy, visibly twitching in anger, made unspecified threats that I had better move. The third person, tried to argue. She claimed that the protest had prior right to this spot, since they had been occupying the park for weeks (a fallacious argument, since the owners declare the park open to everyone equally). She then argued that this was for the entire group, to get the word out about the protest, to which I answered that I’m not part of the protest, that I don’t share their views. Her final argument was the totalitarian argument: this is for the people. She then proceeded to say that she was going to setup the tripod anyway, and that if I didn’t move, she would accidentally step on my laptop computer, because her attention would be on taking pictures and not where she was stepping.

About those 700 arrested?

Back to reporting. I see it as a struggle between the “story” and some sort of “narrative”. Take, for instance, the most reported event of the protest, the arrest of 700 protesters as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. However you treat the story, you have to struggle with the “narrative” that “police oppress protesters”. Here’s what happened. The occupation is of the park in Wall Street. Last Saturday they marched from there intending to go to the park right on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, then back again. The march was planned ahead of time. The protest leaders talked to the police about it. The police told them to stay off the roadway to avoid blocking traffic, and instead use the pedestrian walkway one level above the roadway. The protest leaders widely communicated this to other protesters.

​

But at the same time, some protesters were hoping for a confrontation with the police, because mass arrests would get them on the news (I overheard two protesters discussing this). Others were passing out pamphlets on what to do when arrested and urging people to write the phone number of the National Lawyers Guild on their arm. Some of those arrested were among the Central Committee, who would have been the most likely to have known they should not have been on the roadway.

When the protest happened, many protesters followed the correct path above the roadway, but many others incorrectly chose the roadway. After about 700 had taken to the roadway, the police closed off both ends of the bridge, preventing them from escaping and arrested them all. Eventually the errant protesters were given summons for causing a public disturbance. Protesters accuse the police of causing the problem by letting protesters out onto the roadway in the first place rather than informing them to take the pedestrian way. They also point out that shutting down the bridge for hours caused much more of a public disturbance than letting the protesters pass for 15 minutes. Regardless of any agents provocateurs on both sides, though, it’s a good bet that the bulk of the 700 who got arrested were just sheep, going along with the crowd.

By the way, while Wall Street may be responsible for bad things, it is Wall Street who financed putting a million miles of fiber optic cables crisscrossing continents and under oceans. It is Wall Street that financed the thousands of cell towers. It is Wall Street from which venture capital comes to finance startups like Twitter. Thus, tweeting “Down with capitalism” from your iPhone for those around the word to read seems to be the most ironic thing a person can do. The live stream from the protest site, shared with 12,000 (at this moment) people across the Internet is a testament to Wall Street's allocation of capital that these protesters fight against. [Obligatory Monty Python reference]

That the protest is dominated by Internet savvy youths exploiting social media is frequently mentioned. But what is not mentioned is the fact that the protesters are overwhelmingly college students, or recent graduates who still haven’t found jobs. They aren’t just any college students, but the stereotypical sort that you might expect to be involved in campus activism, such as graduate students in “Gender Studies.” I found nobody with engineering or science degrees, but many from arts and acting colleges. After talking with one guy for a while about unemployment and his difficult in finding a job after college, I found out that he was a “poet.” I’m not sure he understood that employers aren’t looking to hire poets. The only person I met that had a political science degree was one of the police officers “keeping the peace.”

Who's protesting? Ahh, "Art" majors.

The makeup of the protesters also led to amusement among the cops, stationed in pairs on all four sides of the park. For some, their normal beat is in the poor areas of New York City. The police, who daily see the struggle of the real poor, had little use for protesters complaining about jobs while they carried around expensive MacBook computers paid for by their parents.

Yeah.

 

[Sukerkin]

:chuckles: I can't help it but chortle at some of those quotes above, particularly the one about the 'utility' of some of the supposed graduates ... that one could well have been me talking :lol:. By the way, is it just that I don't understand the way the American higher education system works or are the so called degrees talked about really just a bit of a step up from a British 'A' level? I think I've asked this question before and can't recall if I ever got an answer I could get a handle on.

In Britain, a degree is the result of ten years of study, the last five of which have been targeted towards the topic covered by the degree itself. So you have five years studying the breadth of the curriculum ('O' levels), two years of more advanced study ('A' levels) in three or four topics (one of which should be what your degree is going to be in) and three years for the degree itself.

The system may have changed somewhat over here but the basic core of it is still a ten year journey to graduating at 21.

How does the American 'path' go?

 

[JohnEdward]

the real poor

I love it. I love it. It is the greatest worn out propaganda ever created. It is like if the "real poor" were protesting they would be bums, panhandlers and drug addicts living on the street. Stereotyping the protesters to that is a laugh! :lol: It isn't "the poor' protesting it is people disgruntled with the way Wall Street handled itself and screwed the country. It is just that these "protesters" are able to voice something most of us are upset about. The strategy by this CEO who went under-cover and his experience published in Forbes is making me split a gut in laughter. It is like he is going to side with the protesters pls. :lol: Hell his kids are probably protesting.

I personally experienced this duality between populism and totalitarianism.

:lol: If this CEO had it his way we all be under his medieval monarchy. He was probably hippy larva, whose hippy parents did the 180 dance and "sold out to the man" become the new rich that so many wealth people despised back in the day.

Money for nothing!

 

[Steve]

:chuckles: I can't help it but chortle at some of those quotes above, particularly the one about the 'utility' of some of the supposed graduates ... that one could well have been me talking :lol:. By the way, is it just that I don't understand the way the American higher education system works or are the so called degrees talked about really just a bit of a step up from a British 'A' level? I think I've asked this question before and can't recall if I ever got an answer I could get a handle on.

In Britain, a degree is the result of ten years of study, the last five of which have been targeted towards the topic covered by the degree itself. So you have five years studying the breadth of the curriculum ('O' levels), two years of more advanced study ('A' levels) in three or four topics (one of which should be what your degree is going to be in) and three years for the degree itself.

The system may have changed somewhat over here but the basic core of it is still a ten year journey to graduating at 21.

How does the American 'path' go?

In America, most kids get a basic education, beginning in high school (about age 14 to 18) to think about what they want to do after they graduate. I'd say it's typical for most to get as far as "go to college." Many, many get into a college or university where commonly they dabble for the first couple of years while taking pre-req/general undergrad courses. These are the basics: writing courses, history, math... that sort of thing. The things every student must take to graduate combined with the required classes necessary to declare their intended major. For example, you would need lots of math before you could apply to the engineering college. That sort of thing. Then, by year 3, they declare a major and start to focus. The next few years are probably what you'd consider "A" level classes in a particular discipline.

By 22 or 23, they graduate with an undergrad degree in whatever they majored in. They either enter the workforce or go on to an advanced degree from there.

Edit: I'll just add that I believe this is typical of kids who are college bound. Many kids don't go to college. There are trade schools or apprenticeships for many. Also, the military is a common, respectable route to take into adulthood. There are also many kids who are focused and aren't as aimless as I describe above. But, I'd wager most, even many bright kids, are still pretty clueless about their future as they enter the university.

 

[Flying Crane]

It is amazing the shallowness of thought that is being put into this topic. The inherent contradictions in some of the sterotypes are also quite startling.

as I said in another similar thread: written by and for simpletons.

 

[Tez3]

And the other side is always the propaganda. It does amaze me that people are falling for the stereotypes and the name calling etc.

 

[crushing]

They are all about redistributing wealth, did you not hear that?!

Of course I have heard and read that, but that does not answer my question to what is apparently the common thread issue here.

JohnEdward posted, "The major common thread issue here is that the protesters are NOT demanding to be millionaires."
My reply, "Has that been a claim people are making about the protesters?"

Have you heard of anyone making the claim that the protesters are demanding to be millionaires?

 

[crushing]

And the other side is always the propaganda. It does amaze me that people are falling for the stereotypes and the name calling etc.

This is exactly what the evil greedy CEOs want!

 

[Sukerkin]

Maybe not in a directed global conspiracy kind of way but certainly it plays into the hands of the status quo {"Down, down, deeper and down ...."}.