OWS- what happens next?

[sologdin]

They'e annoying.

do they actually have any in cleaverland to annoy you? i can't imagine any sausage-eating browns fans getting off the sofa long enough to protest their foreclosures, downsizings, and reductions to debt-peonage.

[The Warmth of Winter]

Even if the core message is very important, it feels like the main reason for most people protesting has become the way the states, towns and police force have handled the demonstrations. You see these kinds of reactions whenever large protests take place in "first world countries". The government/police panic, they have no idea how to treat the situation and the shit hits the fan when an officer, in a tight situation, throws a hit towards a peaceful public and someone gets hurt.

[awesome possum]

I wouldn't write off OWS, or at least the general movement, just yet.

Nope. If anything, the movement will hibernate for the winter (with protests still happening), and then next Spring and Summer things are going to blow up.

[The Progressive]

I found a picture of OWS' Brooklyn Bridge protest.

Pretty big.

That was an awesome sight!

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

They'e annoying.

do they actually have any in cleaverland to annoy you?

I think they had a rally about a month ago. A hundred or so people attended as best as I can recall, but no occupation. Here, it likely wouldn't be that much of an annoyance anyway because it's not like downtown is booming. If there were some tents up, I doubt most people would care. Or even notice. Er, wait a minute. Just googled. I guess it was there for at least a day of so. There are apparently some tents in some lady's backyard on the west side calling themselves Occupy Cleveland.

http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2011/10/18/occupy-cleveland-protester-alleges-she-was-raped/

http://www.wkyc.com/news/article/214978/45/Occupy-Cleveland-moves-tents-to-west-side-home

Honestly, I think its sort of a double-edged sword for the Occupiers. If they do it in a city and at a location that remains clean, no disruption, and no real inconvenience to anyone else, they won't be an annoyance. They'll just be boring, and therefore ignored. But if they try to deliberately disrupt/inconvenience other people so as to attract attention, then they're an annoyance and generate a backlash.

Personally, I think the whole "campout" idea is counterproductive, and they'd be much better off with larger, irregularly-timed marches/protests that got covered because they were news, rather than getting coverage only because they manage to inconvenience people. But that seems an unpopular opinion here.

But your point made me wonder about something. It seems to me (and if I'm wrong, that's fine) that the "Occupy" movement is less active in traditional industrial, blue collar towns than elsewhere. Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, etc. You'd think those places should be just hopping, but they're not.

It looks to me like it is more active in more cosmopolitan places, perhaps those places with a higher percentage of , students, art/activist community, hipsters, etc.. It also looks like some unions are really pushing this hard, so telling the difference between "grassroots" protestors and full-time union employees can get tough. I think the President of SEIU in NYC was arrested, and if she was out there, you know the foot soldiers were as well. But again, that involvement seems kind of segmented. SEIU is perhaps the most active union in terms of involvement in broad political issues. You might get verbal support from Steelworkers, Teamsters, etc., but it doesn't look to me like a lot of boots on the ground from those other, less activist unions. That suggests to me that the Occupy movement hasn't really broadened beyond sort of the core activist constituency.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I think it is the height of false equivalency to compare OWS in its first two months to the heyday of the Civil Rights movement. It's like saying that the first Selma to Montgomery march was meaningless because only a few hundred marchers participated.

First, I wasn't the one who brought up the Civil Rights marches as a comparator. Someone else did, and I responded that they were different. Second, taking your example, the Selma march had about 500 or so people. Just two weeks later, they had more than 10 times that. And less than a week from that, 25,000 or so. In other words, the Civil Rights marches simply exploded in less than 3 weeks.

Second, why do you suppose national public sympathy rallied around those marches so quickly? What was different about those Civil Rights marches and the OWS movement? I'd suggest that people were appalled that peaceful marchers, following the law, were getting brutalized. The OWS movement, though, has engaged in a lot of conduct that the average person doesn't think is reasonable.

The Civil Rights movement built its base of support over at least two decades. OWS is still in its infancy and is experiencing many of the same growing pains as the Civil Rights movement did early on. I wouldn't write off OWS, or at least the general movement, just yet.

Many of the participants and organizational backers of OWS have been around for a long time, and fighting on issues closely related to OWS. However, I do think you make a valid point. I think that if the OWS people don't change their tactics, they will kill their own movement. If they do, I think there is good chance that the principles supported by many of the OWS people will gain more prominence, and be more heavily discussed, in 2012. It's really up to them.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

In a few years, we'll remember this as a beginning, not an end, to widespread discontent over maladroit government. I'm optimistic about the movement because it's pretty easy to be realistic about the dim future of our economy.

I will be interested to see if this set of protests (and I personally lump OWS and Tea Party together) end with the the sorts of reforms sparked by populist movements at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th Centuries. I think it might (though probably less radical than you might hope ;))

I'm less bearish on the economic prospects, if only because I think that people over-estimate both the "ups" and the "downs" in the economy (in either case you have plenty of people prophesying that it will never change, that whatever the current state, that state is the "new normal").

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

In a few years, we'll remember this as a beginning, not an end, to widespread discontent over maladroit government. I'm optimistic about the movement because it's pretty easy to be realistic about the dim future of our economy.

You may be right about that. If I had to place a bet, I think support will expand as well. But I'm much less confident that support will expand to the point where it can take control. I think there is at least an equal chance that the movement will alienate moderate supporters, and you'll have a very committed 20-25% who will essentially help elect more conservative government. In other words, I think that at least in the U.S. (and it may be very different elsewhere), you'll end up drawing battle lines where you're left pretty badly outnumbered.

[Shryke]

Remember that Iraq War veteran who got his spleen ruptured by the police in Oakand?

Here's the video of just how unprovoked it was: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/18/occupy-oakland-police-beating-veteran?INTCMP=SRCH

[Brienne the Beauty]

and you'll have a very committed 20-25% who will essentially help elect more conservative government.

How so? You wish this would happen, but I can't see the mechanism for it happening. Lefties don't irritate moderates as much as they irritate you!

[Shryke]

First, I wasn't the one who brought up the Civil Rights marches as a comparator. Someone else did, and I responded that they were different. Second, taking your example, the Selma march had about 500 or so people. Just two weeks later, they had more than 10 times that. And less than a week from that, 25,000 or so. In other words, the Civil Rights marches simply exploded in less than 3 weeks.

Second, why do you suppose national public sympathy rallied around those marches so quickly? What was different about those Civil Rights marches and the OWS movement? I'd suggest that people were appalled that peaceful marchers, following the law, were getting brutalized. The OWS movement, though, has engaged in a lot of conduct that the average person doesn't think is reasonable.

Wait, you somehow didn't notice all the sympathy protests that sprung up in support of OWS?

You may be right about that. If I had to place a bet, I think support will expand as well. But I'm much less confident that support will expand to the point where it can take control. I think there is at least an equal chance that the movement will alienate moderate supporters, and you'll have a very committed 20-25% who will essentially help elect more conservative government. In other words, I think that at least in the U.S. (and it may be very different elsewhere), you'll end up drawing battle lines where you're left pretty badly outnumbered.

You just say the weirdest things.

[Jaxom 1974]

From what I've read, you are statistically the least likely demographic to support the movement. IMO, you don't need to defend yourself for not paying attention.

Who are those most likely to support this movement then? 20 somethings? Fresh out of college? Just curious.

The short of it is that they are protests against economic injustice. If you don't know that there is economic injustice in America, you probably wouldn't agree with them.

Of course there are economic injustices in this country. I'd love to see some of it changed, but frankly, I couldn't tell you if I would agree or disagree with the message of this movement because, frankly, there is no one message. And what there is out there, from what I can tell, it is not very organized.

Is that because I'm limited in what I've been able to discover about this? Maybe, but it also seems like a condemnation of a generation with the world of social media at it's hands not being able to adequetly get out a defined plan and message to those just beyond the scope of those out in these camps. Someone like me. A 30 something who actually votes.

But that's neither here nor there, I am not trying to get into a argument or deabte with you, Coco. You are obviously informed and, for lack of a better term, a form of insider on this whole thing. So I will continue to read what you post and I might occasionaly ask a question or two, but you won't see me attack. I'm not prepared to do that.

Here's a question too: What's the end game of the movement? I somehow get the impression that, should these protests work, it'll be like the reaction a dog has when it actually catches the car it was chasing, "Now what? I've never caught one before?"

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Who are those most likely to support this movement then? 20 somethings? Fresh out of college? Just curious.

I just got a mental image of Steve Martin in "The Jerk", where he's explaining what prizes you can choose from if you win, and he narrows it down to about a 4 inch space on one shelf with all the shitty stuff.

Of course there are economic injustices in this country. I'd love to see some of it changed, but frankly, I couldn't tell you if I would agree or disagree with the message of this movement because, frankly, there is no one message. And what there is out there, from what I can tell, it is not very organized.

And I think the problem with this -- and why I disagree with Mlle. Zabzie lumping together the tea parties and OWS -- is that as the message gets more and more focused, it will alienate some people who may have been in agreement on the very general concepts. The commonality is that a lot of people didn't like the bailouts (polls showed that right from the start), but as soon as you start getting into what seems to be the rest of the agenda of a lot of OWS folks, you're going to lose all those who want less government instead of more.

[The Progressive]

Who are those most likely to support this movement then? 20 somethings? Fresh out of college? Just curious.

Check out this poll:

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/ows-survey-revisited

The 25-34 age group (which I think you fall under) still remains the largest supporters of OWS (so I have no idea why Coco keep claiming the opposite). Unfortunately that number has declined between polls.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

And I think the problem with this -- and why I disagree with Mlle. Zabzie lumping together the tea parties and OWS -- is that as the message gets more and more focused, it will alienate some people who may have been in agreement on the very general concepts. The commonality is that a lot of people didn't like the bailouts (polls showed that right from the start), but as soon as you start getting into what seems to be the rest of the agenda of a lot of OWS folks, you're going to lose all those who want less government instead of more.

I certainly think that the two movements likely would consider themselves separate. The broader point that I am trying to make is that I think that the two movements arise out of the same generaly sources of discontent (that is, what makes people get up in the morning and say "yes, this is a good day to attend a protest/rally/whatever seems to be similar, albeit expressed differently). I see the movements as symptomatic of something broader going on in American society. Whether that something every amounts to anything remains to be seen.

[The Progressive]

Neither of these two movements have nothing on the scale of the global protests against the Iraq invasion so I remain skeptical of their long-term impact.

[Brienne the Beauty]

If you mean conservative in sense of actually being conservative, ie, liberty in choice above all, then I'm all for it. Right now, there are no conservatives in Washington DC outside the occasional wackos.

I'd define "conservative" as "wanting things to stay much the same". Is that a UK thing?

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

I certainly think that the two movements likely would consider themselves separate. The broader point that I am trying to make is that I think that the two movements arise out of the same generaly sources of discontent (that is, what makes people get up in the morning and say "yes, this is a good day to attend a protest/rally/whatever seems to be similar, albeit expressed differently).

Well, that's why we disagree. :P I think the sources of discontent are actually quite different. One believes the government is doing too much, and needs to butt out (and bailouts are doing "too much"), and the other essentially wants the government to take a far more active role without favoring corporations (which the bailouts did). In some sense, the only consistent overlap is the anomoly of the bailouts.

While I'm sure there are exceptions, the tea partiers I know are some of the strongest critics of OWS. I see those in the media and elsewhere (not here, because what we say here affects nothing) trying to make that link because they are trying to shoehorn the previously mocked-at tea parties into a box where they actually support completely different goals. It's an attempted co-opting of the tea party support into an agenda that is far more popular among many in the media and on the left.

Not that I think they're co-opting the actual tea partiers themselves. Just that they're attempting to claim their support.

[Shryke]

Who are those most likely to support this movement then? 20 somethings? Fresh out of college? Just curious.

Of course there are economic injustices in this country. I'd love to see some of it changed, but frankly, I couldn't tell you if I would agree or disagree with the message of this movement because, frankly, there is no one message. And what there is out there, from what I can tell, it is not very organized.

Is that because I'm limited in what I've been able to discover about this? Maybe, but it also seems like a condemnation of a generation with the world of social media at it's hands not being able to adequetly get out a defined plan and message to those just beyond the scope of those out in these camps. Someone like me. A 30 something who actually votes.

I'd say your last paragraph here pretty much explains your first one.

Here's a question too: What's the end game of the movement? I somehow get the impression that, should these protests work, it'll be like the reaction a dog has when it actually catches the car it was chasing, "Now what? I've never caught one before?"

What's the point of any protest? To raise awareness and spread your message.

[The Progressive]

Yeah seriously people like thinkerx are clearly under some blinders because as both solo and flow have pointed out, the teabaggers and OWS have nothing in common and all of the OWS peeps in LA that I talk to have a deep loathing for all things tea-party.

The only link between the two movements is some shared appearances of the libertarian fringe and Ron-Paul worshippers.