quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: You see a white guy (general 'you', not you specifically, Dan) with a roll of bills, you think, "Gambler maybe. Could be going to a strip club or something. Maybe a bookie, or a dealer." You see a black guy of the same build with that same roll of bills, you think, "Drug dealer. Maybe a bookie. Could be going to a strip club.
As for the security guard bit...well, to some people, unknown black men are scarier than unknown white men. Pretty straightforward. It doesn't make the guy a frothing-at-the-mouth David Duke activist or something, but, "Scary black guys!" is a pretty strong ping on the racist radar and doesn't require much projection.
Really? I know you're using a general you, and I appreciate that a lot, but I still gotta still disagree with you, man. I see a white, hispanic, or black guy wearing a wifebeater in the middle of a park in Oakland holding a roll of bills, and I assure you, my first thought is always "drug dealer." Gambling and strip clubs don't even blip my radar in that situation. Now, if he's wearing a suit and just got out of a nice car parked in certain neigborhoods of Oakland? Yeah, then I might think strip club or gambling (though honestly I don't think about gambling much so I'd just assume strip club).
It has to do with attire, overall appearance, and location. Not race.
And again, guys, the caption is not "These security guards are scary!" juxtaposed with a picture of some black dudes. It's a lengthy description of the security system in place, and he mentions that the people on security are generally either scary looking or authoritarians. I'm not saying that a caption of "Scary black guys" isn't racist, guys, I'm saying that summing up his caption as "Scary black guys" is totally wrong.
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An editorial by Dahlia Lithwick on how people (specifically corporate media) asking "What do the occupiers want" are clueless. Her take, it's complicated and you wouldn't understand because you're corporate tools.
quote:By refusing to take a ragtag, complicated, and leaderless movement seriously, the mainstream media has succeeded only in ensuring its own irrelevance. The rest of America has little trouble understanding that these are ragtag, complicated, and leaderless times. This may not make for great television, but any movement that acknowledges that fact deserves enormous credit.
quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: An editorial by Dahlia Lithwick on how people (specifically corporate media) asking "What do the occupiers want" are clueless. Her take, it's complicated and you wouldn't understand because you're corporate tools.
quote:By refusing to take a ragtag, complicated, and leaderless movement seriously, the mainstream media has succeeded only in ensuring its own irrelevance. The rest of America has little trouble understanding that these are ragtag, complicated, and leaderless times. This may not make for great television, but any movement that acknowledges that fact deserves enormous credit.
OWS desperately needs this editorial to be believed. Sadly, it's not just the mainstream media and pundits that are wondering what the protesters want, it's the public in general as well. This type of editorial helps stall to get the time they need. But the rational public have been patient while the occupiers shout all the wrongs of the country and tiptoe around the true reality: It's getting cold, the people are getting tired, and if they don't come to a consensus and present some solutions, OWS will end up "ensuring its own irrelevance" and with a swiftness I believe will catch them off guard.
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posted
As soon as they settle down with a list of demands, and as you say, get tired and go home, they'll be pigeonholed and this whole thing will be swept under the rug.
That's most of the reason why they're not doing it.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: As soon as they settle down with a list of demands, and as you say, get tired and go home, they'll be pigeonholed and this whole thing will be swept under the rug.
That's most of the reason why they're not doing it.
I think most of the reason they're not doing it is because it seems pretty impossible for them to get consensus on anything substantive. On NPR this morning, the liason from the Philadelphia mayor's office talked about how it took a week and a half for the occupiers there to agree to a response to a minor request of the city (I forget the exact issue, and am not able to find the news story right now). A week later, the issue still had not been addressed, even after coming to a consensus on how to address it, because the protesters couldn't agree on what format the response to the mayor's office should take.
Meanwhile, several mayors who were originally supportive have changed their opinions as the costs, both material and social, have added up. In Oakland, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Baltimore and Philadelphia, the mayors are making clear that the situation cannot continue much longer. The cost of additional police, the tensions within the camps, and the frequent lack of appropriate sanitation are all cited as reasons for concern by otherwise sympathetic local officials.
I don't see any good end game for the occupiers. They're coming into conflict, not with the 1%, but with local police and city officials. Clashes with police are great for generating news articles and attention, but it seems like a long term loser. Either things escalate and the occupiers come into more or less perpetual conflict with the police, which distracts from their anti-Wall St. message, or they concede to the dispersment requests of the local officials and the whole thing dies with a whimper. If they could coalesce sufficiently quickly into a real national movement, that'd be a different thing. But given their seeming inability to coalesce over even low-level things, it strikes me as a somewhat unlikely outcome.
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I'm interested in what people think of the latest attack ad that tries to connect Elizabeth Warren with the most radical and violent elements of Occupy Wall Street.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Occupy Central! My dad took the picture on his way to work at JP Morgan. #Nostalgic for Hong Kong
I'm like, I wish it was bigger than the Falun Gong protest. Or at least I think I wish it was bigger than the Falun Gong protest.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I'm interested in what people think of the latest attack ad that tries to connect Elizabeth Warren with the most radical and violent elements of Occupy Wall Street.
Well, for the first 40 seconds or so there's nothing violent in it, just showing Warren has expressed strong support for OWS and pointing out that most people at the OWS are strongly anti-capitalist and tend towards communist politics. I say "most" because, well, that's certainly the group that I've seen to be the most vocal, both in videos, in person, and online. Maybe there's a quieter majority but they aren't apparent to me.
So, I don't think those guys ranting about destroying capitalism are the most violent and extreme wing of the OWS movement. I see them as relatively mainstream Occupiers, and I think showing them is perfectly fine.
Where the ad goes totally wrong is when it starts trying to make it sound like Warren is explicitly violent. The blood and teeth on the floor quote is an example of rhetorical hyperbole, no more offensive than Palin's crosshairs or Tea Partiers' signs saying "kill the bill"... us conservatives bitched and moaned when people tried to paint our rhetoric as promoting actual, real violence, so it's totally slimy to turn around and do the same thing to the opposition. I think anyone who tries to pretend that the language of combat and conflict has no place in politics is deluded... they're called "campaigns" for pete's sake.
I'm going to give Warren the benefit of the doubt and assume the stone-throwing comment is also rhetorical hyperbole, and thus also a stupid cheap shot. If she is telling a literal story of something she did in her youth, then I think it's fair game to know she really did act rather like the more violent members of OWS.
Soooo overall the first half of the ad seems like a fine attack ad. The second half goes too far, with the above mentioned possible reservations.
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quote:I don't see any good end game for the occupiers. They're coming into conflict, not with the 1%, but with local police and city officials.
If you look at protest history in America, you'd find that this happens far more than you'd think for left-wing groups, not because they're naturally more violent (though that has been an undercurrent of their history), but because they tend to be more brutally repressed. You never saw the government turn the hoses on protesters at a Klan rally.
Yet those movements achieved success not just in spite of, but in part because of the national attention focused on them in the wake of repression. I suspect, given our media culture, that effect is only amplified today.
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quote:Will Occupy Wall Street grow into a Tea Party-style political organization on the left? I suspect not, because its methods are too anarchist. Will it force the government to enact laws that regulate financial institutions more strictly or restrain the political power of corporations? Not while Republicans control the House of Representatives. But nothing concrete or lasting was achieved by the Bonus Army of American veterans who encamped in Washington, D.C., in 1932, or by the British workers who protested their unemployment and poverty by marching from the small town of Jarrow to London in 1936. All that those earlier protesters managed to do was add new voices to the political conversation. That alone wouldn’t be a small achievement.
You can't see the incident...but the troubling thing is that Olson is maybe three feet away from the police. How do trained officers fire from that range and NOT hit someone intentionally? His position appears to connect with where the previous videos show; him right in front of the line of police officers.
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I guess it's questionable whether they're even allowed to. They said there's no allowance for the use of these generators...but it's private property, and there doesn't appear to be a law AGAINST the use of generators on private property, so where do they get the authority?
And a lesser question, how are they allowed to confiscate the property, and not just demand its removal? Normally that would strike me as a ticketable offense, you can't just take stuff like that.
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posted
How explicit has the permission been from the owners of the park?
I'm unsure about the legality of the firefighters actions. I can very much see their case as they're presenting it. But it seems pretty obvious that the concern is less about safety and more about finding ways to deter the occupiers.
And once again I'm wondering why, if the goal is to get rid of the protestors, city officials keep doing things that earn the occupiers more attention? Sympathy for the movement grows everyday and this news story is bound to bring in new protestors even if some do leave because of the dropping temperatures.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Initially the owners of the park gave them permission to be there so long as they didn't wreck the park.
When they were going to be evacuated for a cleaning, the protesters banded together to scrub the park, at which point the owners said they were satisfied and called off the eviction.
The permission is pretty clear.
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posted
In a breaking news story, MF Global, a brokerage firm that its CEO, John Corzine ex-governor of New Jersey and ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, was trying to transition into a "mini-Goldman Sachs" has imploded after it was revealed 1) that they bet heavily on European debt and then leveraged those bets at a rate of about 40 to 1 and 2) talks to buy a large part of the business fell through when it was discovered that they had broken major regulations by mingling customer money with the money they were betting with and are now missing around $700 million of customers money.
They're going through a very messy bankruptcy right now and are likely going to be subject to fines and possibly criminal prosecution (although not holding my breath on that one).
John Corzine near single handedly destroyed this company. His severance package, when all this came to light, was $12 million.
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And in other news, Occupy Oakland is trying to get movement on a General Strike in the city.
I read a couple OpEds a few weeks ago about Occupy Wall Street trying the same thing, but it's hard to pull off. Have their been any major GENERAL strikes in major US cities in the last even 20 years?
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
So yeah reposting here, Colbert is trying to get his SuperPac I think to back the OWS.
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And in other news, Occupy Oakland is trying to get movement on a General Strike in the city.
I read a couple OpEds a few weeks ago about Occupy Wall Street trying the same thing, but it's hard to pull off. Have their been any major GENERAL strikes in major US cities in the last even 20 years?
Edit: Never mind. I said a buddy of mine who works as a field coordinator for a union told me a little while ago that a general strike would be illegal. But I'm not sure if that's true.
Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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More chaos in Oakland. After shutting down the port for about five hours, protesters broke into an abandoned Travelers' aid building "in order to, as some shouting protesters put it, 'reclaim the building for the people.'". In the process, the occupiers lit several large bonfires around the building, broke some windows, and sprayed some graffiti. When the police arrived, the occupiers (according to city officials) "began hurling rocks, explosives, bottles, and flaming objects at responding officers. Several private and municipal buildings sustained heavy vandalism."
The vandalism aside, I'm a bit surprised by the ratcheting up of actions meant to harm local economies through general strikes, shutting down ports, etc. For me, it brings to mind the era of militant labor protests from the late 19th and early 20th century much more forcefully than the peaceful sit-in ambiance of the Zuccotti park occupiers, which strikes more of a hippie-vibe.
<edit>And now I see that Chomsky mentions favorably the era of militant labor protests (although he, I think incorrectly, suggests the Great Depression was when they solidified. I would say the Pullman Strikes and other rail worker strikes in the late 19th century, and the work of, for instance, Eugene Debs in the early 20th century were of a piece with the founding and progress of the CIO during the Great Depression. If only there were someone on these boards with a history degree and a focus on labor movements that could clarify for me!?</edit>
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On the violence at Occupy Oakland yesterday, there's (unedited) video up on one of Breitbart's sites showing the anarchist wing (referred to as the "black bloc" due to their predilection for dressing in black hoodies with black bandannas covering their faces) doing damage to various stores, banks, businesses. Other occupiers stand up to the hoodlums, yelling "no violence" and do their best to (semi-effectually) prevent the vandalism. The violent riots in Rome last month seem to have similarly been sparked by the actions of anarchists marching with the Occupiers.
I haven't seen any disavowals from Occupiers of their violent anarchist wings. Instead, most of the language I've seen has urged inclusivity (although I haven't seen anyone confronting the issue of the anarchists specifically). Do you think such inclusivity, even of violent actors, is to the betterment or detriment of the overall movement?
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quote:From SenojRetep: If only there were someone on these boards with a history degree and a focus on labor movements that could clarify for me!?
Hi there, Lyrhawn at your service.
The violence attributable to the Railway strikes of the late 19th century, as well as the Haymarket massacre, the Ludlow massacre, and the Homestead massacre is far more because to the response by business and government than of inherent militarism in the movement. At that point in history, strikes and protests by labor groups were pretty much illegal. If you tried to strike, you were violently put down by the company, and if they couldn't handle you, they either called in private police forces or they enlisted the aid of the federal government, which used US troops to break up demonstrations and strikes, often violently. Yes, the railroad strikes did reach a crescendo of violence at one point where they started to burn rail cars stopped on the tracks, but you have to remember that these were isolated incidents of pent-up rage, rather than sustained movements that either realized actual results, even though they were very, very loosely organized proto-unions. The pre-Wagner history of labor movements is one of crushing defeat, where business and government utterly destroyed union protest and dissent. The body count was horrific.
I think you also have to look at the day and age in which they lived. I mean look at what happened in Ludlow. You had roving bands of armed miners engaging in pitched battles with company-hired off-duty militia. But that was followed by the company setting fire to the Ludlow camp, killing dozens of women and children who lived there after being evicted from their company-owned houses. Violence begat violence in a much more visceral way back then, and the government didn't much care about protecting protesting so much as silencing them.
After the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, union membership exploded. It peaked in the 40s (maybe the 50s) and then started a very slow downward spiral after Taft-Hartley was passed in 1947 specifically as a measure to restrict the power of unions to organize and collectively bargain, and further restricted in 1959's Landrum-Griffin Act.
The post-Wagner era was perhaps more militant because it was more organized, and the 30s were a flash point because businesses still tried to repress them like it was the 1890s, but this time unions had manpower, a backbone, and a government that wasn't willing to bayonet them into silence. It changed everything. The 20s and 30s also saw a lot more labor violence because of an influx of immigrants with far more radical labor ideas than most of what we had kicking around in the 1880s. Back then, English probably wasn't the language you hear exhorting members to violence in a packinghouse union hall in Chicago, it was probably Polish. With increased union numbers, the drive for all union shops, and a laissez-faire approach to labor repression from the government, conflicts between labor and management reached a fever pitch in the 30s and 40s, and it resulted in a lot of violent conflicts.
It's really hard to gauge some of this. It depends on what you call "militant." Do you mean groups that actively, intentionally chose violence as a first weapon against owners? If that's the case, then I think you'll find it's a common thread that's woven throughout the entire movement from the 1880s with the Knights of Labor to the the 1960s and 70s with the AFLCIO, Teamsters and UAW (though, a lot of that violence was turned inward, but that's another story). But usually it's an undercurrent rather than a first choice. I think you'll find that the vast majority of union-related violence in the 1880s-1950s period was instigated by either the government or business to repress strikers. Violence mostly came as a response. That doesn't excuse or hide the fact that there were violent union members that instigated violence, but it was hardly the norm. There are far more examples of factory sit-ins, like the massive Flint Sit Down Strike in the 1930s that unionized GM under the UAW, than there were organized violent attacks. For a parallel, compare the UAW sit down strikes to Ford's response at the Battle of the Overpass, where several UAW organizers were beaten bloody, including Walter Reuther, but Ford thugs, simply for passing out union literature.
I don't think Chomsky is wrong, it's just that the 1880-1910s stuff is so much juicier because of the body counts. But that was hardly due to any especial union militarism.
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quote:By the way, it isn't the super rich who are corralling the gains, just the fairly well off. The households showing disproportionately high growth start at about $90k a year.
posted
If I'm reading him right, Krugman's comparing income shares, which have stayed pretty constant for the 80-99 group. That means their actual incomes have been increasing in proportion to the overall economy, which I think is consistent with what was written earlier. If you look at page 3 of the CBO report Krugman's referencing, you see that all income groups' inflation adjusted incomes have increased over what they were in 1980, although at very different rates.
From the CBO report:
quote:For other households in the highest-income quintile (the 81st through 99th percentiles), average after-tax income grew by 65 percent between 1979 and 2007. That growth was not nearly as great as for the top 1 percent of the population, although it was much greater than for most other households
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: In a breaking news story, MF Global, a brokerage firm that its CEO, John Corzine ex-governor of New Jersey and ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, was trying to transition into a "mini-Goldman Sachs" has imploded after it was revealed 1) that they bet heavily on European debt and then leveraged those bets at a rate of about 40 to 1 and 2) talks to buy a large part of the business fell through when it was discovered that they had broken major regulations by mingling customer money with the money they were betting with and are now missing around $700 million of customers money.
They're going through a very messy bankruptcy right now and are likely going to be subject to fines and possibly criminal prosecution (although not holding my breath on that one).
John Corzine near single handedly destroyed this company. His severance package, when all this came to light, was $12 million.
Saw this linked from Ben Smith's blog; thought it was funny.
posted
That's the risk that he gets so highly paid for taking on.
Another little twist, it looks like what was basically stealing their clients money that MF Global did may have been legal, in large part due to the lobbying efforts of Jon Corzine. (article)
Here's my favorite bit:
quote:Just three months ago, Mr. Corzine's firm assured regulators that the proposed rule could cripple the futures brokerage industry by hurting their profitability. In a letter, MF Global told regulators that they were trying to "fix something that is not broken," adding that the firm was not aware of any brokerage firm like itself that was unable to "provide to their customers upon request any segregated funds."
posted
If roles were reversed and Republicans were against this, they'd be going NUTS over this right now. Instead, I'm not hearing much of anything from politicians, and I bet if we did, Republicans would be quick to slap it down.
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posted
In other news, I'll be going to my local Occupy movement tomorrow morning. I just need to think of a slogan to write on my cardboard.
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Provo. I'm seriously thinking about getting winter supplies and dropping them off at the SLC one though.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: If roles were reversed and Republicans were against this, they'd be going NUTS over this right now. Instead, I'm not hearing much of anything from politicians, and I bet if we did, Republicans would be quick to slap it down.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Could you clarify?
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: If roles were reversed and Republicans were against this, they'd be going NUTS over this right now. Instead, I'm not hearing much of anything from politicians, and I bet if we did, Republicans would be quick to slap it down.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Could you clarify?
If the GOP was pro-banking reform rather than anti-reform, they'd be screaming their fool heads off about this. Case in point, they hate Obama's green policies, so when Solyndra happens, they cry bloody murder and subpoenas start flying. If they were pro-reform, they'd be screaming about this too, especially since it's PRECISELY the kind of thing regulators and reformers were trying to avoid with the banking bill, but the GOP cried foul and it was removed from the Dodd bill, which the Tea Party wing, at the very least, wants repealed entirely.
It's also a bit of an indictment of Democrats, who should really use stories like this to hammer home their issues.
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posted
Huh. I first heard about it on a conservative blog. They gleefully pointed out Corzine's history in the Democratic party, and basically blamed crony capitalism for the problem, among other things.
Mind you, I actually think the article makes a couple of decent points, but the if that's an attempt to blame Democrats when the real issue is systemic Wall Street corruption, they really, really lose me.
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posted
Well, I think they'd agree with you that the problem is systemic wall street corruption. The partisan angle would be, I think they're saying that most Democratic legislation on the issue doesn't help and usually makes the problems worse (and they heavily insinuate this is intentional on the part of the Democrats, which is one angle I'm skeptical of).
As always, though, Lyr, I really appreciate that you read the link and are open-minded enough to acknowledge if it makes a good point, even while fundamentally disagreeing with them. That's really cool. Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Ive never heard the phrase "Blue Wall Street" before. It sounds a little disingenuous, but it's certainly true that Wall Street gave Obama a ton of cash in the 2008 election. It's also true that in THIS election, thus far, donations to the GOP have dwarfed donations to the Democrats. The part Democrats probably don't want highlighted is that Wall Street funds both sides of the aisle, especially when Democrats are so wary about what to do with Occupy Wall Street.
If you ask me, they gave Obama money because they thought he was going to win and wanted to curry favor, but this race is a toss-up, so they're hedging their bets but throwing their weight behind the person they actually want to win, the person who will give them the biggest pass, and that's a generic GOP candidate.
The point about home ownership is way off base. Yes, big banks are pretty important in the mortgage business, but let's not forget that the big banks just imploded the entire mortgage lending market through practices that Democrats want to heavily regulate. Getting a home isn't any easier when the economy is in free fall because of the lending mishap.
If Democrats were smart, which they aren't, they'd be all over this because they want the issue, because it helps them make their point with financial regulation reform, and because, despite the fact that Corzine is a Democrat, they want to point out that this is exactly what they warned against. All the better that Corzine IS a Democrat, by attacking him, they'll appear to be putting principle above party.
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posted
Well, I made some new friends. I think I'm going to go meet up with Occupy every Saturday. Though next time I'll bring gloves. My hands are not even working right now.
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