#The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement

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The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement
Wednesday, 11 April 2012 00:00 By Arun Gupta, Truthout | Report


I met Nomi on a bus in Baltimore. She was from Wisconsin and had been
involved with Occupy Wall Street. She was part of Occupy Judaism and
fondly recalled the Yom Kippur services she attended at the Wall Street
occupation with hundreds of other people. Nomi said that, for the first
time, she and her friends felt like they could combine the religious and
radical dimensions of Judaism. The conversation fell silent as the bus
rolled along. Suddenly she turned to me and excitedly announced that she
met her girlfriend at Liberty Plaza. I smiled and responded, "That's why
Occupy Wall Street matters."

By enabling people to find fulfillment in all parts of their lives,
whether romantic, spiritual, political or cultural, the Occupy movement
is more than a movement. It is life-changing. People experience
themselves as complete social beings, not just as angry, alienated
protesters. Nomi said she was no longer involved in the movement, which I
thought was more evidence of why the actual occupations were so important.

The emergence of every mass movement makes sense in hindsight, but no one
could have predicted hundreds of occupations and thousands of groups
would pop up across the United States just weeks after a ragged
encampment secured a tenuous foothold on Wall Street last September.
Sure, anger was boiling over prior to the takeover of Zuccotti Park in
downtown Manhattan, but the occupation crystallized who is to blame for
the economic crisis and who are the legitimate people. Anyone could walk
into the public space, share their stories, find people with similar
grievances and help build micro-societies. Occupy wasn't just a rejection
of Washington and Wall Street. It revealed the failings of liberals,
unions and the left. New activists didn't first have to master volumes of
social and cultural theory, attend grueling anti-oppression workshops and
learn how to pepper their comments with academic jargon before joining.
Nor did the movement require consultants, focus groups or polling to
occupy the center of American politics with a radical left message. And
the form was not the same old rallies with canned chants, pre-printed
protest signs and preaching to the choir.

It's worth considering why Occupy Wall Street was such a smashing success
last fall, as well as where it is headed. While the media lens has
shifted away, Occupy has spawned a menagerie of energized movements and
ambitious plans. Veteran organizer David Solnit, who is involved with Bay
Area Occupy movements, sums up the current state: "The numbers showing up
at GAs have dropped. Any movement has its mass mobilization and its in-
between times. The organizing a lot of people are doing around housing
and education are less visible but go much deeper. We need a better
measuring tape than numbers and public space and whether it's amplified
through media owned by the 1 percent."

Like plants that lay dormant for the winter conserving energy, many
occupations are blossoming anew with ambitious plans now that it's
spring. Solnit says in San Francisco the movement is defending a dozen
families in foreclosure, and is working toward a citywide moratorium on
bank foreclosures and evictions. In Los Angeles, organizers say May Day
plans include large-scale marches by immigrants and unions, rolling
street blockades and even an attempt to disrupt the main airport. In New
York and around the country, a campaign has been launched called "F the
Banks" to force the government to dismantle Bank of America, which is
still receiving taxpayer subsidies. In Chicago, after the G8 summit set
for May was moved to Camp David because of fear of large-scale protests,
activists are moving forward with large-scale demonstrations to
coincidence with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting
the same month.

Challenging the status quo comes with costs. As the Occupy movement
struggles to effect radical social change, it faces persistent police
attacks and co-optation by Democratic Party forces from the outside and
divisions over identity politics, militancy, localism and diffusion from
the inside.

Rethinking Democracy

Occupy Wall Street is foremost a democratic uprising from the left
because it advocates for the downward and outward distribution of wealth
and political power. Tying political democracy to economic democracy has
made class relevant again for millions of people. As for the form,
occupying public space is an old tactic. Since the early 20th century,
examples include the Wobbly free-speech campaign, the automobile factory
sit-down strikes, lunch-counter sit-ins, the Columbia University student
takeover and Cindy Sheehan's vigil outside of Bush's Texas ranch. The
need for democratic forums is greater than ever as public space is ever-
more surveilled, regulated and commodified.

Occupy also challenges the notion that workers are the sole agent of
revolution. Clearly, labor's power is unmatched in potentially bringing
capitalism to a halt, but in actuality, collective action on the shop or
office floor has been crippled by a lack of working-class consciousness,
timid and self-serving union bureaucracies, and the legal and repressive
tools of the corporate-state hybrid. Occupations of public space by
activists, intellectuals and marginal workers - as shown by Egypt's Tahrir
Square, Oakland's November 2, 2011, general strike and the December 12,
2011, West Coast port blockades - can attack capital from unexpected
directions, creating space for organized labor to take more militant
action.

In terms of development, the Occupy movement has gone through a series of
stages, though they are not so much distinct phases as overlapping and
intermingling trends where one stage may take prominence over the others
at different times. First, the occupation created an awareness of a group
that could be called "the people," which is often invoked with the now-
ubiquitous chant, "We are the 99 percent." The flipside of "the people"
is those who are not a legitimate part of the community: "the 1 percent,"
in this case. Both categories are social and psychological concepts that
mobilize rather than analytical terms that accurately describe social
forces. Segments of the 99 percent, such as white-collar managers, small-
business owners and the police, generally act as the social and physical
enforcers for the elite, while the real owning class is perhaps the
top .01 percent. But "We are the 99.99 percent" is hardly a catchy
slogan. In this respect, Occupy Wall Street is similar to the Tea Party,
which invokes its legitimate community with slogans like, "We the
people," "Take back America" and "Founding Fathers." For Tea Partiers,
however, nearly everyone else is illegitimate - unions, immigrants,
Muslims, liberals, welfare recipients (code for blacks and Latinos),
feminists, environmentalists, socialists, and gays and lesbians.

Combine a public organizing space with "the people," and the second stage
follows: assault the citadels of illegitimate power. As one organizer
told me about Zuccotti Park, "At any moment, you could call for an
impromptu march on Goldman Sachs and a hundred people would join you."
The night of October 5, 2011, was an exhilarating example of this. After
a union-led rally in downtown Manhattan, thousands of people surged
through the financial district in breakaway marches for hours. With so
many people in the streets feeling the wind of public support at their
backs, the police were taxed to hold the line. Wall Street was no longer
an impenetrable bastion and the New York Police Department (NYPD) was no
longer omnipotent. They felt fragile and under siege.

The occupation was a focal point for the media as well, and,
surprisingly, many corporate media outlets gave the movement favorable
press at times. Some observers have suggested that one lesson is not to
see the corporate media as the enemy. Rather, it should be treated as a
battleground, albeit one that is tilted toward the interests of the
wealthy and the imperial state. The physical occupation also served a
valuable role in making, "politicians realize there are people watching
what they are doing," says Anne Gemmell, political director of the labor-
backed community group Fight for Philly.

"You Have to See to Be Able to Dream"

The third stage is carnival. After years of clichéd protests bearing
witness to power, street politics had become futile and predictable.
Leaders of the anti-Iraq War movement excelled at polite marches on
weekends with no risk and little impact, and adjusted its politics to the
election cycle, leading to its demise by 2007. Occupy Wall Street hit the
big time because it is innovative political theater, a quality shared by
the civil rights movement, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP),
the global justice movement and the Arab Spring before it. I would stand
on the steps of Zuccotti Park and watch as hundreds of people below
exchanged food, art, knowledge, books, politics, health care, bedding,
anger, ideas, skills and love. Not one exchange was mediated by money (of
course, the goods were paid for at some point). It felt like being able
to breathe for the first time, because relations were being forged
according to human needs and concerns, not according to the logic of the
market. Revolutionary consciousness was being born through collective,
democratic political action, which is essential to igniting a new era of
activism and organization.

The occupation made a different world real, one without corporations,
authoritarian politics and the police state. As Michael Premo of Occupy
Wall Street's housing group, puts it: "You don't know how to dream unless
you see it sometimes. The occupation unlocked the creative, radical
imagination." Seeing new and different ways of organizing work, family
and community drew throngs of first-time as well as wayward activists to
the movement. If it was the left organizing the left, Occupy Wall Street
would have failed because experienced activists, no matter how well
intentioned, come bearing heavy allegiances, ideologies and interpersonal
baggage that inevitably sink left re-foundation projects. A movement must
coalesce around the previously nonpolitical to forge meaningful social
change.

Whose Community?

The fourth stage is creating genuine community. The cultural life of
occupations and the experience of working and living together bonded
occupiers together. What community involves is thorny, however. For
example, at the occupation in Portland, Oregon, organizers say the
encampment diverged from the general assembly because those sleeping in
the park, many of whom were homeless, were not present at the general
assembly meetings, also known as GAs. As a result, the GA was approving
decisions about the occupation with few actual occupiers present. A
related case occurred in Austin, Texas, where one organizer told me that,
by December, the GA was trying to end the encampment on the steps of
Austin City Hall, while the occupiers, again mainly homeless, blocked the
action because they said they had no other safe place to live.
(Eventually, the city of Austin shut it down by force in early February.)
Other cities encountered a similar phenomenon, and frequently enough that
"home-based occupiers" is now a common term used to refer to those who
are active in the movement but do not sleep in the camp.

The idea of community is also a proxy for long-simmering debates over
whether the goal is to take over the system or to build a new world in
the shell of the old. As occupations and enthusiasm spread, many
activists yearned to construct sustainable economies to meet the needs of
daily life. Occupations ran on their communal stomach, so community
gardens, recycling and grey-water systems were often first on the agenda.
It didn't take long for the dreams to outrun reality, however. Last fall,
I was approached by occupiers looking to form a printing cooperative.
They planned to start with photocopies and progress to newspapers such as
The Indypendent and The Occupied Wall Street Journal, both of which I co-
founded. I was stunned. Photocopying flyers is one thing, but printing
50,000 copies of a four-color newspaper is another. I explained it would
require a warehouse-sized space, millions of dollars in capital,
sophisticated press equipment and digital technology, experienced workers
to run the facility and business savvy to survive in a printing industry
with razor-thin margins. I never heard from them again. Currently, many
occupations are pursuing small-scale projects such as urban farming and
communal living, but this runs the risk of utopian separatism. The dream
of gathering the righteous and starting anew in uncharted territory or
creating a new social space is the story of America, after all.
Withdrawing from society is tempting, but a sign of defeat.

Now that nearly every occupation that popped up last fall has been
evicted from their common space, it's tempting to say that "Occupy 2.0"
is underway. There are energized movements around housing, finance,
labor, food, art, gender and ecology. Nonetheless, the loss of public
space is an undeniable setback: it glued the movement together.

Nathan Schneider, who has chronicled Occupy Wall Street from the pre-
planning stages, says that, since the occupation was routed from Zuccotti
Park, decisionmaking power has devolved from the general assembly to the
spokescouncil to working groups to campaigns. In March, I queried about
15 Occupy Wall Street organizers, and not one had been to a GA meeting in
the prior month. Some rolled their eyes at mention of the GA and told of
constant disruptions and occasional fistfights. A few claimed paid
provocateurs were stirring up the pot. No one could offer any proof of
government agents, which is admittedly difficult to come by, but the
infighting is all too real. When hundreds were living on Wall Street's
doorstep, the target was obvious: banks like Goldman Sachs and their
lapdogs in the media and politics. Without an occupation as an anchor,
vessels like the general assembly and spokescouncil can drift aimlessly,
making it tempting to turn on your fellow crewmates.

With the occupations over, most newcomers have wandered away. Ruth
Fowler, a writer who works with Occupy Los Angeles, says: "Occupy is very
odd right now. The people who have stayed are the cream of the crap, and
the brilliant. The rank-and-file in between are at home ... It's an
interesting dynamic. Not entirely comfortable. Lots of loonies floating
around."

The lack of community means struggling with who is the subject and what
is the purpose of the decisionmaking bodies. Michael Premo of Occupy Wall
Street says organizers understand there is a need for physical space, "to
build on the things that worked and think about what didn't work." He
adds that Occupy Wall Street is, "planning on creating a clearinghouse
for people to come together, build community and organize actions."

The Roads Ahead

New York is a showcase for the possibilities and pitfalls of Occupy Wall
Street, which still bubbles with creativity. On March 28, Occupy Wall
Street (claiming support of transit workers) took credit for chaining
open 20 subway stations, allowing thousands of straphangers to ride for
free so as to call attention to Wall Street's profiteering off of the
city's perpetual mass transit follies. On March 15, a few hundred people
outfitted with songs, banners and facades of foreclosed homes and
costumed as bankers and police joined "F the Banks." At turns festive and
angry, the procession snaked through downtown Manhattan, halting at
bailed-out banks to deliver a dose of displeasure. The highlight was an
attempt to occupy a Bank of America branch with furniture. It being New
York, police pounced as sofas, tables and bookcases were arranged outside
the bank. Within minutes, scores of cops had quarantined the area and
were carting away a handful of smiling protesters in cuffs.

The police strategy is to suffocate any outbreak of democracy, and it
shows signs of working as long as the rank and file has vanished. Elites
want images of heavy-handed policing because the narrative shifts from
inequality to streetfighting, scaring off potential supporters. On March
17, the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a completely
peaceful attempt to re-occupy Zuccotti was aggressively evicted. The
occupation shifted to Union Square, but after a few days, hundreds of
police swept in to enforce rarely employed restrictions on overnight
activity. Other than a protest against the killing of Trayvon Martin,
most recent Occupy Wall Street events have attracted less than 500
people. (In the case of the Martin protest, criticism was rife that some
occupiers tried to turn it into an Occupy event to retake space, rather
than focusing on police violence against and profiling of communities of
color.) The protest-a-day mode can backfire because police swarm smaller
protests, however peaceful and theatrical they may be. The antidote is
greater numbers, but because any working group or campaign can call a
protest, the movement risks spiraling downward into diffusion,
unsustainable activity, burnout and shrinking crowds.

Occupy Comes Home

Despite these problems, Occupy has an enviable brand, significant public
support, a plethora of movements and an unqualified success in
reorienting the national debate from austerity to inequality. The secret
of Occupy Wall Street's strength is disrupting power in ways both simple,
such as the "mic check," and grand, such as by occupying public space.
Even if that space is now a rarity, Occupy Wall Street retains a
disruptive capacity that defies prediction. It can be seen from Occupy
the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), which released a stunning
325-page critique of the Volcker Rule (which seeks to curb banks from
gambling with government-insured money), to Occupy Our Homes, which has
successfully engaged in dozens of successful foreclosure and eviction
defenses nationwide since November.

These are symbolic victories that put financial regulators on notice that
they are being watched, and they are real victories that keep families in
their homes. Victories are essential because they sustain the movement.
Occupy Our Homes has pioneered singing demonstrations to disrupt public
auctions of foreclosed homes, having closed down two in Brooklyn in
recent months, and the tactic is spreading throughout the city and
country.

Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, artists and social justice activists
who describe themselves as "eco-sexual domestic partners," have made
their Bay Area neighborhood of Bernal a model of the anti-foreclosure
movement. Their movement began out of "neighborly love" for a 72-year-old
African-American homeowner and veteran who is facing eviction. They say
David Solnit was the catalyst, introducing them to two dynamic organizers
- Buck Bagot and Stardust (in Human Form) - who helped them found Occupy
Bernal to defend homeowners. Stephens said: "The heart of the group is
door-knocking. We have a list of foreclosures, and once a week, members
go out to these homes and tell them we will help." Stephens says 85
households, mostly of people of color, are facing foreclosure in their
area, and Occupy Bernal explains they can assist them with free legal
help.

"We are trying to mitigate the shame in this," Stephens says. "If they
don't feel shame, they can understand where the blame is. They've been
taken of advantage of by the banks." She adds that Occupy Bernal is
actively defending 13 homeowners against eviction, has disrupted auctions
and protests regularly - including in a group called "wild old women" who
are in front of the banks every week - but the threat of eviction
remains. So Occupy Bernal is pushing the San Francisco City Board of
Supervisors "to pass a resolution calling for a moratorium on all
foreclosures until the big banks are investigated" for fraud in lending
and foreclosure activity. Sprinkle emphasizes that while the work is
"deadly serious, we are also having fun doing it."

Nonetheless, the anti-foreclosure movement has a long way to go compared
to the scale of the problem today, with 4 million families having lost
their homes to foreclosures since 2007, and compared to the scope of
resistance in the past, with some historians claiming that, during the
first eight months of 1932 in New York City, 77,000 evicted families were
moved back into their homes by activists.

Laboring for Victories

To notch far-reaching victories, the Occupy movement needs allies with
millions of members and access to resources. In short, the beleaguered
labor movement, which has found a lifeline in Occupy. Organized labor
seems to understand that laws and court rulings have blunted its most
potent weapon: the strike. Labor organizers across the country are
unbridled in their support for the movement, saying occupiers can take
risks unions are unable or unwilling to. Gemmell of Fight for Philly
says, "There are no leashes holding the energy of the Occupy movement
back." She says it has had a "positive spillover effect," and cited two
instances where workers settled contracts on better-than-expected terms
while Occupy Philadelphia was entrenched outside City Hall. Occupy Wall
Street was a factor in the repeal last fall of Ohio's law that would have
decimated public-sector unions, though the tens of millions of dollars
labor poured into the effort did not hurt.

By moving beyond the workplace as the locus of struggle between labor and
capital, Occupy has introduced creative tensions that benefit unions even
if they feel their toes are being stepped on. The December 12, 2011, West
Coast port shutdowns organized by the Occupy movement generated friction
with leaders of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU),
who opposed the blockade attempts from Long Beach, California, to
Vancouver, Canada. Occupiers then began organizing flying pickets to help
the ILWU block a union-busting ship scheduled to come into Longview under
military escort. Paul Glavin, an Occupy organizer in Oregon, says various
occupations were "going to send hundreds of people, if not more."

"It was going to be very big," said Glavin. Before the confrontation
occurred, grain export terminal operator EGT blinked and signed a
contract with the ILWU.

The next test for labor and Occupy is May Day, with Occupy Los Angeles
calling for a general strike. Michael Novick, a retired school teacher
and anti-racist organizer, says, "There is a bunch of labor actions for
May Day in LA," including one by recycling workers in San Fernando Valley
and possibly at attempt by workers to disrupt traffic to LAX, the most
active airport on the West Coast. Students are discussing shutting down a
freeway, and Novick says there will, "be two different immigrant rights
marches in downtown, which reflects a lot of historical divisions in the
movement."

"Occupy is doing a car and bike caravan moving slowly across L.A. from
four different directions," said Novick.

One troubling development is the formation of a "99 percent table" by Los
Angeles labor organizers who are allegedly siphoning unions and faith-
based groups away from the Occupy movement while also excluding some
members of Occupy Los Angeles who have criticized as what they see as
attempts to poach the movement. Novick says Occupy's strategy is to work
with everyone, and the day will end with an occupation of some sort in
downtown Los Angeles.

Many other cities are gearing up for a range of marches and protests on
May Day, though anything approaching a general strike seems highly
likely."Occupy Portland is planning for a spring offensive with May Day
as the focus," said Glavin. "The Portland Liberation Organization Council
is organizing to take over a building May 1. May Day will be part of a
longer struggle. The strategy is to get organized in working-class
neighborhoods to work toward a general strike."

Austin, Texas, is a different story. Dave Cortez, a community organizer
whose focus is on energy and jobs, is part of Occupy Austin's working
group on banks. Since Occupy Austin was cleared off the City Hall steps
in early February, activities include organizing local, small businesses
and nonprofits to move their money from Wall Street banks to community
institutions.

"We are working toward getting the city, the county government, the
transportation and school board to shift their money from the big banks
to credit unions, and local banks," said Cortez. "Since October, we've
tracked $1.6 million moved from largely personal accounts into credit
accounts." But as for May Day, "We are one of the few Occupy movements
not calling for a general strike on May Day. We've built a large
coalition of immigrant rights, socialists, students, communities, faith,
anarchists and environmental groups." Cortez says union members support
Occupy Austin, but it does not have any official union support. "It was
clear from the get-go we would not be able to get buy-in for a general
strike. It's difficult for workers to participate because Texas is a
right-to-work state. If they called in sick and participated, they could
very easily be fired."

Occupy and organized labor may also find themselves on opposing sides as
unions throw money and troops into President Obama's re-election battle
while Occupy Wall Street mobilizes to occupy the Democratic National
Convention, and the Republican counterpart, as well as making its
presence known on the fall campaign trail.

Occupy the Election

When Occupy became a national sensation, Obama and the Democratic Party
tried to co-opt it, which failed. At this point, the liberal strategy is
more sophisticated. Democratic Party front groups like MoveOn and Rebuild
the Dream have glommed on to the "99 percent," trying to steal Occupy's
thunder while distancing themselves from the movement. Obama, meanwhile,
is running even farther away by employing squishy language about
"economic fairness" while Democrats are delighted that Mitt Romney is all
but assured of the Republican nomination. Organized labor and liberals
are already branding Romney as "Mr. 1 Percent," as if Obama isn't a gold-
plated member of the 1 percent or been their greatest benefactor during
the last three years.

Having interviewed hundreds of occupiers across the country, it's fairly
safe to say they fall into three camps regarding the 2012 election. There
are those who didn't support Obama in 2008 and certainly won't this time;
those who voted for him last time, but say they will not this time; and
the plurality, those who say they will hold their nose and vote for Obama.
Few occupiers, if any, will join Obama's campaign, because all agree that
the electoral system is broken, which is exactly why they flocked to the
movement as an alternative method of building and leveraging power. But
at the same time, the Occupy movement needs to create a compelling
counternarrative to the electoral process. It could be sidelined if it
adopts a knee-jerk "pox on everyone's house" response and tries to occupy
the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in the face of certain
police thuggery.

There are some in the movement who do want to enlist in policy battles
and electoral campaigns, but visiting an active occupation affirms that
the heart of the movement is about creating societies that embrace the
limitless possibilities of everyday life instead of allowing our passions
to be manipulated into support for a venal system and our desires to be
ground into grist for cheap trinkets.

In February my partner, Michelle Fawcett, and I heard Occupy Fullerton in
Orange County was holding an "Occupalooza." It was a warm, sunny day,
like it almost always is in the O.C., so we cruised Fullerton's banal
architecture until we happened upon an incongruous tent village. It was a
familiar scene: about 40 tents, most shielded by blue tarps, and small
knots of people playing music, smoking and lounging in the afternoon sun.
The party was on top of the hill overlooking the Occupy Fullerton Camp,
we were told.

Before hiking up the hill we met Wolf, a 25-year-old transgender native
of Fullerton. Wolf was new to the movement, yet already immersed in it.
He explained how Occupy Fullerton is lobbying the City Council to pass
resolutions on issues ranging from Citizens United to predatory debt. His
cool-headed explanation of how credit card companies trap unsuspecting
college students in a cycle of debt gave way to a passionate embrace of
the Occupy movement as a welcoming space for him and his intersex partner.

As we interviewed Wolf, John Park hung on the edge. When we turned to
talk to Park, a Korean-American with two children in college, he launched
into a blistering critique of the ideology of free trade, expertly citing
the academic literature on the subject. That a middle-aged, immigrant
computer programmer who is organizing around the outsourcing of jobs has
found common cause with a transgender youth activist speaks to the raw
ideological and emotional power of the twin slogans, "We are the 99
percent" and "Occupy Wall Street."

When we clambered up the hill, we found a bowl-shaped grass amphitheater
fringed by palm trees, a house band jamming with a few dozen people
grooving to the music. True to the California setting, there were
frisbees, sun bathers and stoners. Since it was winter, kids were
sledding, even though that meant bouncing along a dirt gully gouged from
the hillside. Lupe Barrios, eyeing our camera and notepad, sauntered over
to talk. He said he was from Tucson, his right calf proclaimed "Hecho en
San Diego" and he was here for "fun, not politics." But within a minute,
he was talking about how, "immigrant rights are workers' rights," and
told us, "My mother lives in a cage wherever she goes because of social
and class oppressions."

The party was festive and giddy and unpredictable. The left is abundant
in anger; the Occupy movement has turned that into joy. This country is
floundering in despair; Occupy has given countless people hope. Within
the Occupy movement, questions of inclusiveness, cooperation, compassion
and democracy are foremost on people's minds. People want work, but they
want it to be meaningful. They want the good life however they define it:
liberatory, intellectual, libidinous or spiritual.

These emotional and philosophical truths make all the difference. If the
movement becomes predictable, the faces all look familiar and the
organizing feels like drudgery, then it will have lost. For now, no one
knows what will happen next. And that's a wonderful thing.

Arun Gupta is covering the Occupy movement nationwide for Salon. A
version of this article is being published in the May 2012 issue of Z
Magazine
This article is a Truthout original.

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Not dead, in jail or a slave? Thank a liberal!

--
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution
inevitable” -JFK

[Richard Steel]

On Apr 12, 3:57 pm, 2960 Dead <d...@gone.com> wrote:
> http://truth-out.org/news/item/8444-the-wonderful-unpredictable-life-of-
> the-occupy-movement
>
> The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement

If it's so wonderful....why aren't YOU there?

[Kurt Nicklas]

His chapter occupies the local pizza parlor once a week.

[2960 Dead]

There's this incredible invention called "The Internet" which makes my
physical presence unnecessary.

[2960 Dead]

Oddly enough, yes. Do you have a problem with that, Knickers?

[Richard Steel]

> >> The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement

> > If it's so wonderful....why aren't YOU there?

> There's this incredible invention called "The Internet" which makes my
> physical presence unnecessary.

What makes your physical presence unnecessary is that it's connected
to YOU.

[Earl]

we must crush organized labor and force slaves like you to do the work
for as low a wage as the market will bear.

you will starve if your work fails to satisfy us.

the lash will not be spared. the only rights you will have will be to
work and not be punished for failure.

[Steve]

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:49:26 +0000 (UTC), 2960 Dead <de...@gone.com>
wrote:

>On Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:20:47 -0700, Richard Steel wrote:
>
>> On Apr 12, 3:57 pm, 2960 Dead <d...@gone.com> wrote:
>>> http://truth-out.org/news/item/8444-the-wonderful-unpredictable-life-
>of-
>>> the-occupy-movement
>>>
>>> The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement
>>
>> If it's so wonderful....why aren't YOU there?
>
>There's this incredible invention called "The Internet" which makes my
>physical presence unnecessary.

Porky belongs to the Occupy-by-Bloviation movement.

[Steve]

On Fri, 13 Apr 2012 02:03:56 +0000 (UTC), 2960 Dead <de...@gone.com>
wrote:

>On Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:29:41 -0700, Kurt Nicklas wrote:
>
>> On Apr 12, 8:20 pm, Richard Steel <rsteel2...@aol.com> wrote:
>>> On Apr 12, 3:57 pm, 2960 Dead <d...@gone.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> >http://truth-out.org/news/item/8444-the-wonderful-unpredictable-life-
>of-
>>> > the-occupy-movement
>>>
>>> > The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement
>>>
>>> If it's so wonderful....why aren't YOU there?
>>
>> His chapter occupies the local pizza parlor once a week.
>
>Oddly enough, yes. Do you have a problem with that, Knickers?

<LOL> They're probably protesting that there isn't enough cheese.

[Foxtrot]

2960 Dead <de...@gone.com> wrote:

>http://truth-out.org/news/item/8444-the-wonderful-unpredictable-life-of-the-occupy-movement

>
>The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement

>I met Nomi on a bus in Baltimore. She was from Wisconsin and had been
>involved with Occupy Wall Street. She was part of Occupy Judaism and
>fondly recalled the Yom Kippur services she attended at the Wall Street
>occupation with hundreds of other people. Nomi said that, for the first
>time, she and her friends felt like they could combine the religious and
>radical dimensions of Judaism. The conversation fell silent as the bus
>rolled along. Suddenly she turned to me and excitedly announced that she
>met her girlfriend at Liberty Plaza. I smiled and responded, "That's why
>Occupy Wall Street matters."
>
>By enabling people to find fulfillment in all parts of their lives,
>whether romantic, spiritual, political or cultural, the Occupy movement
>is more than a movement. It is life-changing.

Oooo goody!!! The park crappers are back! More opportunities to
humiliate the left by showing voters the libs' true hidden beliefs.

Of course it's life changing. Exposure to bio-hazards and paranoia is
very corrosive.

So why have they dropped off the political radar in the mainstream
media despite being their darlings at first? First, the public looked
closer and saw that they're spoiled brats who text with their iPhones
and drink Starbucks coffee while whining about how cruel life is. Then
the videos came out of them throwing rocks at police. After they were
finally forced out, the sprawling piles of feces, urine, used condoms
and tampons were the nails in the park crappers' coffin.

Why can it be called unpredictable? Because the left had grand visions
of its future but didn't predict what an abject failure it would become.

>The emergence of every mass movement makes sense in hindsight, but no one
>could have predicted hundreds of occupations and thousands of groups
>would pop up across the United States just weeks after a ragged
>encampment secured a tenuous foothold on Wall Street last September.
>Sure, anger was boiling over prior to the takeover of Zuccotti Park in
>downtown Manhattan, but the occupation crystallized who is to blame for
>the economic crisis and who are the legitimate people. Anyone could walk
>into the public space, share their stories, find people with similar
>grievances and help build micro-societies. Occupy wasn't just a rejection
>of Washington and Wall Street. It revealed the failings of liberals,
>unions and the left.

How true.

>Now that nearly every occupation that popped up last fall has been
>evicted from their common space, it's tempting to say that "Occupy 2.0"
>is underway. There are energized movements around housing, finance,
>labor, food, art, gender and ecology. Nonetheless, the loss of public
>space is an undeniable setback: it glued the movement together.

Loss of public space?!? It wasn't yours to begin with. How typical of
the left's belief that it's entitled to things that don't belong to them.
Sheesh.

>Occupy the Election
>
>When Occupy became a national sensation, Obama and the Democratic Party
>tried to co-opt it, which failed. At this point, the liberal strategy is
>more sophisticated. Democratic Party front groups like MoveOn and Rebuild
>the Dream have glommed on to the "99 percent," trying to steal Occupy's
>thunder while distancing themselves from the movement.

That is a true similarity between the Tea Party and the park crappers.
Both began from public outrage, politicians saw their popularity then
tried to take them over.

[2960 Dead]

Do your little dance for your corporate masters, Fauxy.

[2960 Dead]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2012 08:02:02 -0700, Kurt Nicklas wrote:

> On Apr 12, 10:03 pm, 2960 Dead <d...@gone.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:29:41 -0700, Kurt Nicklas wrote:
>> > On Apr 12, 8:20 pm, Richard Steel <rsteel2...@aol.com> wrote:
>> >> On Apr 12, 3:57 pm, 2960 Dead <d...@gone.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> >http://truth-out.org/news/item/8444-the-wonderful-unpredictable-
life-
>> of-
>> >> > the-occupy-movement
>>
>> >> > The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement
>>
>> >> If it's so wonderful....why aren't YOU there?
>>
>> > His chapter occupies the local pizza parlor once a week.
>>
>> Oddly enough, yes.  Do you have a problem with that, Knickers?
>

> No problem. And I don't see it as "odd" at all.
>
> From you, it's what I've come to expect, Voteless.
>
> You're a hypocritical windbag. When it comes to action all you are is
> talk,talk,talk.
>
> <snickers>

Why don't you tell us all what sort of "action" you think I ought to be
taking?

[Richard Steel]

> >> Oddly enough, yes.  Do you have a problem with that, Knickers?

> > No problem. And I don't see it as "odd" at all.

> > From you, it's what I've come to expect, Voteless.

> > You're a hypocritical windbag. When it comes to action all you are is
> > talk,talk,talk.

> > <snickers>

> Why don't you tell us all what sort of "action" you think I ought to be
> taking?

You should get a tent, and move in with the Occupiers to show your
solidarity for the cause.

[Richard Steel]

On Apr 12, 6:49 pm, 2960 Dead <d...@gone.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Apr 2012 17:20:47 -0700, Richard Steel wrote:
> > On Apr 12, 3:57 pm, 2960 Dead <d...@gone.com> wrote:
> >>http://truth-out.org/news/item/8444-the-wonderful-unpredictable-life-
> of-
> >> the-occupy-movement
>
> >> The Wonderful, Unpredictable Life of the Occupy Movement
>
> > If it's so wonderful....why aren't YOU there?
>
> There's this incredible invention called "The Internet" which makes my
> physical presence unnecessary.

If you believe in their cause, then you should endure a little
discomfort. Otherwise, you're kinda full of shit.

[2960 Dead]

You should just start wearing a swastica and brownshirt and drop the
pretense that you're an American.