October 2011
15 posts
Mollifying the Radical Drummer-Boys: Another...
Today, OWS protestors once again narrowly escaped eviction from Liberty square, a move threatened by a local community board in response to the movement’s apparent inability to regulate its drummers (who, according to the OWS website, “feel that they are bringing rhythm to the revolution and have a voice that must be heard”). N+1 published a hilarious OWS memo reporting...
WatchPolice Intervention: The X-factor
Footage from Oakland, last night: local police disperse a thousand-strong demonstration using tear gas and flash grenades. The march was intended to reclaim Frank Ogawa plaza, which served as a base for two weeks of protests until police cleared it before dawn (arresting 75). The protesters were headed for city hall, vowing to retake their camp. A small group...
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Rightwing-media Hit Jobs: Part 1
Media org: Bloomberg
Story title: Occupy Wall Street Knows Not What It Does Hurting Local Jobs.
Charge: Businesses near Zuccotti Park are suffering as a result of protests.
Evidence: Reporter overheard a handful of nearby business owners complain about dwindling foot traffic.
Shortcomings: The charge is baseless as well as feeble. The writers bury a concession deep in the article that...
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On Incoherence & its Virtues
When the mainstream media finally started covering the Wall Street protests several weeks into the sit-in, transitioning overnight, as Jon Stewart put it, from blackout to circus mode, they dwelled heavily on the apparent incoherence of the demonstrators’ message. Cable news producers dashed around Liberty Square to find out what the protesters wanted and could not discern a clear line. Many of...
"Necessity fuels a revolution, not moral argument"
Protestors in Zuccotti Park explain to The Atlantic why Bush era anti-war protests failed:
“The anti-war movement wasn’t based on a kind of material self-interested behavior the way that this is,” says Jonathan Chabrier, a Brooklyn middle-school teacher who has been involved in the Occupy Wall Street, and who helped organize anti-war protests while studying for a...
Establishment vs. Disestablishment
New York Magazine hosted a discussion between former governor/client 9 Eliot Spitzer and Wall Street protestor/grad student Manissa Maharawal. Both inhabit parallel universes and suffer from grave limitations, but their unlikely introduction makes for fascinating conversation. A must-read!
The 99%: The Difference Between Broke and Poor
The Wall Street Journal has a fun little interactive feature that tells you what “percent” you are based on income, i.e whether you should be dragged through the streets by your silk pantaloons or feast on the champagne-infused flesh of the rich. A friend of mine posted the link on Facebook with the comment: “I’m in the bottom 1%. I <3 grad school.” I clicked through and was...
The Advantages of Disillusionment
Our political system is rigged and it is working very well for the moneyed interests who rigged it. As such, our ability as citizens to influence core policy is very limited. Their power structure is well insulated. Paradoxically, though, for it to continue its smooth run, it is instrumental that the educated classes entertain illusions of influence. Elections serve that purpose, and when those...
The Other Occupations
There is an undeniable correlation between the manifold forms of injustice that the US wreaks on its own people and the populations of other countries, and the dismal economic situation in which we find ourselves. A history of tolerating injustice against others has bred a culture of impunity. Protesters who are now furious that the system is rigged to benefit a few at the expense of the many...
On Looking Like Democracy
At risk of reading too much into the chants by Occupy Wall Street protesters, I want to take the opportunity to initiate a discussion of the movement’s rhetoric. Bearing in mind that it is diverse and leaderless, you still have a number of people leading protesters in chants, and save for a new additions such as “We are the 99 percent”, these chants mostly originate from...
The 99%: View from the home front
The terminology of the 99 percent campaign has infiltrated every facet of our lives. In my home, 1 percenter is currently synonymous with asshole, the shirking of household duties, and leaving only a drop of milk in the carton, while 99 percentcan be invoked for any grievance and to improve one’s negotiating position. Yesterday in the car, on the way to the supermarket:
E:...
Framing OWS
Democratic party strategists and their mainstream media shills are already trying to force Occupy Wall Street into a mold that will help re-elect Obama in 2012. Yesterday Common Dreams published this advice to the movement by George Lakoff, linguist and author of “Don’t Think of an Elephant!” a blueprint for “framing the debate,” which received a lot of attention...
Hello
The aim of this participatory blog is to initiate a debate on the rhetoric, form, strategy and tactics of the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street movement among the Left, as well as to parse criticism from other sources.
We believe that a critical perspective is beneficial to the movement as it grows and as attempts to co-opt, diminish or trivialize a challenge to the status quo intensify.
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