Exit, stage left
Remember last year’s Shiny New Thing?
Occupy Sets Wall Street Tie-Up as Protesters Face Burnout
Occupy Wall Street, the global movement against inequality that ignited in Manhattan last year, will mark its first anniversary by trying to block traffic in the financial district and encircle the New York Stock Exchange.
Planning for the Sept. 17 protest, dubbed S17, follows months of internal debate and flagging interest, according to interviews with organizers. The morning action may include attempts to make citizens’ arrests of bankers, and some activists intend to bring handcuffs, they said.
“We are here to bring you to justice,” said Sean McKeown, a 32-year-old chemist and New York University graduate who’s helping organize the demonstration. “We’re offering you the chance to repent for your sins.”
What is it with all these chemists breaking bad? Is that a career-related psychosis like mailmen going postal? Oh yeah, bring handcuffs. Make sure they’re comfy because you’ll be wearing them after the police take you away for false imprisonment and various other felonies.
Seriously.
Organizers said there has been more fatigue than fresh thinking this year. Occupy’s New York City General Assembly, which oversaw planning by consensus, ceased functioning in April because of infighting, ineffectiveness and low turnout, according to organizers and minutes of meetings. The group’s funds were frozen to preserve money for bail, ending most cash distributions, they said.
“Movements calcify, and it’s difficult to maintain the vigor and camaraderie,” said Travis Mushett, 26, a novelist who helped organize an Occupy reading group. He was one of six who used the word “burnout” to describe the recent mood.
[…]
Attendees at general assemblies had long and circuitous talks about allocating money, not about “what they wanted in the world, or how they were going to change it,” said Nicole Carty, 24, a Brown University graduate who helped run meetings.
Hornbein said that online forums became venomous as “systems broke down.” A separate oversight body, the Spokes Council, also dissolved, he and other participants said.
That means there’s no nucleus to a movement that had already rejected leaders, a central website, unified fundraising drives, administrative headquarters or a national advertising initiative. A working group that tried to come up with a list of essential demands wasn’t able to, organizers said.
[…]
Anarchists are at the heart of Occupy, organizers said.
“In a way, the fringe is the core,” said Mushett, the novelist. “That’s where you find a huge anarchist presence.”
[…]
“If they’re promoting ideals that don’t ring sensible to large numbers of people, what they want doesn’t go anywhere,” said Todd Gitlin, 69, a former president of 1960s protest organization Students for a Democratic Society and now chairman of Columbia University’s interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in communications. “It doesn’t become a social reality. It becomes the expression of a subculture.”
[…]
“This isn’t over,” said Dana Balicki, a member of Occupy’s press team. “This isn’t over until the last person calls it quits and goes home, wherever home is.”
First of all, an organization of anarchists is an oxymoron, with emphasis on the “moron”.
Last year Obama and the Democrats came up with what they thought was a brilliant plan. They would create their own version of the Tea Party. Just as the Republicans rode the Tea Party to victory in 2010, the Democrats would ride Occupy to victory in 2012.
Things appeared to go well at first. The Democrats needed plausible deniability so they couldn’t be directly involved in organizing the movement, but they could funnel financial assistance through anonymous donors and provide covert political support. They got the unions to lend a hand too.
It is no accident that the Occupy movement was strongest in cities controlled by Democrats. Even though there were supposedly no leaders the group coordinated very well with SEIU and other unions. The police initially bent over backwards to accommodate the Occupiers and half a million dollars in donations flowed in within the first couple weeks.
If things had gone according to plan the Occupy movement would have become a left-wing version of the Tea Party – a grassroots activist group simpatico with the Democratic party. Obama and the Democrats would promise them the moon to get their support and then throw them a few bones after the election. With any luck the Occupiers would provide the momentum to retake Congress.
The Democrats failed to learn the lesson of the Tea Party – when you create something real from astroturf the monster will run amok. But they had an even worse problem.
Take a look at your typical Tea Partier. They tend to be middle-aged and older, hyper-patriotic, middle-class and financially independent. They are politically focused and conservative. Most of them have children. Despite the media caricatures they are mostly well-behaved and law-abiding. They are not a bunch of white supremacists or gun-toting militia members. They are right-wing but not lunatic fringe.
Now consider your typical Occupier. Younger, no kids, no job (or bad job) still dependent on their parents. They are anarchists and socialists and nihilists. They are starry-eyed idealists and rebels without a cause or clue.
When the Tea Party monster escaped from the lab and began to run amok, the Tea Partiers seized control. They got shit organized and started getting shit done. They agreed on some demands and goals. They supported candidates and started winning elections.
When the Occupy monster escaped from the lab and began to run amok, nobody seized control. Their shit was disorganized and they couldn’t get shit done. (They even had trouble finding places to shit!) They could not (or simply would not) agree on anything. They squatted in parks and occasionally tried to disrupt businesses. They made fools of themselves.
Despite what Riverdaughter and others might think, nobody did it to them – they did it to themselves. After things spun out of control Obama and the Democrats ran for cover. The money stopped flowing and the political support was withdrawn. Finally the police were called in to end it.
Yes, I am gloating. I was right. She was wrong. Nyah, nyah, nyah! I told you so!
Never argue with the Klown.
The Crawdad Hole 
Republicans can probably count on their base turning out this year. Tea partiers and Palin supporters will vote in numbers, they’ve had it with Obama. So it seems Romney’s camp is making a stronger play for the moderate middle in the final months. Team Obama on the other hand appears to be entirely about motivating base turnout at 2008 levels. So their final two months may get more radical and ugly if that’s possible. The politics of fear turned up all the way.
So, I can stop “waiting for it” ? 😀
Just wait. /s
Of course you were right all along! 🙂
Michelle Obama yuks it up with Letterman last night ….
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/television/NATL-Michelle-Obama-Admits-to-Not-Watching-RNC-on-Late-Show-167960556.html
OWS members are my favorite combination of stupidity and arrogance. They were led by the nose and joined up with such an obvious cult based artificial organization carefully designed (via obscene bureaucracy) so they could never go anywhere not already charted for them. Many were so stupid they thought they had a real movement. And when we pointed this stuff out, they thought we were the stupid ones.
It was really sad how people we knew were suckered into it. But they’re the ones that jumped in. They joined a cult. They voluntarily joined an artificial tribe designed to imprison them. They signed up to be pod people. It’s sad. But I have no sympathy. They indeed have all been clueless.
It really creeped me out when RD and RalphB joined the cult. I thought they were immune to Kool-aid.
It was like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
OWS is gone but neither one of them has been the same since.
To face us is to face what they did, and how gullible and stupid they were. To avoid all of that requires some crazy. Must be fun in their heads right now. 🙂
And funnily enough not long before that we had conversations about why some of us seemed to be immune to such things. They were weak kneed and desperately wanted to belong to a tribe. Who know they were holding it back with every fiber and jumped in with the next one that came along.
After RD came back talking like one of the pod people I was really weirded out.
“Come . . to . . a . . rally. See . . for . . yourself. Try . . the . . Kool . . aid.”
I was afraid if I went to a rally I would end up selling flowers at the airport.
Who know they were holding it back with every fiber and jumped in with the next one that came along.
It makes me realize why shunning and excommunication have been favorite control methods of religious movements. Works like a charm on those needy for acceptance.
Bingo. And keeps the flock protected and controlled at the same time. They know they’ll be next if their dare ask uncomfortable questions, or think for themselves.
It’s also funny to see people who like to talk negatively about religion being, well, religious. Irony much.
It’s not really irony as much as a necessary consequence. Wasn’t there some study that showed that the human species always invents some kind of religion – it’s like hardwired in the brain or something.
The trick, imo, is keeping whatever religion you have in balance with reality and the rest of your life.
I was afraid if I went to a rally I would end up selling flowers at the airport.
I have a confession to make: I visited the local OWS rally on the very day that RD posted the entry denouncing me, in thinly-veiled terms, for refusing to do so. (Not because she posted it, mind, I was already on my way there when I first saw it.) I didn’t let on at first because I didn’t want to seem to be condoning such a presumptuous demand, and I continued to be mum because the reaction was so revealing.
The two protesters I talked to there seemed open to my concerns about OWS tactics and organization*, they certainly were far more reasonable than RD was. They were local activists of long standing and not really connected to the OWS “leadership”, though.
*borne out by subsequent events
Of course you were right, myiq. We said at the get-go that the “nice” people were not the core of the movement: the loons and anarchists and burn it all radicals and cold-eyed Dem union operatives and feckless stoners were. The nice people, even if large in number, were the fringe, being used.
The teapartiers may have had some loons too, but the majority of average joes repudiated and got rid of them as fast as they showed up. OWS didn’t mind if commies and anarchists were speaking and marching and flying their flags, or the Jew-baiters were proclaiming in their midst.
It worked out well for Obama, as we predicted. There was a window of time when the left could have coalesced around holding him and the D’s AND the R’s accountable, just as the teaparty went after “their own” and did a lot of housecleaning in the R party. Instead all that anger and energy was wasted camping out and banging bongos. That was the plan: distract the activists so no internal party opposition arose the D poobahs and their power. The organizers and those running the show, controlling the money, were kept deliberately fuzzy, in the shadows.
The teaparty shook the GOP, big time. The GOP was terrified of them, scrambling to at least make enough changes to placate them.
OWS didn’t shake shit, except annoyed commuters and shopkeepers.
It was planned that way – direct all that discontent AWAY from Obama and elected leaders to some inconsequential sidetrack. That was carefully managed. The refusal to allow the OWS gatherings to get specifically “political” about specific politicians was no accident. They were steered well away from attacking holders of actual power, toward futile emotional symbolism. We have hundreds of years of history to show us where power lies, and how it’s wielded, and how it’s challenged. And these morons were told, “No, we’re not going to do it that way. We are going to do it this new and different way!”. And RD and the rest of the fools bought it, and called us whip kissers when we pointed out what was obviously going on.
We were right. Again. What we predicted would happen with both OWS and the Teaparty played out just as we said. One sputtered into a joke and/or radical fringe, the other became a potent force that the pols FEAR.
We live in strange times. It appears that there is no greater sin than being right a lot. What should make the idiots more likely to listen up the next time we assess something……. will instead make them angrier…. at US. And more determined to not listen and villify us. So okay – it’s their funeral. But we are right. A lot.
Sad as hell, isn’t it. But I have no patience for the clueless.
I think that originally the Democrats hoped to be able to take control of the movement and “guide” it into useful (for them) channels. But it was set up to guarantee it couldn’t be used against the Democrats.
Exactly. First, do no harm (to the Dems). And if we get lucky and it takes off, we’ll use it.
I am so damn happy I fell upon your blog MYIQ2XU !!!
As soon as they opened their mouths I knew we had some serious arrested development on our hands. They had the cognitive and social ability of early teens who thought they had sneaked out of the house with the car keys. Most had attended college but still had not figured out how to take care of themselves or plan for the day after tomorrow. Some had not learned how and some are simply not capable of it. A world view shaped by movies, video games, comic books and propaganda. Most were used just like the naive and dumb have been though out the history of mankind. The handcuff stuff is pure fascist domination fantasy crap and they need to be called on it.
RD has more in common with her mother than she will ever admit.
When one has been raised in a cult like religion it isn’t unusual to seek out acceptance from another controlling group or figure after rejecting or being rejected by the religious organization of one’s parents. Unfortunately too many escapees just trade one master for another be it a group, person, alcohol and/or drugs.
Ever since escaping the hell-on-earth of my childhood religion I have been wary of becoming a follower of individuals, religions, political parties, entertainers and athletes. I can appreciate and admire people like Sarah Palin but am not likely to become anybody’s star struck groupie. That is a recipe for disappointment and disillusionment.
This calls for one of my FAVORITE movie quotes, from the Big Lebowski:
~Walter Sobchak
He also said, and I LOVE this:
♥