Don't you pretty much have to be in the 1% to have enough money to run for president? (I know you can ideologically be with OWS, but still.)
God, no. Imitating an adversary's moves (in this case, the Tea Party's) is just silly.
Any insurgent political movement that I'll support has to be based on the idea of gaining an electoral victory. If it's just about demonstrating my political purity, I'll vote for Obama.
On the other hand, I'd vote for any semi-plausible OWS-type candidate in a Democratic primary. I'll vote for Kucinich if he runs.
Herman Cain represents the 9-9-9 percent. That's like a whole extra 9 for free.
2: Actually, the Tea Party model is pretty useful and I'd sign on for that - but I base that opinion on the idea that the Tea Party will line up behind Romney when the time comes. Perhaps that's an incorrect assumption.
Not impressed with OWS. I am doing well enough under the current system to be nervous about major changes and OWS seems uninterested in incremental reforms.
I'll vote for Kucinich if he runs.
Kucinich is legitimately prepared to hold power in a way that OWS is not. OWS is a disorganized, vaguely utopian grassroots movement that doesn't have the collective structure for electoral politics. A vote for OWS would just be a way of registering total disgust with the available electoral alternatives.
But it's necessary to move the Democratic party. Primary challenges are one of the very best ways of doing that.
I am doing well enough under the current system to be nervous about major changes
It isn't all about you, James. I guess most people are always going to vote purely out of self-interest, but it seems unfortunate.
As I said ages ago, the 'baggers' main achievement was imposing a loyalty-test on anyone who wanted to run as a Republican anywhere. not willing to sign up to 'baggerdom = no candidacy. The exact opposite would be a big improvement.
Kucinich is legitimately prepared to hold power in a way that OWS is not.
Comparing one guy to a movement seems a bit problematic.
9: I wish more people would vote out of self-interest. The majority of the Republican base have been voting against their self-interests for years now. Of course, they've been fooled into doing it ("Hey! Look over there! War Against Christmas! And brown people!"), but still.
What's an OWS candidate? If an otherwise credible candidate (counting credible as Kucinich-class or better) said that they supported OWS's goals, I'd take that as a reason to think better of them, and might vote on that basis if it didn't seem strategically ill-advised (see Nader, Florida).
I'd be happy to vote for just about any liberal alternative to Obama. I don't live in a swing state, so why the hell not?
The question is moot. Obama has already amassed the largest presidential campaign chest in history (according to disclosed figures: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/index.php, ignore the GOPers, they haven't revved up yet), and he has the corporate sponsors and party leadership behind him. If an OWS presidential candidate came along, it wouldn't even be a case of trying to run David against Goliath. It would be betting a blade of grass against the power of a tornado.
Herman Cain represents the 9-9-9 percent. That's like a whole extra 9 for free.
I hadn't thought of it before. But 9+9+9=27. 27% is the magic number. Cain is just a world-historically good troll!
Yes, not in 2012 - too many people need health reform to go through.
My notion is that OWS should try for a coalition - its candidate has voters swing to the Dems based on a negotiated policy settlement. (Not cabinet posts, though that could be a symbol.) First time it probably falls through, showing we're serious; after four years of a Republican, the Dems realize it makes sense (their concessions can focus on the OWS ideas that poll the best).
It means at least 4 years of horribleness, but I can't think of any other strategy that yields forward motion of any sort.
Of course, in 2016 OWS enthusiasm will probably have dissipated.
In the short term, how about OWS-Congressperson meets like the Tea Party did? Pulling the left wing of the House farther left can only be to the good. And of course elect our own.
What's an OWS candidate?
Someone who publicly identifies with the 99% and the Occupy movement, and any list of principles or demands it may put forward.
Given the anarchist-with-a-small-'a' roots and decision-making structure of the various OWS-related movements, I don't think that they will ever be in the business of delegating leadership to someone participating in US electoral politics, especially at the national/presidential level. There are already Green parties.
I guess a version of this dilemma could be:
You have a limited amount of money to donate to political causes. If your local Occupy branch is fundraising to start/expand a free health clinic, do you give your money to it or give your money to a Democratic candidate who will be a vote against Republican repeal of the Affordable Care Act?
Cain is just a world-historically good troll!
I'm coming around to this opinion. I mean really: "I'm not supposed to know anything about foreign policy"? What on-the-level presidential candidate would put those words in that order and then say them into a microphone? In order to explain not knowing which side we supported in a bombing campaign that just ended?
Don't you pretty much have to be in the 1% to have enough money to run for president?
Really? Neither Clinton or Obama seem to have massed any wealth nor cracked 500k/yr before becoming President...
21 Both had wives earning very good money as lawyers.
How would you play it, support and action-wise, if it appeared an OWS was going to split the liberal vote and give Perryomneynain the presidency?
Then I am objectively pro pepper spray.
21: I don't remember exact incomes, but they were both at least top 5% family income, and they were both remarkably poor for serious presidential candidates. It's possible to be outside the 1%, but just barely and not by much.
24: Didn't Harry Truman work as a haberdasher and live at his mother-in-law's before moving into the White House, or am I misremembering my presidential lore?
Harry Truman was so poor, he had to sell period after his middle initial.
According to Wiki Michelle Obama was earning about 270K in salary plus about 50K in income from board positions in 2006. Add her husband's senate income and we're looking at around a half million in income excluding investment income. So top one percent.
The Teap Party has done a good combination of making politicians move their agendas to please them and running primary challenges against those who don't. I suspect that OWS will do its best work in the former, I would be pleased to see some of the latter, and I don't think the presidency is a place where it will be tactically plausible anytime soon.
6: I'm in favor of incremental reforms myself, but the historical record seems to be that the only way you get incremental reforms (unless they're actively pursued by some segment of the elite) is when someone else pulls for radical reforms.
Actually, I'd totally vote for some OWS candidates for city council. I can't remember if my councilman's term-limited out next round -- I think he might be.
We kinda had an local-OWS-endorsed ticket for City Council in the recent elections. Weirdly, it was a Socialist, a standard-fare centrist Dem, and a Libertarian who runs every time.
33: The three candidates endorsed by local Dems (including that one standard-fare Dem mentioned in 32).
Surely if they're more or less friendly to the top 1%, they'll get [a sufficient amount of] their support regardless of whether they're personally in the club. Pretending to plan to raise the top marginal rate by 4.6% doesn't count.
34: I was thinking sitcom, but I guess not.
Too soon to tell, though I am not voting for Obama
I really do think we are rapidly moving into a very interesting year, and everyone should wait at least six months before committing to action plans or voting preferences.
I sometimes wonder, out loud even, what it would take to get liberals to stay home or hit the streets. Ground invasion of Iran? Ground invasion of Greece and Italy?
But I am certain those kind, though likely less dramatic, of disincentives will continue to accumulate. Even accelerate.
Elizabeth Warren is running for senate in the next election cycle, and she is as close to a OWS candidate as I think is viable. If she wants to cut her Senate term short and run for president in 2016, I am totally behind her.
I was thinking sitcom
I could see the Lib dude tripping over furniture John Ritter-style, but I remain unconvinced that anyone ever actually watched that show.
It's being widely reported that DHS coordinated the Occupy clearings. If so, then Obama has put himself squarely against the movement (assuming that DHS wouldn't act without at least checking with the White House).
what it would take to get liberals to stay home or hit the streets
Civic holiday with parades. Something very procedural. Preferably with snacks.
39: You mean Three's Company? For its time, it was as close as you got to porn if your dad didn't subscribe to magazines.
as close as you got to porn
Charlie's Angels.
Chrissy didn't need an excuse to wear short-shorts and tight shirts. That's who she was. The Angels needed excuses. They were always looking for "undercover investigations" that would force them to become bikini models.
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Friends in Manhattan are saying that the NYSE trading floor is shut down or partially shut down, but that doesn't seem to be being reported in the corporate media. Anyone have good info?
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I need to go get a sandwich, I could look around on the street. (I feel like an idiot being right here and not knowing more than I do; I have complicated excuses including deadlines and childcare, but mostly every time I've been at OWS (a couple minutes in the morning and evening, not terribly engaged with anyone), it's been people standing around, without much transparent going on.)
mostly every time I've been at OWS ..., it's been people standing around, without much transparent going on.
You mean other than occupation?
Careful getting the sandwich. If you get too ham-fisted, you'll never meet those deadlines.
I mean while I've seen lots of cops, I haven't seen any active conflict with them, I don't have any particular insight into OWS decision-making -- I've just wandered through and said hi to people and donated food money a couple of times. I'm right here (well, a couple dozen stories up except when I'm walking back and forth to the subway), but I don't feel as if I know anything more directly than I do from the news.
So the Guardian says the opening bell rang on time, and there is certainly trading (90% of which is electronic anyhow), but the rumors on the street are that a lot of people are having to teleconference 'cause they can't get there.
Of course, everyone on Wall St. has business contingency plans up the wazoo. My guess is that a lot of key people probably stayed in hotel rooms overnight and came in at 4 in the morning or something.
My friends who are there mentioned there was a young Black woman who was being detained, and that it took 11 cops to get her into the paddy wagon, and that before they shoved her in, she spat on several of them. Friends were very impressed with her tenacity. Hopefully she doesn't get beat up too badly (any more than she already was, that is).
The NYT is reporting lots of arrests, but nothing about stopping the exchange.
Hey, there's a new Kate Ascher book out! The Heights, about skyscrapers. Cool.
Their liveblog says "some traders did appear to have a hard time reaching the building. But the stock exchange opened for trading as usual at 9:30 a.m."
Breaking: Park raided again with much violence by a huge contingent of police.
Oh, I guess it calmed down. More of a snatch-squad deal.
More of a snatch-squad deal.
You sound like ToS.
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This is only the second time I've ever seen a man do the winsome headcock that I hate so much in professional pictures of women. The first was an obvious parody. So this is the first time I've ever seen a picture where a man is posing like this for real. I wonder why.
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Winsome Headcock sounds like the name of a British Prime Minister.
And his evil alterego, Gruesome Cockhead.
So now, the police aren't letting OWS protesters leave Zuccotti park? Can that be right? Is that legal?
LB, I demand liveblogging.
What's an OWS candidate?
What LB said in 13. Also, Elizabeth Warren (though she did slightly annoy me by saying that she'd laid the intellectual foundations for Occupy Wall Street).
Also agreed with numerous comments upthread to the effect that an OWS-sympathetic third party candidate in 2012 is a nonstarter for the presidency -- perhaps in 2016. Incrementalism is the only way to go, not by preference, but of necessity. Far too many of the laws and regulations that have made corporate and political corruption possible and contributed to vast income inequality require time and influence in their turn to undo.
On preview, looks like I should update myself on what's going on at the actual OWS.
The list in 61 really deserves its own thread. Front page posters? It's kind of like the "I'm too classy to find Jenna Jameson hott which is why I jerk off exclusively to pictures of Tina Fey and indie chicks," but for women.
This is only the second time I've ever seen a man do the winsome headcock that I hate so much in professional pictures of women.
I try to do this as much as I can, because I'm a feminist.
LB, I demand confirmation of this story from the Russian media.
Hey wait, when did embedded spaces in URLs start working? I thought they had to be escaped. It looks like my browser isn't just rendering it as a space but sending the entity, rather sending the URL with a space-- can that be?
I am just so tired of people who don't know what they're talking about. We've recently had Mitt Romney declaring that as President he'd haul China before the WTO for its currency practices (unpossible), and Rick Perry vowing to enact a variety of unconstitutional moves in his quest to limit and downsize the federal government, judiciary included.
Earlier this afternoon I listened to a radio call in program on What's Wrong with the Government Today, Plus OWS, Plus Should We the People Run for Office, What Say You? Among the callers was a young man whose principal political platform would be the legalization of marijuana; when asked what else he believed in, he declared "We should get out of Iraq, this is a neverending war, enough already, US taxpayers can't afford to build roads for them there, just bring the troops home by the end of the year." He was told that Obama is doing just that, actually, in Iraq, and he seemed unsure what to say at that point.
Another caller was upset about the influence of big money in politics, felt strongly that only private citizens should be allowed to donate to political candidates; the show's moderator remarked that the caller would have to speak to the Supreme Court about that, and was the caller familiar with Citizens United? Oh. No, the caller was not.
I had the vague and quite unpopular thought that anyone allowed on the ballot for higher office should be required to pass a civic literacy exam. Yes, I know that's not in the constitution, and that technically one need only be, what, 35 years of age and born in the US.
I'm not going to argue, as I have in the past, either the efficacy or morality of accepting the greater evil as a way of punishing the lesser evil into becoming still less evil. You've all heard it all, and no one is going to convince anyone. I'll just offer this: the strategy is completely undercut by (a) complaining about how unfair it is (or would be) to blame people who are engaging in it for the short and mediumno term consequences; or (b) spending a decade denying having engaged in (or cheerled) the strategy.
OWS has broken through the Village haze, temporarily. This is great. The 2014 midterms are not too far away for people who want the support of the kinds of people who are in, or sympathetic to OWS to start figuring out if they can make a go of it in particular districts.
The list in 61 really deserves its own thread
That list is a masterwork of link trollery, Halford. Don't give them what they want.
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I'm not sure what to make of it, but a cow-orker just told me my shirt (which I think is awesome, and I picked it out to wear for my gig tonight) makes me look like a Mexican cowboy.
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I'm not sure what to make of it
Hay?
Get yourself some sweet, sweet boots and declare victory, Stanley.
I am just so tired of people who don't know what they're talking about.
In a system where ordinary people have essentially no ability to change anything, why would you expect them to know what they're talking about? What's the point? Why not follow the minutiae of Dancing With the Stars, instead, which at least isn't depressing?
which at least isn't depressing?
I take it you don't watch the show?
I take it you don't watch the show?
Good point. Okay, replace that with some piece of uplifting pop-culture.
In a system where ordinary people have essentially no ability to change anything, why would you expect them to know what they're talking about?
So you're saying that if ordinary people had more power to bring about change, they'd be better informed? Really??
78: Dude. If nothing else, OWS claims that we can and should have the ability to change things: I strongly suggest that we know what the fuck we're talking about if and when we try to do so. I'm against any camp that thinks this is dispensable.
Or: oh, I'm not going to take that bait.
75: You play in a Norteño-style band, IIRC.
80.2: The Kardashian divorce?
I'm not buying it. If you're not interested in finding out whose hand is around your throat, then there's something wrong with you.
Further to 82: OWS should make citizen education part of its message and set of goals. Perhaps a website or section of website dedicated to links to sites providing helpful information about relevant issues such as campaign finance, banking regulations (to include explanations of Dodd-Frank, the Volcker Rule, Glass-Steagall and whatever else), and perhaps basics about tax law -- repatriation of foreign assets and tax laws regarding such, very basic stuff about what a marginal tax rate is, and so on.
Can't think of other categories of relevant information at the moment.
Also stuff about corporate welfare, i.e. subsidies.
if ordinary people had more power to bring about change, they'd be better informed?
If ordinary people believed they had more power, yes, I think they might seek out more relevant knowledge. Maybe.
Independent press activity during politically volatile eras (pre-WWI, 30s, 60s) would be worth studying. Also, looking at people who actually do have power, like the US Congress. Congresspersons might not know what you think they should know, but might know what they think they need (each other's preferences)
OWS should make citizen education part of its message and set of goals.
You don't think it (insofar as we can speak of an "it") already has? I mean, what are the libraries for, if not that? The one time I went by OSF, there seemed to be a whole schedule of teach-in thingies.
I feel like there already are plenty of sites dedicated to the sort of thing you're talking about (and good for them!). But, to my way of thinking, part of the value of OWS is about something prior to that--making it acceptable to say out loud, per Walt, that someone's hand is at your throat and you're angry about it. (Which isn't easy, because the very strong background assumption in our culture is that if you're struggling, it's your own damn fault.) Class-consciousness raising, you might say.
I'm not saying that knowing what's what is dispensable; as you and Walt rightly insist, it's crucial. I am saying that it's entirely understandable that the vast majority of folks have no fucking clue about anything; everything about our society encourages them to persist in that ignorance, and getting informed is both hard work and depressing. Not to bring in that other beached whale of a thread, but political ignorance is simultaneously (a) a moral defect and (b) an entirely normal response to the signals and incentives around us.
So you're saying that if ordinary people had more power to bring about change, they'd be better informed? Really??
Yes, I am. I'm not being utopian about this. The reason people are ignorant is because getting informed is a bother. But being engaged in something, feeling the sense of personal efficacy, and (perhaps more importantly) group solidarity, can overcome this hurdle, and make getting informed, if not precisely fun, at least what one does, just to be who one is or wants to be.
Of course, "getting informed" can just as easily mean going down the rabbit hole of right-wing economics...
86,86:OWS is and should remain a goalless demonstration. What they should teach each other and newcomers is organizational and media skills and techniques. Outreach.
All we really need is to occupy Wall Street.
Until?
Until nobody wants to occupy Wall Street.
what are the libraries for, if not that?
"Oh, it's just a place where homeless people come to shave and go BM."
Warren Susman ...via US Intellectual History
Behind Susman's defense of the dialectical character of modern American culture lay a growing concern that critical cultural historians in the United States would move beyond an attack on the repressive dimensions of mass culture to a contempt for those who consume it and thereby cut themselves off from a public deeply interested in its past. Shortly before he died, Susman remarked that "these people sitting in front of the television set are the people. They are not automatons. . . . How can you demean these people and at the same time try to convince them to be part of the new socialist order? What do these people think about what you think about them"
I'm generally in agreement with 88, but this:
what are the libraries for, if not that?
sure, but the libraries don't come with guidance. Being able to pick up a copy of The Federalist Papers doesn't get you much of anywhere if you've never even heard of Citizens United.
The teach-ins are wonderful, but they're on the ground. The teach-ins need to be made available online. There should be a constant, ongoing public message from OWS that among our primary goals is educating ourselves about the laws currently in place in our country. This would go toward shifting the normal response to the signals and incentives around us, away from ignorance and toward awareness.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to extend teach-ins to free workshops in local public libraries and whatnot in the evening and on weekends.
I gotta say, everytime people in my bureaucracy want to do something, but something so inoffensive that it'll make it past the stakeholders, the first suggestions is inevitably "a clearinghouse for all the good information that's out there" and the second pointless suggestion is "let's educate the voters." I now take those two suggestions as the signal that we don't intend to do anything on the issue and that political will has collapsed.
94: And if they suggest you get all the stakeholders in a room and come to a consensus, it means the political will has collapsed and they want you to die.
94 is great. In the vast technocratic system we've built it's simply impossible for people to be informed about all the details. Furthermore, it makes little or no difference when they are informed. Politics is about power. Popular engagement is about getting power behind the right side, the side that benefits the big majority. That's the genius of the 99 percent slogan. The key is to know which side you are on.
In our times especially you don't need to get very far into the details to know which side you're on. Sometimes it can be confusing and you have to dig deeper, but not that often.
That's what my old meetings used to be like (in the mid-nineties), but now we hired facilitators and I am no longer afraid of personal attacks. Dying of nitpicking and wordsmithing is still quite possible, but not haranguing.
The teach-ins are wonderful, but they're on the ground. The teach-ins need to be made available online.
But there already IS tons of this stuff on-line. There has been for years. The problem is getting someone to read it, or watch it, because it's daunting.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to extend teach-ins to free workshops in local public libraries and whatnot in the evening and on weekends.
Well, okay: go ahead and start one. I won't, because I'm lazy and contemptible, and the thought of all that would be involved makes me want to crawl back into bed, and I don't know anything useful to teach regardless. But maybe others should! Don't let me stop you!
You know what was a great fucking invention?
The Forum.
You know what a lot of repressive societies lack or won't permit?
A place where a multitude can gather in undirected activity, a place with this purpose.
What is the difference between a forum and a park?
Why do blogs moderate comments?
99: Why do blogs moderate comments?
Because you can't punch someone through an ethernet cable.
89: What they should teach each other and newcomers is organizational and media skills and techniques.
100% comity.
Occupy Pittsburgh occupied the bridge between my office and house but I think they've stopped by now.
The Forum was an especially great invention in 1985, but it pretty much kicked ass throughout the 1980s.
PGD gets it exactly right here.
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Call me crazy, but I see this as evidence of Yggles' blogging style creeping into established media.
Elite institutions are mostly in the business of running high-stakes admissions tournaments and access to ruling-class acculturation as sideline endeavors that support their primary function of managing highly-leveraged hedge funds that pay for academic research.
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You know what, come to think of it, the (most of the time) empty Red Square or the empty Tiananmen or all the empty stadiums and auditoriums in the US are an important symbol and message. A greater message than if they didn't exist.
We will tell the people when to aggregate and for what purposes.
I have to read Lefebvre and more Harvey on urban space. I'm reading myself blind.
Occupy is 100% right. Nobody, including OWS, should tell the people why they should come to the Square. OWS is entirely about grabbing public space.
I think what's confusing this discussion is the view that OWS represents a demand, fundamentally, for a more effective and left-wing Democratic party.
That may be what the vast majority of people sympathetic to it want, but that doesn't really seem to be what's animating those on the ground who participate in the General Assemblies, staff the libraries, power equipment with stationary-bicycles in lieu of generators, etc.
104: it certainly isn't any more true there than it is when Yglesias says it.
Is it me, or has Yggles been taking even more contrarian annoying stupid pills than usual recently in anticipation of his move to Slate?
104: most endowments aren't *highly* leverage.
Is it me, or has Yggles been taking even more
contrarian annoying stupid pills than usual recently
in anticipation of his move to Slate?
I predict that he will suck at writing the Moneybox column. Business and finance is a weak area for him, and he is going to be writing for an audience less inclined to treat him as an authority when he makes one of his glib pronouncements. Gross and Surowiecki did well in that forum because they were industrious reporters, and they waited until they had informed themselves a bit about a topic before opining on it.
Also, endowments don't, as a rule, fund research.
Here's a perfect example just today of Yggles trying to derive a conclusion from textbook principles while blissfully ignorant of basic facts.
112: I was also going to say that
113 -- Oh wow I had missed that. Even by his standards of total ignorance of the industry for which I mostly work, that is just so, so ignorant.
Though I don't really know where my paycheck comes from. Some kind of slush fund or something. May or may not originate in the endowment.
Are you suggesting that ESPN and the YES network don't offer their channels to Time Warner for free?
I'm confused by the link in 113: it's the Yglesias post linked therein that's wrong, not Atrios, right?
Slate knows what it is getting.
I can't remember if Gross and Surowiecki liked to play with the blogosphere or just do research and add to the glorious mountain of human knowledge in a kind of isolation.
I didn't read them and never went to Slate. Now I will.
118 -- right. As literally ten seconds of learning about the cable industry would have taught Yggles.
118: Right, it's Atrios setting him straight. The correction doesn't mean that Yggles' point is entirely mistaken, but he has derived it from premises that show him to be poorly informed.
No, the point isn't that Yglesias was wrong. The point was that Atrios and Unfogged connected to him.
God knows I have had to wade through enough drivel correcting Herman Cain, for Christ's sake. It isn't
as if you get no attention, no eyeballs, if you are wrong.
It matters how you are wrong on the Interwebs, I suppose.
I fully expect to see dozens of blogs and hundreds of posts telling me how horrible Yggles is at Moneybox.
You people are funny.
Boy howdy does 122 explain a lot.
96: 94 is great. In the vast technocratic system we've built it's simply impossible for people to be informed about all the details. Furthermore, it makes little or no difference when they are informed.
94 is stupid. Give me a fucking break. In our vast technocratic system it is simply impossible for people to be informed about the fact that Obama has declared that US troops are (for the most part) returning from Iraq by year's end, and that the Supreme Court has ruled via Citizens United that corporate money to candidates constitutes free speech? And it makes no difference if people are so informed?
Seriously, we are not talking about hairy scary details here.
94 is stupid. As though adding 'educational clearinghouse' to the list of agenda items is a bad thing. Jesus christ.
To trapnel's But there already IS tons of this stuff on-line -- sure there is, but most people don't have the time or wherewithal to crawl all over the internet looking for it. Show me an online 'citizen's primer' and I'll concede.
ruled via Citizens United that corporate money to candidates constitutes free speech
That's not exactly what Citizens United holds, or why it's important. I doubt you understand it very well, either. I also doubt that whether or not you understand Citizens United well is particularly important for anything, as long as you know you're on the side of anti-corporations. Which I think was PGD's point.
Bite me, parsimon.
I've seen the dynamic repeatedly. It ends up being busywork that people can point to instead of doing whatever politically contentious change should have happened. It is the marker for a process or forum that will not exercise institutional power. Five years later you've got a website with a bunch of links and an unsolved issue. But, you know. Enjoy building your website.
Today, while reading Susman on film, I though a little while about producerism vs consumerism. Specifically in that case about looking at the auteur instead of looking at the audience, and how the audience shaped the film.
We have way too many producers who want to add value, provide some brilliant critical analysis, some helpful aggregation, whatever. Not enough people who believe they have nothing useful to say. Most of us with brains, jobs, and money should shut the fuck up and listen. We fucked it up.
OWS, or it's leadership, seem to be partly or mostly about getting people out and listening to them, to their stories. Listening. Consuming. I think it's terrific.
It is the marker for a process or forum that will not exercise institutional power.
I thought we were talking about OWS. And I thought OWS was not a movement dedicated to exercising institutional power, except to the extent that it motivates various persons to take actions in their various ways, here, there and everywhere, whether that means running for local office, organizing a teach-in at a local library, having a living room meetup, or just buying locally.
You appear to be talking about an already existing bureaucracy and the ways in which it can and can't be productive. I think it's a mistake to apply any lessons you've learned in an already hidebound technocracy to what OWS might fruitfully do.
I can honestly say that of the tens of thousands of useful things that OWS might be doing, a website or section of website dedicated to links to sites providing helpful information about relevant issues such as campaign finance, banking regulations (to include explanations of Dodd-Frank, the Volcker Rule, Glass-Steagall and whatever else), and perhaps basics about tax law -- repatriation of foreign assets and tax laws regarding such, very basic stuff about what a marginal tax rate is, and so on. is about at position 9,999 on the list.
Wow, that Yggles post is pretty remarkable. News stories about negotiations breaking down between cable providers and networks or whatever seem to come up pretty often.
Actually, I can take that even farther. Proposing those things is the very first way that savvy lobbyists subvert a process. "Why yes! Of course we support water conservation. But the state should not mandate 20 x 2020, no no! Rather, the state should... create a clearinghouse for the many great programs that are out there at the local level."
As if the problem were the transaction costs.
And I'm off to cook for a dinner party.
130: Whether or not that's the form it takes, I maintain that among the list of things OWS should strongly emphasize is self-education.
I really find it ridiculous that anyone should say that educating voters is a stupid idea.
94 the first suggestions is inevitably "a clearinghouse for all the good information that's out there"
This reminds me of all the workshops and conferences I've been to where people propose that we can all magically be more cooperative and productive if only we start a wiki.
Making public information more accessible can be a valuable good in its own right, though. If there were no disclosure for campaign finance I wouldn't take the suggestion to require reports and make that data accessible as a wasted opportunity to ask for more. It's just that people tend to expect too much from that sort of thing.
It is true, and has been since the 19th century, that these kinds of transparency requirements are often the only thing anyone advocating larger reforms is able to gain the power to put through.
I really find it ridiculous that anyone should say that educating voters is a stupid idea.
People vote for the person they would want to sit down and have a beer with. They don't want to spend the evening, or four years, with someone who wants to "educate" them.
You think you are different?
Trust me. Let me educate you. You are no better.
Parsimon, consider the possibility that you don't understand people very well and that in an age where information is more accessible than at any point in history the vast majority of the electorate is not in fact dying to read up on issues but being held back by their lack of google fu.
134, etc- I don't really get what you think should happen that isn't. There are tons of informative videos and websites and graphics and charts and articles all over the place. People link to them all the time. In fact everyone seems to link to the same ones so I see them all over and over again in my facebook feed.
And there are teach-ins and workshops on the ground. Do you think OWS should start making television commercials a la MTV get out the vote?
Also I think you're the only one calling other people's ideas stupid, so far.
I suspect that if you look at politically-oriented information and library movements,* the most successful ones will turn out to be the ones that focused more on education for the people/organizations engaging in advocacy or in politics and less on general population education programs.
*Municipal reform groups, labor unions, business trade groups - it's not all liberal/progressive in this area - have all had and some still have active internal libraries.
OT: The Benetton "unhate" ad campaign is kind of creepy.
I try to keep up as best I can, but aside from avoiding condescension from a bunch of political junkies, what's my incentive to be more informed? Give me a good reason why I should use my hour or so of leisure at night reading up on politics rather than watching Modern Family.
Shift the power structures in such a way that I am not totally and completely irrelevant, and I will feel differently. (And I think that, in fact, is the beauty of OWS as a movement.)
Also I think you're the only one calling other people's ideas stupid, so far.
I apologize for having done that, and will henceforward stick to calling other people's ideas ineffectual and counterproductive.
Obama's Biggest Advantage is that even though people disapprove of his performance, they want to have a beer they like Obama as a person.
I, of course, don't drink and strongly disapprove of drinking. It makes you stupid, social, aggressive, and vulnerable to flattery.
143: You need to insult the person instead of the idea. People are around for maybe 80 years but most really fucked up ideas have been around for centuries.
While I see the absolute logic in Megan's point, the 311 information clearing house--at least in NYC--is a really good thing.
It's not what you are talking about, but some information-clearing-houses, inform-the-people-about-what-services-already-exist sorts of things can really improve people's lives.
And I thought OWS was not a movement dedicated to exercising institutional power, except to the extent that it motivates various persons to take actions in their various ways, here, there and everywhere, whether that means running for local office, organizing a teach-in at a local library, having a living room meetup, or just buying locally.
The opposite of this, please. Occupy Wall Street needs to be more than the Random Acts of Kindness bumper sticker.
I really find it ridiculous that anyone should say that educating voters is a stupid idea.
Megan and PGD have this exactly right. In politics, "educating voters" means two things: a feel-good compromise to avoid accomplishing anything or a cover story for get out the vote operations by excluded parties, e.g. churches or unions handing out candidate scorecards that are very clear about who they're instructing you to vote for although they don't technically endorse anyone.
There is something important in the kinds of teach-ins that are sprouting in the occupy, but they and the media work are means to an end which is organizing solidarity between different groups in order to reorient institutional power.
Not precisely on point but I enjoyed this.
Not at all on point but I feel that there is he or she here who might benefit from this. Middlemarch, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Our Bodies Ourselves? As good as any litmus test.
I really find it ridiculous that anyone should say
that educating voters is a stupid idea.
To me, the question is whether the return on investment justifies the effort.
147: There is something important in the kinds of teach-ins that are sprouting in the occupy, but they and the media work are means to an end which is organizing solidarity between different groups in order to reorient institutional power.
I don't think I said anything contrary to this. In no way did I suggest that the only or primary task of OWS was to educate voters, or that this should be a task to which energies directed elsewhere should be redirected. I tend to see OWS as expandable.
I recognize what Megan and PGD are pointing to, and sure, I'm familiar with it, but I honestly can't say that it leads me to conclude that any and all efforts toward the provision of information are doomed, naive, obfuscatory, or any of the other dire things that we're familiar with in these tales of corruption.
OT: Ignoring Skype contact requests from people you are already on Facebook with isn't bad form is it? I'm guessing that some kind of mass Facebook to Skype mash-up is why I got this contact request. I never knew her, really. I knew her brother.
Also, 147.1: The opposite of this, please. Occupy Wall Street needs to be more than the Random Acts of Kindness bumper sticker.
Sorry, k-sky, I usually agree with you about most things, but this is kind of bugging me. I don't think motivating people to run for local office counts as a mere Random Acts of Kindness sort of thing. OWS should at best spread outward in numerous ways as yet uncounted.
Depends on whether you just motivate one person to run or you motivate a person to run and an infrastructure to support the candidate.
Ideally the latter, I would think. I would also like the person and her or his supporting infrastructure to know what they're talking about, of course, because that just makes sense to me.
I have no idea what to say to Di about incentives for becoming informed.
My own view is that OWS (not that they've asked) should not in any remotely primary sense be about electoral politics, at all. It should be a giant continuing fuck you to finance and the wealthy, which politicians can then choose to respond to as they will. And perhaps a spur towards supporting labor, though I'm not optimistic there.
Show me an online 'citizen's primer' and I'll concede.
I am puzzled by the idea that such a thing would exist outside of some ideological agenda. "Oh yay, I've finally found the website that just tells the truth!"
Googling "citizen's primer" yielded lots of hits for Perlman's Citizen's Primer for Conservative Activism, and a first-page hit for Obama's Presidential Eligibility - An Introductory Primer.
One of the central points of the OWS critique is that the system is bought and paid for. Motivating a good person to run for office in a corrupt system may actually be less useful than bringing your ukulele out to the old folks' home and putting a few smiles on faces for an hour.
I do agree with you that there's a commendable openness to OWS. I like that there's room for experimentation. But I also think it's important to figure out ways to institutionalize it. I'd much rather have the same old assholes who occupy the offices start paying heed to a growing movement than change out the assholes.
I am further puzzled, I must say, by the idea that there should be one website (the 'citizen's primer') that gives you all the lowdown on all the stuff you should know as a citizen. That encompasses a lot of quite disparate things! Many of which are better covered already in other places.
I'd much rather have the same old assholes who occupy the offices start paying heed to a growing movement than change out the assholes.
Amen.
Whatever OWS ends up being "about", I think the most important education happening right now is a giant lesson to middle-class white people about how militarized the country's police forces are and who, in the end, they actually work for.
158.1: If you want to cancel just say so and we'll get another ukulele player.
Not sure I understand 158.1, since I'm unsure how bringing a ukelele to the old folks' home isn't a case of OWS becoming a Random Acts of Kindness bumper sticker.
Anyway, yes to 158.2.
Basically, when in doubt, I look to what it looks like on the ground: the actual Occupy movements in various (esp. larger) cities have a clean-up/sanitation committee, and a winterization committee, and a librarians committee or whatever they call themselves, and a self-policing and a health and wellness, a kitchen of course, and a bloggers/media/information, and so on and so on. All of these tasks and zones of endeavor are possibilities and necessities not just in the occupied areas themselves but in our larger communities; there's no reason to think we should cut any area short.
First thing is, we'll need a committee to develop the selection process for the committee that will develop the election criteria for the committee that will solicit and review contributions to the website.
I think 164 came out way jerkier than intended. I was just being silly.
E. Messily is totes right. I move that we call them mobs instead of committees. Further move that we have an information mob.
(On I-95 South on the east coast, just south of, uh, the Delaware line (?) just after you clear a toll booth, there's an institutional building to one side bearing the lit-up sign: Information Police. Always good for a nod.)
161.--Whatever OWS ends up being "about", I think the most important education happening right now is a giant lesson to middle-class white people about how militarized the country's police forces are and who, in the end, they actually work for.
Leaving the subway this evening, I saw a family carrying signs, among which was one that read: "THE POLICE WORK FOR THE RICH." They were obviously on their way home and looked happily exhausted.
I was a little nervous today. OWS was moving all over the city, with people getting arrested right and left (including someone I vaguely know: Keith Gessen, one of the founders of N+1, whose arrest was videotaped and broadcast on Gawker), and as I was leaving work I read that they were occupying Union Square, where I get on the subway. Nervous because I didn't know what the street was going to look like and also nervous because I knew I'd be tempted to make some sort of gesture of solidarity without at all being prepared for the ramifications of, say, being arrested.
Of course, it turned out that Union Square is being occupied by some sort of Christmas market.
I have no idea what to say to Di about incentives for becoming informed.
If you want to focus on educating voters, you need to figure out the answer to that. I don't mean that contentiously. I think it's a real barrier to address.
return on investment justifies the effort.
1) Why should anyone show up for jury duty? Same argument, staying informed is a grind like making sure that all of your bills are paid.
2) Self-defense. The only way you will learn about approaching threats is to gather information.
3) Knowing the world around you is part of being human, neglecting it is like neglecting housekeeping or a habit of discipline.
someone I vaguely know: Keith Gessen
Me too! My writing partner shows up a clef in his novel. I like that Keith.
On topic, I first met him during the LA DNC protests -- we had some tiff where I brought him over to the convergence center where it was my job to be escorting journalists and he didn't tell me he was writing about it. Since he was entirely friendly in his reporting it remained a very minor tiff. Good to see him in cuffs today.
1. I can see the immediate impact of my participation in jury duty, see the real people who are affected by that involvement.
2. And me seeing the clusterfuck of Iraq coming helped how? Saw the threat of the Patriot Act. So what? My knowing what was coming made no difference at all.
3. The world around me is middle school concerts and billable hours and ill-advised romance and crap, I almost forgot to let the cat back in. The world is big and complex and we all have to make choices about which discrete portions among the infinite possibilities we are going to pay attention to.
170.3 Also, I have no trouble at all neglecting housekeeping.
I have no idea what to say to Di about incentives for becoming informed.
Part of the problem is the media. Most reporting on politics isn't very insightful.
173: The Volker Act would require you to have a cleaner house.
175: I think I could be okay with prison.
In that case, go to OWS with some bricks and a bad temper.
21
Really? Neither Clinton or Obama seem to have massed any wealth nor cracked 500k/yr before becoming President...
Untrue with regard to the Obamas. Their AGIs from 2005 through 2008 were $1655106, $983826, $4238165 and $2656902.
174: Well, it is after all difficult to understand how the provision of information, whether by the media or in a more straightforward educational format, can be anything other than informed by an ideological agenda. Plus calling for the provision of information is a fool's game to begin with, what with people not being incentivized to care in the first place, and the champions of provision of said information being compromised into milquetoasts already, you see.
I am having a really hard time keeping my sarcastic voice in check. Sorry for that. Done.
180: Wait, why the flood of sarcasm? 174 must be one of the dullest, most trite comments ever written.
I am having a really hard time keeping my sarcastic voice in check.
Yeah, it's easy to get all snide and condescending about people not caring enough when you forget the privilege that actually gives you the leisure time to obsessively consume all the information you do.
Sarcasm was to half the comments upthread. Sorry. I'm just getting tired.
If I focus just right, my sarcastic voice can kept in German.
Well, it ain't in English, that's for sure.
49: I feel like an idiot being right here and not knowing more than I do.
I just a day or so ago realized where Zucotti Park was (somehow I imagined it was hidden somewhere down by The Battery) despite having been in the immediate vicinity a fair number of times over the past 25 years. I learned it as Liberty Plaza Park and have apparently not really paid close attention. And immediately after that became aware that my wife's brother has apparently become the go-to "supportive of OWS in the park" neighbor, being quoted twice in WSJ articles and once in the NYT in the past week. He even defended the drums in one.
My inner geography nerd's disgrace, let me show it to you.
Education can be useful because if it becomes common knowledge that a certain straightforward factual claim is out there, it can be harder for the media to bullshit people based on ignorance of that claim. Once people are aware of the degree to which income inequality has increased in the last 30 years, it becomes much harder to operate on the assumption that dissatisfaction with current levels of inequality is outside the realm of reasonable opinion. Of course... [insert boilerplate about how it can't be a substitute for more concrete political activity.]
I.e. much harder for the media to operate on that assumption.
Or, for that matter, politicians.
For a piece of information that could have a similar effect if more widely known, here's Kevin Drum:
Roughly speaking, [the chart] shows total corporate income tax paid as a percent of pretax profit, and as you can see, it's been on a pretty steady downward trend for a long time, from around 50% in 1950 to 20% today. But of course, this is just an aggregate number. As Felix says, "What we don't know -- because they won't say, and no one's forcing them to say -- is how much any given public company pays." And you can hardly blame them, since the tax rate for lots of big companies would be so laughably small that no one would ever take them seriously again when they complained about America's terribly burdensome tax system.
Of course, the right would make up all sorts of crap in response, but it would be harder to operate on the assumption that it's self-evident that corporations are dealing with an unfair tax burden.
the most important education happening right now is a giant lesson to middle-class white people about how militarized the country's police forces are and who, in the end, they actually work for.
I hope OWS is doing a better job in other towns then because that's absolutely not the lesson anyone's getting here. They moved into a park and got overrun with a ton of the local dopers and alcoholics and their response was to go on rants to the news cameras about how no one was doing anything from the homeless. They did this, I shit you not, in the park that's a block from the shelter/kitchen and across the street from the free clinic that's been doing huge amounts of work for the homeless for decades. Their naivete and righteousness made even other liberals want to tell them to go fuck themselves and consequently AFAICT nobody gives a shit that they got cleared out.
I tried to find some coverage of Occupy - any Occupy beyond the local one - on cable tv here and didn't see any pictures on CBC, BBC, or CNN. Ok, so CNN is the only one I get that counts for American audiences.
CNN did run a DEVELOPING STORY about Herman Cain not doing an interview with some newspaper in New Hampshire. It seems to have been a key point of contention that the interview would be either an hour or twenty minutes. And there was the usual annoying heads crap.
With that kind of editorial judgment of what is or is not newsworthy - massive protests in the country's largest city? eh - I suspect that most people aren't learning much about Occupy except for brief, broad news bits summarizing things in a minute or two. You can of course learn a lot more detail on the internet, or watch Maddow, but if you're doing that, you're probably already part of the set of people who know a bit more about the Occupy movements.
Wait, I see a bit of Occupy now in the background while Anderson Cooper interviews Peter King.
And now in the background while he interviews Van Jones. 'Cause everything comes down to "both sides", no other understanding of politics allowed.
I'll stop summarizing my occasional CNN watching, as I'm going to stop watching CNN again (today was the first day in months).
Oh, one more comment: Van Jones did a pretty good job there. Didn't he get pushed out of some potentially influential position over some BS a few years ago?
OWS, whatever it is, is a revolutionary movement. To worry about whether or not 2012 or 2016 is too soon for an OWS candidate to run for presidency is as useful as wondering whether Lenin should've run back in 1917. It'll fail or it'll succeed, but if it does succeed it won't be by worrying about Citizens United or any of the other details of America's current political system.
Be realistic, demand the impossible.
197: Yes.
A Glenn Beck/FoxNews led bit of hysteria (Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck launched the drive against Jones and all but declared war on him after a group Jones founded in 2005, ColorofChange.org, led an advertising boycott against Beck's show to protest his claim that Obama is a racist. ). Mainly he had signed a petition in 2004 to investigate 9/11 that I was from a truther organization and the following:
the comment -- recorded last February before Jones joined the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- was in response to an audience member who lamented that Democrats were less effective than Republicans in using their majority to pass energy legislation.
Jones' reply: "Well the answer to that is, they're assholes."
He added, "Now, I will say this: I can be an asshole, and some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama, are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity."Some of his other past associations were controversial as well.
I hope OWS is doing a better job in other towns then because that's absolutely not the lesson anyone's getting here.
Oh, it isn't that the OWS people are *doing* the educating on that; they're *getting* the education on that.
198. Occupy doesn't look like a revolutionary movement to me, yet. It looks pregnant with revolutionary possibilities, but still very unformed. I'd expect revolutionary currents to emerge from it, as they did from the anti-war movement in the 60s, but we're a long way from that at the moment. Other currents will emerge too.
we already have an information clearinghouse. it's called "Wikipedia", and it tries hard to avoid partisan bias.
no OWS-sponsored clearinghouse would be able to claim that.
Our Occupy encampment has come back. They voluntarily moved out on Nov 11, to let local veterans do their traditional courthouse lawn remembrance thing, and then again on the 13th, possibly at the informal suggestion from some folks from the county. Not official, and they've ended up back up to 10 or 11 tents now. Wind chills into single digits this morning, and it'll be snowing again soon.
200:You do read Ian Welsh, apo. He's terrific
All of this is crazy. The financial elites are on a plundering spree, gleefully using their power to force entire nations into poverty, blackmailing governments into huge payouts. Pay extra on bonds, or pay extra on oil, or hey, why not both!The political elites are clearly either bought or completely ineffective at resisting. If the ECB won't buy bonds, then countries just need to leave the Euro so they can print money. Yes, that might cause inflation and various other problems, but that is better than semi-permanent depression through austerity.
Yeah, I do read Welsh and while he sometimes shoots wide of the mark, I do think he's spot-on about that. Last week, some (unaffiliated with Occupy Chapel Hill) anarchists decided they were going to take over a building on Franklin Street that has been abandoned for about a decade. I don't think it was a particularly well thought-out or executed idea, and some of the people in that merry band are just anti-social assholes that are always looking to provoke a response. Regardless, the police came unannounced and rousted them armed like this (irony alert: they then loaded the arrestees into a city bus with a giant Wells Fargo ad on the side of it). In a town that routinely deals with tens of thousands of drunks lighting bonfires in the streets during basketball season without ever unholstering their pistols.
Some OCH people who had wandered over found themselves face-down on the sidewalk with military weaponry pointed at their heads. These were standard drums-and-puppets campus liberals who are now deeply freaked out. Similarly, the baton-swinging incident on the Mario Savio steps at Berkeley.
rousted them armed like this
Probably SWAT guys, they loves them that getup.
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This thread has moved on, but I added a hazy shot of the Mexican Cowboy shirt to the Flickr group.
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Re: 104 et seq.
Yglesias tries to backpedal. One of his commenters offers this (pretty much fair) summation: "Shorter Matt: Even though everything I wrote yesterday showed I had no clue about how the market actually is set up, I'm still correct!"
112: not science research, no, but they do fund humanities research by paying professors' salaries and maintaining libraries.
211: that's amusingly symmetrical. Processors' salaries are operating expenses unless they're named positions, no? That's mostly not funded from "the endowment" as an entity but rather from reserved gifts, yes? Similarly for the ops of libraries. Certainly the erection (laydeez) of buildings is largely from "the endowment" usually with matching (or even majority of) funds in exchange for naming, yes?
I also imagine it varies widely. So.
210: He and Slate really were made for each other.
I'm with Halford in 156, Apo in 161, and Martin in 198.
And while you will find no more devout believer in the power of public information -- I am now in my third decade of working in public libraries -- I am keenly aware of the relatively limited audience for wonky websites.
Here's a citizen's issues primer for PA, and here's a citizen's guide to city government. Here's a high-fiber national news site, and here's a local site that goes deep on a single issue (urban planning).
You know what all these have in common? Readership in the low thousands (and maybe low hundreds). You know why? Because smart, thoughtful, caring human beings are also parents and siblings and lovers and hobbyists and employees and caregivers and sports fans and...there's just limited time in the day.
I say hooray for the late-night comedians and hooray for the snarky Onion articles and hooray for everyone who comes up with cute or clever or silly ways to annotate and critique our society. We're never going to get a world where everyone sits down together at nine p.m. on Tuesdays for our citizenship education, and in a lot of ways that's a good thing.
Find me a lottery winner or a cuckoo philanthropist who wants ideas for a PSA campaign teaching people how to think critically and I promise I will be all over it. And in the meantime I'll be hanging out at my library on Saturday afternoons, happily pointing curious patrons in the direction of every resource I know. On election day I'll be fielding calls and requests from my friends and family who want to know what they need to know to vote.
But please don't ask me to believe the answer to the bad parts of our democratic republic lies in a website. I love this country unabashedly but even my faith doesn't stretch that far.
the answer to the bad parts of our democratic republic lies in a website
A website with an RSS feed?
We're never going to get a world where everyone sits down together at nine p.m. on Tuesdays for our citizenship education, and in a lot of ways that's a good thing.
I felt like telling that to the city council candidate who knocked on my door last week, who was advocating that sort of arrangement, or something even more improbable--disbanding the council in favor of direct democracy, IIRC.
In the end I had the same sort of difficulty I always have with Jehovah's Witnesses and the like--how politely to get them off my porch so I can go back to watching Maury or whatever. It didn't help that this guy is personally so much more irritating and obtuse than any of the Witnesses I've met.
You know who was keen on validating his political decisions through plebiscites? Napoleon, that's who!
please don't ask me to believe the answer to the bad parts of our democratic republic lies in a website.
I at least never asked anyone to believe that.
218 cont'd: It would be good if we could stay clear on the difference between "citizen education, as one among many endeavors, can't hurt and can plausibly help" and "a website will solve all our problems."
We might also stay clear on the difference between "a website never solves all our problems" and "it is a waste of time to add citizen education at all, ever."
Just to be clear, the argument I'm making is basically "We probably don't need more citizen education tools than we already have, and while many of them can be extremely useful, there's a reason that they tend to have limited readership."
NY's 311 system, as I understand it, is better than Philadelphia's. Ours is not bad, but it's emphatically not great, either.
I like 311, but I never thought of it as citizen education, exactly -- more as "I have a problem that must be the sort of thing city government addresses, but I don't know who specifically to call. 311 will know which city agency to switch me to."
plebiscites? Napoleon, that's who!
Napoleon was good at web design, but he was undone when he decided to invade RSSia.
220.1: I understand the reasoning, but maintain that if you're listening to people repeat misinformation over and over again, I don't see the harm, and can see the help, in deciding to just print up a damn fact sheet, even though there are already many sources of information already available out there.
Suppose you're visiting an Occupy site, and over the course of a day or two, in casual conversation with others about why we're all here protesting Wall Street, 1 out of every 2 people remarks, say, "Damn Obama for bailing out the banks."* I think it's entirely reasonable to conclude after a while that it would be a good idea to produce a fact sheet -- a primer, if you will -- to include such items as "The bank bailout, known as TARP, was signed into law by President Bush in 2008 before Obama took office." Maybe this could be part of a general timeline, or greatest hits, on developments regarding Wall Street and corporate/big business in general: it is, after all, relevant to what we're protesting, and it is better -- I claim -- that we know enough of what we're talking about that we aren't stumbling around in a confused informational haze.
This is very far from claiming that an informational website to end all websites will suddenly be read by 90% of the population, all will then become clear, and there will no longer be any need to take any of the direct actions the Occupy movement is involved in. I didn't suggest any such thing; and the suggestion upthread that the provision of information in this way signals impending and inevitable doom for any attempt to do anything constructive in other ways is, erm, wrongheaded.
* Not particularly a real example; I have no idea what the average Occupier on the ground has to say about TARP.
I don't see the harm, and can see the help, in deciding to just print up a damn fact sheet
Because the people who would be spending time doing this could be doing other things instead?
224. One person, half a day on google? Not a huge resource commitment...
