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Comment by knuckleheads

5 days ago

It is a shame that jart got control of @OccupyWallSt and occupywallst.com and never gave it up. It seems like her politics and views are very out of line with many of the people who were originally involved in that movement. Repurposing occupywallst.com for something like this compared to it's origin is a big disappointing contrast. https://web.archive.org/web/20111021162924/http://www.occupy...

55 comments

knuckleheads

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jart  5 days ago

I was the one who registered it. Occupy as a movement has always been inclusive of people with different points of view. My job running the website and twitter has always been to give the people a voice. I think that's important, don't you? The only guy with more credibility than me in Occupy is Micah White but he's been growing vegetables in Oregon ever since he visited Davos a few years back. So I'm the best you've got.

  • Edman274  5 days ago

    > My job running the website and twitter has always been to give the people a voice. I think that's important, don't you?

    Do you truly believe in your heart of hearts that people posting neo-MOASS wish fulfillment suffer from a lack of a voice, and no place for them to be heard? Take this seriously. More important than "a voice" is consistency and clarity of communication. The people involved in occupy wall street in 2011 weren't occupying it because they wanted to eventually join it, and I don't think that their form of economic justice would be for Wall Street to lose money in a gigantic market crash that again would result in taxpayer-funded bailouts that spurred the first protests. For transparency's sake, what are your market positions today?

    • jart  5 days ago

      I'm hanging out in a bunker in Omaha rooting for the Japanese people, who've gone through great hardship for several decades to checkmate Wall Street.

      They're the true Occupy Wall Street and all I'm doing is recognizing their achievement.

      1 reply →

  • legitster  5 days ago

    > The only guy with more credibility than me in Occupy is Micah White but he's been growing vegetables in Oregon ever since he visited Davos a few years back. So I'm the best you've got.

    As an outsider to all this, it's funny how these movements always crumble as soon as there is any mainstream recognition.

    You have X complaint against an institution. Let's say the institution accepts and reforms somewhat. It's pretty rare that the complainant will pat themselves on the back and say job well done. It's ultimately a game of diminishing returns.

    If you have a hammer, it's not just that everything is a nail - you must find enough nails to justify continuing to use the hammer.

    • jancsika  5 days ago

      > As an outsider to all this, it's funny how these movements always crumble as soon as there is any mainstream recognition.

      It crumbled when the physical encampments were forcibly removed by the police. I mean, even at the tiny encampment of UC Davis-- essentially a few camping tents-- the students got pepper sprayed and hauled off. Remember that meme? Many of those same students also faced serious jail time for a protest outside Washington Mutual Bank. It's probably difficult to sustain a movement under those conditions, no?

      In any case, the message that resonated across the U.S. encampments is essentially what turned into Bernie Sanders two runs for president. That, the group behind AOC's House run, and many other important grassroots movements are the legacy of OWS. Whatever the deal is with jart's website is orthogonal to all this-- I've literally never heard about her association with OWS outside of HN.

      Edit: clarification

  • closewith  5 days ago

    Seems like you're just giving yourself a voice? Why not do that on a personally branded domain?

  • detourdog  5 days ago

    I think whoever registered the domain deserves the domain. I would dislike anyone grabbing my domain because it was perceived as miss used.

    Secondly a domain and a political movement are 2 different things. Either one can exist without the other.

    The domain is not even a .org which would be befit a movement ownership

  • lkey  5 days ago

    > [nobody left] with more credibility than me

    Source: trust me bro

    Justine, do you think that readers here don't have eyes? The page linked is a call to financial action that, if the advice is followed, will result in yet another unsophisticated ETF pump and dump at best and a call to financial suicide at worst.

    You are personally underwriting propaganda for something you are very likely invested in, targeting the most credulous. For it to appear on a site called 'Occupy Wall Street' is deliciously ironic.

    Here's my disclosure: I am completely divested for both the US and Japanese market, except for transient USD cash holdings. I don't have a horse in this race. Will you follow suit?

    I know very little of what happened in NYC years ago, but I would tell anyone reading the site now that it is run by actively malevolent speculators.

    I do, however, know a few of your associates. Stop hanging out with grungy, unwashed sex pests, they aren't as smart as they pretend to be, and you should know that by now. It's unbecoming and frankly sad. You have the means to start life anew elsewhere, and you should take that opportunity now.

    • alsetmusic  5 days ago

      > Stop hanging out with grungy, unwashed sex pests

      And that's where you lost credibility with me. I haven't the knowledge of these topics to express an intelligent opinion and I was considering your arguments, but then you went and lowered the bar. There's no need to level rude insults.

      I'm a Leftist, fwiw. While I don't know enough to speak intelligently on this, I do resent the people at the top who plunder society for their own gains so I'm spiritually supportive of anyone who's against them.

      2 replies →

  • knuckleheads  5 days ago

    You in particular are my main criticism of Occupy as a movement. They lacked any sort of structure, shunned it in fact, that would have ripped control of these resources away from you once it became clear that you disagreed politically with the vast majority of the people involved. That you were allowed to keep control of those resources is emblematic of how Occupy could let all that energy dissipate into nothing.

    • bombcar  5 days ago

      Co-opting potentially effective political movements is how the people in control stay in control. Once you start noticing it, you see it time and time again.

    • jart  5 days ago

      What resources? OccupyWallSt.org only accepted enough donations to keep the 1-800 number and website online. I was smart enough to understand back then that an unemployed 26 year old activist living in a park wasn't qualified to manage the capital that was being offered to us. So what did I do? I gave you about twenty different links for various projects on the donation page to choose from.

      18 replies →

riddlemethat  5 days ago

Anyone attempting to build a movement might find it interesting how Pumping Station One in Chicago is governed. It's a maker space but run by people who care (at least from my experience when I was a member back in 2015/2016). The process for electing leadership and holding members accountable was very democratic and fair, from my experience. They open-source as much as they can about how they organize:

https://wiki.pumpingstationone.org/wiki/Do-ocracy

https://wiki.pumpingstationone.org/wiki/Member_Manual

https://wiki.pumpingstationone.org/wiki/Administration

znpy  5 days ago

Quoting from https://web.archive.org/web/20111021162924/http://www.occupy...

> This #ows movement empowers real people to create real change from the bottom up. We want to see a general assembly in every backyard, on every street corner because we don't need Wall Street and we don't need politicians to build a better society.

Maybe at some point those people will understand that high-school approach doesn't work in the real world.

Look at the amount of change they brought, look at the amount of change that a single person like Donald Trump has brought (for better or worse, this is not an endorsement).

shadowgovt  5 days ago

jart... Oh, Justine Tunney. Is she still a techno-fascist or did that change at some point?