Comment by jart
6 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.
> 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?
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.
Is the aircon any good?
> 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.
> 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
Seems like you're just giving yourself a voice? Why not do that on a personally branded domain?
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
Substantively reply to the critique.
> [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.
> 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.
My comment had an audience of one, Justine.
It's also why I addressed her directly by name. I would really like her to leave the cult she's in, but I refuse to mince words about the nature of that group. She knows who the r*pists in that community are. I lost a friend to those people and I hold a grudge.
None of this is a secret and I could give a shit if me bringing it up isn't 'credible' to you. Other than the short 'don't take financial advice from internet strangers' PSA, this isn't about you.
Why don't you look inside yourself and try to figure out why you don't find it 'credible' that there might unchecked sexual violence in a insular community of wealthy, mostly male, SV crypto fascists (who are on record warmly discussing feudalism and the return of chattel slavery to the US).
81% of women in the US have been sexually harassed, myself included. Only 2% of reports are false. Your default assumptions are fucked. If you are thinking 'well.. none of the women I know have been...' You are wrong, they just don't feel safe enough around you to talk about it, and for good reason.
People who invite themselves into conversations solely to tone police and cast doubt on allegations of sexual violence are the furthest thing from an ally. Spiritually support me by learning how to not be that person around the women in your life.
1 reply →
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for another example of why Occupy was doomed to fail, I had not considered that you had control over the donation flow. Instead of working together as a group and finding somebody more responsible than yourself to manage the incoming capital, you diverted it away from the movement and dispersed it to the winds. Was that decision made collectively by the group? Or did you take it upon yourself to do so? Control over the domains and twitter account, along with the incoming flow of donations are the resources that you had and Occupy let you squander.
15 replies →
I’d love to talk with you because I’ve tried to do anarchist organization in the past and it’s super fucking hard
one (started here) was successful but one failed hard
I’d just be curious to trade stories to see if we can learn from each other
My handle@iCloud if you want to reach out
Well, and now you use it for this so what was all that for?
The 'Occupy' energy didn't dissipate into nothing. It fueled extremism and populism, both on the left and on the right.
> It fueled extremism and populism, both on the left and on the right.
I think you're confusing the Occupy Movement with the housing crisis itself.
Any anti-establishment/libertarian right-wingers would have already gotten energized years before by the Tea Party movement. Even Ron Paul's million dollar "money bomb" in donations happened a few months before Occupy. And what's the path from Occupy to right-wing extremism? Even on Fox News Occupy was a short-term blip.
The "one percent" slogan made its way directly into Bernie's campaign, so that tracks with what I assume you're calling left-wing populism. But what do you mean by "extremism" here? If it's violent extremism I don't see the connection. And if it's left-wing anarchist movements, have those grown in any significant way since the 2010s?
2 replies →