Whining will not effect positive change

[melchar]

It's been more than 2 months and the various 'Occupy' folks STILL don't have a message. The 'theme' that the occupy movements has expressed has been about whining.

Whining that they have the right to stand where they want, march where they want, loot when they want, camp where they want and to heck with the small businesses they are ruining in their wake.

How much time could it POSSIBLY take to make a 'soundbite' message? Hammering just one point home would make 'occupy' into a coherant movement. REINSTATE GLASS-STEAGALL** - 3 little words that even a mob could yell at the same time. You want to get Wall Steet's attention? Reregulate financial institutions!


[**Glass-Steagall passed in 1933 and prohibits banks from owning other financial companies & was repealed by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act in 1999.]

Comments

[seawasp]

They have many messages, though all of the messages come down to the same thing. They haven't yet become the revolutionaries, but if the "1%" don't read the warning signs -- and those signs are very readable -- they will become revolutionaries, and they'll have demands. But no one wants things to get to that point. Right now it's a movement of general anger and dissatisfaction, which has some very clear points in the general sense, but it's made of millions of people. You can't get five people to agree on toppings for a pizza; you expect millions of people to agree on ONE message when there's at least a dozen good major issues involved, ranging from banks that got to play games no private citizen would be allowed to get away with (and play those games with everyone else's money), to the lack of a decent healthcare system (and in fact a system that gets worse for the average person every year)?

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

It is interesting that they, and their message, is still more popular than any politician, banker or business person. To the point where even the right-wing republicans are trying to co-opt their message.

I'm still waiting to hear from anyone other than Fox that the actual occupiers are looting or much else.

[neonbunny.livejournal.com]

The message of economic inequality has been around as long as money has been around, maybe even longer.

I think what the major turning point that happened here, was a group in new york stumbled on a new tactic, that suddenly got a group that would otherwise be ignored, nation attention.

And that's pitching tents.

This tactic, very much like the kids game of "i'm not touching you", is meant to provoke and draw a response. And that it did.

And as others saw a game changing tactic, they also adopted not only the tactic, but the name of the group that started it.

Protest groups everywhere jumped in on it, even though they had already been protesting. And suddenly, it became about camping, not the original cause that the protestors on Wall Street were about, which was economics.

In my home town of Oakland (which is about as opposite of Wall Street as you can get), the Occupy groups is made up mainly of the "stop the injunction" (anti-gang injunction group financed by the Nortenos that caused the Oscar Grant riots), "cause justa::just cause" (local immigration rights group), and a number of union organizers, with their usual union rights things, and a few anti-war protestors.

The biggest reason that there is no clear message is once the Occupation left Wall Street, and the tactic and catch-all name got adopted by organizations elsewhere, is that each individual group has their own message. Ask any one of the protestors, and they will give you very specific reasons for their protests. Ask two protestors, and you will never get the same answer.