Is there an "Occupy" movement in your city? Are they helping or hurting the cause?

Typically, there are four people on our teeny village green with signs and slogans. They are out there most week-ends with the “cause du jour.” I admire their fortitude and stamina; they do no harm.

Occupy San Francisco has been pretty much a non-event. I think they did it to keep from feeling left out. They had a couple unremarkable marches back in early October. They have a pretty good camp going and that is about it.

Occupy Oakland has been a mess all around, well covered in the national media. Occupy Walnut Creek, near where I live, has been one side of one block near a bank, for a few hours every week.

Washington DC. Yes, and they are making headway I believe.

Who says democracy is not messy? Lol.

I’m glad @marinelife knows about Occupy DC. I’m 30 minutes away but not following it.

I think the “Occupy” movement has been extraordinarily successful. They have caused the polity to focus on their issues. In fact, just playing coy about their issues is extraordinarily successful, and keeps others trying to guess what they are actually on about. This keeps them in the news. This makes their issues that politicians must at least be aware of, no matter how stupid they think the issues are, nor how much they disagree with the occupy movement.

Every action helps. Right now several cities are kicking the occupy people out. Soon, my city will do the same. All this does is bring them more attention, and it doesn’t matter if there is negative attention about how smelly or dirty they are, because the underlying issues are still there, and they are still calling attention to them.

The occupy movement serves as a vanguard following that old saw, “there is no such thing as bad publicity.” If they can keep these issues in the public eye, then politicians have to be aware of them. They can’t ignore the issues. The business of focusing on business to the exclusion of the “99%” can not go on as usual. They will have to at least pretend they are concerned about the 99%, even if they don’t really give a shit (and it seems like pro-business conservatives can not imagine doing anything for ordinary people—only business drives the economy and business can do no wrong).

So yes, the Occupy movement is a big win and will continue to be so as long as the protesters hang out, wherever they hang out. The police pushing them away are doing them a big favor. Which, in cities like NY, Oakland, and others, is probably in the best interest of the government, since they have so many poor and would love to have more money from Washington. I doubt the cops would see themselves as helping the protesters, nor would they see themselves as being advantaged by the protests, but it could well turn out that way.

I just moved to London, so the answer is yes, but as far as I know there is no occupy movement in Spain yet.

Yes, we do, and they are a fantastic group of people. They aren’t making a mess, the local authorities have been quite supportive so far, and they aren’t blocking traffic, causing trouble, nothing like that.
Truth of the matter is, whatever the movement, we desperately need something here. Our city is dying, we have no jobs, half of the city is below the poverty line, and we are the hungriest city in the nation. I wouldn’t care if they made a mess, we need someone to make some noise. I would join them, but I have had things going on in my personal life that made me feel it would be better to avoid drawing any attention to myself that could potentially become negative.

Occupy Seattle has been well-behaved and cleans up their own mess.

I’m not particularly concerned about them keeping the park all nice and clean. I have no intention of telling people who’ve had their savings wiped out by ponzi schemes, houses foreclosed on, and can’t get a job that they can only protest so long as they don’t litter and don’t make anyone really take notice of them. I’m far more concerned with how the police (who have a history of brutality in my town) handle them, and so far, I’m not impressed.

Occupy Dallas has had episodes of rather extreme police actions, but the protestors have done very well in abiding by the permit allowed by the city. However, I think that the businesses have decided that they do not want to continue to allow the protestors to continue to function – so the last I saw of the demonstrators, the police were forcing them out. Unfortunately, there were just not enough protestors to make as great an impression as the OWS protestors have made.

Yes, we have one in Glasgow

My city is NYC where OWS began. I am in full support of the movement. I don’t see how any of it can ‘hurt the cause’ unless there’s violence from our side to theirs.

The Occupy Boston movement is robust and growing. As noted here I plan to lend my support for the first time at a march this Thursday. The movement has gotten a mainly corporatist-owned press acknowledging finally that income and wealth disparity are the worst they have been since before the Great Depression.

OWS has changed the national conversation. We are now asking, “Do we want to keep moving toward a banana republic model, where a handful of fabulously wealthy families perpetually control all the nation’s wealth and use the government as a tool to keep things that way, ordo we want to return to building the middle class and lifting the poor out of poverty?” This is an enormously important and healthy debate to have.

Just wondering… WTF IS the “cause?”

@CaptainHarley ; I think they are protesting corporate greed and income inequity. The Gap between the rich and the poor has widened drastically, especially since the Bush tax cuts. The right likes to talk about not taxing “job creators” but I can tell you, they are not creating jobs with all the extra cash. My MIL is a prime recipient and is just hoarding it. If the tax cuts were given to people who actually NEED the money it would be spent and stimulate the economy.
I really think our society is doomed.
Once we actually started outsourcing prisons, making incarceration a “for profit” venture, we lost our moral compass. I mean, really, in what universe does that make since?

@Judi

Lots of room here in Texas! [ hint, hint! ] : ))

I think most of the companies getting rich off of incarceration are based in Texas.

@Judi I thought they just executed people…

@jerv

Yes. I recommend you stay where you are. : D

@CaptainHarley They would have to take a number and wait in line, just like everyone else.

”@”:CaptainHarley Here’s a copy of what I heard protesters complaining about when I went to a recent march here. I posted this tonight in another thread.

“I went to the Occupy Boston march to the Washington Street Bridge, a bridge so decripit that police kept protesters from flooding onto it because it might collapse under the weight of that size crowd. Congress, in their great Roadblock Republican wisdom, refused to appropriate any money to fix it, along with other crumbling bridges across the nation. So the unemployed construction workers in the crowd were pretty steamed about that. But the primary focus seemed to be ever increasing wealth and income disparity between the 1% and the 99%. The top 1% now own 42% of everything, up from 33% in 1980. The middle class has shrunk from 65% of the population in 1980 to 46% now.”

“And the reason they preceive for these changes is the corporate and special interest money flooding into politics. They think, rightly so I believe, that those with enough cash can buy themselves all the tax breaks, set asides, and outright welfare for the rich and corporations they want. Witness the fact that a good number of IRS checks went out to people earning over $1 million a year in 2010. Not only did they escape paying taxes, they got money in subsidies!”

@ETpro Right now, Occupy Seattle is complaining more about allegations that a pregnant woman miscarried after cops hit her in the stomach. The 84-year-old woman that got pepper-sprayed also prompted a few complaints.

I see things going downhill fast.

@jerv With the amount of money the dedicated Greedy Oligarch Pigs are transfering from the middle class to themselves, you had to expect a tooth-and-nail fight.

Occupy LA has been active and I am proud to say very forthright in their attempt to get out there and be heard. It has not been easy .