What should Occupy WS (99%) do to get concrete actions from the 1%?

It’s pressure on Congress that will make the difference. Some of it is a balance to the Tea Party. Some of it is about getting them to take the issue of jobs more seriously. Some of it is libertarian. There’s a lot of other stuff involved, too. I don’t know if the issues will ever actually make it out of the stew pot, but still, there’s plenty for everyone in the pot.

Nobody expects Obama to wake up and give a speech saying that they can have whatever it is they want. The goal is to get press to hopefully spread spread the idea that a country ruled by companies is not the best for 99% of us.

They can start by voting with their dollars.

For example, I stopped going to Home Depot when they gave their outgoing CEO $400M while laying off employees. Clearly that company does not need my money.
They need to come up with a way to spread the word. I like the idea of a website. There has to be enough talent in the group to pull it off.

They can start by at least trying to make suggestions. There are plenty of intelligent people protesting, and plenty of people in the movement could actually come up with good, concrete suggestions, but unfortunately, the way I see it, that’s all lost underneath excessive complaining, and that might be turning off the nation to some of their better ideas. I’m all for Wall Street Reform, but the time has come for suggestions and ideas, not just complaining.

Publish “excessive” pay deals so potential shareholders scan avoid those companies.
Simple bullet points with simple facts so simple people can understand it.

Here is an excellent example.

That site is for Golden handshakes. They need one for yearly compensation.
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Most people I know are getting pretty disillusioned with them and labeling them as “spoiled hipsters” and such. I have friends who go to UC Davis and were there when that whole pepper spray incident happened and most of them were telling me they’re sick of the whole movement/protest and that it’s time for it to go.

Here’s a theory on why not much is getting done. Why risk real change when you can systematically siphon and dissipate organic dissent?

Campaign and vote for candidates that agree with your views, send money to your favorite candidate.

Stop buying products that are made by big corporations, buy only local, handmade goods.

This is going to get frowned on, but I think there is just not enough violence. These 1% people are sipping champagne on their balconies watching how the peasents with security jobs fight the peasents with supply jobs, and until the peasents figure out that they have been divided and conquered there will be no progress.

Sipping champagne in a 3000 dollar suit is just not scary enough. Make these fuckers barricade them selves in with fear of having their heads cut off and we may start to see some progress.

The only ways to get he attention of the 1% are to affect their net worth/profits, or to get seriously violent. And I’m not talking like the riots over Rodney King here; I am talking PLO vs Israel full-scale military action here. Remember what happened to Nicolae Ceascescu?

It may also be instructive to llok at Ferdinand Marcos and note what has happened in the Phillipines in the last couple of decades.

Good question, although it’s a fallacy that the lines are drawn clearly between the wealthiest 1% and the other 99%. A good number of the 99% are right wingers who either are among the 1% who benefit from constant tax cuts and subsidies for the rich, or are 99%ers who have been duped into cutting their own body parts off to feed the starving billionaires. And in a recent survey of the wealthy, 65% said that those making more then $1 million a year should pay a greater share of taxes in order to support America and get the unemployed back to work. The people driving for ever more for the top 1%, to be taken away from the 99%, are a very small minority of the total population.

The OWS movement can either try to work within the system to change it, collecting donations and hiring lobbyists to try to buy all the for-sale lawmakers in Washington and all the state governments, or they can do as Mario Savio said, ”...throw your bodies on the gears and wheels of the machine.” I suspect that is what it will take to make the right-wing authoritarian leaders realize that they have to share. They can’t have it all for themselves. I hope not, but that’s usually how it plays out.