Honestly, I have nothing rational to add to this weekend’s insanity, except to point to the commenter on the New York Times ‘coverage’ of the Brooklyn Bridge Arrests who asked, “Why do the police wear jackets that say NYPD instead of Wall Street Security?” As someone who supports the protesters’ goals, I’m almost afraid to say anything, lest Bloomberg and the NYPD come to their senses and stop putting their collective foot in their collective mouth.
Here’s a link to the Huffington Post coverage roundup, which I’m including because they documented the New York Times’s weird headline switch over the course of the day. Also, the Guardian is asking anyone who was actually on the bridge to post eye-witness accounts of the entrapment and kettling.
And once again, here’s a recap of the links I posted last week for donating to Occupy Wall Street:
Global Revolution is the best place both to watch live feed from Zuccotti Park and to donate to keep it going. Scroll down the page below the streaming feed and you’ll find a list of donation links to keep the live streaming going:
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution
The media team at Liberty Park has said on air that while their online donations pages are definitely going to be useful in the long run, they’re having a lot of trouble accessing them for immediate funds. If you want to help with immediate needs for bedding, camping supplies and just plain cash, you need to send either nonperishable items or a money order (no checks!) to the nearest UPS store. Make money orders payable to Occupy Wall Street and send them to:
Occupy Wall Street
UPS Store 118A
Fulton st #205
New York, NY, 10038
Next, here’s a list of local businesses that will deliver to the protesters at Zuccotti Park is here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11aEYlrHbWsYw9UFLmnR3V62NRdN0EtN5aVFJs_YXbg8/edit?hl=en_US
And finally, the New York General Assembly (one of the several organizations involved in the protest) also has a links page for people who want to donate:
Good luck Occupiers! Many of us who can’t be there are thinking of you and supporting you! You’re doing great work. And with a little more help from the NYPD like you got this weekend, this should really take off!
I support their opposition to the status quo crony capitalism. I’m not really sure the Occupiers have any single set of unified goals. As someone who’s socioeconomic outlook is quite different not only from the status quo and the status quo ante, but also past socioeconomic ideals that have never panned out, I find it difficult to locate others that share my point of view, which is admittedly not very bumper sticker ready. But the gist I get from the Occupiers is that they are mainly fed up with the entrenched mentality of American governance. If they have specific objectives, I have been unable to glean them from the irritatingly sparse mainstream media coverage. That’s looking through a digital lens from across the country, though, and I would be grateful for any insight my few New Yorker friends – you among therm, Chris – could give me since you are closer to the thick of it and likelier to know participants. Thank you for your posts regarding the protests thus far.
Hi Aaron!
I know, the press coverage really has been abysmal. And it’s hard to see what’s going on down there through the combination of non-coverage and obfuscatory coverage. I think a lot of people are in your position: basically sympathetic to the protesters but having a hard time actually figuring out what they want or stand for.
Sadly, I can’t say I have any speshul sekrit local knowledge here. After all, I now live 4 hours from the city and haven’t even been able to get down there since the protests started!
That said, I have heard from friends who work and live near the financial district. And they’ve been alternately annoyed and amused by the NYPD’s over-response to an obviously peaceful protest. One friend crossed paths with an Occupy march on her way to work last week, and said the protesters were all “happy hippies” and the cops had them completely outnumbered and were treating them as if they were dangerous wild animals instead of a few college kids with bongo drums. She came away from the encounter feeling that the NYPD were wasting public money and trampling on the protesters’ free speech rights … and also with a renewed resolve to go down to Zuccotti Park and shower the protesters with homemade cookies
As for what the Occupy Wall Street protesters want? Well … they did finally publish their demands on their website. Tellingly, most of their demands are about process not product. They want a fundamental change in government that ends the tyranny of corporate money and puts individual voters back in the driver’s seat. I think most Americans agree with that. And as for the Occupation’s substantive demands … well, I agree strongly with some of them, while others … meh.
But that’s how genuine consensus governance works. And I’ve been watching the livestream on and off for about ten days, so I can tell you that these folks are VERY VERY serious about consensus governance. That means they’re never going to come up with the kind of incisive action plan that, say, your local pipefitters union has. And they’re certainly not going to create the kind of prime time-ready artificial consensus of astro-turf groups that mobilize “citizen activists” as worker drones for multi-million dollar lobbying campaigns whose “spontaneous demonstrations” are carefully crafted behind the scenes by highly paid media consultants.
What the genuine grassroots activists down on Wall Street CAN do, however, is what they’re already doing so well: occupying the territory and providing a center for other sympathetic movements and people to coalesce around so that — working together — we CAN effect real change.
So I don’t think Occupy Wall Street is a “failure” because the occupiers haven’t come up with some five point action plan that everyone can get behind. I think the talking heads who keep harping on that are missing the point. In fact I think that’s the real failure here. I don’t know what to do about it. But I’d love to reach out through the intertubes and shake some sense into a whole lot of progressive organizations that AREN’T down on Wall Street yet. Because instead of supporting an honest-to-goodness grassroots groundswell, they’re standing on the sidelines saying (essentially) “This isn’t how WE did it in our generation” and “Why don’t you kids dress better and get more organized and make it easier for the dumbed down media to report on you?” and, in the final analysis, when you cut through all the bullpatootie: “Waaah!! Kids today! Get off my LAAAAWN!!!”
I am not quite sure what these whiners and naysayers see when they look at Occupy Wall Street. But it’s not what I see. What I see is a large number of quite well-organized college kids, along with some (but not enough) older allies. I see them putting their physical safety and their clean criminal records and future job prospects on the line to stand up for free speech. And I see them seriously, earnestly, and very idealistically living a commitment to participatory democracy and consensus governance.
And you know what? This is how real progressive change in this country has always started. Some small, committed group — usually heavily composed of young people — always lead from the front. And then rest of us struggle to get our heads out of our antipasta and catch up to them. So to those so-called progressives who are standing on the sidelines and complaining about Occupy Wall Street I would say this: the kids are out there leading from the front. Where are YOU?
Ahem. Anyway, that’s my two cents. As a disgruntled middle-aged activist who has spent the last two decades listening to other middle-aged activists complaining about the materialism and apathy of “kids today” … and now is hearing those exact same people complain about how the Occupy Wall Street kids are doing it wrong and wrecking everything.
So — Aaron — getting back to your original question about what’s actually going on down there. I guess the best I can say to you is: watch the live feed from Zuccotti Park. And keep in mind that this protest is trying to do something that hasn’t been done since the big IWW general strikes of the 1910s: unite ALL working and middle class Americans around a broad-based goal of making the country more democratically responsive to the needs and desires of ordinary people. That’s the big existential question of every radical political movement: is it worth the gamble of trying to make real change happen instead of just settling for the crumbs you can get within the business as usual paradigm? The IWW gambled big and lost in the 1920s, partly due to unconstitutionally harsh repression of free speech rights … but also because they never did manage to convince middle class Americans that their lives would be better if they stopped dreaming of joining the 1 percent and started standing together with the 99 percent. But in the larger march of history, the IWW and their allies brought the pressure from the left that made Roosevelt enact the New Deal. Just as the Freedom Riders and Selma marchers led from the front to force Kennedy and Johnson to live up to their campaign promises on Civil Rights. So whether the Occupy Wall Street movement becomes a footnote in history or the first stirring of a mass political movement that makes America deliver on the unfulfilled promises of the New Deal and the Civil Rights era? Well, that’s largely up to the broader community of progressive activists in this country … and so far their behavior is not making me optimistic!
And to the ‘get off my lawn’ crowd I would say this: If this generation’s political activism has to be exactly completely like yours in every detail before you will deign to support it then I predict that disappointment looms in your future. But on the other hand, if you stop backseat driving and start actually supporting them, something good might just come of it. I mean, come on people, seriously … parent much??!?
I laughed and cried through most of that very passionate reply. All I can say is, well said!
My frustration is not with the protesters. My frustration is with the ‘get off my lawn’ crowd
But then I found myself wondering how I was any different if I wasn’t there marching alongside them. Well, I can’t be there in person, but I can be there in pizza money and camping equipment. So that’s why I was so appreciative of your links, which I passed along to the Boing Boing commentariat (confident you wouldn’t mind, and with a nod to you for sourcing them).
My dissatisfaction with my government’s policies is as deep as my love of its constitutionally enshrined ideals. I imagine it’s like the relationship between Batman and Catwoman.
But I know I’ve fallen through the looking glass when the only people willing to stand up to the firms destroying whatever once existed of the free market (not what most soi-disant capitalists think it is) are the hipsters. I do believe society progresses, but it’s being wildly outstripped by the grass growing.
On the plus side, I’ve been getting some great ideas on how to build better corporations which, while unlikely to be adopted anytime soon in the real world, should be fun to write about.
” I do believe society progresses, but it’s being wildly outstripped by the grass growing.”
Oh lord, yes to that! And also to the observation that it seems to be much easier to build effective corporations than effective social movements.
I don’t know whether I should say this in answer to this comment or to your comment about The Inquisitor’s Apprentice. But what keeps running through my mind right now is that I just got finished writing a scene in the second NYPD Inquisitors book where JP Morgaunt quotes Jay Gould’s famous line:
“I can hire half the working class to shoot the other half.”
And honestly, when I ask what progress we’ve made since 1900, the most obvious change seems to be that these days Gould’s modern equivalents can hire half of EVERYBODY to shoot the other half of EVERYBODY.
Yikes!
It’s funny you should say that. I actually think a good corporation and an effective social movement would share a lot of characteristics.
Nor are all corporations equal. As someone who was part owner in a small tech firm for seven years, I can tell you that Mom and Pops are a whole different ballgame from the Goldman Sachs or JP Morgans of the world. Somewhere along the line Americans across the political spectrum somehow got it into their heads that ‘free market’ means the freedom to use government lobbies and our fiscally unequal court system to smash competition and beat customers into submission. It doesn’t, and Adam Smith is spinning in his grave as the very East India company model he railed against is taking over the world in the name of his ideas. It’s on par with saying that ‘freedom of religion’ is the freedom of a religion to take over the state and burn unbelievers at the stake.
That’s one reason I so enjoy Cory Doctorow’s books; he’s one of the few authors I know that write what might be called ‘econ-fiction’, at least as one of the central themes. I suppose it’s the programmer in me, but I emphatically do not believe society is best served by staking out ideological economic theories and then trying to stuff reality into them whatever the real world costs. Maybe the economy just needs a good debugging.
Anyhow, kudos to the Occupiers for being, as far as I can tell, civilized. It makes the city and police look all the worse when they send in Tony Bologna.
JP Morgaunt…hehe
Yes to all that! And you’re reading my mind uncannily on about three counts.
One … I actually wrote and then deleted a sentence in my last comment that said, in essence, there’s a reason why a whole host of left-leaning political SF writers, including me and Cory Doctorow, are moving to writing for kids. And it’s not because we all want to be the next J. K. Rowling. It’s because we’re ready to stop talking to the “get off my lawn” crowd and start talking to readers who are actually going to go out and change the world for the better.
Two … have you read Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia? I keep recommending it to people, and one of the reasons is that he explains the mechanics of the problem you put your finger on. We’ve created a system of government that imposes backbreaking burdens on SMALL (try getting a liquor license sometime) while operating as a massive corporate welfare system for large corporations. As you say, it is the British East India system posing as free market capitalism. And the results are what we see all around us today. But try telling the average small business owner that we actually need more aggressive regulation and taxation of corporations, not less, and he or she will laugh in your face. Because half the money the government hands out to Dow and Monsanto and Exxon comes out of the pockets of small business owners.
Third … About the British East India Company! Even though I don’t explicitly talk about it in my SF books, a huge part of the underpinning of the Spin State world is based on my dad’s family’s experience as mixed race Eurasians who emigrated from Calcutta to the US in the 1920s. And I have been thinking increasingly of late about writing a nonfiction book about that family history, which basically gives a view of life for a typical Eurasian family in Calcutta from the arrival of the Portuguese and French through the rise and fall of the British Raj. Not because I think the world needs another heartwarming family memoir(!!) but because the parallels between the reality of life for ordinary working class and middle class Calcuttans under the British East India Company and the reality of life under today’s global corporations are … just … astounding. Especially the skillful manipulation of race and religion as wedge issues to make the 99 percent look the other way while the 1 percent is picking their pockets. It’s a tactic that still works today. Still works in India. Still works in America. Still works pretty much anywhere in the world you look.
And what can one say about that? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Fool me for 400 years? Words truly fail me…
The title alone sells it. On my non-fic list it goes…
So, here’s a few highlights of what I believe might make a dent in the state corporatism and start hopefully pushing us toward real free markets, sustainable economic growth and away from the New Feudalism.
1) Regulations not written by the industry ‘leaders’ which they then ignore with impunity behind platoons of lawyers while small fry either sell to them or drown.
2) Common resources such as mineral and land wealth not given to well-connected conglomerates as campaign favors, but actually developed by transparent bidding processes anyone can audit.
3) Credit default swap ponzi schemes treated like exactly what they are, fraud…massive, willful fraud…too which investors and bank customers are subjected without their consent.
4) $0.00 further dollars given to bail out any corporation. If the Executive is feeling so damn generous about kick-starting the economy with our tax dollars, they can give that money to tax credits for all of us, not just the jet set.
5) A flat tax above the basic cost of living – not the laughable ‘poverty’ level.
6) No tax, or a graduated negative income tax, below the basic cost of living.
7) ALL tax loopholes summarily eliminated. Not most, all so the wealthiest Americans pay the same bleeding percentage of earnings as the rest of us.
8) Corporate income tax transferred to a corporate consumption tax. We’ll see how Exxon stacks up against Mom’s Apple Pie Shop when it has to pay to use national resources.
9) The payroll and other corporate taxes transferred to a national sales tax, so corporations can’t dodge them, and they are externalized for all to see and appreciate.
10) The legal fiction of corporate personhood eliminated. If a board of directors wants to contribute to a political campaign, they can pay themselves the money and use the after tax dollars to do it in their own personal names. If corporate income tax is transferred to a corporate consumption tax as outlined in #8, this makes political stumping all the more costly and means corporate executives can’t use their for-profit incorporation as a liability-proof sock puppet.
11) Obtaining non-profit status should entail opening all accounting books to full public scrutiny.
12) Unions that compete with each other for worker membership, so they actually ‘Work for You!’ instead of working for political favors at member expense.
13) The invisible hand needs to be allowed to clean house on Wall Street, Detroit and elsewhere. Investing treasury funds in failure to save a few thousand jobs short term is not going to create long-term job growth or turn America back into a producer of goods or services the world wants to buy.
14) Existing regulations actually being…gasp…enforced on large corporations and their industry trusts, not just more laws the sharks are never slapped with.
15) A concerted effort by the geekosphere to develop wireless mesh networks as viable alternatives to the centrally core routed architecture subsidized by government and built by regional telco monopolies. The internet is beautiful, and it had to be built using existing utility rights of way which I recognize is a valid commons. But it’s venerable as all get out to corporate abuse and government censorship and now that it has become the nervous system of global economics and free expression, that vulnerability is a towering liability.
16) The Left to stop looking the other way when Democrats perpetuate and expand Griftopian programs such as TARP, or get us embroiled in yet another foreign war, or defend massive Executive expansion a la Dubya’s consolidation of half the alphabet soup under the DHS umbrella.
17) Some economic regulation of politicians, not just business owners.
18) Most of all, I want American citizens to get off their duffs and stop treating elections like American Idol, or Dancing with the Stars, or whatever Fahrenheit 451ism is on TV.
Sigh! *Climbs down off soapbox.* I’ll save health care, foreign policy, criminal justice, education and environmental conservation for another time. You’ve probably noticed by now, though, that I’m a fan of smart, tight regulation, transparency and participatory democracy. For some blasted karmic sin I wasn’t born in the 24th century. Live long and prosper, Chris
All of the above is indeed completely logical and sensible.
And furthermore it would work.
And that is why we will never, never do it.
Aye, but our chillun might. There is one force on Earth I have more confidence in than human stupidity…evolution.
In the meantime, that’s why I write stories. It helps me keep perspective while my species takes its sweet time evolving.
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.” ~ Lazarus Long
I’d be interested in reading that. I know you’ve gotta make a living as it’s your career, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster knows I want more Spin books, but I still say write what you need to write. And remember, just ’cause it’s a family history doesn’t mean it can’t be entertaining (though fewer posthuman-AI love triangles might be in order
).
Write and they will read…