The YoungWorld

Darkest Souls

The anti-Wall Street protest in Lower Manhattan entered its third week with hundreds of arrests after the group blocked traffic Saturday on the Brooklyn Bridge, and budding copycat movements across the U.S. continued to stage smaller-scale protests, planning them online on social networking sites.

Protesters held sizable gatherings in Chicago and Los Angeles. In other cities, like San Francisco and Pittsburgh, protests were smaller or existed only in a planning stage. A website, occupytogether.org, lists groups that are offshoots of the New York protest. Activists have begun organizing outside the U.S., including in Prague, Melbourne and Montreal.

In New York, the protesters initially set out to occupy Wall Street but were rebuffed by police. Instead, the group set up in a nearby park, keeping the "Occupy Wall Street" moniker. The spread to other cities appears largely organic—the protests don't have a central organizer—and the idea came from a Canadian magazine and grew on social media websites.

This is very similar to action we have seen from "rebels" in egypt during early stages of protest. American president Obama has declared the people have the right to protest how they see fit. What direction do people think these protests will take?
_________________
- A gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a man perfected without trials-

Lasting · Private Joined: 24 Dec 2011 Posts: 5

Too bad this ended up being a joke. There was a good opportunity for voices to be heard and for light to be shone on real issues and real problems. The problem is that most americans are not intelligent enough nor eloquent enough to run a protest that can be taken seriously. I am an american and every time I see them get ready to interview someone on tv from "the crowd" I just cringe and pray...please dont speak, please dont speak...to no avail. We are lacking in good public leaders is part of the problem. Ok, my little mini rant is over. Would love to hear other thoughts on this.

scrivneria · Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 7:23 pm Post subject:

The movement definitely spawned more jokes than useful dialogue. My favorite was "99% of the world's practice time is used by 1% of the world's music students. #occupythepracticeroom"

It's definitely a comment on our society how inarticulate the bulk of the protesters were. Then again, I do believe that the media with some rare exceptions singled out the people least likely to state any coherent objectives. NPR had a couple of people who made good points, e.g. "I'm out here when I'm off work because I have a master's degree and can't do better than an $8.00/hr part time job." Unfortunately, these were the rare cases rather than the common speakers.

The other major problem with the movement is that both ends of the political spectrum had PAC's attempting to capitalize off of the occupy protests. The liberal side turned it into an issue of student loan debt and tried to galvanize 99% sympathizers to sign a bunch of petitions to erase that debt to stimulate the economy. Don't get me wrong, I signed the petitions, but that particular movement has already failed twice since I started my first undergraduate in 2002. The conservative side, meanwhile, used the occupy protests as an excuse to categorize college students as a lazy group of economy-drainers who wanted a free pass out of personal responsibility. Personally, both extremes have both a point and glaring flaw in their thoughts.

What truly scares me moving forward from the occupy protests are the excessive uses of force that were allowed (e.g. pepper-spraying college students legally sitting in their own university quad at California Berkeley), and the increase in rabid anti-intellectual rhetoric that has dominated the Republican primaries thus far. The only person in that race to have spoken more than three words of sense in a row so far is John Huntsman, who, unfortunately has been tracking very poorly.

Not that I have any intention of voting for anyone but our current president, but as a person raised to believe in America as a concept, I had hoped for a real set of debates that required me to engage my brain. That said, in an increasing anti-thought world, the very notion of asking someone to make me think might be too much to ask of them.
_________________
[

With my seal and blessing -Scrivneria, Grand Master