h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>
Criticising Effers because she doesn't share your point of view (or for her posting style) does nothing to advance your argument. If you had any evidence whatsoever of real progress being made by Occupy, you would post it.
<<

Sorry RE, but I'm not criticising her because I disagree with her POV. And her posting style matters if it causes problems in the thread (which it does too often IMO).

Many of us *have* been posting about the relative value of Occupy, throughout this thread. I'm really happy to talk about that with anyone who can engage with people here on the issues. I'm not willing to talk with anyone who just turns up repeatedly and says Occupy is rubbish and that they know everyone where they live hates it. It's just boring and pointless after the first few times. And honestly, I don't understand why anyone would keep coming back to this thread and doing that when it's so badly received by most of the thread participants. What is the point?

Back on topic...

>>Comparing those two movements is an insult to generations of black people.

In what way RE?

in the way that freezing your butt off Occupying, being uncomfortable up a tree or the like is not comparible to Syria for instance

and it is not

just in the same way as I should be grateful when comparing myself to woman in Somalia

and I am

something along those lines?

You don't see it?

Now, how do you think Occupy is going to make any impression on the crisis which is effecting so many people?

Even bright young people, here in Spain, have little chance of finding employment. When they do, they will find that they will have to work until they are 67, and even then they will not have worked long enough to earn a decent pension.

The Indignados was formed to demonstrate their utter dissatisfaction with their predicament - and I support that. However, to think that they can make any real change by their actions is just wishful thinking.

By bringing more attention to the inequalities which have caused the crisis?

Of course that would rely on a combination of the media doing proper reports on Occupy and people acutally bothering to listen to them instead of sitting in their comfy homes calling them a bunch of dreamers and hippies.

To what extent is Occupy a development on the protest movement that kicked off (to pick a rough date) with Seattle in 2000? The Social Forums, WTO protests and so on?

Is it a development of that, or something completely different?

"By bringing more attention to the inequalities which have caused the crisis?" It's hardly a secret.

No, but most people are still content to just sit back and let it happen to them. Occupy are going out and trying to really draw attention to it. But even people intelligent enough to know better are just treating them with derision and insisting that after only a few months the movement is doing no good. This isn't a fast SMASH THE SYSTEM type thing, because those usually burn themselves out in this kind of context. This is, hopefully, just the first step.

@Comrade D:

Is there any point whining that the meeja and the comfy people at home aren't listening? Surely a movement's success should be measured by what it can achieve *despite* that?

@KB:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcYZlRWWxO0

I see Occupy as part of the long game and for people who don't know activism and what it achieves and how it achieves it I can see why Occupy seems impotent. Yes it has connections with the WTO etc protests, but it's also distinctly different and an evolution from past protests.

Occupying land is *radical*. In NZ radical Maori occupied land and did similar kinds of protests in the 70s and 80s. They were derided with exactly the same kinds of scorn and criticisms that Occupy is getting and were largely maligned and misunderstood my the MSM. However, over time the thinking of the general public shifted, to such an extent that those protests have evolved into a Maori renaissance and many concrete things have been achieved including settlement of grievances by the Crown that Maori have been trying to address for over a hundred years. So there is another 30 or 40 year movement that needs hindsight to see its value.

I think that Occupy is somewhat different because it is basically standing up and saying that the US govt and the American dream are so corrupt that they have to stop/be stopped. We are probably past the point of being able to do much about that, and with the convergence of climate change, peak oil and the global financial crises I expect that Occupy will play more of a part in preparing for the fall out than bringing about some glorious revolution.

I disagree that people in general understand what the issues are and I expect that over time Occupy will influence the MSM and thus the general population, in much the same way that Maori did here (and has happened in other places and other times: the radicals on the fringe always move the centre in some direction). This doesn't mean that the MSM and the public will (probably. We can come back here in ten years and see if that is starting to happen or not).

Is there any point whining that the meeja and the comfy people at home aren't listening? Surely a movement's success should be measured by what it can achieve *despite* that?<<<


A few things,

since when the protesters said they would bring successful results?

They are protesting, that´s the first step, well, the first step is to get angry and then protest. To solve a problem the first thing to do is to see it and to make other see it. And here comes the second thing:
media is absolutely vital, it creates opinion,and feelings... but if the content is controlled, the opinion is biased. That´s what is happening, except in the internet.
But how many ordinary people bother to look for information in the web? They want pre-cooked info, ideas to follow, something to stick to. To hear from conservative media once and again that this is a band of "perroflautas", lazy, drug-adicts, dirty hippies and that serious people accept their fate and suck it up, apparently makes some feel comfortable.

The Spanish media, mostly conservative, has been attacking the Indignados since the beginning, and that creates a biased opinion against them. , against the need to let yourself get angry, outraged and go out to shout, to protest, to camp, to tell politicians: hey, we are here, we are not stupid, we know your game, we want real democracy not this farce...

It´s going to be a revision of the law that allows banks to get the house of people when they can´t pay the mortage. People have to go on paying the debt even though they do not have a house anylonger.
That´s a result.
Citizens have started to get angry, and that is really a great success.
::
Ed, do you know that debate between Focault and Chomsky? Sometimes you remind me of Foucault, or is it you playing the devil´s "avocado" again?

I'm reminded of something somebody said to me one time - it would have been around the early to mid 1980s. This was that there were three things which he would never see in his lifetime. The first was the end of Apartheid in South Africa. The second was the end of "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland. The third was the end of communism in the Soviet Union.

History can surprise us sometimes. At that time, those seemed like the great eternal truths. But in the five to ten years after he said that, every one of those impossible things actually happened.

You know I'm always the devil's avocado, Maria.

Movements generally start by having to *make* people listen.

But there are different ways to make people listen- whether it was Ghandi calling a fast or people in Chicago 1968 getting arrested.
Let us hope it does not take something violent to make TPTB listen.

I wasn't suggesting that. Nor criticising Occupy.

Make who listen?

>>> But there are different ways to make people listen- whether it was Ghandi calling a fast or people in Chicago 1968 getting arrested.
Let us hope it does not take something violent to make TPTB listen.

There have already been incidents of police brutality against Occupiers and numerous arrests.

We already have something different. We have the entire resources of the Internet and we have this, right here, this thread where we can trade information about what is happening with Occupy all around the world.

I have been finding people listening, all ears and are also wanting to be heard, not sure we have found our voices so much (uk centric) but that is not the same as it isn't happening, maybe in those sort of terms 'Occupy' is not quite having the same sort of 'resonance' as elsewhere

>>Movements generally start by having to *make* people listen.

Ed, are you suggesting that Occupy has failed to make people listen? I would have thought the complete opposite.