OWS costing jobs-actions have consequences

[BlaqueKatt]

story here

Cafe owner has lost business and has laid off 21 of his staff of 97 workers, also has had to change his closing time from 9pm to 3:30pm, meaning the remaining staff gets less hours. Who is this protest supposed to be affecting?

The occupy oakland protest is blockading the docks, preventing the dockworkers from earning their pay as well.

Maybe some of the protestors need to occupy their braincells, or someone else's shoes.

Asked if he felt the protesters realized they were hurting his business, Epstein replied: "I'm very afraid of getting into what they are thinking and whether it's the police or the protesters because I don't want to get mixed up in the battle between them. But everyone should understand the consequences of their actions and nobody is."

[Gravekeeper]

Corrections:

The blockades in NY are police barricades. This guy is the only restaurant in that area. While it sucks he, and others in the area may be losing business and yes, the protestors should be respectful of that fact, the movement is certainly addressing a much larger problem than his cafe. However, NY in general has handled the protest in a pretty shitty fashion and while I would walk through a peaceful protest to get to where I was going, I would not walk through a protest where I have a good chance of just being randomly pepper sprayed, punched in the face or arrested just for being in the area. People will walk around and ignore protestors, but they will not walk through what they percieve to be a point of major conflict.

Also, some dock workers in Oakland are on strike supporting the protestors. They are not being prevented from working. Many of the city workers are supporting the protestors with a strike now: Service workers, teachers, nurses, etc . The Oakland Police are also turning on the mayor as they feel like they're being shitsmeared for carrying out her orders. Oakland is a total mess and its completely the mayor and police's fault.

[AdminAssistant]

I completely support the primary protest behind OWS (businesses have undue power over government through lobbyists) and the way that NYPD and Oakland PD have responded (in particular) is terrible.

I recently saw a video by an OWS protester comparing the police reaction to OWS to the Arab Spring movement, the Civil Rights movement, and Tienanmen Square. That's ridiculous. Protesters are being harassed, not executed in mass, attacked with dogs and fire hoses, or drug off to prison. At this point, someone should be saying, 'Okay, what next?' because the longer they stay in the parks pissing people off, the more support they lose. Besides, winter's coming on. As much as they seem to be opposed to having leadership, that's exactly what the movement needs. Leadership, a list of demands, and a gameplan to accomplish them. Back in the 60's, a group of women 'occupied' the administrative building on campus. They had a list of specific demands that they wanted: childcare services, a women's resource center, a women's studies program. They got it. Waving your hands around isn't going to get anything done.

Fiance recently told me about this Move Your Money campaign...the basic idea is that we're all supposed to join together on one day, storm the big banks, close out any accounts that we have with them, and move our money to small banks/credit unions. Which is all fine and dandy except 1) if the bank runs out of money they can say, "No, you can't close your account right now" and 2) Really, you're only ruining the day of the poor schmucks who work at that branch.

I support the movement in theory, but BK is right, they need to occupy their brains a bit.

[Gravekeeper]

I recently saw a video by an OWS protester comparing the police reaction to OWS to the Arab Spring movement, the Civil Rights movement, and Tienanmen Square. That's ridiculous.

Yes, it is ridiculous, which is why its kind of silly to argue against him. He's obviously the most entertaining or provocative twit they could find and thus not exactly representative of the whole movement. I also haven't seen this loss of support you speak of. If anything, support has galvanized thanks to the twit cops in Oakland braining that war vet. That incident also gave them a figurehead.

As for Move Your Money, it became "Undercover cop locks you inside the bank so they can arrest you for trespassing" in New York. They literally grabbed on woman outside and dragged her back inside so they could charge her with trespassing despite the fact she already left.

There are obviously quite a few of them that are "occupying their brains" as you put it, given the level of organization displayed in their camps. I also do not understand this argument about protestors and local businesses. The country's economic and political systems are completely fucked, but you shouldn't protest because you might cause someone to have a bad day?

[Rageaholic]

There are obviously quite a few of them that are "occupying their brains" as you put it, given the level of organization displayed in their camps. I also do not understand this argument about protestors and local businesses. The country's economic and political systems are completely fucked, but you shouldn't protest because you might cause someone to have a bad day?

Exactly.

I get that many here come from CS, but just because something might make the employees job harder shouldn't deter people from protesting. It's not as if they're taking it out on the employees and going full blown raging asshole on them. In the end, most protesters are probably on the side of the lower tier employees anyway.

[AdminAssistant]

The country's economic and political systems are completely fucked, but you shouldn't protest because you might cause someone to have a bad day?

Will cause someone to have a bad day and it doesn't do any fucking good, except that now all of those bank employees hate you, and so do their families. I hate to sound like a Republican, but I think at this point it might be more effective to occupy Congress. Demand tougher regulations on businesses, campaign finance reform, and the end of lobbying.

An example of people getting pissed off - one of my favorite webcomic artists, Jeph Jacques. He put out a series of tweets (http://twitter.com/#!/jephjacques) on October 28th about a small group of protesters in his town harassing and yelling at Bank of America customers. The customers. What good does that do?

Understand this, I support the movement, and because I support it, I want it to succeed. But more and more I get the feeling that it's just a lot of people marching around in a park feeling great about all the good that they're doing when they're not doing anything. Again: Organization, Demands, Action.

[Gravekeeper]

Demand tougher regulations on businesses, campaign finance reform, and the end of lobbying.

The whole underlying point of this is that they're politically powerless because they don't have money. Its not like this is some big surprise. The proper channels have failed them so completely, utterly and repeatedly its not funny and now the people in charge of fixing the game against them are sitting around going "Wow, I just don't understand why they're so mad about us fucking them up the ass for years!".

It sucks that there's some front line employees in the middle, but do you really think MoneyBags McCashDick is going to come out of his office to talk to them? Of course not. Its not even going to register on his radar unless enough grumbling makes its way up the chain of command to him.

Understand this, I support the movement, and because I support it, I want it to succeed. But more and more I get the feeling that it's just a lot of people marching around in a park feeling great about all the good that they're doing when they're not doing anything. Again: Organization, Demands, Action.

95 cities in 82 countries is hardly just a lot of people marching around in a park and they're clearly doing something else we would not be talking about them at all.

[Sleepwalker]

/shrug

The only one I feel sorry for is the cafe owner. If the store I work at went down, I'd find another job. It'd suck, but I'd rather get change in this country than keep the status quo. Stores go down all the time because corporate holds towns hostage for tax breaks, then closes up shop and moves overnight when the tax breaks expire. Or shut down stores to make their stock go up, even if the store isn't in the red.

Or when a business shuts down because of the bloody recession we're in that was caused by the god damn banks. And now we're supposed to be ashamed of ourselves because the police are blockading one bloody cafe. Go fuck yourself.

[jackfaire]

The proper channels have failed them so completely, utterly and repeatedly its not funny and now the people in charge of fixing the game against them are sitting around going "Wow, I just don't understand why they're so mad about us fucking them up the ass for years!".

The thing is many of the things I see people bitch about are things that the public voted on. Things that the public as a whole said, "We want it to be this way" Now they want to bitch for those very same things they voted for and supported verablly and rallied for.

I have seen many resolutions over the past ten years that with a little bit of research people would have voted the way they now apparently wish they had voted that overwhemingly were either voted against or voted out.

People are bitching in my town for example about how the quality of service for public transit has gone down in the last 12 years. Apparenltly none of them remember the tax that used to subsidize the public transportation that 12 years ago they voted to get rid of.

Not the politicians voted but the regular people voted.

[Gravekeeper]

The thing is many of the things I see people bitch about are things that the public voted on. Things that the public as a whole said, "We want it to be this way" Now they want to bitch for those very same things they voted for and supported verablly and rallied for.

To be bluntly honest, this system no longer works in the US at a national level. For all of its extoling the virtues of democracy, the fact of the matter is you're deadlocked in a two party system driven entirely by money where your two options are basically "Do you want one finger up your ass or two?".

This is the problem, basically. The systems that have fucked these people over are so fundementally entrenched in the political system that they cannot be changed using the political options available to the average person. You don't vote for the best option, you vote for the option you can live with that has the best chance of defeating the option you can't live with.

You can't change anything without money, and the people that don't want anything to change have more money than you do. -.-

[SkullKing]

I never Understood the two party system, could some american person try to explain what is the rationale behind it?

[Gravekeeper]

I never Understood the two party system, could some american person try to explain what is the rationale behind it?

Its more of a result than a rationale. It takes so much money to run a national political campaign in the US that they ended up condensing into just two teams. If you want to run, you have to join one of them. Because you're not going to raise that kind of money by yourself and both of them will do everything they can to sink you if you try. So even if you disagree with both parties, you need to put on the team jersey of one of them to have a shot at anything.

[Rageaholic]

Its more of a result than a rationale. It takes so much money to run a national political campaign in the US that they ended up condensing into just two teams. If you want to run, you have to join one of them. Because you're not going to raise that kind of money by yourself and both of them will do everything they can to sink you if you try. So even if you disagree with both parties, you need to put on the team jersey of one of them to have a shot at anything.

And if you do run for under a third party, you're pretty much fucked. The only non Republican or Democrat who even remotely stands a chance is Ron Paul.

[Gravekeeper]

And if you do run for under a third party, you're pretty much fucked. The only non Republican or Democrat who even remotely stands a chance is Ron Paul.

And even after you give it a try, everyone will blame you for splitting the vote and causing their team to lose. -.-

[AdminAssistant]

Ron Paul is a Republican. Yes, he's technically a libertarian (well, I think he's technically crazy, but not the point), but he is running for the GOP nomination.