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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSo...was the "99% Spring" doing anything today?
We didn't hear about them doing anything...other than trying to wipe out OWS, the actual people's movement.
They've got slick ads...as opposed to actually caring about anything.
As far as I know, they haven't even started the civil disobedience workshops they bragged about in the ads...which means it will be too late to start them when they do. They'll probably turn them into voter registration workshops if they ever do start them, which will make those workshops useless(fine, people should vote, but putting voter turnout before movement building is co-optation).
And they'll politely lobby legislators, I suppose-asking for tiny change if it doesn't offend our masters.
And that's...about...it.
If they'd joined Occupy, they'd be part of the solution. Instead, they split away and created something that can't lead to any real change at all. We needed unity and they destroyed that...and for what?
Why did they create a needless split?
They have to realize that they're only helping the rich by building a rival group.
There were good people in the 99% Spring...but why did they waste their energy on splitting for the sake of splitting?
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xchrom
(108,903 posts)Having been booted from the admin - is good question.
randome
(34,845 posts)Just because they have different methods is no reason to put them down. If you truly care about effecting change, you would support ANY group that is trying to change things. Just because you don't like their methods doesn't mean they aren't valid.
In fact, the same thing can be said of those of us who have suggestions for OWS.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Occupy isn't a Stalinist organization...you can work within it as you wish to.
What good possibly came from forming a different group?
What has the 99% Spring done anywhere that's EVER been more effective than OWS?
All they've been is blander, more polite, and safer. No one in 99% Spring has ever taken any risks...and none of THEM will ever be teargassed. They aren't in the streets, which means they aren't doing anything.
REAL change can't ever be made quietly or by working within the system. It only comes from the system being FORCED to change from below. Learn that lesson, before it's too late.
The system is ALWAYS against us.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Where did the idea EVER appear that OWS can't tolerate dissent?
That's an especially weird given that those who spread it also say that OWS has no structure.
Either you have no structure or you brook no dissent...logically, it can't be both.
People within OWS do, however, reserve the right(as does everybody else, including the Democratic Party and the "99% Spring" splinter group)to disagree with the suggestions...especially when those suggestions are essentially to give up everything they stand for and just campaign for Obama.
I'd compare the reaction to the emergence of 99% Spring among OWS types to the reaction Eugene McCarthy supporters had when Robert Kennedy, after promising he WOULDN'T enter the '68 presidential race, got in anyway. I actually would have supported RFK in that contest, but I understand the rage the McCarthy people would have felt and accepted it as justified.
99% Spring should have informed OWS of what they were planning to do and should have made it clear that they weren't trying to supplant OWS. 99% Spring did neither. Clearly, you'd have to agree that they were wrong not to do either of those things.
mmonk
(52,589 posts)trained both Occupiers in civil disobedience and legal observers in how to monitor treatment of those arrested as well as get volunteers to pick up arrestees after processing. Funny how little people with limited exposure to the movement actually know, or care to know, about it.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's always been a lie to say that OWS never trained anybody in anything.
