Those saying they don't know what the Occupy Wall Street protesters are demanding...

[JackRiddler]

are a lot like courtiers who say they don't understand what the crowds around the palace mean when they chant, "Down with the King!"

[OneGrassRoot]

1. Love the Declaration:

"As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known."


http://nycga.cc/2011/09/30/declaration-of-the-occupation-of-new-york-city/

[frazzled]

2. But even those who chanted "Down with the King" had ....

a plan for what would come next in the French Revolution. Beginning with the ordering of the Etats-General and then the formation of the National Assembly and a constitution. It still turned into a rather big mess for 100 years. But there was an organized plan to replace one system with another with specific rights and rules.

What is difficult for people to understand here is what comes after the recognition of corporate greed and influence. What specific institutions/rules/economic or political systems should be put into place? For the anarchists involved, I suppose the answer is none. That is not an acceptable answer, unless you're envisioning some sort of agrarian/pastoral society of self-sustaining clans and itinerant tinkers.

[Aerows]

3. For starters, holding people accountable under our laws

If that had been happening, none of this would have happened in the first place. The root of this is injustice. The protesters know it, the American people know it, and many around the world also know it. Unchecked greed - unchecked by law and enforcement of our laws - is what has caused this mess.

[JackRiddler]

4. No, actually. They did not have one plan.

Yet the king still had to be removed, if anything was to change.

The king in this case holds sway over the nation's governing institutions and economy, perpetrated history's greatest financial fraud and was rewarded for it, and holds the people hostage to his bottomless appetite for rentier income.

Solutions are not nearly as obscure or difficult as you are making them out to be. Ending the too-big-to-fail institutions, investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators of fraud, clawing back what they plundered, re-establishing the old rules (and some new ones) that would have prevented or minimized the impact of the fraud, restoring progressive taxation on the richest, spending on creating jobs in industries that transform an ecologically suicidal civilization... these are obvious alternatives.

None of it happens as long as the king remains in power.

Occupy Wall Street because Wall Street has occupied Washington DC.

[frazzled]

7. Wrong: the Assembly functioned for two years before the king

even arrested, and four years before it voted to execute him (in 1793). During those years it wrote a constitution (which attempted a constitutional monarchy, preserving the king). Laws were made, and there was plenty of intrigue.

But it is completely untrue that the king had to be undone before anything happened. For many years, they tried to implement changes with the king in place, and with the institution of a new legislative body.

[JackRiddler]

8. I know all that and wrote nothing that justifies your false assumption that I didn't.

No one thinks everything will change overnight today, either. What can change any time is the direction.

Furthermore, the king by collaborating with those who worked for a restoration and with the countries waging war on France guaranteed that he had to go.

Regardless, my point isn't about France. You related it to France.

My point is that Wall Street is today's operative king of today's US government. The protests are a challenge to that. Those who don't get it don't actually want to get it.

[frazzled]

11. Look, your arguments make sense, but they are not the arguments ...

being put forth by the protesters.

We're ALL for reigning in corporations and financial institutions and restoring a more economically just and viable system. No problems there.

But most of us are neither for ending all government (the position of the anarcho-hacker groups); nor are we all for abolishing the Fed (the Ron Paulites); etc. There are no leaders or driving philosophy in this action (by its own decision). There are negatives that need to be addressed, but no positives that would form even the kernel of a plan for addressing them.

I gave the example of the French Revolution because, despite all the different factions, in the beginning it really did have some very organized and specific goals, such as the institution of a permanent legislative body, made up not only of the nobles and clergy but more largely of citizens, that would be a check on the power of the king. It was only eventually (and after things got totally out of control and a lot of people needlessly got their heads chopped off) that it was decided to abolish the monarchy. Then the monarchy came back for a very long time.

In other words, while almost all of us support the general idea that corporate/financial institutions have acquired too much power, this is where the similarity ends. Many of us look back to the results of previous revolutions and think it would be better to go about things somewhat differently.

[JackRiddler]

14. It doesn't matter what arguments are put forth by the protesters.

First of all, you're wrong. I've been there, you don't say you have, and there is definitely more vision in the typical sampling of the people there than, well sorry, here.

Doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

(Presumably most of) The protesters at Wall Street will never be the leadership of a future alternate society. They will not be writing the new Constitution. They're not even looking to be the leadership of a movement! They are simply where the protest needs to be.* They are looking to spark a movement, to bring it together. When the millions join, when the popular organizations such as unions join (as they have already started!), then let's be real: The millions will determine what the movement is, not the kids who are in Zucotti Park today (and whom I will be joining later).

All else in the struggle for economic justice having failed, the people continue to be eaten for Wall Street profit and war finance, with no recourse for change left other than resistance from below.

The means in the case of "Occupy Wall Street" is the end. That's why one of their "single demands" they've come up with is probably the most compelling, simply: Join us.

They don't mean, Be Like Us (and it wouldn't matter if they did, since they have no intent or power to enforce it). They mean: shut down the business of the monster that has attacked you.

The media try to obfuscate by focusing on them, rather than on what they are doing. They create profiles of them as kooky, or suggest that culturally/identitywise you don't want to be like them.

Doesn't matter. They don't want that either. They want to occupy Wall Street, and so should you.

Nothing happens without the fall of the financial tyranny. Government, corporate media, courts, and most established civil institutions have failed to even identify the problem. All have capitulated to the sovereignty of the high finance sector and the TBTF banks, who continue to act with the world as the poacher with the elephant, or Godzilla with Tokyo -- except that this is a Godzilla who destroys specifically to plunder, not simply because he's a crazy monster. Godzilla is the pressing threat to our futures. Godzilla must be defeated. Down with the king.

.

* Note above * The other place, the second head in our dual divine-right monarchy by money and ideology, would be the Pentagon; good luck and one thing at a time.

[Me.]

5. Don't Forget That Elites Who Wanted Power Themselves

Like the Duc D'Orleans were prominent in helping bring the revolution about. It was they who paid for a lot of the pamphlets the people read. They were the 18th century version of the Koch brothers. Now I'm not saying the people weren't fed up, they certainly were but they were also played by those who had ambitions quite like the tea partiers have been. I like the organic nature of Occupy and think it will grow and develop at its own pace. It's already spreading. We, in my household, found it interesting that they had a general assembly, just as was in France. The same France who paid a price for our democracy being born as the money they gave us as a start up helped bankrupt their country in the first place.

[txlibdem]

12. The danger of special interest groups attempting to sieze power if they can

We'll just have to make sure that they don't get the chance... and if they try we'll need to explain to them that this is a no no, lay a little smack-down on the greedy and power hungry.

[zazen]

6. Elizabeth Warren has a plan; the progressive Dems have a plan

Take leading progressive Dems and economists, put em in a room for a weekend, and they'll have a plan. Or just ask Bernie Sanders.

They've been shouting plans for years. They've been shot down by Republicans and by traitors from their own party who'd rather take PAC money from banks on the Financial Services Committee than actually fight for real change.

We have plenty of plans for how to run this country effectively.

We don't have effective plans for ousting the corporate kleptocrats from power. If Obama had an aggressive Justice Department that prosecuted Wall Street criminals and removed corrupt SCOTUS members and if Harry Reid would go back to majority rules so we could get new reasonable judges and cabinet appointees in at every level, that'd be a small start. But they don't have the guts. Too afraid of offending their paymasters or God forbid, not looking bipartisan.

If they had the guts, they'd tap into and fuel an incipient movement in this country that would sweep 2012 and give us the power to usher in 21st Century New Deal.

But they won't.

[txlibdem]

13. SCOTUS member who falsified documents for 7 years... YOU'RE FIRED!

I wonder what would happen to a "little person" American who falsified their financial records for close to a decade...

[TalkingDog]

9. See reply #6 and self sustaining clans would be worse how?

n/t

[librechik]

22. Maybe it would help to think of it as a postmodern deconstruction of those ancient revolutions

These folks noticed that single charismatic leaders often turn into despots in the heat of revolution, and they are protecting us against that kind of hegemony. By keeping the protest more or less formless they open the way for a broad swath of society to indentify with its many many individual aims (well documented at the OWS site) No firm structure means no dictators. It's so obvious what the main grievance is (Wall Street & it's cohortmakes true democracy impossible) that there should be no need to spell it out. Make up your own slogan.

[Fire Walk With Me]

10. "How quaint. They want to 'get down' with the King!"

(Kick and Recommend!)

[lonestarnot]

15. Ass powderers that never heard of talc causing cancer.

[chill_wind]

16. k & R.

[JackRiddler]

17. Thousands try marching to Brooklyn, suddenly blocked on both ends of bridge, 500 arrests so far...

[JackRiddler]

18. NYT leads provide both the real story and the propaganda, in just 20 minutes.

[JackRiddler]

19. next day kick

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. thanks jack for the screen cap

[JackRiddler]

21. next day bump