So tell me, will OWS take off or will it fizzle out?

[bluestateguy]

I am certainly rooting for it to succeed, but you'll pardon me if a decade of disappointments and dashed expectations is not leaving me to encouraged right now.

And on a related note, I must tell you that I am not a fan of symbolic victories. Think of Paul Hackett's run for Congress in a special Ohio election in 2005. I realize it was a Republican Red district and he did better than anyone could have assumed, but he didn't go to Congress, did he? Jean Schmitt is still there.

I prefer the type of victories where the side I'm on defeats the other side outright.

[Vincardog]

1. OWS will be a success if we support it and do not quit

[MineralMan]

2. I think it has already taken off just fine.

Whether it will produce actual results remains to be seen.

[Luminous Animal]

3. OWS is only as strong as you make it.

[monmouth]

4. I'm looking at OWS dates well into November for here in Florida..n/t

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. It already has succeeded. Now it only has to grow.

I wonder about the coming winter weather, but I know they'll adapt!

[peace13]

6. Until those folks find jobs my guess is that they are 'occupied'!

And I am thankful for it. The cold weather will be a bit of a hurdle, I fear.

[CrispyQ]

7. It will take off. Eventually. There are more & more unemployed & destitute.

Oh, the greedy, short-sighted oligarchy.

"You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again." ~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


Their mistake is in taking it all. But their greed overcomes.

[nevergiveup]

8. If there were hundreds of thousands

peacefully marching in the streets of our big cities then there would be some Wall Street fat cats and politicians shaking in their shoes. It could come to this as there is momentum. We shall see.

[MannyGoldstein]

9. How do you define success?

I think it's a start. It'll take a decade to truly take back our country, if we are able.

[xchrom]

10. Only you can answer that. Nt

[DaveJ]

11. It is like other sociological phenomena that got labelled

Except with intelligence and purpose, I think this is akin to Generation X, Generation Y, the Millennium Babies.

It has evolve into something new and better, hopefully not like the hippies selling out and becoming yuppies.

But like peace13 says, until we fix the system, we are going to have people living in the park. IMO America could be the greatest country on Earth if we just gave people a free room/food/healthcare. Something enough to qualify as basic needs. Otherwise this system is based on greed and we will continue to require people fighting for fairness.

[tama]

20. Hippies

I've been to Rainbow Gatherings - direct descendant of the hippie movement - and participated in talking circles. They are not so much about talking but about listening. Listening is also what Zapatistas teach by their example. I just read someone describing his participation in OWS General Assembly, he didn't speak out and at first experienced the confusion and frustration but quite soon he felt and understood the importance and power of attentive listening.

The waves of sounds, the waves of our movements.

[tama]

23. Here's the article

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/matt-stoller-the-anti-politics-of-occupywallstreet.html

"I have been through a few general assemblies now, and they are remarkable because the point of the assembly is to truly put listening at the heart of decision-making. There’s no electronic amplification allowed in Zuccotti Square. So the organizers have figured out an organic microphone system. A speaker says a half a sentence, everyone in earshot repeats, until the whole park can hear that half a sentence. Then the speaker says another half a sentence. People use hand signals to indicate approval, disapproval, get a move on, or various forms of objections and clarifications. During these speeches, speakers often explicitly ask for more gender and racial diversity, which is known as “progressive stacking”.

At first it’s extremely… annoying. And time-consuming. But after a few hours, it’s oddly refreshing. I felt completely included as part of a community forum even though I had not been a speaker. But what I realized is that the act of listening, embedded in the active reflecting of what the speaker was saying, created a far richer conversational space. Actually reflecting back to one another what someone just said is a technique used by therapists, and by pandering politicians. There is nothing so euphoric in a community sense as truly feeling heard. That’s what the general assembly was about, not a democracy in the sense of voting, but a democracy in the sense of truly respecting the humanity of everyone in the forum. It took work. It took patience. But it created a communal sense of power."

[flamingdem]

12. so far no poll on DU to see how many here are joining

if the internet was shut down it would really do well!

[bbgrunt]

13. they need to declare themselves the "People's Party" and

start an on-going political movement.

[DaveJ]

14. Repukes would love that n/t

[KharmaTrain]

15. Outright?

I'll settle for an energized party/political movement that elects more progressives to the House and Senate and make it political poison to support the concept of corporations being people and against the enforcement of Dodd-Frank or any other major bank reform law. To make it a political liability to accept large sums of corporate money and push the political ball more toward the political center rather than framing all issues in far right terms.

I'm with you...I've seen enough "symbolic" shows in my life. I saw many idealistic people of the 70s have their dreams and hopes washed away by a political movement that got too symbolic and allowed the corporates th gain the upper hand. While I'm very supportive of the OWS protesters I want to see more focus...not to shout at windmills but to take this movement and turn it into a political agent of change. Time will tell...

[livingonearth]

16. I will be going to my city's occupation starting this coming Monday.

I will be going there after work each day, and staying over nights on the weekends. I plan to give assistance to others staying longer than myself in the form of food blankets etc. That is all I can do for now.

[Bluenorthwest]

17. 5000 marched in Portland, Oregon today

that's what I'm hearing...

[Zorra]

18. Well, many of us are very encouraged because there is finally an active

tangible force dedicated to defining and implementing the exact changes necessary for the preservation of democracy in the US.

We had hoped that our Democratic legislators would take aggressive action toward enacting these changes, but aside from a small minority of honest men and women, they barely even mentioned them. In 2008, we thought that we were on the side that defeats the other side outright. Sadly, we were mistaken. Many of those we elected, that we thought were on our side, were actually playing for the other team.

So, we have been forced to take action ourselves in one of the few avenues left open to us.

We are encouraged.

We have some real hope for change now.

We believe that the movement will continue to grow, and that the We, the people, will prevail.

[WCGreen]

19. Yea and he walked away from politics as soon as he was defeated...

Paul Hackett, that is...

I met him and I have met dozens of these guys in my 25 years or so involved with Ohio Democratic Policy...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

21. As cynical as I've become over the years, I think this movement has legs.

[moondust]

22. Don't expect that type of victory.

Paradigm shift can take a long time and require a lot of patience, partly depending on how vicious the resistance to it.