Occupy Wall Street is Only Going to Get More Contentious
"While a couple of witnesses said that officers used pepper spray to clear the streets, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that one officer 'possibly' used it." Well, now we're all a "couple of witnesses" to last night, dear Times reporters. Welcome to the modern age! Turns out everyone can see these things now! So I would describe that event as not at all "possibly" and also "indiscriminate baton-beating and macing." (As would the Fox 5 news team, who got it in the face.) It makes it really hard to retain sympathy for New York City's cops, who do a hard job under often terrible conditions, when, overall, it seems like the NYPD hasn't much changed for the better since Giuliani times. What's more, it's not clear that large media organizations have changed much either, in how they make sense of what they "know." Never in my life have I thought that people who complained about the "mainstream media" had a point. Let's blame the bleeding of reporting talent at the newspapers by their short-sighted, tight-fisted owners. And this would be a good time to get down there and pay attention! This kind of tension always precedes a greater conflict. What exactly does everyone think will happen when Occupy Wall Street gets evicted?
I'd like to take this opportunity to bitch about this new thing I'm seeing in which people are declaring that if you fall into the 1% you are forbidden from standing with the 99%. Because hooooooooo boy does that ever chap my ass.
@jolie (It also chaps my ass that so many of the 1%ers are being SUCH FLAMING DICKS about their "superior" status. They are disgusting and should be choked to death with their Vineyard Vines ties.)
@jolie : Right? As many have pointed out, there's a weird human tendency to view getting paid a lot of money as confirmation that you're doing something right / smart / good, when the facts just ain't necessarily so.
@jolie The really amazing thing is that the 1% is assuming that this empire is going to last 1,000 years. Rate we're going I'd say it's even money it gets that many weeks.
@dntsqzthchrmn THE ENTIRETY OF THE 1% DOES *NOT* THINK THAT. JESUS FUCK.
@jolie I would think that having members of the so-called 1% stand in solidarity with the 99% would be a feather in the cap of the protesters. You're convincing "the enemy" that you're right! Isn't that the point?
@jolie Do you want us to promise that when the revolution comes we won't burn your house down and carry you to the guillotine? ALL RIGHT ALREADY, but please be sure to make lots of brownies ahead of time to keep the mob at bay.
@Mr. B Well it certainly would be something if the mob I've just said I stand with decided to guillotine me, but if that's the way it's going to be fine. Just… I would prefer a French swordsman do the beheading. You know, in deference to my Anne Boleyn fetish. That would be a nice touch.
@jolie Bah, sorry, my jokes never work here. Or anywhere else, really.
ie: Anne Boleyn fetish, hmm? *Call me.
vive le mon square!
@jolie Re: the entirety of the 1%'s thinking. Of course, it's always overgeneralizing to say anything like "group X thinks Y", because there are always going to be members of group X who don't think Y. But it's purely a fact that many of the public faces of the so-called 1% (Mayor Bloomberg and Ms. Taylor… I'm sure you can think of others) have been pretty dismissive of the whole idea of OWS. It's pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that a majority of members of that group think that we don't need to change anything about our economic system, that we can keep it the way it is, that everything's fine right now. Because, of course, it is… for them.
And yes, there are obviously contrary views among the "1%" (Warren Buffett, and again I'm sure you can think of others). But surely you agree that this represents a minority view.
tl;dr: Recognize that there's a kernel of truth in these sweeping statements.
@SeanP Pardon, but where did I say that the majority of the 1% supports OWS? Where did I say or suggest that supporting the 99% isn't a minority position among the 1%?
I took umbrage with the sweeping statements you seem so keen to defend. And I stand by that, as I think it's shortsighted of those in the 99% to reject the support of those of us in the 1% who truly believe in what they're doing.
But you know, keep down talking to me. Go right the fuck ahead, and while you're at it, why don't you call me a "crazy lady" again, since you seem to so enjoy that.
Wait, what's the dividing line between the 1% and 99%? A, uh, a friend needs to know.
@Clarence Rosario I think it's whether you can afford to live in Manhattan.
@jolie Holy smokes, jolie? You're 1%? Are you sure, because that's a crapton of money. Congratulations on all your success, and while scholastic obligations keep me from Wall Street I don't even begin to have a problem with your or anybody else being there who is there for the right reasons.
I mean, no matter how equal you make an economic system, there's always going to be a top 1%.
Hey, when's the protest march against sweeping statements?
@jolie I'm sorry, but you don't get to complain about anything from the standpoint of being in the 1%. Don't like something? Tough shit. Suck it up.
@jolie Respectfully, are you really in the 1%? I don't think the focus of OWS is rich vs. poor Americans, but instead that tiny sliver at the top that has most of the money and all the political power in this country. We’re talking brothers Koch money here, not Chris Rock money.From what I've seen, the movement is welcoming of rich people who are on board.
@Clarence Rosario Nationally, households in the top 1% had a minimum income of $513,633 in 2010. In NYC the top 1% of households made $3.7 million last year. Where things start to get really crazy is the disparity in net worth. In 2009 the top 1% had, on average, almost $14 million in net worth. The bottom 80% had an average net worth of $62,900.
I took all of these numbers from the Wonkblog post this morning. http://wapo.st/nDA6bB
I think it's a testament to the power of framing that, all of a sudden, we are using these terms "1%" and "99%" as if we have to, as if we couldn't just reject those frames and suggest others. That said, I think they are pretty good shorthand for understanding important current differences in society.
@Clarence Apparently, it has something to do with the fact that the gang and the government are no different? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxG8Z7UYNs&noredirect=1
(But actually, thanks, Maxine for the real info.)
@Maxine Ah, thanks! Very helpful.
And regardless of where Jolie (or I, or anyone else) falls within the actual 99/1% splits economically, I think this is less of an economic distinction than an ideological one.
I guarantee that folks like me would probably be lumped in with 1% to some of the OWS folks if we're comparing W-2s. I work for a big Three Letter Corporation. But I'm sympathetic to the OWS cause, for sure.
Conversely, my parents aren't in the 1% either. But I guarantee they'd defend the "It's my money, I earned it, keep your IRS out of my pocket" sentiment that OWS is rallying against.
That's what I got from Jolie's point.
@Clarence Rosario Nicely said, friend.
@Clarence Rosario So if it's "less of an economic distinction than an ideological one", can the 1% really side with the 99%? What happened to the ideological distinction?
@jolie : Since the plural of anecdote is data, I'll point out that about half of the 1%ers with whom I have casual contact have expressed approval for Occupy Wall Street and its/their goals, insofar as those goals roughly boil down to "Wall Street has gone from a necessary evil to an actively malignant social force, and we should really get back to making stuff for people rather than stealing money from eachothers' pockets." There's a healthy smattering of "maybe we'll get some real New-Deal-style social goods out of this" and "where can I send a donation?" which is nice, too.
Granted, the other half of the 1%ers I know just haven't mentioned it at all, so uh, there's that.
"A couple of witnesses" happens to include the Fox 5 news team and a Daily News photographer, whose photo is on the front page of the tabloid. It just goes to show how impoverished the local reporting has become at the "New York" Times.
shouldn't those white shirts be brown?
Funny thing: I somehow know everything that's happening even though I never watch TV news, read NYT reports, or follow any of the big news media (well, it appears that I know what's happening) So, what does this mean? Someone should look into that.
I'm surprised that you thought mainstream media gripers didn't have a legit point until now. But maybe that's because I have never thought of you or the media companies you have worked for as "mainstream." But maybe you think of yourself that way? And maybe you are? Regardless, I appreciate your take on OWS.
@lawyergay I think, speaking personally, it's because the genesis of the "mainstream media is biased and lazy" meme comes from the extreme right, where they want (and need) to discredit any type of factual reporting in order to get people to vote against their own best interests.
@riotnrrd Oh, okay. I get it. I'm so far left that I long ago dismissed as idiotic and stopped thinking about the right's disingenuous "liberal media!" slam. This always struck me as a transparent effort by Republican partisans to work the refs.
But what Choire seems to be saying is that the NYT's report was stupid and biased…for the first time ever! Even though I know that this is not the first time Choire has leveled this charge against the Times or other supposedly "liberal" mainstream media outlets.
I guess what Choire is saying just kind of baffles me. Whatevs.
I was there in Foley Square, and for the most part everybody was actually pretty chill, even kind of festive. The hippie freak flag contingent in weird costumes was present, but they were by far outnumbered by regular folk — a good cross section of white-collar and service union members, students, and people who looked like your generic 25-60 y/o readers of the Huffington Post. Doctors and nurses, teachers, a Musicians' Union local, some environmental and food policy groups, Afghan War vets, and Tim Robbins.
Around 6pm, people got kind of bothered and were stuck standing while the crowd funneled to a bottleneck at the south end of the square as the march headed past City Hall toward Broadway, but nobody freaked.
It seems there's something of a provacateur contingent that might, intentionally or not, sort of be courting these altercations with the NYPD by crossing barriers and doing angry rebel shit. It's not for me, but it's honestly not a bad media strategy.
@ontologicalpuppy
I think it's interesting that people admit that the cop eruptions are provoked for the sake of publicity, and at the same time pretend to the moral high ground.
So revolting to have to choose between the meanness and cluelessness of the Tea Party tools and the self-righteous disingenousness of Occupy Wall Street ('The ends justify the means, so why specify the ends?'), with its weird claim that it speaks for 99% of the population.
@Tulletilsynet Well, I don't claim to speak for anybody but myself, and even then as something between an observer and a participant. But it's hard to say that 23 arrests out of a crowd of 10,000 – 15,000 really compromises anybody's moral positioning.
If anything, it seems to me that some of the OWSers suffer from an over-ingenuousness; a slogan like "End Corporate Personhood Now" is a nice sentiment (if you lean that way), but doing so would require either a radically different SCOTUS or a constitutional amendment. But to focus only on the naïve or simplistic features of (some parts of) the group rhetoric is to miss the point that a broadening popular movement is emerging, reanimated by ideas long absent from the political conversation — progressive taxation, income inequality, workers' rights, corporate accountability, social democracy &c. It's probably too soon to say whether anything useful will come of it, but it's interesting and even a little inspiring.
What I think is disingenuous, however, —and this isn't ad hom. in your case, because I don't know your politics— is that so much of the left are quick to snark on or pigeonhole the OWS for their purported earnestness/incoherence/'self-righteousness.' It's a kind of cynical irony that bitches about what the right has done to the country, and then bitches louder about those on the left who are trying to do something about it.
Edited to add: That is to say, if you want a better protest movement, it's on you to show up and bring the goods.
A couple of years back, when the Tamil Tigers were getting their asses kicked, a few thousand of their countrymen took over a major street in Toronto, closed it down. The cops … stood around and let them! They hung out for a week and then left on their own. Everybody was pretty chill about it, except for the surprising number of people who complained loudly that free speech should never get in the way of traffic flow.