#occupy protests

[personal-blog243]

Blackout The System | Home Page

BLACKOUT THE SYSTEM

Here is a link about a mass boycott/general spending freeze happening this week!

Spread the word!

[arctic-hands]

I remember my first real protest was during the Occupy movement. I was seventeen and obvs couldn't go to New York even if I had the health for it, luckily I had a liberal, borderline leftist and poor father who was also fed up with all the economic bullshit who could drive me to the solidarity protest in Indianapolis.

I was so excited. I made a protest sign that was painted over an old Hillary '08 sign we still had, with some years-old wall paint from a can we had after my mom repainted the bathroom, and some of her Apple Barrel acrylics. It talked about how I was worried about my future as a poor and sick (and gay? I don't remember if I put that on the sign) young person. This was still when I would be still denied health insurance since I've been diagnosed sick since age 8, and we didn't know what would happen to my Medicaid when I became an adult the next year.

Knowing what was going down in Zuccotti Park, my father took me to Lowes to buy some (much too small) zip ties as a symbolic gesture should we be arrested. "I brought my own!" I would defiantly say when the police arrested me. My father made a sign too, but I don't remember what it said. Anyway, the first day of Occupy Indy, we got up early (a chore for me in those pre-coffee days) and loaded up our signs into the truck and started the hour and a half drive to Indianapolis. My father said we couldn't participate in the planned overnight campout in front of the governor's mansion because of my health problems, but that we'd go back to Indy every day. My mom didn't come. She was worried that, since she was a immigrant (from Europe), she would be in more legal trouble than us even if she did have a green card.

Anyway, Occupy Indy was a complete cluster fuck. It was–and I say this as a white person and that I am in no way No True Scotsman'ing to set myself apart from this–completely white led and led by middle class whites, mostly women, who had no real stakes in the game and were essentially LARPing social justice. We were divided into groups, all of them led by white women of varying stages of adulthood. Mine was led by a middle aged white woman. This was immediately after the Obama government drone-striked anwar al-awalki, an American terrorist part of al-qaeda. Yes he was a terrorist, but he was also an American citizen and at the time even American terrorists were supposed to have due process, unlike their foreign counterparts. The drone killing of al-awalki and his sixteen year old son were loudly decried in the U.S. and abroad as extrajudicial killings.

Anyway, an older, taller Black man, with a sparse grey beard, in our group started talking about this, how if the Obama administration and the U.S. government at large could kill an American citizen, no matter how terrible, without the American having any legal protection or chance to prove their innocence, what's to stop the American government from killing or arresting any citizen, home or abroad, with no due process? Indeed, not too long after this Obama signed the National Defence Authorization Act 2012, which allowed for the indefinite detention without due process for any American suspected of terrorism, with no legal protection and almost certainly a one-way ticket to Gitmo. To my knowledge, that policy is still in effect.

Anyway, our middle aged, middle class white woman "leader" literally told this Black man to shut up, that it wasn't part of the conversation or protest at large. I could tell he was angry, but what could a Black man, even an older Black man, do to go against a white woman who could very easily claim he was threatening her? I didn't understand that fully, it probably took me until the murder of Mike Brown to fully comprehend that notion, that a Black person could be taken down with no recourse just because a white person felt threatened by their presence. But still, I was angry. I had been listening and nodding along to the man because I, having been a news hound since I was 8, knew about the drone strike and the abhorrent politics and illegality of it. I wanted the man to talk about it, because what he said was a warning that indeed came true.

I didn't speak up. I like to think I would have, had my now-self been there instead of my timid seventeen year old self. But maybe I would still be just as likely to kowtow, however reluctantly, to the middle-class white person who was our self-proclaimed leader. The Black man, whose name I never knew, on top of being angry also looked as disappointed as I felt. He walked away from the group and I didn't see him again. I wish I had followed him, either to leave the protest in disgust too or to keep talking to him, but I did neither.

Anyway it just for worse from there. I don't even remember what the woman said after that, it was completely meaningless and hollow. Eventually after our group discussions (where the woman dominated the entire "discussion" and nobody else spoke out), we all formed a crowd again to hear a younger middle class white woman speak at the podium, where she thanked Indianapolis P.D. for keeping us safe and for keeping order. This was at the same time the Zuccotti Park protesters were being brutalized on the daily. I don't remember if Occupy U.C. Davis had already happened, where the officer john "Sargent Pepper" pike had brutally pepper sprayed in the faces a group of protesters who had been peacefully sitting down. I don't remember what this other white woman, a college student, said, it was just as meaningless as our group leader's talk.

I do remember at some point the crowd started to get a little riled up and started chanting at the police officers "protecting us", and the crowd was pushing me along and I was a bit scared, either of potential police brutality or a crowd crush. But then some older white man dressed straight out of the hippie movement started singing "Give Peace A Chance" and that was enough for the crowd to disperse.

Anyway my father and I were so disgusted by the "protest" that we left well before the march to the governor's mansion and stopped for a bite to eat at some restaurant I don't remember before making the drive home, and we didn't go back.

This regaling of the story isn't about Poor Timid White Person guilt, or as said above a No True Scotsman "I'm the real white ally" thing. I wanted to talk about it because I've seen a lot of discussions about white/upper class/upperclass white people co-opting protests in the name of a being allies (some of which I didn't reblog because they were image-heavy and difficult to caption), and it reminded me of this. Hell, even in Zuccotti Park itself, the encampment was divided through the middle within a week or two between the poor and disenfranchised who spent their last few dollars to get to New York City to support the movement they believed could make a change, and the middle and upperclass protesters who had less to lose when N.Y.P.D sent in N.Y.F.D to destroy the encampment and everyone's tents and possessions.

Anyway, I kept following Occupy Indy's facebook page for a while afterwards. Within a year it gear shifted to Tea Party claptrap before I unfollowed. Make of that as you will.

[thebartelists]

Protests v. Riots

1st Amendment v. Criminal Acts – you be the judge:

Martin Luther, a founder of the Protestant movement/religion

Dr. Martin Luther King, 1968

Chicago, 1968

Democratic National Convention, 1968

Rodney King Riots, 1992

Rodney King Riots, 1992

Tea Party Protests, 2009

Occupy Riots, 2012

Occupy Riots, 2012

Travon Martin Riots, 2013

Ferguson Riots, 2014

Protesting is one thing, rioting and…

View On WordPress

[annechristnovich-blog]

Uh oh. The ambiguity of the Constituion strikes again...

Those of you who know me are aware that I never pass up an opportunity to talk about the ambiguity of the Constitution or the First Amendment (especially after some beer).

While I haven't had any beer (yet) today, it is close to the Fourth of July and that means I get a free pass to talk about constitutional things all I want and it's completely appropriate. So here goes:

The defendant is Malcolm Harris, the managing editor of the New Inquiry website. He's charged with deliberately violating police orders during an October Occupy demonstration when he and several hundred other protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. The prosecution argues "Harris' messages could show whether he was aware of police orders he's charged with disregarding," according to an AP article written by Jennifer Peltz.

The subpoena was directed at Twitter Inc. but it argued on Harris' behalf that users have ownership over their content, not the company.

Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. denied that argument, saying this: "If you post a tweet, just like if you scream it out the window, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy."

I'll save you all from my oh-so-qualified legal musings on why I think this ruling is misguided but suffice it to say I think Judge Sciarrino is dumb*.

Instead, I'll skip to the Reductio ad absurdum argument of what I think will happen if we don't protect our rights to privacy online.

NOTE: Before I continue, I want to be clear I'm talking about privacy in terms of who OWNS the content. While it's important to keep Facebook in check when they change privacy settings and things like that, that's a different story for a different post.

Think of what the Internet could be reduced to if we're afraid everything we say could be used against us in court. The web's main purpose of disseminating information suddenly loses its value if no one will publish content police or government agencies can use to put someone in jail.

If that doesn't scare you, there's this thought: If you think there's too much "Can I Haz Cheezeburger"-type content out there now, wait til no one wants to post anything mildly inflammatory.

If this judge says Twitter owns all the content on its site, and that content is the same as "shouting out a window," does it mean the U.S. mail service own the letters I send? Does the Post-Its company own my grocery lists? If I did actually shout something out a window, would the owner of the building be responsible for my message? Does Tumblr have ownership over all these stupid rhetorical questions?

We can't use free speech to, um, speak freely on the Internet if we don't start demanding protection over our right to post our thoughts, photos, essays and embarrassing scores on Words with Friends.

I think our free speech rights concerning what we post on social media are in trouble. This topic is becoming increasingly complex and, at the same time, increasingly important for us to address. If you're reading this post, you're affected by these decisions and you should care.

*By the way, I can call the judge "dumb" and it's a legal exercise of my free speech without threat for libel. Thanks, Journalism Law class!

[peekingu-blog]

a different kind of tea party

[woetothedownpressors]

'Occupy' movement fading out in a whimper

Perhaps it is the specific media coverage of the issue, but it does appear that the 'Occupy' movement is indeed fading away. All mass movements must fade away eventually, but sometimes they leave a noticeable impact on the world. I am not sure the 'Occupy' movement is leaving behind a specific impact. Certainly we heard their cries and their shouts. Many people, myself included agreed with the very essence of the message, which was that 'have nots' of the world are tired and frustrated with the treatment being metted out to them by those with the power and money. Their message of equality and social justice I am certain would resonate with the vast majority of people. 

However, their approach appears to be ineffective. It is their approach to the process that I feel will prevent the movement from having a lasting impact. An editorial in the USAToday, made just such an argument.

Tea Partiers, the conservative counterparts to the Occupiers, effectively used protests to establish themselves. This, plus a carefully crafted news media campaign, an explicit set of objectives and voter turnout drives, helped bring about conservative gains in the 2010 elections.

That is a useful model for the Occupiers. If their goal is to promote public policies that will lessen income inequality and punish bank misbehavior, the way to do it is to bring pressure where it matters most — at the ballot box.

That approach has been successfully deployed by liberal activists in Midwestern states angered by the work of Republican governors and legislatures. In Ohio, for instance, voters overturned a controversial law restricting collective bargaining for labor unions.

The demographics of the Occupy movement skew young. And young people have an abysmal track record of voting. Even in 2008, when the youth vote surged, it lagged the overall turnout. Then, in 2010, it fell off again, with just 21% of eligible voters ages 18 to 24 showing up, compared with more than 60% for voters 65 and older. That helps explain why Congress caters to seniors, as well as the wealthy interests that underwrite campaigns.

If the Occupiers want to do something useful, they should recruit candidates, get supporters to the polls and forget about the urban camping.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2012-02-09/Occupy-movement-wealth-income/53032740/1

The authors point is well received by me and I think the Occupy movement may want to take up this line activism. However, it is indeed possible that I am biased towards a strategy of activism and protestation that has been known to work in the past. It is indeed very possible that the Occupy movement has introduced the world to a very different way of obtaining change in the attitudes of people. Only the hindsight afforded by posterity, will inform as to whether the 'Occupy' movement was able to achieve anything significant. We wait and see.