Killing them with kindness
The Occupy Wall Street movement might have died on the vine were it not for the short-sightedness (and I'm being kind) of certain members of the New York Police Department.
Killing them with kindness
The Occupy Wall Street movement might have died on the vine were it not for the short-sightedness (and I'm being kind) of certain members of the New York Police Department. The protests in Manhattan went from little more than zero news coverage -- and interest from the wider public -- to moderate attention levels after a NYPD higher-up pepper-sprayed peaceful demonstrators, and it spiked to intense national awareness after police rounded up and arrested 700 people on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1.
The protesters, meanwhile, have been remarkably peaceful. There've been no major episodes of vandalism or physical violence that has been tied to the demonstrators in any city in more than three weeks. Which is great. Seeing how things are playing out, the authorities now suddenly seem to be bending over backwards now to reciprocate. Simply put, they may want to kill Occupy Wall Street -- and the various affinity groups like Occupy Philadelphia -- with kindness.
Here in Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey have been out strolling and kibitzing with the local protestors, allowing them to erect tents and City Hall and march across town. There hasn's been a single arrest.
And now this:
Occupy Wall Street protesters can camp out in their downtown park indefinitely - or until rain and snow drives them out, Mayor Bloomberg said Monday.
"The bottom line is people want to express themselves. And as long as they obey the laws, we will allow them to," Bloomberg said.
"I think part of it probably has to do with the weather."
It was a minor change from last week, when Bloomberg suggested that it was only a matter of time before the city put an end to the encampment in Zuccotti Park near the Stock Exchange.
So will the death of the Occupy Everything movement come not at the blunt end of a nightstick, but from...boredom? Like everything else in this uncharted territory, only time will tell. Some protesters will surely run out of time or money or interest or patience, but others won't. I do think the media -- and this is an area with which I speak with some experience -- has a low threshold for ennui. Here in Philadelphia, it might spark some interest if protesters branched out more from the friendly confines of City Hall and into more hostile, 1-Percent controlled territory, the people that they're actually protesting against.
Or in other words....where is Abbie Hoffman when you need him?
===[[[ Will, are you Jewish? [[[===
Rufus, WTF is your problem?— Talking point sleuth- [[[--- Will, are you Jewish? ---]]]
Rufus - what is your problem?— Talking point sleuth - Will, you don't need Abbie Hoffman! Bill Ayers may be available, or he can at least give you a referral. You can be the pied piper leading the Occupy people to the land of the 1%. Oh, the glory of it all!— Falls Ed
- I don't know if it was a slip up or what but last night on Hannity Dick Morris stated that of course Obama wasn't a Socialist, and there was no protest from Hannity. They've gone ahead and refuted their own lies. So we now have convincing evidence that meme was a total farce. So now we now they lie for their own agenda. Everything is a carefully constructed scam. Its to now take advantage of the idea that Obama is the root of all of the (grudgingly admitted) shenanigans in the financial industry. The wind blowing has more integrity. A rat looking for a morsel of food has more integrity. blackhawk incites violence because violence was incited on blackhawk -- itn't that right blackhawk?— Murrayman
- Steve Eisman, mentioned in an article called, 'The End', written by Michael Lewis in about 2008, came to the revelation in about early '07 that investment banks were creating mortgage holders out of thin air. There weren't enough bad loans being created through any means necessary, including predatory lending (Fannie estimated roughly 50% of subprime actually qualified for regular mortgage), to satisfy the mongers on Wall Street. So they just up and created them whole cloth, out of nothing. Would any of our resident Conservatives like to guess how they did it? Or are you too busy focusing on that one photo of some guy defecating? Go ahead atkins, answer it. Tell me, how did they pull of this scam, and was it legal?— Murrayman
- It's so strange that a seemingly comfortable, middle-aged man has youth-gone-wrong, teenage fantasies about police nightsticks. Even odder that he agitates for social unrest to come to his own neighborhood.— m13sully
- Lets use an example to show how to effectively divide and conquer. Ah yes, The "Friends of Angelo" program. How sweet and lucrative. Members of US government, and employees of Fannie, Freddie, were given sweetheart deals in return for -- lax regulation. Sweet! But instead of focusing on the corruption, lets make it a partisan issue! That'll fix it. Countrywide predatory loan tactics were unprecedented, and as a result, nothing happened.— Murrayman
- So youre saying the government is run by crooks but you support giving them more power. If that isnt partisan nothing is. The other side of that partisan coin would be to give more power to Wall street and kick government out of the regulation business. — tr88
- Will is subtly telling the protesters to get violent if they want the favorable media coverage to continue. If it happens, I will say Will's home address is available on the internet if any of the offensive Tea Partiers want to confront him.— tr88
- Will's hero, Abbie Hoffman, was sentenced to life in prison for dealing coke in 1973 and committed suicide in 1989 kids. A great American and a real role model - if youre a nihilist.— tr88
- No actually, tr88, I support giving more power to the law, and more power to the means by which it is enforced, including when it is broken. The law, tr88. Meaning, if you sell a bill of goods to someone under duress, and deceive them, it breaks some sort of natural law, which is what statutes are based on. Maybe will is saying to more ably stand your ground, show them you know your rights, and they will hate you for it and in many instances act provoked and act violently. Then you win.— Murrayman
- If you dont think mortgages for everyone was bi-partisan and backstopped by government, I would conclude your sadly delusional. Private business would not have taken that risk without that tacit assurance from government. — tr88
- It wasn't 'mortgages for everyone' it was -- lets lower the cost of capital through a mechanism of backstopping loans through repurchase agreements. Private business WAS taking that risk, through their own alchemy, before legislation was passed. Its so funny and sad - this idea that government was the cause of this monster. Do you have any understanding of how a CDO works? How is it a 500k mortgage is approved to someone making 20k a year gets rated AAA? Is that becuase Fannie, through a new jumbo loan purchasing program, takes it off the books of the originator? Or is that terrible securutized loan sold to -- er-- take your pick -- Iceland? Go 'head and take a guess. There was very little backstop -- it was all done under the guise of free markets -- free to scam.— Murrayman
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