Occupy Wall Street Movement: An American Spring

[JeffreyS]

My question was serious as well.  I also believe that government should be of, for and by the people.  Those that make $250,000 or more per year are people as well. 

I have not criticized the Occupy Wall Street movement.  They have every right to express their opinions, whatever they may be and however wide ranging they might be.  I see many of the same problems they see, although I may differ in what I see as the solutions.  Challenging authority often results in positive change.

I was curious as to how you believe that the founding fathers would have viewed what the OWS folks see as the problems.  I would disagree that they would agree with the idea of a "well regulated democracy".  I think they would have been much more creative than we have been in ensuring that multi-national corporations do not take away the liberty of the people economically or any other way.

I think they would view corporations as having too much influence and our governments promotion of corporate profits as not having the bang for the buck for our citizens.

I think they would be shocked at what our government has allowed corporations to morph into, and I agree that they would be very disappointed in the lack of integrity displayed by our government officials (kind of the same thing, in the end).  I also believe that they would be shaking their heads over what we have allowed the banking system to become. 

But the answer does not lie in an even larger and more powerful Federal government, in fact just the opposite.  A return to decentralized power as envisioned by the founding fathers, with common sense state laws would go far in reducing the power of multinationals and their political money.

I am not sure  it constitutes a large expansion of government to have real campaign finance reform and strong banking/ wall street regulations.  I find myself less trusting of local government.

[buckethead]

I Have serious doubts as to whether expanding the scope and authority of our current government could offer citizens anything more than expanding the status qou.

More patriotactism, more fractionalbanksterism and moving ever closer to slavery for the masses.

We need reform and even revolution and we will likely need it again in the future. Power does corrupt.

I FEAR my government.



Wait a minute... No I don't. I am the 99 percent.  I said it. Sue me for copyright infringement.

They are my brothers, siters, mother and father, sons and daughters and my allies. I watched from the sidelines as the tea party was usurped by the statists quo because they appeared to be a mixed bag with no real direction. Now they are fighting to further entrench republicans, whether they realize it or not.

OWS has similar problems. From anarchists to marxists are joining in. A bitter pill to swallow. Nevertheless, the majority are reasonable  and responsible people (just like Not Now) who agree with me on the perils of patriotactism and fractional banksterism.

[FayeforCure]

I Have serious doubts as to whether expanding the scope and authority of our current government could offer citizens anything more than expanding the status qou.

More patriotactism, more fractionalbanksterism and moving ever closer to slavery for the masses.

We need reform and even revolution and we will likely need it again in the future. Power does corrupt.

So true...........just like we needed a separation of Church and State at a time when Churches wielded immense power, so too do we need a separation of Corportists and State.

There has been too much Conflict of interest, and we need to restore government of the people, by the people and for the people.

[FayeforCure]

The scope of OWS is widening, whereas Tea Party appeal shrank among Americans:

Latinos Provide Key Support To Occupy Wall Street





First Posted: 10/20/11 07:31 AM ET Updated: 10/20/11 09:33 AM ET



NEW YORK -- As Occupy Wall Street has grown rapidly in the past month, with the number of supporters swelling from hundreds to thousands and like-minded protests cropping up in most major U.S. cities, Latinos have become an ever more important part of the burgeoning movement.

"As days go by and with the growth of the movement to other cities, the presence of minorities at Occupy Wall Street has gone up," Fernando Lopez, editor-in-chief of Poder360 magazine, said in Spanish. "If the movement goes on, this presence will be even larger."

And some Latinos aren't just participating, they're trying to convinces others to join the protest as well.

"We saw that the number of Spanish-speakers has been increasing," said Guillem Alvarez, a young student originally from Spain, told HuffPost LatinoVoices in Spanish. "Some of us decided to create a group to carry out certain tasks like translating the newspaper and the website into Spanish, or going to neighborhoods with a Latino majority to explain to them what is happening,"

Some sympathetic observers, including Luis Barrios, an Episcopalian minister and professor of criminal justice at John Jay College, say there weren't many Latinos participating at the beginning of Occupy Wall Street.

"This is a movement that -- we have to recognize it -- started among white, middle-class youth, but it has since opened up, because the crisis is affecting us all," Barrios said in Spanish.

But others contest that view. Roberto Lovato, co-founder of Presente.org, an online organization that advocates for Latinos, said that contrary to what others may contend, "Latinos have been present since the beginning of Occupy Wall Street." The Spanish language version of the newspaper Occupy Wall Street Journal and signs in Spanish around Zuccotti park -- such as one that said "Ya basta Wall Street," or 'enough with Wall Street' -- Lovato added, show the strong participation of the Hispanic community.

Julio Cesar Malone, a veteran journalist and columnist for Spanish-language media in New York, said he thinks some Latinos who identify with the movement may not have the time or energy to actively take part.

"What time does a Latino have to go protest on Wall Street?" he asked in Spanish. "Our people are working two jobs to survive. Many work 16 hours, and have to commute for four more -- that’s 20 hours; they’re drained."

But Malone said he remained hopeful the Latino presence at Occupy Wall Street will continue to grow, saying that "in time, the movement will continue to grow and the participation of Hispanics and blacks will come. I have no doubt about that."

And many commentators said that whether or not Latinos were a vocal presence in the movement's beginning, many of the ideas Occupy Wall Street protesters have focused on resonate with Latinos. Some said that they expected both the movement and Latino participation to grow.

"The unjust distribution of wealth leaves us, Hispanics and blacks, lower than at the bottom. Today, the whites are on the bottom and we are a few floors below that. We are in the basement," Malone said.

"As opposed to typical demonstrations where people go out to the streets, confront the police, throw stones and then go back home, this one is different. The participants have decided to stay put and question the essence of the system," Malone said.

"What is interesting," Malone added, "is that it’s a horizontal movement like the one that brought down Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. There is no visible leader; the people of Occupy Wall Street are united around an idea: We are going to distribute the resources better, because it can’t go on like this."

Other Latino commentators emphasized that Occupy Wall Street was important precisely because of the movement's inclusive nature.

"What we need to do is to find common ground," Barrios said. "Whether white, black, Latino, documented or undocumented, the common denominator here is that the dominant upper class is exploiting us. That is why we have to change these conditions."

Alvarez, the student from Spain, said, "This isn’t about Americans, nor about people who subscribe to a concrete political ideology. This is about individuals that have seen themselves affected by the system. The important thing is to be here, to come and fight."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/20/latinos-occupy-wall-street_n_1011283.html

[NotNow]

I think they would view corporations as having too much influence and our governments promotion of corporate profits as not having the bang for the buck for our citizens.

I think they would be shocked at what our government has allowed corporations to morph into, and I agree that they would be very disappointed in the lack of integrity displayed by our government officials (kind of the same thing, in the end).  I also believe that they would be shaking their heads over what we have allowed the banking system to become. 

But the answer does not lie in an even larger and more powerful Federal government, in fact just the opposite.  A return to decentralized power as envisioned by the founding fathers, with common sense state laws would go far in reducing the power of multinationals and their political money.

The answer to our national defense, never was a decentralized power..........likewise it would be foolish to decentralize reigning in out of control corporations ( think Rick Scott's cozy ties to his own company).

Listen........the founding fathers were right about identifying some of the dangers that the US faced at the time........and that the US would be facing in the furure, but they were in no position to be prescient enough to lay out solutions to what is happening now.

The only corporation with the kind of brute power that today's corporations have was the East India Company:

The prosperity that the officers of the company enjoyed allowed them to return to Britain and establish sprawling estates and businesses, and to obtain political power. The Company developed a lobby in the English parliament. Under pressure from ambitious tradesmen and former associates of the Company (pejoratively termed Interlopers by the Company), who wanted to establish private trading firms in India, a deregulating act was passed in 1694. This allowed any English firm to trade with India, unless specifically prohibited by act of parliament, thereby annulling the charter that had been in force for almost 100 years.
By an act that was passed in 1698, a new "parallel" East India Company (officially titled the English Company Trading to the East Indies) was floated under a state-backed indemnity of £2 million. The powerful stockholders of the old company quickly subscribed a sum of £315,000 in the new concern, and dominated the new body. The two companies wrestled with each other for some time, both in England and in India, for a dominant share of the trade. It quickly became evident that, in practice, the original Company faced scarcely any measurable competition. The companies merged in 1708, by a tripartite indenture involving both companies and the state. Under this arrangement, the merged company lent to the Treasury a sum of £3,200,000, in return for exclusive privileges for the next three years, after which the situation was to be reviewed. The amalgamated company became the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies.[17]

In the following decades there was a constant see-saw battle between the Company lobby and the Parliament.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

Sounds pretty familiar now doesn't it?
Where are the people in this equation?

The founding fathers were very explicit about having government of the people, by the people and for the people.

This decentralize everything......local control, while sounding like power is closer to the people, really waters down the power of government over "large bodies" like corporations. Already countries are struggling to maintain power over multi-national corporations as they can easily shift their finances and questionable operations overseas.

To dilute such a huge problem, by advocating "local control" is delusional.

But on a positive note........I think there is major common ground on identifying the major problem that faces the US............the abject power of corporations at the expense of the people, and a government that is bought and paid for by these corporations and thus unable to do anything about it.

We just differ on possible solutions. And thruthfully, without publicly financed campaigns, we will always have corporate owned government that CANNOT by definition do anything to curb brute corporate power.

I do agree that the undo influence of money upon our elected leaders is a real problem.  Of course, you can't legislate honesty and integrity.  The band-aids appear to be "restricting donations" and such when the real problem seems to be that our elected officials lack the integrity and honesty required to resist whatever bribe (legal or not) they are offered to ignore their duty to the public.  We need to elect honest and moral people.  This is an argument for more local control.  We can monitor our local officials without the filter of media and spin doctors.  We see how they live and how they act. 

Corporations were closely controlled by the states for the first one hundred years of our country.  Once again, the US Supreme Court has usurped the power of the states to control those organizations that do business in their jurisdictions so that now states have no recourse against those that operate against the public interest.  Returning the power to the states to revoke the right to do business in their jurisdiction to the states.  Return control of banking to the states where it belongs, so that banks must operate within their charter on a state by state basis.  And when they operate against the interests of the public, those charters would and should be revoked by individual states.  These actions would remove the well of bribery that Washington D.C. has become.  There is a reason that the founding fathers limited the power of the federal government.  The fed should not have the power to just print fiat money, which is a hidden tax on ALL of us.

We do agree on some of the problems.  I hope to convince you that just doing the same thing that we have done for seventy five years (growing the federal government) is NOT the answer.

[simms3]

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/occupy-atlanta-campers-remain-1209058.html

Long story short:

Occupy Atlanta hosts 2-day hip hop show in park, costs city $100K in extra policing on Saturday alone, nearly escalates "beyond peaceful".

A generator was brought in.  Police tried to remove it, but people stood on top to block that from happening.  If it had caugth fire, the City would be liable for damage and injury.

Central Atlanta Progress, the CID group for downtown, is unhappy with the protesters as they have hurt small businesses in the area (that's off record - what I have heard from the owner of a local pizza place...IRONIC right?), created excessive noise, damage to the lawn, and set an uncomfortable precedent of undermining the city's authority.

Long story short, as with so many things in this city, the movement has turned HOOD, and is now uncomfortable.  The mayor (who is black) is trying to shut it down, but he is in an awkward position because if he does Atlanta will be seen as a closed city and will get a bad rep.  The Brown kids have largely moved on and the thug elements have taken over, so our Occupy might be a little different from others at this point, but the world won't see that or sympathize with shutting it down.

The traffic police at my building in Buckhead have been at the park for the past week, so drivers are temporarily happy to make illegal left hand turns into my garage, but that is just how resource using this movement is.

Here is how idiotic the group is:

1) They protested BofA instead of the Fed.
2) They renamed the park after a convicted and executed cop killer.
3) They tried to storm Emory hospital Midtown because they thought it was in a conspiracy with the city to close an illegal homeless shelter that has repeatedly caused problems and broken laws for a decade.
4) They blocked John Lewis from speaking.
5) They are hurting small businesses.
6) They are costing the taxpayers a hefty sum.
7) They have hosted a 2-day hip-hop concert!

I HATE this group of people.  Luckily I have no friends who are participating or agreeing with this movement (even my most liberal friends are too intelligent to associate with such idiocy).  As someone said recently, the group is a cross section of Model UN, Lord of the Flies, and a Phish concert (except in Atlanta it's more like a Gucci Mane concert now).  These are the same people who host squatter's rights sit ins and oppose gentrification, which is itself the utmost form of stupidity.  (don't we all agree on here that gentrification helps the poor, the urban pioneer, and the city?)

[FayeforCure]

I just have to shake my head at the distractionary and incessant mocking of the 99 percent while missing the entire BIG picture.

From an economic world view......it has been the 1% that destabilized our economies, and this is how they did it:

This is as good a one-sentence take on the evolution of the 1% over the past 30 years as you’re likely to see:

If you believe â€" whatever your political take on it â€" that:

in the early 1980s the U.S. shifted from a tradition-driven economy where the working rich managed their firms for plodding stability (and were paid with a fixed and comfortable salary) and the idle rich invested in Treasuries, to..........

a shareholder-value-driven economy where the working rich managed their firms for quarterly earnings target (and were paid with options and incentive comp) and the idle rich invested in hedge funds,

then that would explain the rise in volatility: the rich went from being basically creditors on the economy to being shareholders.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/27/how-to-blog-dealbreaker-edition/

simms3, the 99 percent isn't the destabilizing problem of our economy..........it is the 1% in power that has caused this mess: the burst of an artificial economy dominated by the financial sector, and the resultant high unemployment and lack of opportunity.

Too bad there still are people so easily distracted from the wrong-doings of the 1%, that they contribute/enable this sick system by finger-pointing to any and all scape-goats among the 99%. One of the most famous scape goats used in the history of politics was the so-called "welfare queens", which suppossedly caused so much mayham on the economy.........that, if we fixed that situation, all would be well.

See how distracting that was? THAT wasn't the real problem. The real problem is explained in the quote.

Too complicated?

[FayeforCure]

Mainstream media has made an effort to portray OWS protestors as lacking specific demands. This is laughable when a protestor is carrying a sign reading "Restore the Glass-Steagall Act." I have never seen a more specific demand at a protest. And "How about a Maximum wage?" might seem frivolous, but it's advocating legal caps on executive pay.

The protesters know quite well what they want. It just happens to be a long list, with the solutions not always immediately apparent.

Controlled anger is a sign that the people are serious. A street-smart cop can tell you that a pale angry face is potentially a lot more dangerous than a flushed angry face. The flushed face may be looking to lash out in some general violent way, but the pale face is edging towards intent -- specific intent.

Mainstream media is having fun photographing dancing and music at the protests, but if you look over the sea of faces, relatively few are there for fun. They have fun to break the monotony, but it's not a party. Even the protesters' smiles tend to be ironic, as media try to get them to show excitement.

The temper of the times seems similar outside the protests themselves. Two weeks ago I posted a Huffington Post article which mentioned "There is a huge sense across America that the rich are increasing their cruelty far beyond the point necessary to live lives of obscene privilege."

Before posting I asked several readers if I was going overboard with the word "cruelty." All said "No." The reaction was so uniform I became curious, and showed the article to over 20 people. Every one said "cruelty" was the right word -- and every face had the same expression: a cold hard anger. It was faintly eerie. These are minds that have come to their own conclusions; they can no longer be cozened with false statistics about how unemployment is falling, or not rising, or "rising more slowly." They do not buy stories about the dangers of a "double-dip recession," because they know that on Main Street the first dip is still going strong.

Loss of patience by the masses means the force of change has been unchained; there is no longer the weight of mass disapproval damping down the protests.

When the power elite see the masses slip away from them, they know they are down to their own resources: police and army. In America the masses are now slipping away from the one-percenters towards the 99-percenters, and about the only mindless supporters of anything mainstream are Tea Partiers.

To see anything like this loss of middle-class support in America you have to look back to old videos from the 1968 Democratic Party election convention in Chicago, and watch middle-class people hurling lamps and ashtrays from apartment buildings and hotels down on the attacking police as they fought it out with rioting hippies.

In a similar but more peaceful vein, residents around Zuccotti Park are now helping the protesters by letting them use bathrooms and warm up. Across America polls are reaching as high as 43% approval for OWS. Since most of the public only heard of the protests a month ago, approval can be expected to climb. Meanwhile the tide of Americans moving their money from big banks to credit unions is surging at unexpected speed.

Basically, the middle-class and the upper-middle class are withdrawing support from the Establishment, which leaves OWS free to roll onwards with no opposition (other than armed force).

Revolutions come in different shapes and sizes: some violent, some peaceful; some economic, others social; some front page news, others unseen until the new day has dawned. What they have in common is the very word "revolution" -- a turn of the wheel, with the cart moving forwards.

This puts them in sharp contrast to rebellions, which are inherently conservative. Rebellions shout "quit pushing us!" and demand a return to previous benefits and rights. Their demands are inevitably more specific than those of revolutionaries, since rebels want the exact things they used to have, whether it is a freedom from daily floggings or a return to lower gas prices.

In the Occupy Wall Street movement there are demands for a return to financial controls, and a return to reasonable executive salaries -- but these are the tip of the iceberg. The protesters are under no illusion that the factory whistle will blow and call them back to work, or that the rich will stop the financial floggings on their own initiative.

In fact they know there is no return to the American dream world of the 1950s and early 1960s. They don't believe that a few tepid anti-lobbying laws will clean up Capitol Hill's corrupt relationship with big banking, or that the Fortune 500 will start hiring Americans again.

So we will see specific demands for the new rather than a return to the old: clearer-than-ever separation of commercial and investment banking, genuine restrictions on lobbying, stronger consumer protections, and possibly legislated pay caps on executive salaries.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-carroll/occupy-wall-street-and-th_3_b_1083243.html

[NotNow]

Faye,

That is the kind of opinion that drives middle America away from your cause.  Like some other posters here, you seem to believe all of the fringe crap that is printed on Huffington and other far left sites.  OWS has some legitimate concerns, but the fringe far left element is turning off most of America on a daily basis. 

Constant demonization of the Tea Party and the Republican Party only show partisanship and a lack of factual information on your part.  It is an old, tired tactic that frankly doesn't work in the modern age of free information.

[NotNow]

Well, I suppose we can just wait a few months and see how things work out, can't we? 

[ronchamblin]

     Thanks Faye.  Interesting blog.  I am so pleased at the continued protests, and the attempts at defining the current OWS phenomenon.  It seems that as the weeks pass, more individuals offer support for the ideas of the OWS.  But attempting to discover the truths of the overall scenario is difficult, as so many individuals, including those in the media, are at times either obscuring truths, or offering lies.

I am inserting a post I did on MJ over a month ago, as it seems still valid:

"Thanks for gathering the informative material FayeforCure.  I am overjoyed with the emerging movement.  Whereas the beginning was awkward, the end will be clear.  There may be hesitations, sidetracked energies, and appearances of failure, but the truth of the absurdities and abuses on the eighty percent is so formidable that a clear picture will finally emerge for all to see; and the pressure of need, of justice, and propriety will force the changes our population deserves and demands.

Many ....  the protesters, the bloggers, the columnists, the posters, are working a large painting, each welding the brush according to ability and inclination; but as colors and details are refined, as truth emerges, as the walls of secrecy are destroyed, and as the painting approaches completion, only the totally blind will avoid seeing the beauty of it."          

   The fact that the protests are worldwide might seem unusual, but it only shows that many of us humans, no matter our home country are prone, without concern for those destroyed by our efforts, to aggressively seek wealth and power â€" and to do so relentlessly, without end, even if wealth is achieved that can only be described as obscene; and all this, as we see our fellow citizens suffering to gain enough food to eat, and shelter from the rain.

     Recent months have caused more individuals to realize that our government, our corporations, and our financial institutions, including wall street, have been infected.  The disease has been suspected for decades.  The individuals infected show signs of extreme wealth and power.  The disease seems to be restricted to a small minority, perhaps to one percent of the population.  Analysis so far points to the high probability that the disease is caused by the unusual combinations of two viruses; one is called greed, the other is called by the rather long name of “indifference to the destruction and suffering caused by the individual’s actions during the quest for wealth and power”. 

     These infected individuals in government, finance, and the corporate world, are in positions wherein they can function in secret, and together.  They are in positions to use their specialized knowledge to leverage all things to their benefit, or to their friend’s benefit, and this, in secret.  Therefore, if they are infected with the disease, if they are inclined to greed, and to the accumulaton of obscene levels of wealth, they are in the perfect position from which they can exercise that greed. 

     The hidden scenario is much like the attorney who says he performed ten hours on a project, but actually only worked two hours.  He charges you ten hours.  You pay.  Or it’s like the auto mechanic who troubleshoots your auto and finds the problem and fixes it is fifteen minutes.  You return in six hours to pick up your auto.  He says it took him three hours to do whatever, and you pay him for three hours.  It’s like the rare book dealer who, because of his position of having knowledge, can avoid sharing fairly any assets brought into his store by a customer desiring to sell books.

     It’s called trust.  It’s called abuse of that trust.  It’s called corruption.  It’s called greed.  It seems that certain of our citizens cannot possess the idea of being reasonable in their quest for financial stability and security.  Our culture has produced a population having too many individuals who seem to strive for extreme wealth, far above what is needed for a comfortable living.  And when these individuals are in a position allowing them the vehicles or methods to exert this almost insane desire for wealth, they frequently do so brutally, tenaciously, and without regard for those whom they destroy or push to poverty by the very actions they perform as they strive to take their net worth from twenty million to twenty billion. 

     And these recently discovered wall street type individuals who have behaved as above, contributing in a huge way to the destabilization of our economy, have not only avoided prosecution, some have been given huge bonuses, while the average worker has been pushed further into poverty.  This very fact points to a shameful collusion between government and wall street.  I dream of guillotines in action. 

     And some people wonder about the reason for the OWS movement.  Only the ignorant, the stupid, or the very comfortable and uncaring cannot see the reason for the protests.  So….. to all protesters………… I am with you.  You are doing the dirty work, in the cold, on the ground, in the wind, and in the face of the comfortable establishment.  I salute you, as you are worthy of respect and admiration.  Your work will be remembered and rewarded as we all look back to when you were the ones in the field. You were the infantry.  You were the soldier.       
     

[FayeforCure]

     Thanks Faye.  Interesting blog.  I am so pleased at the continued protests, and the attempts at defining the current OWS phenomenon.  It seems that as the weeks pass, more individuals offer support for the ideas of the OWS.  But attempting to discover the truths of the overall scenario is difficult, as so many individuals, including those in the media, are at times either obscuring truths, or offering lies.

I am inserting a post I did on MJ over a month ago, as it seems still valid:

"Thanks for gathering the informative material FayeforCure.  I am overjoyed with the emerging movement.  Whereas the beginning was awkward, the end will be clear.  There may be hesitations, sidetracked energies, and appearances of failure, but the truth of the absurdities and abuses on the eighty percent is so formidable that a clear picture will finally emerge for all to see; and the pressure of need, of justice, and propriety will force the changes our population deserves and demands.

Many ....  the protesters, the bloggers, the columnists, the posters, are working a large painting, each welding the brush according to ability and inclination; but as colors and details are refined, as truth emerges, as the walls of secrecy are destroyed, and as the painting approaches completion, only the totally blind will avoid seeing the beauty of it."          

   The fact that the protests are worldwide might seem unusual, but it only shows that many of us humans, no matter our home country are prone, without concern for those destroyed by our efforts, to aggressively seek wealth and power â€" and to do so relentlessly, without end, even if wealth is achieved that can only be described as obscene; and all this, as we see our fellow citizens suffering to gain enough food to eat, and shelter from the rain.

     Recent months have caused more individuals to realize that our government, our corporations, and our financial institutions, including wall street, have been infected.  The disease has been suspected for decades.  The individuals infected show signs of extreme wealth and power.  The disease seems to be restricted to a small minority, perhaps to one percent of the population.  Analysis so far points to the high probability that the disease is caused by the unusual combinations of two viruses; one is called greed, the other is called by the rather long name of “indifference to the destruction and suffering caused by the individual’s actions during the quest for wealth and power”. 

     These infected individuals in government, finance, and the corporate world, are in positions wherein they can function in secret, and together.  They are in positions to use their specialized knowledge to leverage all things to their benefit, or to their friend’s benefit, and this, in secret.  Therefore, if they are infected with the disease, if they are inclined to greed, and to the accumulaton of obscene levels of wealth, they are in the perfect position from which they can exercise that greed. 

     The hidden scenario is much like the attorney who says he performed ten hours on a project, but actually only worked two hours.  He charges you ten hours.  You pay.  Or it’s like the auto mechanic who troubleshoots your auto and finds the problem and fixes it is fifteen minutes.  You return in six hours to pick up your auto.  He says it took him three hours to do whatever, and you pay him for three hours.  It’s like the rare book dealer who, because of his position of having knowledge, can avoid sharing fairly any assets brought into his store by a customer desiring to sell books.

     It’s called trust.  It’s called abuse of that trust.  It’s called corruption.  It’s called greed.  It seems that certain of our citizens cannot possess the idea of being reasonable in their quest for financial stability and security.  Our culture has produced a population having too many individuals who seem to strive for extreme wealth, far above what is needed for a comfortable living.  And when these individuals are in a position allowing them the vehicles or methods to exert this almost insane desire for wealth, they frequently do so brutally, tenaciously, and without regard for those whom they destroy or push to poverty by the very actions they perform as they strive to take their net worth from twenty million to twenty billion. 

     And these recently discovered wall street type individuals who have behaved as above, contributing in a huge way to the destabilization of our economy, have not only avoided prosecution, some have been given huge bonuses, while the average worker has been pushed further into poverty.  This very fact points to a shameful collusion between government and wall street.  I dream of guillotines in action. 

     And some people wonder about the reason for the OWS movement.  Only the ignorant, the stupid, or the very comfortable and uncaring cannot see the reason for the protests.  So….. to all protesters………… I am with you.  You are doing the dirty work, in the cold, on the ground, in the wind, and in the face of the comfortable establishment.  I salute you, as you are worthy of respect and admiration.  Your work will be remembered and rewarded as we all look back to when you were the ones in the field. You were the infantry.  You were the soldier.       
   

Ron, you can say it so much better than I can!

All I can do is aggregate info. and defend my beliefs in support of OWS.

Here is a bit on the branding of OWS:

Saturday, Nov 12, 2011 12:00 PM 12:25:01 EST
The branding of Occupy Wall Street

The director of the first Occupy TV ads talks to Salon about the battle over the protest movement's brand VIDEO
By Justin Elliott .

Topics:Occupy Wall Street, Advertising
Last week, the first Occupy Wall Street TV ad began airing on channels including Fox News and ESPN:

http://www.youtube.com/v/GVQPo62x3UI?

The airtime was paid for through a crowd-sourced funding service, which has raised about $13,000 so far. The ad was created by freelance director David Sauvage, who shot footage on location in Zuccotti Park during the early weeks of the protest. The spot even ran during the O’Reilly Factor on some cable providers one night last week, according to Sauvage.

The ad was not endorsed by the general assembly at Zuccotti Park, the official governing body for Occupy Wall Street in New York; rather, like much of the work around Occupy, it was created as an affinity project by a supporter of the movement.

Sauvage’s bread and butter is corporate commercial work; ironically, his most recent project before the Occupy Wall Street ad was a commercial for the Wall Street Journal.

I sat down with Sauvage to talk about the creation of the ad and the continuing battle over the branding of the Occupy movement. His second and third Occupy ads are below. He is also planning a corporate spoof ad in partnership with some activists involved in Occupy Wall Street.

You typically work with corporate clients. How did you approach the Occupy Wall Street ads differently given that there was no client in the traditional sense?

I approached it the way I would approach ideally any spot. I tried to figure what was at the heart of what is going on. I tried to figure out what they wanted; I looked at Occupy Wall Street as my client, which was interesting because there is no one person who speaks for it. I wanted to make something that was both true to them but that was also palatable to a wide audience. Those were the two constraints I was operating under.

How did those two constraints shape the ads you produced?

In terms of being true to Occupy Wall Street, it was important for me to capture the diversity of views at Zuccotti Park. The movement has been constantly criticized for not knowing what it wants. I think that that criticism is a reaction to an actual strength of the movement: People want different things, and that’s something to celebrate, rather than criticize. I thought it would be a big mistake to say in the ad, “This is what Occupy Wall Street is about.” Because no matter what message I came up with, it would have alienated a third or two-thirds of the people there. It was a matter of having the balls to say, “I can do something that speaks for the movement,” and the humility to say, “I’m going to embrace the diversity of views that makes up the movement.”

In terms of making an ad that’s palatable, that’s casting and editing. I specifically picked people out who I felt audiences could easily relate to. People with tattoos on their faces or really shaggy hair, I tended to leave out; people who looked more presentable I tended to put it. If they looked “threatening” or “hippyish” â€" from the perspective of an ignoramus, I mean â€" then it was doubly important for me to make sure they were crystal clear in their thinking, so that we could undermine the stereotypes. I wanted the audience to think, “Oh, that is somebody I know.” I wanted to prevent the audience from being able to “other” the protesters.

How did the actual production in the park work?

I had each of the people I talked to say what they wanted many times over into the camera, and I had them do variations on it. It was very much directed. I never put words in their mouth, but I definitely worked with them so they presented what they wanted in as powerful a way as possible. I had multiple takes of many more people that I ended up not using. I interviewed probably 30 people, and eight made it into the final spot; those eight had probably five takes each.

When you were creating these ads, were you aware of the alternate right-wing narrative of the park as a place populated by freaks and freeloaders?

Yes, it was very much in my mind. There are very unfriendly media outlets doing their damnedest to highlight the most unpleasant parts of what’s going on, or to invent those things. And that didn’t gel with my experience down there, so I was very much seeking to counter that narrative. More importantly, I just wanted to get at what I felt was fundamentally true about the movement â€" and that in itself would counter the narrative most effectively. A lot of people have pitched me the idea of doing an ad that would show what Bill O’Reilly says about the protesters and then show actual protesters. I think that’s a little too conceptual for my taste. I don’t try to make points in my best work, I try to hit people in the gut.

Talk about how the Occupy Poetry and Occupy Streets ads came about:



I was at Occupy D.C. and brought my crew with me, and I saw this guy radiating a certain kind of charisma. He turned out to be a poet. So I filmed him doing his Occupy poem; the cinematographer Eric Branco did an incredible job of framing him just right.

The Streets piece was filmed on the morning after the city had been planning to evict the protesters from Zuccotti Park. At the last minute the city decided not to evict; it was, of course, enormously dumb of Bloomberg to wait until the last second to tell 500 of the most militant occupiers that they had won. The occupiers took to the streets and the NYPD sent mopeds straight into the crowd. The ad shows one of those scenes where the mopeds just mercilessly charge into a throng of people. The protesters stood their ground and flashed peace signs. I thought it was both aggressive and inspiring on the side of the protesters. This is not like the poet piece or the “I want” piece; it’s not sweet or loving.

In fact, in the LoudSauce campaign that we’ve launched to raise money to buy airtime, we’ve gotten a lot of pushback on the Streets piece. Some people have said they don’t want to put their money behind that ad because they think it’s not going to present the movement in the best way. Myself, I’m torn. I do think there’s something to be said for telling those people who are never going to agree with the message of Occupy Wall Street that we’re not budging. To show resolve in itself is a powerful message..

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustinMore Justin Elliott

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