Index

What's it Like at an Occupy Encampment?

There is so much happening at Occupy that you won’t find in the big papers and won’t see on TV. How does it function on a day to day basis, who attends, what kind of work needs to be done, does anyone want to do that work? There are similarities across the various sites; in fact we now know that many of the occupiers travel from one site to the other, and they definitely share information via conference call and by internet.

Here at Lollipops we’ve got numerous pages giving the low-down on several occupy cities. In fact there is so much information right here on this one blog, its hard to find what you are looking for. To that end, today’s post is a recap, with all the links you need, to navigate to the city/issue you want to read about first. 

And why, you may ask, would this blog cover Occupy at all? As our tagline denotes we are ever
QUESTIONING OUR PRESIDENT'S PROMISE TO GIVE THE MIDDLE CLASS ALL THE GOODIES THEY COULD POSSIBLY DESIRE, YET NEVER ASK THEM TO PAY. 

The entire Occupy movement has come into being because of that empty promise. The president swept into office on the oath that he would provide health care, education, higher wages,  and a carbon free environment, and a host of other enticing things, at no cost to the middle class voter. We'll get the rich to pay,  he promised. And now the occupiers want that promise kept and are mobilizing to demand the heads of the so-called rich.

DC Occupy
There are many tents at Occupy DC, but who is living there and how do they think? And how are they going to know when to stop the occupation? They are constantly talking peace, but they plan and carry out actions that almost dictate that violence will result. They are making plans to insert themselves in the area community for months to come.

Who is hanging out at the DC occupation?

Roadmap for Violence

Logic Difficulties

The Goal of Occupy

Working Groups at Occupy  

Boston Occupy

The vast majority of people at Occupy events are not enamored of the founding documents of the United States. In Boston they have been jotting down some ideas for a substitute constitution. On the other hand, occupy events sometimes attract a handful of Ron Paul supporters and Tea Partiers. Some people in Boston know that the 99% definition is pretty fuzzy. Do all the ninety-nine percent wish to help do the work, or to wait patiently for the redistribution of Occupy Wealth?

Not me--Let some eager beaver pick up that trash

Gimme mine

Co-opting the language of Occupy

The new Boston Tea Party?

Boston's new constitution. 

Chapel Hill Occupy 

Here is how things all started at Chapel Hill in October 2011. From the first day, Chapel Hill Occupy offered a table spread thickly with literature from causes and perspectives they clearly hold near and dear.  

And who is living in the occupation? Perhaps not the poor, who seem to lack the motivation to join up. And where do they use the bathroom and what are the arrangements for rain in Chapel Hill? Which nearby organizations offer their support to Occupy Chapel Hill? Here are all the posts we have so far from Chapel Hill. And there's a video of that first day  as well.

First Day in Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill Literature Table

Not appealing to the poor

Churches provide bathrooms

Up Twinkles for Trash Pickup

When Noam Chomsky comes to address a crowd in Boston, as part of the Occupy thing in that city, people expect the media to show up. The MIT professor  is pretty famous. "According to the Chicago Tribune, Professor Chomsky is “the most cited living author” and ranks just below Plato and Sigmund Freud among the most cited authors of all time". And when the media comes, the organizers will like to put forth a good image. And so it is on Saturday, October 22 in Boston. I am in town anyway for the Head of the Charles Regatta, so I decide to spend the morning roaming around the occupy thing in Bean Town. It's time for a huge clean-up and I am just in time to observe how the idea of a large scale community clean-up effort goes down.

The place is pretty well packed with tents. There may be close to a hundred tents here at Dewey Square Plaza in the Shadow of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.  Jammed together, as close as can be, some tents are dedicated to special purposes such as the Library Tent, the Logistics Tent, the Sign Making Tent, a tent for food service. There's a tent for generating electricity and there are tents for religion also (one a "spiritual tent" and one a special tent for Shabbat). But most of the tents serve as sleeping quarters. A main street runs down the middle of the occupation, starting at a makeshift stage/screening area where someone is strumming on the guitar, and continuing all the way to the other end, near where you can pick up the T at South Station. The place does not seem overly crowded wtih bodies, but there are plenty of people there, and if you look inside the tents, you see there are many groups of people inside, sitting and talking. Other tents are closed up, perhaps with people sleeping inside.

This shanty town is pretty scruffy. The organizers need for it to look presentable before the media arrives tonight. It's not clear what everyone's doing, but there are plenty of people moving about when the guitar strumming comes to a stop. Someone steps to the microphone to announce that it's time to clean up. They have seen media before, but not as many as they will see tonight, because Chomsky is coming to speak in the evening. It's important to have the place looking good, he says, so we need for everyone to grab a trash bag and pick up all the trash. A man in front of me stops what he's doing, and puts his latex gloves into the air and wiggles his fingers at the speaker. UP TWINKLES! A total of two people in the crowd give the up twinkles hand sign; they're agreeing it's important to clean up; they get right to work with those trash bags. Others do not. Most ignore the call to join in. Can you believe it? Most people are lounging in tents and there does not seem to be any mass exodus to pop out and jump to.  Some continue to amble down the path next to the community garden (a feature of the park since well before the protesters arrived), others are stopping for a bagel, plenty of people are standing around chatting. Some are smoking.

So it's really just a few who are helping with the important job of cleaning up the shanty town to put the best face possible on the movement so that the media will take away a good impression of the Occupy Movement.  After a little while the man comes back on the microphone and asks again for clean up help. It's a beautiful day. It's not snowing. There is no wind, no rain. It's not even all that cold. And no special skill is required. Helping with the cleanup would not be difficult for most of the people on site.  Yet,  I see no rush to pick up bags. I continue to roam and to take pictures. The entire time I'm  there, I see only about five people engaged in the clean up. Yet there are hundreds of OWS people on site. Yes, some are busy with serving food, or with making signs, or with manning the logistics tent, but a large number of able bodies are simply not choosing to join in to help further the effort of putting the site into a  litter-free state. 

And now comes the irony. The man gets back on the microphone and admonishes those who ARE working to clean up. Clearly, the job may never get done, since not everyone is helping. You could say that the 99 percent have decided they are not really "into" joining the clean up effort. So instead, he speaks quite loudly to the one percent who are already helping: YOU'RE NOT HELPING IF YOU DON'T BRING ME A FULL BAG!

"The one percent needs to do more to clean this place up!"

If there is anything overarching about the movement, it's this: many of the people attracted to OWS, imagine a world full of evolved beings who naturally act selflessly and do whatever it takes to further the community. They will thus follow a moral and loving course in life which will end up providing  for all  needs of all living beings. (That's what social justice is all about).  But if the OWS people themselves are not willing to answer the call for something as simple and easy as a clean-up effort on a sunny day, you have to wonder if maybe the idea of the idyllic, cooperative world is an unrealistic dream.

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The Fast Track to Redistribution of Wealth--the Destruction of Your 401K

The Wall Street Journal knows what is going on in today's economy and it is not pretty. Notable lines:

Most of (Obama's) "stimulus" spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest....The market has notably plunged since Mr. Obama introduced his budget last week, and that should be no surprise. The document was a declaration of hostility toward capitalists across the economy.

Health-care stocks have dived on fears of new government mandates and price controls. Private lenders to students have been told they're no longer wanted. Anyone who uses carbon energy has been warned to expect a huge tax increase from cap and trade. And every risk-taker and investor now knows that another tax increase will slam the economy in 2011, unless Mr. Obama lets Speaker Nancy Pelosi impose one even earlier......................The powers in Congress -- unrebuked by Mr. Obama -- are ridiculing and punishing the very capitalists who are essential to a sustainable recovery. The result has been a capital strike, and the return of the fear from last year that we could face a far deeper downturn. This is no way to nurture a wounded economy back to health.........
Listening to Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, on the weekend, we couldn't help but wonder if they appreciate any of this.

ARE YOU LISTENING, PRESIDENT OBAMA?

And, perhaps more importantly, to those who were excited to cast a vote for Obama: Are you understanding now what kind of change you have voted in?

I have trouble believing that this is really what America is hoping for, and it certainly ought to be becoming clear now, that when the capitalists take their ball and go home, it becomes increasingly impossible to buy the unaffordable lollipops any society would, in a perfect world, like to have.

One way to equalize the income differences in a population might be to simply remove a massive amount of wealth from a large number of people. Let's hope that this kind of redistribution of wealth is not in any way a part of Obama's plan.