Forum Post: Don't turn into the 21% or you'll lose your shot at being the 83%
Posted 12 years ago on Sept. 29, 2011, 6:13 p.m. EST by granito
(21)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I recently read and voted on the list of demands and I'd like to remind you guys that if you're going to be "the 99%" you should probably keep in mind what the people across the US fall under http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conservatives-single-largest-ideological-group.aspx . This said, there is one issue that more people agree on than almost any other issue and that is that congress is doing a terrible job http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html
So I'm asking you guys to reconsider and focus on an issue that unites everyone and leave other issues to the political process once it has been fixed. Wall St is only one of several different corporate factions that has taken advantage of the weakness in the political system. Focusing on just them attacks the symptom but not the disease.
The disease is a dysfunctional congress. They have been kidnapped by lobbyist and special interests from banks, energy companies, telecommunications, defense, you name it. This is why we should focus on fixing congress and making that the "one demand." Please look at http://fixcongressfirst.org/. There's a 2:31 minute that explains the general idea.
I love you guys. What you've done in such a short time and the determination is incredible. My fall break starts next Wednesday and I'm considering coming out to NYC but I'm slowly getting turned off by a lot of the conversation. I want to see this succeed but coming from the 35% (moderate), most of the demands on the document so far just aren't going to get support from moderates much less conservatives (both of which are needed to truly be the 99%). Please choose a demand that can unite us, fix congress first.
Granito, I totally agree with you.
I had been hoping this would take off, but I am not sure of the status: https://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-please-help-editadd-so-th/
I agree there are unrealistic expectations in the coupmedia demands. There is no incentive to not vote on something, so everybody is piling on. I'm waiting for them to add the "Free Rocky Road ice cream for all" demand.
No way dude, free Milk & Cookies ice cream :D
I think the problem can be summed up by saying we should have separation of corporate and state. Just like the separation of church and state. Corporations have a tight grip on the politicians because they are so intertwined. When that comes to an end then the voices of the people will be heard again and we can go about fixing all the problems that were caused by the connectedness of corporations and government.
Oooh I like. Constitutional amendment? I guess the devil is in the details of how this would actually work (I mean, just look at http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/09/24/alabama-town-gives-offenders-a-choice-jesus-or-jail/) but maybe it could be made more explicit so corporations can't find a way around it.
If you look around more you will see that movements have begun in most major US cities now. In California for instance there is a movement beginning on Saturday to occupy near the federal reserve bank there. Even movements are springing up in Montreal and in other countries around the globe. This is not just about Wall Street, Wall street was just the beginning. I think the general idea is more about a feeling that income disparity across the globe in simply unjust and needs to finally be addressed in a real way. And these protestors are not taking it upon themselves to determine how, they have left that up for debate so that views like yours and mine can be included. Then once a consensus is reached, hopefully we can all focus on making a change.
If you want to go with income disparity you may have a shot http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/poll-73-percent-support-the-buffett-rule-including-66-percent-of-republicans.php. But you'll have to stick with that as the demand. If the demands stray from that you quickly start losing people.
Judging from http://coupmedia.org/occupywallstreet/occupy-wall-street-official-demands-2009 it doesn't even seem to be on the radar. Demand 1 is related but not really. Everything else has almost nothing to do with it. I'm voting, but it doesn't seem like it'll make the difference.
I agree with that. But I think what we will see happen is, as this movement grows, more level headed people will become involved and the conversation will shift. What you see now is the list put together by the protesters there on the ground. While they are very brave and deserve much respect for what they started, I think it is clear that they do not represent the views of the majority. However, they have left room for inclusion of other points and I think that upon further debate, once things get better organized, people will start to see that defining and attacking a root cause (maybe this, maybe something similar) will stand a much better chance of making a measurable difference and inviting more support.
I hope so. I'm going to occupydurham and depending on how that goes I'll take my fall break and make the trip to NYC. It feels like the movement is slowly lurching leftward and if that happens a lot of us could get left out. The event invite for occupydurham kept mentioning "economic justice" which is kind of off-putting to the rest of us.
Well good luck in durham and thanks for getting out there and giving it a shot. I am in central Montana and I doubt support will grow very quickly here but as soon as something happens within 8 or 10 hours of where I live, I'll be there. Don't give up hope, lets keep fighting for a more even and directed approach and see what happens.
Many, many reasons for the dysfunction in Congress and money is at the root of most of them. Since so much of the money that pays for our politicians comes from Wall Street, the occupation has exactly the right focus.
I recommend to you:
Our Polarized and Money-Driven Congress: Created Over 25 Years By Republicans (and Quickly Imitated by Democrats)
www.nakedcapitalism.com/.../our-polarized-and-money-driven-congress- created-over-25-years-by-republicans.html
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php. Goldman Sachs comes in at #25. If you look at the entire list it is made up of a lot of non-banks. Since we agree that money in congress is the problem why don't we focus on congress instead of one of the hundreds of sources that money comes from.
Edit: I read through the article and this further shows that congress is what needs to be fixed. They don't care if the money comes from Wall St or corn farmers in Iowa as long as there's money.
I'm not sure what percentile I fall within. But conservatives who align themselves with tea partiers who protest against people in wheelchairs that want healthcare is the problem. Conservatives don't care what havoc wall street wreaks so long as they don't wreak havoc with government help.
And they problem is that those companies have wreaked havoc with government help. Stopping that from happening would bring in support from all over the political spectrum.
No. The problem is that they wreak havoc, regardless of who they are colluding with.
You are some what right... unfortunately for this country.
we talkin global Granito. The global 99%. Conservative or Liberal, we're talking PARADIGM SHIFT.
Could you elaborate on the paradigm shift? Although a high percentage of people agree that there's something broken in the system I think once we start discussing how to fix it we start disagreeing. Just the fact that congress has 13% of people who approve of what they've done tells me there's people in this country (not to say this world) that live in a reality nearly completely different from mine.
i agree that we need to stop immediately any form of lobbying and instead institute a direct open source direct democracy system. Every political office should run a forum and a wiki, and the entire process should be modernized to reflect an absolutely open system of intellectual problem solving instead of political theater by ignorant evil corrupted "representatives" There are several key elements to this, the first is that we need prolly first to demonstrate to the world how lucid proles can be instead of how clusterfooked and log jammed and scrawled out and half insane they can be inside of mob mentality. In short. We must form the open source think tanks which would run a functional America and use that as the storm by which to take back a genuine democracy from what has become a ritualized mockery.
I love the idea of a wiki and forum for the political offices. Those are the sort of ideas that we can get people behind. There's similar websites that I think are trying to do something similar http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Main_Page, http://www.opensecrets.org/, http://www.opencongress.org/. Maybe you could talk to them and see about involving them in the process.
we all need to talk together about this and approach them as 1000 peeps with a strong game plan, not just me.." yo... open congress,.. will you help with my protest movement that can't get its act together?" no. we get it together, get our own program up and pretty and then we approach other such groups for collaboration. its a good idea for after we get strong presentations and organization done.
Its not simply which party or the Political System that is the problem. The Issue is that with automation, and the increasing technology of our world we are losing positions for people. Simply put Almost everything can be automated and is being automated as soon as it become cost effective to do so. As Such its our whole Monetary System and our Fractional Reserve Banking System producing Fiat Currency that is no longer stable. and as such we need to move to a new type of Government and Economy.
This is possible, but those are decisions that should be made through a national discussion made by representatives accountable to the people. The movement should concentrate on allowing that national discussion to occur with as little influence by money as possible.
There are conservatives, then there are complete lunatics who are not voting based on what they think is actually right, but on deceitful rhetoric and "the party line." But do you know what would "fix Congress? If they couldn't get piles of money from corporations. That would go a long way towards it. And that is a part of what OWS is trying to accomplish.
So I think that should be the focus of the demands. Taking the money away from the corporations won't stop it. Impeding congressmen from having access to corporation's money might stop it. The biggest problems with the demands is that a lot of them don't work towards that goal and will instead lose support for the demands as a whole.
as far as catering to the ideals, demands, or etc of duped and thus sleepwalking conservatives, its my responsibility to carry on for them in their stead for their own best interests since they can't. Nobody can say i am not working for all of us or that i am not actually open to working with anyone. BUT. Every single instance of a "political platform" by "conservatives" is in essence a n evil and twisted control mechanism designed to screw somebody down. I'm not going to stay silent on the truth, but i will try to make sure everyone knows that i am reading, listening, caring, and trying to empathically communicate in that as well. Conservativism is form of insanity, and waking up and getting free of it is important for all of us. If that makes you decide that our supposed 99 percent is really only 83.. i am fine with that as long as the number doesn't get below 51. I hope you see where that leaves us.
Unfortunately that won't get you 51 percent that will get you 21 percent. http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conservatives-single-largest-ideological-group.aspx. Even if it only gets you 51% the idea is to get broad support not just get the bare minimum.
honestly, no, and the reason why is because truth instead of BS eventually wins over everyone, including the elites, who realize they are actually living in a caged and barren hell instead of paradise. I can win everyone over as soon as one tenth of one percent joins me even if everyone else initially rejects us. All we have to do is the intellectual WORK instead of more propaganda noise fighting. Realize that most conservatives even on some level know that they have been lying to themselves about these things and letting evil people tell them what to think. They are only a few steps away from waking up. All we have to do is cling to the TRUTH and birth what evolution brings.
... wow, I can't believe you just completely erased the political point of view of thousands of people. Can you even conceive of someone having different values than you do? http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/blog-html/leftvright_world.html. That is exactly the type of patronizing that people dislike and that turns them off (even if you "have the truth").
yes, of course i can conceive of that i deal with it constantly. the problem is i don't have a point of view. i don't have a mere opinion. i have 3000 textbooks. And knowledge tells me that conservativism is the problem, and that there is zero reason to consider any of their demands, zero reason to try to find any kind of compromise with them because they will not comprpomise, they are dead wrong, they don't know what they are talking about, they have no regard for OTHER points of view, they have no regard for science or truth and they are impervious to rational argument. So. The only strong response is absolute severity. I will not be swayed. i will not bend. I will not give on inch to the evil that conservativism is. But conservative people are still the clients trapped in the matrix who i am here to save, and if you stop really playing games like you are even on our side in the first place and only here to disrupt us in the first place, you can stop and see that in fact what the solutions are can be agreed upon once the facts are known. Evolutionary diplomacy happens at the end of 20 phds worth of knowledge if even 1 percent of the population does that it will cause a paradigm shift. I don't need the stuck or evil people, just one percent of the population getting smart and educated can send over a tipping point and then every conservative idea will be busted and conservatives will leave their flock until the only people left are just the evil ones- minus all the sheeple and dupes.
conservatism by definition is anti intellectual, is anti truth, is anti factual, is a propaganda con scam generated by pro liars. We need have less than no regard for it and ultimately the better we stand up to it the better off we are. If you like being a slave to the corporations, if you like working 9 to 5 and earning nothing more than a hovel to sleep in and no time for anything other than sleep and work.. if you like being con scammed in a rigged casino and taken for a ride by the elites... be a conservative. If you actually like truth, or freedom, or science, or fact, or right action, or evolution, step out of the box and stop letting evil people do your thinking for you.
haha, do I have to complete a time cube for that? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsOrgKiTQ44.
most creative random pointless insult and digression this week.