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Wall Street Protests


The Dark Lord

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Over the past month, there have been a series of protests against Wall Street and the corporate influence in American politics.

 

One of the recent controversies was the arrest of about 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

 

What do you think about the protests? Are you participating in them yourself? Do you believe that this may be a sign of unrest to come in the United States during these tough economic times?

SWAG

 

Mayn U wanna be like me but U can't be me cuz U ain't got ma swagga on.

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Not participating in them myself.

 

A sign of unrest? Sure. Things are still relatively good though; if this is the unrest now, it's going to be pretty bad once the economy craps its pants properly.

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"It's not a rest for me, it's a rest for the weights." - Dom Mazzetti

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I think it's ironic that the companies these people are protesting are the same companies that donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Obama's 2008 election.

 

While in general I'm against crony capitalism, I do not support the vision these groups have for America.

99 dungeoneering achieved, thanks to everyone that celebrated with me!

 

♪♪ Don't interrupt me as I struggle to complete this thought
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I think it's ironic that the companies these people are protesting are the same companies that donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Obama's 2008 election.

 

While in general I'm against crony capitalism, I do not support the vision these groups have for America.

 

I like how you assume they're all Democrats. Also, you don't even know what their vision is because all of them have different grievances; there is no hierarchical structure, and it's very anarchist. Hell, a lot of them are Ron Paul supporters. The only unifying message is this: the banksters stole our money, the wealth gap is continuing to increase, and we're not going to tolerate their [cabbage] anymore.

 

No, I'm not participating with them, but I am there in spirit. I might go up to Washington on Wednesday if I can find a ride to partake in those protests. When I said my political beliefs, I said I'm very much of the mindset of Howard Zinn:

 

I believe that it is preferable sometimes to have one candidate rather another candidate, while you understand that that is not the solution. Sometimes the lesser evil is not so lesser, so you want to ignore that, and you either do not vote or vote for third party as a protest against the party system. Sometimes the difference between two candidates is an important one in the immediate sense, and then I believe trying to get somebody into office, who is a little better, who is less dangerous, is understandable. But never forgetting that no matter who gets into office, the crucial question is not who is in office, but what kind of social movement do you have. Because we have seen historically that if you have a powerful social movement, it doesn't matter who is in office. Whoever is in office, they could be Republican or Democrat, if you have a powerful social movement, the person in office will have to yield, will have to in some ways respect the power of social movements.

 

We saw this in the 1960s. Richard Nixon was not the lesser evil, he was the greater evil, but in his administration the war was finally brought to an end, because he had to deal with the power of the anti-war movement as well as the power of the Vietnamese movement. I will vote, but always with a caution that voting is not crucial, and organizing is the important thing.

 

When some people ask me about voting, they would say will you support this candidate or that candidate? I say: "I will support this candidate for one minute that I am in the voting booth. At that moment I will support A versus B, but before I am going to the voting booth, and after I leave the voting booth, I am going to concentrate on organizing people and not organizing electoral campaign."

 

If this continues to grow, it gives space for politicians to act in favor of the citizens, and against the bankster criminals.

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[spoiler=Relevant]b5c27.jpg

 

I can't help but see the whole movement as a joke. It's as if they think standing outside the NYSE or blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge will suddenly cause a change of heart amongst CEOs and bankers to distribute their wealth. The protesters in Washington? Sorry, but if the roughly half a million anti-abortion protesters who have gathered in DC once a year since 1974 can't change anything, it's unlikely that a few thousand stoned hippies or pizza-faced basement dwellers can either. Now, I'm not saying their intent is wrong - in fact, I'm inclined to agree with them. However, the only way to actually take the money out of their hands would be a successful and widespread boycott of the goods of the CEOs' companies and the services of the fat cats' banks and begin to use small local businesses and credit unions/S&Ls (at the potential cost of tens of millions of jobs, of course). I'd like to see one protester put his money where his mouth is if these people are as serious as they claim to be.

 

inb4 "I never support the evil big corporations [sent from my iPhone 5 @ Starbucks]."

 

Slightly off-topic, but I can't be the only one reminded of the song

when he hears the zealots preach about the severity of this, right?

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"If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation..., then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping." - Sophocles

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

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Yep, boycotts en masse are really the only effective tool. Of course, however much we might claim to hate big corporations, they make the world turn, and I doubt that 10% of these protesters would be willing to give up the majority of the goods these corporations make.

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"It's not a rest for me, it's a rest for the weights." - Dom Mazzetti

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Yep, boycotts en masse are really the only effective tool. Of course, however much we might claim to hate big corporations, they make the world turn, and I doubt that 10% of these protesters would be willing to give up the majority of the goods these corporations make.

This. I doubt there's a person here that actually likes the corruption and similar nonsense that goes on with them, but it's probably not as simple as "All corporations = Hitler".

 

Protests like these may well be interfering with the lives of the people they're trying to protect. I'm not from the east coast, but I can't imagine it would be easy to get to work if there's a large crowd protesting in front of the building you're supposed to be working in.

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To be fair, I don't see any sort of contradiction with having products produced by corporations and protesting against corporate influence in politics. I haven't heard of any protesters actually saying that they would wish that all corporations would disappear. It just seems that people are pissed off about how American politics work (which is indeed fairly corrupt).

 

And with the economy in its current shape, it's very understandable for people to be pissed. They view Obama's bailout for Goldman Sachs and other companies as basically an excuse for corporations that couldn't give a damn about U.S. citizens to make a profit from taxpayer money.

 

Now, personally, I do kind of laugh at how these protests lack unity of a cause. It's almost a joke in that case. Still, I think many of them do have a good reason to protest and see this as a sign that the United States has a LOT of serious problems lying ahead if it continues its current course.

SWAG

 

Mayn U wanna be like me but U can't be me cuz U ain't got ma swagga on.

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I see no contradiction in using a corporation's product while calling for a more fair and just economic system. That's like saying RATM "sold out" because they signed onto a record deal. BS. There's nothing wrong with using the Machine against itself. What we have cannot continue. The Earth simply cannot handle infinite growth. I'd say we're headed towards "the end of growth" in many developed countries. Every recession is harder to get out of in the post-WWII world.

 

I'd say we're about to go into another recession, and that doesn't even include if we have a giant shock (Greece, Spain, and Italy).

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And with the economy in its current shape, it's very understandable for people to be pissed. They view Obama's Bush's bailout for Goldman Sachs and other companies as basically an excuse for corporations that couldn't give a damn about U.S. citizens to make a profit from taxpayer money.

 

Ftfy

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How do you boycott investment banks?

 

Large companies that sell products with 'overpaid' ceo's etc are small fish. It's the white collar criminals who sell crap investments and then bet against them that are the issue.

 

What we really need is regulation of the finance industry.

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How do you boycott investment banks?

Stop investing with them.

Sorta hard when don't already do.

 

Bomb the CEO's mansions and assassinate them?

 

Hm.

"The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you never hear it you'll never know what justice is."

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Sorry, but if the roughly half a million anti-abortion protesters who have gathered in DC once a year since 1974 can't change anything, it's unlikely that a few thousand stoned hippies or pizza-faced basement dwellers can either.

 

How did I miss this? Have you even seen the number of abortion restrictions that have been passed by state governments? I live in Virginia. All of our Planned Parenthoods might shutdown in January because they don't meet hospital requirements. A lot of states have made getting an abortion effectively impossible. [cabbage], they got the Partial Birth Abortion Ban passed, and we cannot challenge it until the Supreme Court is changed. I wouldn't say they "can't change anything" at all. in fact, they've been quite successful.

 

In response to this, and I don't mean to sound condescending (even though virtually everyone is being condescending to these brave people), but did you watch the entire spectacle of August 2009 to the elections of 2010? The Tea Party ravaged this country and pushed the Republicans even farther to the right than they already were. The Republicans right now on any political scale would be akin to the BNP. I doubt we'll even get a budget until January of 2013; until then we'll probably continue surviving on Continuing Resolutions. They pushed these people so far that any amount of tax increases are off the table. But this is how democracy works. The Tea Party didn't just vote. The Tea Party mobilized so many voters because of its activism prior to the 2010 mid-terms. Change happens over a long-scale. It doesn't happen over night. Do you think the Feminists of 1848 (Seneca Falls Convention) wasted a bunch of time protesting and organizing? They wouldn't get the vote until 1920. I doubt that any of the attendees to that convention would make it alive to 1920. Was what they did "useless"?

 

Did boycotts give us the 40-hour workweek, weekends, child safety laws, environmental protection? No. It was democratic action and community organizing, followed by mass movements to the polls. That's how you change things -- barring a total revolution. That was Howard Zinn's point! The ballot box is important, but it's only a small part of the process.

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Oh, and just for fun, big bankers and CEO's are growing concerned:

 

I had gone down to Zuccotti Park to see the activist movement firsthand after getting a call from the chief executive of a major bank last week, before nearly 700 people were arrested over the weekend during a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal? the C.E.O. asked me. I didnt have an answer. Were trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this, he continued, clearly concerned. Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?

 

As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably dont have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didnt seem like a brutal group at least not yet.

 

But the underlying message of Occupy Wall Street which spread to Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles on Monday is something the big banks and corporate America may finally have to grapple with before it actually does become dangerous.

 

Link

 

Marie Antoinette famously said, "Let them eat cake!" (although there's no true 'evidence' that she said this). And then heads started to roll. FDR instituted the New Deal because the threat of communism becoming a reality was very real. The opposite of the New Deal is not some idyllic paradise of free-market bliss. The opposite is rampaging mobs who light [cabbage] on fire just to show you that they can do whatever they want. Eventually, that can include burning down your business or your house, or, maybe, even taking your life.

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@magekillr

[spoiler=For once, we are in agreement then. ]i1zNn.jpg

 

On the note of the anti-abortion protesters, they have been lobbying for the flat out repealing of Roe v. Wade and a straight ban (no exceptions). I thought I was pro-life until I went on the March for Life last year. That was my first real exposure to disturbing radicalism and I have avoided the issue entirely since. In fact, that's about when I gave up on the Republican Party (read: Tea Party). Luckily, they've been relatively unsuccessful on the national level. The fundie-dominated South you mentioned is a whole different story, though.

 

On-Topic:

Hackers plan to take down Wall Street on October 10th

I like the sentiment, but with the job crisis in the U.S. and the debt crisis in the E.U., this seems like very bad timing to cause people to lose faith in the market.

Player since 2004. All skills 1M+ XP.

Hamtaro.png

"If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation..., then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping." - Sophocles

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

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