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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
(Cuz it's really, really nice of the Mayor to have the SPD to do this with enough lead time so the story can to make on the 5-o-clock news all over)
1) If he evicts the protesters: They'll come back in greater numbers to the exact same location, bring in support from labor unions, progressive Third Party groups, college students, the unemployed and homeless who have nothing to lose anyway. And then what? Is he going to go WTO and tear gas the crowd? His political future will look as bleak as Paul Schell's did.
2) If he does not evict the protesters: Moderate increase in support based on growing affinity among Seattlites for the NYC protests. Disruption of business as many shoppers realize that that latte they just bought from Starbucks now makes them look like an asshole, and whatever outfit they just picked up at Forever 21 just says "Corporate Whore". Sudden loss of consumerist appetite causes massive loss of revenue from downtown businesses. Corresponding outrage from corporations translates to a post-Citizens United spending spree on whoever challenges him for re-election.
McGinn cannot win. No matter how he handles this, he'd better start making plans for where he wants to move after his term of office expires.
We need more traction behind actual ideas like @11's. These would have actual tangible effects.
"The 1%" does not give a single damn about how much time people are willing to devote to standing around chanting with signs and living in tents.
http://www.truth-out.org/5-facts-you-sho…
"There'll always be someone who's your boss, so why are you slaves protesting the Masta' lash and asking for your freedom? Silly slaves!"
I know it's hard for people who grew up in this era of hypertrophic klepto-capitalism to believe, but sometimes people to do come together in mutual interest without the intention of screwing each other into the poorhouse.
So now it's "Occupy A Tent” instead of “Occupy Seattle”? Soon it will be “Occupy A Jail Cell (and complain that the food isn’t vegan)”.
But hey, maybe times are different now...
Yes, you'll be arrested for not knocking it off with the fucking camping in a public plaza. Congratulations. Now you can attempt to set up your tents again and start fights with the police. Then you'll really start a change!
This dumbass protest is already on the same old wrong track. WE HAVE TO HOLD THIS GROUND. HOLD YOUR TENTS.
I thought this was about corporate greed or some shit? What the fuck do you dumb fucks care about whether or not you can keep being Campfire Kids? What does that have to do with ANYTHING you're actually trying to accomplish?
Stand around with signs, go home and sleep. Tents don't fucking matter. I'm sorry you guys can't play along with the unofficial game that's been started by the "Occupy Everything" tagline. Jesus alive this is stupid.
If you've got all day to sit around, for weeks;
Can't manage a coherent statement due to miseducation or substance use;
Lost all your saving in a sucker bet on home finance;
Overextended yourself on student loans you don't want to pay;
Of the political persuasion to have us all live in your communes by coercion.
The you are clearly NOT part of the 99%.
In fact, you're the bottom 1% -- and nearly all of it is because of shitty personal choices in your own control.
Instead of claiming to represent everyone except the top 1%, let's recognize this de facto "Occupy Slog" group for who they are. Freeloaders, weepy-eyed utopians, and cop-baiting malcontents fringing on the middle 80%, wanting someone else to pay for their drum circle habit.
Yeah… Laugh, but when they started locking up the WTO protesters several of them actually did complain because all they got were baloney sandwiches in the lockup. They said their rights had been violated because their vegetarianism wasn't being respected.
Really made the “movement” look credible… I believe they likened being served only meat sandwiches to cruel and unusual punishment and torture at the time.
So do nerds and movie or iphone camp-ins
"Can't manage a coherent statement due to miseducation or substance use;"
I'd say that they have issues with a coherent *narrative*, but most of them used proper English.
"Lost all your saving in a sucker bet on home finance; "
Yawn, most of the people fucked by the bubble weren't the flippers, or the poors. It was the American middle-class.
"Overextended yourself on student loans you don't want to pay;"
If this is a concern of yours, move to ban most for-profit universities like Phoenix and Kaplan.
"Of the political persuasion to have us all live in your communes by coercion."
Yawn, just another Tea Partier who has no clue what this form of populism means and substitutes "communism" in his head.
"In fact, you're the bottom 1% -- and nearly all of it is because of shitty personal choices in your own control. "
If you're going to be calling people uneducated, you should probably know something about the country you live in and what's going on around you.
You come off like some sort of bozo who thinks AM Talk Radio is reality.
http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/how-move…
Because people could never prove that Mallahan was a corperate shill, they woudl cite no facts that back it up, just general assumptions. With McGinn, he's arresting corperate protesters right now. Actions speak much louder than words.
How is that ridiculous? It doesn't have to taste good, it just has to meet their basic needs. Give them carrots, I can't believe that you're so incredibly insecure about yourself that lowly vegetarians make you feel uncomfortable.
How many of the Occupy folks voted then, do you think? No, they're in the "do things this way because we want you to" camp.
McGinn was a shill attorney, too, I'm not denying, but seriously, there are more than two sides to every fucking political decision. Just because McGinn's cops are arresting trespasser's doesn't make Mallahan a progressive.
It's not getting arrested "for the symbolic sake of it". When you're staging a protest, the authorities come and cite some statute which allows them to remove you. In this case it's "you can protest out here in the rain, no problem, but you can't have shelter", but it could just as soon have been "no loitering in the park", or something equally misapplied. If everyone shrugs and moves on, that's not a protest, it's business as usual.
For those of you saying they should be doing something better like moving their money to a credit union... again, you misunderstand the idea of protesting. We are having this conversation about credit unions because a few hundred people went out in the rain and set up tents. That's how protesting makes works in a democracy; people express their political dissatisfaction publicly (i.e. annoyingly) and it impacts public opinion.
Also, given that these people are protesting economic imbalance and the role money plays in politics, suggesting that they vote with their dollar is obtuse.
No. I was just amused that their willingness to “suffer" for their cause included dressing up like sea turtles but ended at eating processed meat… Hardy Gandhi like. Ridiculous.
Ha! The revolution WILL be televised (and brought to you by Big High Fructose Corn Syrup).
There is no chanting going on and the protesters are massed closer to Pine.
There is some tension in the air but I suppose that is to be expected. I am curious what will happen when the shops start closing.
they were also generally retired, so in essence, THEY HAD NO JOBS and could loiter around and protest all day. and be inarticulate and misdirected in their anger.
so fuck all you douchebags fronting for wall st. grifters and corporate tax dodgers.
What a difference a few 100 miles makes. #OccupyLA the mayor's office bought protesters rain ponchos #OccupySeattle the arrests have begun
But you see. That’s it. When you go to jail, you don’t get choices or accommodations. That’s part of why it’s a sacrifice to go to jail for a cause you believe in.
And KittenKoder, FFS, SHUT UP.
And the history of public protesting in the US for close to fifty years is the history of strengthening the thing you're protesting against. IT'S NOT REAL. It's not how change comes.
What a difference a few 100 miles makes. #OccupyLA the mayor's office bought protesters rain ponchos #OccupySeattle the arrests have begun
Oh, to dream...
You try getting 'em off their rascal scooters.
If those protesters REALLY believed in their cause they would douse themselves in gasoline and light a match now.
The eyes of the world would be upon them, and Capitalism would be a thing of the past by November!
>so fuck all you douchebags fronting for wall st. grifters and corporate tax dodgers.
I'm not fronting for grifters or tax dodgers. I'm saying these protests are fucking stupid.
They have a message. Bring accountability to corporations.
Yay for them, they have a message. Nobody important is listening. They could stand out there for the rest of the year chanting their message and waving their message around on cardboard signs. Nothing will change. It's a waste of time.
And that was the problem with Stewart's "Rally for Sanity". Sanity doesn't sell adverts.
If you believe in anything, kill yourself and thus improve the world.
I believe in nothing. I have faith in a lot of things though.
I can just picture the cops chanting that as they backed slowly out of the crowd.
@76 for the It Starts Here win.
You weren't.
You don't know what works unless your corporate masters tell you.
And if you've got that figured out, why don't you go down there and suggest it?
Given the dinky participation in these "Occupy" affairs, this would hardly be considered "populism." Since they marginally represent a margin of society, perhaps it would be better described as "Marginalism." The importance of this event is distorted by the echo-chamber of Twitter and Facebook. This isn't a robust movement. It's inconsequential, low-grade public slothing, regurgitated by Twitter-dependent media dupes.
Not sure how you think the middle class got rooked by banks. Didn't they understand that houses go up and down in value? Did they not understand that the first letter of ARM is "adjustable"? If they didn't read the mortgage fine print, really who should? Didn't 100% LTV sound a little too good a deal? Was the 30-year low-interest capitalization of a vacation, inside a mortgage, really a smart way to fund some sun? Did they really think all those investment condos would be easy to flip?
And who gives a shit is a university is for-profit or non-profit? If YOU borrowed the money, YOU fucking owe it. (Hell, every top non-profit state university president makes a million bucks a year, so why would you be in such a hurry to compel repayment to them, and not UPhoenix?)
At what point should we stop expecting gov't to save you fucking dumbasses from the consequences of your own voluntary -- and seemingly, consistently shitty choices?
You can throw labels like Teabagger around all you want (I'm not one, incidentally) to try an marginalize the prevailing view in this country (evident by the ass-kicking you "regressives" are taking in the ballot box). But all this is going to do is lead to a downtown-Starbucks-window-breaking spree that further dislocates middle class Americans from any sense of understanding and sympathy for your endangered "American Dirtbag" species, (Hippius Uneducatus Dopus).
Go ahead and be angry at "the man." Just don't expect to find the resolute qualities of a good one looking back at you from the mirror.
Then you say that what they're doing is ineffective. I suggested that if you have a better idea of how to achieve their goals, head on down there.
Do you not agree with their goals? Can you not be arsed to do anything? Or is it just more entertaining to sit behind a screen and complain?
There were those nuts that openly carried firearms to town-hall meetings. But that was all legal in the states where that was done.
Teabaggers don't camp. They don't have to. they live in McMansions. They don't really march. They "rally" with permits and all that shit. They didn't DO civil disobedience. They were a purely establishment movement bought and paid for by corporate interests.
The entire POINT of the so-called Occupy Movement is to force the establishment into confrontation and that means arrests. They aren't going to accomplish shit without risking police confrontation and mass arrests. Now, if they play their cards right, the idea is this confrontation will garner them sympathy and swell their ranks. And it will get the power of numbers and then be an actual threat to the established order.
What did you think was suppose to happen?
The problem is it probably won't. At least not in Seattle. Not unless people are really committed to losing everything. The people down there have to be willing to lose everything they own. Or have nothing to lose to begin with. That is the only path to revolutionary change people think they want.
Only I don't believe they really want it.
Hired thugs, no more, no less.
The Civil Rights movement worked because the people committed to it had fucking nothing to lose. They were ALREADY completely disenfranchised and excluded for the political community. They kept going when they got fire hosed. They kept going after they had dogs set on them. They kept going when they got, lynched, shot, beaten and had their churches burned down. They would have torn this country apart if Civil Rights didn't pass.
None of that has happened to the 99%. At least not at the frequency it happened to black people pre-1969. Which was pretty fucking often.
This 99% thing is almost all spoiled college educated white people like me who have been the most coddled and privileged people in the history of humanity. We already had full participation (as full as it was gonna get) in the political system. Sure. That system is broken. But as long as the US was on top and money was flowing we all endured a broken system.
The fantasy is over. The US is no longer the last man standing after WWII. We are not exceptional and your degree is no better than some guy's from Guangdong. You don't automatically deserve a 3000 sq. ft. house, a car, and a 401k. Welcome back to planet earth. Where most people are poor and there's a tiny percentage of rich people with healthcare. It sucks. But it could be whole lot worse.
The so-called 99% still have long way to drop. They still benefit way too much even from a broken system. Give this economy another five years—it's not even close to hitting bottom —then maybe you'll either see serious change or total surrender. People won't have choice.
Credit card and College loan debt doesn't really motivate the average person to dedicate their lives to changing a system. Maybe a couple of weekends. But not their lives.
I'd love to be wrong. Please. Prove me wrong. I'd like to get ahead of hitting bottom. But historically societies just don't change until they hit bottom.
I'd love this thing to swell into a massive movement that rocks the system to change before the election. I really hope it scares the shit out of the conservative political establishment.
But will it?
Why. Did. I. Vote. For. McGinn?!
We should ALL spend some time at this protest. This Rich-people and cop's shit's got to stop!
And CHZA gettin' mad, madder, maddest....
Because.... ... ...?
Next time the protesters should ride bikes and the cops should be in tents.
Mobility Seattle
Like it or lump it, shabby treatment of WTO protestors wound up costing the Seattle of Seattle a butt-load of money. Treating protestors well saves your wallet and the city's budget.
Maybe you like the protestors, maybe you don't. But, this afternoon's action was pointless and wasted a bunch of money.
Impede us and our message becomes ever more attract.
Arrest us and we grow stronger.
100% Seattle? You don't hang out much in Madison valley, magnolia, queen Anne, Ravenna, Mapleleaf, sunset hill, sandpoint, north beach or blue Ridge do you?