Quote:
Originally Posted by woob
As a global society, we accept that protests happen. They occur everywhere for any amount of reasons. Those reasons are seen by some as valid, some as not, some don't care either way. That really doesn't matter because the people that want to protest are going to protest, no matter what those who don't agree with it or don't care about it think. And society is going to react to that either by supporting them or sending out the riot cops. Until someone writes a manual on the proper way to protest that makes everyone happy and the Earth as a whole agrees to this globally and abides by it, protesters are only going to be concerned with what they're protesting about and how to get that message out en masse.
While we may not agree with their methods, it's besides the point. You and I can debate whether it is right or wont until the cows come home but really, what does it achieve? You can feel better for yourself because in the case of one protest I may say I have no issues with the impact they are causing and to you and a bunch of critics you agree with, that is wrong? It's entirely irrelevant.
But, for your satisfaction I will state the following: I have absolutely no issues with the impact this particular protest has on the surrounding residents of Liberty Park.
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But it keeps coming back to the question of effective versus ineffective protesting.
1) Effective protestors target the thing or group of people that piss them off with the intent of disrupting their lives. IE if you're pissed at the 1%, shouldn't you be protesting by setting up camp in fox country in front of the mansions and estates of the 1%, maybe moving into the penthouse next to the CEO of xyz corporation and banging your drums all night. If your pissed off at the bailouts, you should be protesting in front of the white house and senate as they were literally responsible not only for the bailouts, but also for regulatory environment that the corporations did business in. That's effective protesting, however . . .
2) Ineffective protesting is where you protest against the 1% for example but disrupt the lives of the 99% or even the 53%, where you make people late for work which puts them in poor standings at work, or disrupt their sleep which makes them ineffective at work which threatens their living, or you poop up the parks and facilities that the 99% use, while the 1% sit by and laugh about it at their private clubs and golf course.
What you're literally doing with ineffectual protesting is pissing off the people that should be on your side, and should be supporting you, and making it easier for people to label you as a self interested fringe protest.
beyond that
3) When you show dis-respect to public property by scumming it up, its the 53% who immediately focus on the costs of cleanup for example because they're the ones that are going to deal with the tax burden, they will eventually have to pay a greater share of that burden then the 1%, and the protestors who at this point are obviously not for the most part paying taxes.
4) When you have people sitting in camps all day and up all night making noise and partying, the 53% or 99% are asking themselves about these people not working and what its probably costing in terms of unemployment and welfare benefits to keep those people in those squatter camps.
5) In Canada the 99% have pretty much declared that anyone making over $170,000 is the class enemy 1%, Its hard to be sympathetic to the 99%'ers in those camps when you consider that $170,000 is not some outrageous sum to be paid for someone that is very skilled in thier profession like Doctors and lawyers, and really excellent account managers. If the disparity was like the one in the states wherer the 1% are $400,000 dollars then I could see it
6) If the 1% dropped the whole ridiculous concept of wealth distribution war against the group that pays over 25% of the nations taxes and repackaged it as we need to evaluate the tax codes to close loop holes then we would have a more effective and smarter occupy movement in this country.
7) When you have zero control over the agenda of the occupy movement people wouldn't roll their eyes at it. Oh and if you want to be an effective protest then you actually need to deal with the media and not go all pouty and whine about it when Insano Joe declares that he doesn't work, and one of your key members bitches about nobody helping him, then fails to show up when someone gives him a job.
8) You keep talking about inconvieniencing people, but I ask again, who are they effectively inconvieniencing and turning against their movement. When you have middle working class people saying that its time for occupy to end, or calling them entitled spoiled kids you have a huge problem.
9) Stop asking for free stuff, do you know how much it pisses off the middle and poor working when your sitting in a tent saying give us condoms and clothing and electricity for free, oh and we want you to heat our tents, and the bums are eating our luxury organix food?
10) when people around the OWS or other occupy movements that run small busineese that rely on walk up traffic and they're reporting that the business is down, when you disrupt a small business owners livelyhood, its time to move.
Again, the occupy had its movement at the start, if it would have stopped after the first week, they'd be remembered as a effective grassroots movement, now because they're pissing off the people that they should be supporting, its now looked at as a bunch of campers free loading that should probably try to get back in the workforce.