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u/NavyDean 54m ago
And the people who helped cause the 2008 crash are back in charge again.
Such as the current head of the SEC.
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u/FiveFingerDisco 2h ago
The last gasp of the American revolutionary spirit.
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u/paper_airplanes_are_ 1h ago
The biggest issue with these protests is they lack a cohesive ask. I remember going and chatting with these protestors back in the day and I got wildly different answers from each participant as to why they were there. Everything from corporations are bad to legalize weed to religion is bad (even though the local churches were letting them camp on their lawns when they were kicked out of the public parks). It was just a mess that had zero policy prescriptions. Even the No Kings protests were somewhat like this too. Everyone brings their pet issue and nothing is accomplished. It’s really frustrating because the Occupy Wall Street issue started out as a protest against wealth inequality which is a legitimate issue.
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u/Scaryclouds 1h ago edited 1h ago
Occupy Wall Street deliberately made the choice to be “leaderless” which is amiable given the fundamental issue they were protesting: social stratification. A very much, live the way you talk.
Yet it fundamentally meant the movement would never accomplish anything. In the end you need to have some strategy, some platform/asks, and some people who will be the face of that.
Wouldn’t surprise me if there is a distinct group of OWSers to diehard MAGAers despite the obvious contradictions.
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u/fredthefishlord 50m ago
No kings is much more cohesive. Even though everyone has their own strands, there's still a clear unifying goal
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u/Wabbajack001 43m ago
But it way less effective cause you guys only do them twice a year. People were talking about occupied wall Street daily cause they cause daily chaos.
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u/getrichnever 1h ago
I don't think the lack of a coherent ask invalidates these protests. If anything Its more of an indictment of the US political system that these people never found any sort of alignment in politics other than Bernie Sanders who was continually sabotaged by the democratic establishment.
It's heartbreaking to think of how much better the world would be right now if just a few of the ideas from occupy has been addressed by government. Wealth inequality and its resulting toxic effects on democracy have gotten so much worse since 2011.
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u/jawstrock 19m ago
did these people show up to vote in primaries though? The tea party didn't find alignment, they created it by running candidates and showing up to vote in primaries. All the occupy people I knew wouldn't participate in federal politics, they just wanted stuff to happen.
Granted the tea party being funded by billionaires made running in primaries a lot easier.
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u/paper_airplanes_are_ 14m ago
It doesn’t invalidate the sentiment but it renders them way less effective.
Also this narrative that Bernie Sanders was sabotaged needs to die. He wasn’t. He got less votes consistently throughout the primaries and people rallied around the moderate dem (even though Biden turned out to be quite progressive). It’s as simple as that. It serves no one to fall into left wing populism and start tilting at windmills like MAGA “drain the swamp” people do.
Edit: also imagine how much better the world would have been if Hilary or Kamala had gotten elected. If any of these movements had actually put their effort into electing democrats even if they are “establishment dems”.
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u/letsburn00 1h ago edited 7m ago
For people who wonder what created this and why it failed, it's got to be seen as part of its time.
This occured just after a right wing "populist" movement appeared, the tea party. The Tea party formed in theory because when the banks were bailed out by the government, people were upset. So under Obama, a portion of money was set up to "bail out" people who were underwater on their loans. This was effectively the same thing the banks got, but went to poor people instead. This infuriated some people, leading to a fox news commentary that it was "money going to losers." The tea party was formed, claiming to be an organic conservative movement, it had rallies and protests And envirigorated wthe right wing.
The tea party was actually formed by a group of billionaires, it was not organic and had a PR team running messaging and helping to coordinate rallies. However it portrayed itself as organic and grassroots. It also effectively replaced the Republican leadership and was the ultra rich asserting it's control but with a different face from the discredited Bush years.
Occupy wall street was an attempt to have a left wing equivalent. It however was largely grassroots. It actively discouraged centralised leadership and messaging. This meant it did not have message control and groups would vote on actions. On top of this, the media actively were against it and used the lack of messaging to make it look disorganized and like it had no goals. The government also was against it because it largely targeted the ultra rich. It has been accused that one reason the Boston Marathon bombing happened was the FBI was too busy spying on occupy wall street.
The reality is that true grassroots non organized groups rarely succeed and many "organic" movements were actually organized, such as Rosa Parks fully planning to get arrested. You need people who are focussed and organized to get messaging centered. There are problems with this of course. There is a risk of selfish people taking "leadership positions" and using their power entirely to enrich themselves. This can also happen when fake groups with similar names appear. For instance the legitimate and largely state by state Black lives matter movement had a fake "national" group form who basically just stole the Money they got from donations.
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u/counterfitster 15m ago
It has been accused that one reason the Boston Marathon bombing happened was the FBI was too busy spying on occupy wall street.
That's a weird claim, considering the OWS camp was cleared ~18 months before the Marathon bombing.
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u/letsburn00 8m ago
They were reported to the CIA by the Russian government around 18 months prior to the bombing. They were given only a limited review by the FBI a few months before that (in 2011) and were cleared by them.
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u/WTFwhatthehell 9m ago
to make it look disorganized and like it had no goals.
Not exactly untrue.
It was disorganised.
When every member of movement has their own cause its little more than "angry crowd is angry and want.... something....."
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u/ThrowitB8 35m ago
The most gentle and kind man teaches philosophy and ethics at my university. He has always been extremely open and leaving conversation up to students interpretation. He told us a story about a prior student who is extremely conservative, who by the end of undergrad ended up camping out for OWS in 2012. The prior student ended up emailing and updating said professor.
I guess in some ways higher education does lead to “liberalism” in other ways I presume the introduction of philosophy/ethics leads people to draw their own conclusions about things.
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u/zsreport 13m ago
When I was in high school back in the 80s, there were a couple Alex P. Keaton clones in my AP history and government classes. I ran into one of them a few years later, after college, and he had become so liberal that I looked moderate by comparison. He told me he kept in touch with the other guy who had also done a political 180.
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u/mrev_art 1h ago
Immediately after this the oligarchs started pushing identity politics, HARD.