Occupy Wall Street in Cartoons

[Barry]

And how it's seen in the Red Zone:

[Barry]

[pbrinton]

What a mean spirited set of cartoons. I will not even dignify them by quoting them. Whatever made you choose these to show us?

Patrick

EDIT: I see this appears below a second post; it is the top post I am referring to, particularly the bottom three cartoons.

[Barry]

What a mean spirited set of cartoons. I will not even dignify them by quoting them. Whatever made you choose these to show us?

Patrick

EDIT: I see this appears below a second post; it is the top post I am referring to, particularly the bottom three cartoons.

Perhaps you missed my note before those cartoons: 'And how it's seen in the Red Zone:" meaning the corptocracy and their deluded followers who have drunk their tea.

["Mad" Miles]

I agree with Patrick. Also the second and third 'toon in Post #1 are derisive, insulting actually. I came of political age in 1975 and have had to deal with being dismissed as a marginal '60's wanna be ever since. It was stale then, it reeks now.

[Barry]

I agree with Patrick. Also the second and third 'toon in Post #1 are derisive, insulting actually. I came of political age in 1975 and have had to deal with being dismissed as a marginal '60's wanna be ever since. It was stale then, it reeks now.

Ok, let's see, the "one, two, three, what are we fighting for" should have been in the "red zone"

"It's made harold nostalgic" I think is fair, and it's a good thing! The fact that there are lots of boomers that have anti-war protesting experience is one of things that will broaden and strengthen the movement. There does not seem to be any danger of the Occupy movement being redundant of the 60's. The youth are in the lead and creating new paradigms, as they should, with lots of support and solidarity from the boomers.

"Pizza Place and Polling Place" is also relevant. You don't have to agree. Sure it's premature. The tea party was very focused on putting their candidates in office. Nicely enough we have time to consider our strategy, but it need's to result in changes at the ballot box. That process has yet to begin.

Actually a fellow Wacco, Jonathan Greenberg, journeyed to Wall Street to help move things in that direction. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Bi...y=1&rel=0&hd=1 and https://www.occupygovernment.org/. I'm sure there will be more about that on these pages.

Unfortunately, the key issues at hand (getting the money out of politics, ending corporate personhood, stop equivocating money with speech, etc.) are errors at the supreme court, so one election isn't going to get us there. We'll need at least another 8-12 years to bring the court back to sanity.

I don't necessarily agree with the cartoons I post. I just think they are representative of the various points of view than many people hold, and worth a gander.

["Mad" Miles]

Barry, (This got long. Feel free to move it to the "proper" file cabinet/category.)

I wasn't questioning your right to post the cartoons. And I understand you were just sharing what is out there in the MSM. but most of the cartoons were/are disparaging of the Occupy Wall Street and Everywhere movement.

And if Boomers from the Sixties participate in ways that just replicate their heyday, well, some of that's been going on for the last thirty-five years of activism, I know because I've been there/here, and while it's nice to have the added numbers, sometimes those who have not learned the lessons from the mistakes they and their cohort made in the past, can be an obstacle to progress.

Thankfully most of the activists I've worked with all this time, those who directly experienced and were active in the Sixties, evolved with the times and didn't just keep trying to replicate the Summer of Love, or The Days of Rage. That's why the guy in the easy chair cartoon is so insulting.

Such people, most of them, never quit, they've been doing stuff all along. Yeah, I know it's a cartoon, a joke, but it's a put-down and a lie in the service of the artists forced and lame humor. The new faces I saw on Saturday were predominantly young, when it came to people older than, let's say thirty-five, it was the usual suspects, those who I've gotten to know in this area since 1998 when I attended the first Progressive Festival and started organizing locally.

And since this is one of the last bastions of the counter-culture, you would think if there were some significant numbers of Hippy burnouts who hadn't demonstrated since, let's say 1972, who were coming out of the woodwork to join the Occupy Santa Rosa march and rally? They would have been visible. They weren't.

Yeah, I know, the guy is sitting passively at home in his tie-dye and beads with his bandanna headband watching TV, I get it. Good one? Not given the implied message.

Since the counter-culture and the protest politics associated with it was a heterogeneous and complex phenomenon, it's a very long discussion to go into all the various ways it was good, counter-productive and/or irrelevant to social change. Though that conversation was pretty settled by the late seventies into the early eighties.

There was a group of adults who I know, but not from political demonstrations, meetings, forums and other organizing that I saw on Saturday. But they fall into the late-forties to mid-to-late-fifties age range. I know them from the live music scene. And the OSR! event drew their participation. Not hippies, not unemployed bums (like I am currently!), not politicized activists, just good people mobilized by the current crisis and this response. That goes against the narrative in pretty much all of the cartoons below, and the conservative alarmist commentary. Along with the new activism among twenty somethings, that's a development I find hopeful and exciting.

As for any needed solutions requiring electoral success in order to be implemented... That's a huge discussion. One that has been going on for a very long time, and is well represented here on waccobb.net over the years. I would say that the question of whether electoral politics as it is currently constituted in our country, has any chance of making real, necessary and desirable for the vast majority, substantial change, is one of the central questions raised by the current mass expression of outrage and frustration.

It's being discussed, along with many other pressing issues, in the General Assemblies. It's being discussed on the internet in the social networking, blogging and alternative news and commentary venues.

Even though I advocate for my political party, I've never confused that part of my politics with the central issue of our time, the need for social movements to come together to change the agenda and make the status quo no longer profitable for those who most benefit from it. How to make real change and not just rearrange the deck chairs.

It's why I've been advocating massive, sustained, organized and coordinated NVDA for decades. It's the only thing that has a chance of rebooting the system, and/or (preferably) replacing it with a better one.

Is the Occupy! movement an example of the kind of NVDA I've been advocating (and occasionally participating in, and even more occasionally organizing) for thirty-five years? That's a complex discussion. Yes and no. It's definitely a combination of symbolic protest, semi-passive CD and NVDA. (Non-Violent Direct Action)

And it may be something new. Crowd-Sourced Open Democracy using mass consensus process without a preconceived agenda to address social and economic problems. Something that has been done in the Social Forums and in various environmental and social justice movements for quite some time. But the first time any of us have seen a mass response to socioeconomic injustice, inherent in the economic system, such as this one.

Or not systemically inherent. There are plenty of voices that think passing, or reestablishing, some regulatory laws, or removing regulatory laws (i.e. Dump The Fed! and various other laissez Fairyland schemes and proposals) or changing the leaders of finance and government, or getting rid of corruption, or this or that, will "fix" the problems. i.e. the system is good, it just needs some tweaking and change in leadership, a return to tradition and established values, to bring it back to some golden era where it worked the way it should.

So far I see little to no consensus coming from the Occupy movement on whether Capitalism is the problem, or some restored/improved form of Capitalism is the solution to problems created by the "Socialists", or the "Banksters", or the (pick your poison). Not sure whether, if ever, that difference of opinion will be resolved. And it's a pretty big one! It's also not the only basic division in points of view. We've also got the Statist/Anti-Statist issue. The Authoritarian/Anti-Authoritarian debate. Individualism/Community/Commons/Private Property debate. And so on, all related, but not the same things.

This might be the first time in forty years when that begins to happen (a system reboot and upgrade at least). I sure hope so, and I know I'm far from alone. The reactionaries on the right have started screaming to high heaven about the threat of that very thing, and throwing around exaggerations and outright lies to try and stave it off.

You heard about the Tea Party founder who has called for a hiring strike? That small business owners, all owners, should stop making new hires until the One World Government / New World Order Socialist Obama Regime and its foot soldiers/stormtroopers in the Occupy movement have stopped threatening to destroy "Free Market Capitalism" and the U.S. Constitutional government? I just read it yesterday.

With that kind of vile, dangerous tripe floating about, do you wonder why some of us object to the replication of that same narrative in a "Progressive" venue? At least without very clear and highlighted commentary which warns ahead of time, about the biased and insulting content?

Any attempt to channel the momentum and direction of this new exercise in popular democracy, into conventional electoral efforts...? Well, good luck with that.

Maybe, just maybe, down the road, party building and elections will become the agenda of the inchoate and diverse movement that has loosely coalesced but making that judgement is premature at this point. (A movement which didn't spring out of the earth on its own, there have been many precursors, whether the young creators of it realize it or not. They are well educated, and from what I can tell, they fully acknowledge who and what came before them. Both successful and not.)

And yes, I've read the OWS proposal for a process leading to a new electoral party in a year, if the/our demands are not met. Based on my reading of history, that is a possibility, but there are many obstacles to overcome before that happens in any kind of viable way.

The power of Occupy! is more about autogestion and open democratic consensus process, than it is, for now, located in the established channels of political discussion and decision making. Is it likely that this energy will become routinized, coopted, institutionalized (in all senses of that word!?), professionalized and mainstreamed? For sure. That's the pattern. To the extent it is invited into the mainstream will it lead to substantial, radical, systemic change? Yeah.... Tell us another one.

If you want to push the Occupy! "movement" into conventional liberal democratic party politics, which I know a significant sector of the liberal scene would certainly like to see, you're going to have to spend a lot of time in the General Assemblies, do a lot of writing and networking, and change a lot of pretty well, already made up minds. A significant discussion about the threat of cooptation by either of the dominant parties, the Democratic Party in particular, has already happened.

I will not promote the Green Party in the Occupy! scene (General Assemblies, Smaller group discussions at the occupation in Santa Rosa). I will represent for my party, and explain if asked, but mostly I will listen, and eventually ask questions, try to get a sense of what consensus is jelling, and only offer the fruits of my experience as an activist, if invited. That won't stop me from commenting in my usual venues, obviously!!?

I spend a lot of time every day reading about current events, and lately mostly about the Occupy Wall Street excitement. Best thing I read today was forwarded in a compilation of commentary by Marty Bennett, Living Wage Coalition of Sonoma County co-director, it's by Rebecca Solnit, one of our best writers about social change movements and politics in recent decades.

She and at least two of her siblings are also active in various aspects of those same movements. I've never met her, but I know two of her brothers fairly well. She's also a very creative artist in the medium of lovely and inspiring prose. Her commentary and reporting, published yesterday, addresses many more details with regard to the questions I raised above. It's also a very good history of what has led to this juncture and what is going on right now:

https://www.truth-out.org/letter-dea...ope/1318949571

[Barry]

I trust this is more to your liking (and mine!)

[Barry]

[Barry]

[kinlinda]

Is Hilarious!

[Barry]

[Barry]

[Barry]

[Jonas Martin]

We have the money that they rely on for their escapades and games that they play. We can take that power away by taking our money back and putting it somewhere real and local. Bank Transfer Day on Saturday is a good first step. But credit unions are more than just a place to keep your money. They’re your neighbors, too. Want to see how the bank treats your neighbors? learnmore.asmarterchoice.org.

[Barry]

[Barry]

[Barry]

[Iolchan]

MR. MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-BANKING-COMPLEX, ESQ.


- Senate Bill 1867 -

"The Duopoly at Work"
=OR=
"Bi-Partisan Co-operation"





Organize the Unorganized






"Blessing and Sanctifying World War III"

FINANCIAL INTEREST: "Now remember, if we have another, I'll depend on you to
make it a very holy war."

MINISTER: "Yes sir, I'll do my best, sir."

Relativity



Source:

The Best of Art Young, Vanguard Press, New York, 1936

Note: This book is in the Robert F. Wagner Labor Library,
at the Tamiment Institute, at N.Y.U., on Washington Square

[Barry]

[Barry]

(thanks to Braggi)

[Barry]

[hales]

Thanks, Barry, I appreciate humor as a powerful way to share and communicate complex ideas and sentiments.. we don't always have to agree with something to see the humor in something, but when we do, I think that it helps to open us up to a broader way of perceiving things.. : )

For instance, I LOVED it when Stephen Colbert was PAID to roast George Bush (the younger) and he didn't even seem to notice that he had been well and truly skewered.. When humor comes in to play, I think that all bets are off, there is a wildness to to it that can have very surprising effects.. for instance, pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes.. ; )

Scott.

[Barry]

[Barry]

[Barry]

[Barry]

[Barry]

[Barry]

[Barry]