Is the Occupy movement fading?

[dotymed]

My homepage is MSN news. I know...MSN is crap, but it allows me to see what "news" the majority of people are viewing. One of the headlines proclaims that "Two More Occupy Camps Close."

If any of those ass-wipes stayed a night, camped out in the cold winter, fighting for a cause, they would consider themselves martyrs. Anyway, this is the perception that they are selling to the public, that Occupy is over. Bullshit!

There is no way I could stay in the bitter cold night after night knowing that any minute the Gestapo will bust in to my camp and start brutalizing all inhabitants. Ending up in a jail cell with an out-sized bail standing between me and freedom. I salute the brave Occupy individuals and understand that often (especially with the violence and cold) it is best to regroup and plan in a less hostile environment.

Go OWS!

[CJCRANE]

1. They'll be back in the spring

I'm sure.

[Balbus]

4. So you're saying it's literally a "fair weather" revolution?

[CJCRANE]

11. Life and nature have their cycles

there's nothing unusual about. Things always come back stronger in the spring.

Plus see the post below mine, they're doing other things too.

[newfie11]

2. I don't think so

I think they are changing tactics.

[Balbus]

3. I hope not. They've become a laughingstock and I do enjoy laughing.

:twinkle-fingers: (we need an emoticon for that)

[Cid_B]

5. Maybe DU3...

[unionworks]

12. leading republican strategist

Who gets paid megabucks very recently said he is "frightened" by the Occupy movement. Doesn't sound like laughter to me.:evilgrin:

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[marmar]

9. "They've become a laughingstock"

Projection.

[unionworks]

10. the 1%

Aren't laughing at all.:evilgrin:

[Me.]

6. You Might Want To Check Out Occupy Foreclosures

There's plenty going on even if it's not on the front page. Chris Hayes had an extended discussion of what they're doing with foreclosures this morning.

[Fumesucker]

7. There's a lot of people wishing and hoping OWS fades..

Some of them are even on DU..

If you limit yourself to a single tactic then you are easily defeated, a moving target is far more difficult to hit.

Make TPTB play whack-a-mole, if 10th century goatherds in Afghanistan can do it then so can the 99% here.

[dotymed]

13. I DO NOT THINK that OWS is fading. IMO, OWS is the only

political movement that stands a chance of improving the lives of the 99%. I was observing what the MSM are trying to propagandize us with.

Frankly, I am disgusted by remarks like "fair weather movement" and any posts that denigrate this people powered, vital movement. IMO is is disturbing that a combination of sanctioned violence and severe weather have caused some camps to close. I also am glad that Occupy is helping people by stopping foreclosures, etc..

We have to keep the momentum going. OWS is not an inconsequential aberration on our political scene. It has the possibility of changing our society and politics, for the better, and hopefully in a permanent way.

GO OWS!

[Safetykitten]

14. Time compressed thought. The sixties did not start and end in a summer. We are in for a wild time.

[Huey P. Long]

15. The media will do what it always does. The rude one answers you-

But I will throw my 2c out. Do you think things will get better, or worse? If you think things will be getting worse, you don't have to worry about OWS. New recruits every step down. The next wave will be massive, imo. Its only a matter of time.
--

11/30/2011
The End of the Occupy Camps Is the Start of the Next Phase:
Last night, in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, the police moved in by the hundreds to clear out the Occupy encampments. In L.A., Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa used the tiredest excuse of them all: think about the children. In a city with at least 13,500 homeless kids (and that's just the ones that show up at schools), L.A. probably could have spent the money it used for the 1400 cops and 200 arrests at the City Hall camp on, say, housing some of the kids who don't want to be on the streets.

You can bet that we'll be hearing about more crackdowns as the winter progresses, until almost all the camps are gone. And to that, the Rude Pundit says, "Finally."

Don't get him wrong. He fully supports the occupiers and their colonization of urban spaces, the footholds of American renewal. He even understands why defending the camps has become so important. For some, whether fresh-faced, middle-class college student or unemployed middle-aged homeless person, the camps are a taste of what power and democracy are like. They are a small victory in a concrete swamp of constant indignity and degradation. Smelly, ugly, and full of sloppy dissent, the Rude Pundit thought they were beautiful. It's why he wanted and still wants people to donate stuff to the remaining encampments. If they're gonna stay, then he wants these hippie harbingers of the future fight to be safe and warm.

But the camps need to be seen for what they are and what they've accomplished: they had to come into being in order to show that there are large numbers of people willing to put their bodies on the line for a cause. They needed to remind us that the public square is not virtual and that civic engagement in the real world is necessary and vital for the reclamation of the country. That has been done. But right now the media is focusing too much on the camps as symbols and their eviction as a loss, with some even portraying the evictions as a victory over an ill-prepared, misguided, easily-mocked group of anarchists and leeches. Don't let the fuckers have the victory. Don't let them take back the narrative.

Of course the occupations have to be destroyed by the police. That was the point, wasn't it? Draw out the authorities. Get them to respond to your actions. Transform yourself into beings with your own agency, no longer objects to be acted upon. And how does that not bait the ones with the batons and the pepper spray and the ones who order them to attack? The Rude Pundit doesn't mourn the end of the encampments in the same way he didn't mourn moving from teenage years to adulthood. Now we've seen that action is possible, that community is possible, that mass public support is possible. It's time to move to targeted direct action, and, no, that doesn't mean supporting candidates for election. That's bullshit co-opting and dilution of the movement. Leave that to Occupy Wall Street's sympathizers. It means direct confrontation, like the new effort to stop foreclosures from occurring. (The Rude Pundit will be out there next Tuesday.)

And it means that Adbusters had it right when it declared, in the heated environment after New York was shut down, "We will turn this winter into a training ground for precision disruptions – flashmobs, stink bombs, edgy theatrics – against the megacorps and the unrepentant 1%, a festival of resistance in the snow with, or without, an encampment that'll lay the tactical foundation for our Spring Offensive."

While we need to take care of the outdoor occupiers, we cannot cling to slivers of land when we have a nation to take back.

--
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html


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