One of the things I’m enjoying most about the OWS movement is the creativity of some of the offshoot efforts. Like this.
By themselves, such efforts aren’t going to change or rock the world. But multiply these sorts of ideas by thousands – or millions – and you’ve got a movement that only channels massive amounts of pent up frustration and anger over our broken economic and political systems, and not only has a strong identity, but is life-affirming and fun. And as any good organizer knows, you can have the most committed people and the most righteous cause possible, but if people aren’t having fun participating it’s very difficult to sustain. The encampments may fade as the novelty wears off and the weather worsens in much of the country, but if the creativity and fun blossom, the movement will simply shift to other tactics. It doesn’t look like this is going to fade away any time soon.
Funny you should mention that “Fun” thing. I used to be a big Obama supporter and had lots of fun doing it. I still am a supporter and there’s no way I’d vote for anyone else but the “Fun” is GONE.
I don’t know what to say about that. I’m sure others will chime in. But the OWS movement is FUN to watch and the results coming out of it are just amazing. It’s about time.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I think we know on which side of those doors Jesus would be
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Thanks for the link. It’s always good to start a day with some out-right laughter. When he pulled up the wood shim I had to hit pause I was laughing so hard.
Small quibble (and I do hate being a Debbie Downer): Banks do not have “mail rooms” for this sort of thing. They have “Mail Processing Centers” that are subcontractors–the direct mail marketers who sent the bulk mail solicitation in the first place. So, yeah, they might have meetings. But, they have a strong incentive not to tell the banks what’s happening.
Instead, in the near future, we may receive Postage Paid Reply Cards “requesting additional forms” etc., instead of envelops. See how they’ll segue right around the problem if it gets big enough? And if you send the postcard to get the envelop, well, then they’ll definitely have your address, buddy, in a database and those mysterious bar codes on the original envelop pretty much tell them who you are already.
I once worked at a database company that got swallowed by R. R. Donnelly and, let me tell ya, they’ve GOT YOU AND ME PEGGED and they trade files, back and forth, with the Big Credit Rating Bureaus. It is so, so easy to get YOU “accidentally” confused with a dead-beat felon who has a similar name, your credit score drops like a rock and you have trouble buying a car or a house and spend hours proving you are NOT who they say you are. If the bill from the Post Awful significantly impacts their bottom line, they might get that petty. Yeah, they might. Jus’ saying what looks like a harmless lark might have long-term unforeseen consequences for YOU personally.
All the above assumes the Post Awful won’t toss your wood-filled envelop in the recycle bin as soon as they receive it so it never reaches the intended victim of your prank. You really think they’re going to hand-process and sort these things into bins for delivery? They are largely dependent upon income from Bulk Mail and, therefore, in league with the Direct Marketing Association…
Bwa-ha-ha! Feeling paranoid yet?
I would be delighted to force these folks to using post cards with requests for additional information.
And if bulk mail went away, I would be very happy. And the only reason the income from bulk mail is important is that the US Postal Service is no longer seen as an instrument of government communications with and between the people. It got subsumed as an instrument of commerce. If the US Postal Service was seen as essential to government as a court or a register of deeds, it would not be required to break even or make a profit. And the accounting of its costs would be more honest.
Nixon broke it because he wanted to break the Postal Workers Union.
Occupy Columbia SC is having a march today in support of local businesses and against bigboxification.
Occupy Nashville got a federal court injunction that prohibits the State of Tennessee from evicting or arresting them. Judge said if you can’t protest on the Legislative Plaza, where can you protest?
Occupy El Pas is in its third week.
Occupy Laredo starts its second week.
Occupy Lubbock will have its first event soon.
Occupy Mississippi is still having general assemblies.
The City Council of Irvine CA (Orange County?) decided that if money was speech, tents were speech as well and allowed an encampment.
Occupy Birmingham (AL) had their first brush with police when they had an all-night picket at the bank.
Occupy Huntsville (AL) attended their Congressman’s Town Hall meeting and asked questions about money and politics to the boos of the Republican faithful.
Occupy Pensacola was evicted from Martin Luther King Plaza (!) but allowed to have an encampment in front of City Hall.
Occupy Wall Street encampments all over are having to deal with the homeless folks attracted by the free food and entertainment. In Atlanta, one of the key actions of Occupy Atlanta is to ensure that a homeless shelter downtown is saved from developers who want to use its pricey real estate for a new office building. One of the homeless people in the Occupy Atlanta encampment claims that Occupy Atlanta, by keeping him busy, helped him break a 30-year crack habit. At least for the moment.
Occupy Asheville has not been as good dealing with the homeless, mostly because of the higher ratio of homeless to occupiers. Occupy Bloomington (IN) has sort of the same experience. And in New York, the NYPD has been reported (NY Daily News) as sending the homeless to Zucotti Park as a tactic to destroy the encampment by overwhelming it with disruptive people.
Occupy Hartford CT tweeted a picture of their encampment in the snow as did Occupy Lancaster (PA) and Occupy Harrisburg.
An astounding number of Occupy Wall Street encampments are on sidewalks only. And too many of them are maintained without sleeping by having shifts of rotating picketers throughout the night and no permanent residents.
In Raleigh, the Raleigh Police Department tried to take away the occupiers signs and arrested a disabled woman in a wheelchair for sitting on the sidewalk.
And with Occupy Nashville’s eviction and Occupy Richmond’s eviction, Republican governors and mayors are showing they can be every bit as oppressive as the Democrats like Hickenlooper, Emmanuel, Quan, and now Adams. And the pointed destruction of personal property by shoveling tents and supplies into garbage trucks has been striking. The City of Richmond even used a large front-end loader to make the job go faster.
The Occupy Wall Street encampments that have been relatively unmolested have made progress through their general assemblies in developing a platform. They still say that it will take a long time because not enough folks are getting their ideas into the mix.
And watch what happens to Occupy Tampa (site of the GOP convention in 2012) and Occupy Charlotte (site of the Democratic convention). Both mayors “don’t want to set precedents for how protesters will be handled at those conventions.” So how will the GOP and Democratic convention organizers ask the cities to handle protesters? Will people be able to show their displeasure with both parties? Or will it be like the 2004 Republican convention in New York where 500,000 marched against the wars, there was no media coverage, protesters were confined to “free speech zones” well away from and notice by convention-goers, and over 2000 protesters were detained in a warehouse converted into a makeshift detention center for most of the convention. Remember also that this GOP convention was the purple-heart bandaid convention.