Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

it also helps to distinguish between wrong ideas and actively stupid ideas.

(the latter being more prone to only be expressible in actively stupid prose)

i guessi just think criticizing a text "from the standpoint of writing-as-craft" is a pretty stupid idea. most things i've ever read in all three were competently written

competent is a great bar to set for something you seek out to read voluntarily when you could be doing other things with your time

dude... lol

anyways your critique is lacking in specifics wanna provide some examples

also to the extent you're criticizing something _only_ as a text, is there anything but "the standpoint of writing-as-craft"

the nation doesn't have the establishment jr. vibe of jacobin. that counts for something.

jfc where do u come up with this shit

(xp)

jfc where do u come up with this shit

― flopson, Thursday, September 19, 2013 5:27 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno ask the guys at jacobin i bet they learned all the references in grad school, lol

you're coming off really butthurt rn for no explicable reason... what's the bfd?

just two bros, zinging, nbd

...idgi

there needs to be a comic about this exact argument

what's with ppl hating on grad school btw? like why is "grad school" considered an adequate dismissal of something?

fuckin ivory tower intellectuals with their smooth hands

this thread = great moments in leftism

oh lol xp dan m said that

what's with ppl hating on grad school btw? like why is "grad school" considered an adequate dismissal of something?

― flopson, Thursday, September 19, 2013 5:40 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my problem isn't with ppl going to grad school, its with ppl who either metaphorically or literally have yet to graduate.

more seriously (and this is really gmil-level-picayune-crap) i think i went from viewing jacobin as something interesting and occasionally irritating to something irritating and occasionally interesting after they wrote that terribly bratty dumb response to frank's piece in the baffler on occupy (i think we even discussed all that way up itt). they really went to the wall defending the idea that somehow their exaltation of 'class warfare in the onion's sex house' was more 'progressive' and 'open to radical potential' or whatever than frank's more historically validated cynicism w/r/t the relationship between enjoyable cultural things and actual change in society. and i mean, not just that, they went to the wall defending a zillion silly things. and they _also_ missed the point of frank's 'grad school' criticism. it wasn't that i started agreeing with jacobin more or less after that article, just that i found their attitude a million times more insufferable.

This is kind of a xp to the Best Music Writing thread, but usually after S17 / May Day actions, a ton of people filter from Zuccotti to Blarney Stone a few blocks away, and I was sitting one table over from D4phne all night and really wanted to ask if she was using Kickstarter money to buy those beers. Thought it would be waaaaay too creepy to bug her about, tho.

so you didn't like one article, big woop. i didn't read that baffler thing as much about the actual articles it was referencing, more as a general pt about how baffler's 90's cynicism doesn't fit the post-occupy moment. jacobin do have more of an optimistic vibe in general. i don't see how you could be soured on the mag since then though, just keeps getting better imo. not sure what those zillion silly things are, there are occasional duds but it's really solid

you can tell ilx belongs to the left because a shitty little comic turned into a bunch of dudes fighting over left wing organs

i love jacobin, the baffler, the nation, even tni, ftr, all have published great stuff by great writers

c'mon max, get in the spirit of things and talk smack about the yacht rock article, you know you want to.

(flopson: if you could point me to recent articles you think are good and solid i'd appreciate it. on that baffler thing i mean for a 'keep it posi, unity' vibe, it was actually a really nasty piece of work and nagl. also i guess i don't have an optimistic vibe myself, so there's that. and i smell a rat when you get this really sanctimonious stuff about tous ensemble all while trying to get traction as the guys who 'don't pull punches' or whatever. you can't have it both ways, except i guess if your 'polemic' is all over like who thinks youtube webisodes are more important or whether when we watch Lincoln we agree on the right reason to denounce it for concessions to hegemonic racialized notions of history or etc.)

Is the real legacy of Occupy the 99% meme? I have a lot of ideological criticisms of it as a movement, but I see unrest globally and think one of the problems is the lack of a class analysis among the disaffected. The 99% meme seemed to get people to examine their political life through the lens of class war, and this will hopefully bear fruits. I guess I'm asking how pervasive those ideas are? To what extent can we continue to see that ideological perspective among campaigners?

'campaigners' as in people seeking elected office or as in people pursuing a goal

Campaigners as in folks who'll get out and make some noise if their library is closing etc.

yeah ime the 1% meme in particular actually seems more widely used than 99%, and i wonder about to what degree that's a reflection of the awareness of heterogeneity within the 99% among the POC & working class people who lead a lot of the fights here in DC.

between the popularization of the ideas and the people i know from occupy who've gone from say "waiter" to "communications guy for restaurant worker advocacy group" and the like who continue to use these ideas in their work, i'd say campaigners still get plenty of use out of them.

democratic socialism (influencing democratic party from the left by running candidates in primaries)

did we all read the "rise of the new new left" article

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/12/the-rise-of-the-new-new-left.html

It’s impossible to know whether the protest against inequality will be such a movement. But the forces that drove it are unlikely to subside. Many young Americans feel that economic unfairness is costing them a shot at a decent life. Such sentiments have long been widespread among the poor. What’s new is their prevalence among people who saw their parents achieve—and expected for themselves—some measure of prosperity, the people Chris Hayes calls the “newly radicalized upper-middle class.”

If history is any guide, the sentiments behind Occupy will find their way into the political process, just as the anti-Vietnam movement helped create Eugene McCarthy’s presidential bid in 1968, and the civil-rights movement bred politicians like Andrew Young, Tom Bradley, and Jesse Jackson. That’s especially likely because Occupy’s message enjoys significant support among the young. A November 2011 Public Policy Polling survey found that while Americans over 30 opposed Occupy’s goals by close to 20 points, Millennials supported them by 12.

trying to craft a national narrative out of a nyc primary election with 20% turnout is dumb for a lot of reasons

trying to suggest that the millenial vote won de blasio the election is dumb when youth turnout was ~11% and people across age groups voted almost identically

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/elections/2013/nyc-primary/mayor/exit-polls.html

youth turnout was 11% of the total, rather, idk what the actual turnout number is, probably even lower

it's a news hook for a thinkpiece about demographics and ideology nationwide, not a suggestion that Blas & the Kids are gonna save democracy

read past paragraph 1

if a hillary clinton hack can reinvent himself by saying 'tale of two cities' a few times I am pretty sure clinton will be the ows candidate if it's in the political winds

What if, in other words, the harbinger election didn’t take place in New York but in Colorado—where a hyper-ideological, insurrectionist, corporate-money-soaked minority, as I pointed out the other day, recalled two progressive legislatures for daring to favor background checks for gun purchases even though Coloradans want background checks by a margin of 68 to 27 percent.

Beinart wants to think big. So let’s think big. Given a precedent like that, the result of our current trends might not be more socialism, but once more a stark showdown between socialism and barbarism. Apathy and social misery might make fertile ground for some charismatic demagogue, preaching scapegoating and a narrative of violent redemption…

But that’s a big, big prediction—and again, as a historian, I don’t like big predictions. Let’s stay close to the ground, and the near-term, instead. Beinart has amassed some very convincing poll numbers about the mood of young voters. He has written, “If Hillary Clinton is shrewd, she will embrace it, and thus narrow the path for a populist challenger.” Hillary Clinton surely reads Peter Beinart. Let’s hope she reads and heeds this. That would be a very nice start. What will come next, frankly, nobody knows.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/176267/peter-beinart-right-about-new-new-left#

If that is so, another scenario looks like this: young citizens motivated by left-leaning passions run into a brick wall again and again and again trying to turn their convictions into power. The defining story of our next political era becomes not a New New Left but a corrosive disillusionment that drives the country into ever deeper sloughs of apathy.

gonna be putting my money here

civil disobedience + provoking the state to change or shed blood is the way to go

what about comics on doubleyou doubleu doubleyou dot blogger dot com will those help?

If that is so, another scenario looks like this: young citizens motivated by left-leaning passions run into a brick wall again and again and again trying to turn their convictions into power. The defining story of our next political era becomes not a New New Left but a corrosive disillusionment that drives the country into ever deeper sloughs of apathy.

gonna be putting my money here

― iatee, Friday, September 20, 2013 7:25 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cynicism's an easy way out and fixing shit is hard, sure--but corrosive political disillusionment & apathy is what we've already had for most of the last decade. People will get off the wagon frustrated with the challenges ahead, obviously, but I suspect that moments like global justice, Occupy, and whatever comes next will press lots them to pivot to finding ways around--or through--that brick wall.

iatee it is so sad that you have already turned into a disillusioned cynic, aren't you like 23?

here in Eugene the Occupy folks have metastasized into an Occupy Medical free clinic, a bunch of people working against illegal foreclosures, and a homeless activist splinter group called SLEEPS (Safe and LEgally Entitled Places to Sleep), they have a permanent demonstration going on downtown with two perfect signs:

LEGALIZE SLEEP

HOW DO YOU SLEEP?

in terms of good potential memes, I think "LEGALIZE SLEEP" has serious potential.

i like it

i've just been reminded of the weird and funny final days of ODC, where a group of guys decided to go on 'sleep strike' until the 'no sleeping in parks' enforcement was lifted

"i think maybe there's something lacking here guys, strategically"

what are we talking about?

oh wait, when i loaded the page it hid the last 20+ posts. so confused.

lol

hmmm

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/09/owss-rolling-jubilee-refuses-to-explain-what-theyve-done-with-590000-despite-promises-of-full-transparency.html

well that's unfortunate.

eh, article is overwritten and sensationalistic. buries the lede about the communications and what's forthcoming.

full transparency never means 'everything, as it happens'.

not saying everything is great or not, but yeah nov is 'around the corner' from late sept, and the article is stupid to pretend otherwise.

agree. even so, it's being run up the flagpole by insurrectionists clowns yelling 'SEE WE SHOULD HAVE BURNED THE MONEY'