Occupy Newark's compelling on-line rollout

Strongly against this. (0.00 / 0)

The 1% isn't in Newark.  Go to Wall Street if you want to occupy.  Newark can't be wasting its limited law enforcement resources supervising this, which they'd be forced to do.  

People are dying on the streets in Newark.  That's where the police's focus should be.  On another note: don't occupy if you didn't vote.  

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by: Matthew Jordan @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 01:54:20 AM UTC

Matt (4.00 / 1)

This is going on all over the country. What makes you think everybody can hop a train or taxi to Wall Street?

It makes complete sense to protest economic unnecessary economic struggle where people are struggling.

What makes you think people participating did not vote?  

It's not a particularly snappy signature, but here's what I think we need in the next NJ Democratic State Chair.  

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by: Rosi Efthim @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 02:03:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Better argument... (0.00 / 0)

...for OT than ON.  Wall Street is a quick PATH ride, which runs 24/7, from Newark.

If this was seriously about the 99% versus the 1%, the movement would be occupying the Prudential Center, where the 1% could be confronted on a regular basis.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 02:32:15 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Anyone that can get to Newark can get to Wall Street. (0.00 / 0)

My comment on voting was more general.  26% voted in this past election.  I think it's safe to say a good amount of these (and other) occupiers didn't participate in the election.  

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by: Matthew Jordan @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 03:00:45 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Matt (4.00 / 1)

I don't think you mean it that way, but I think you make a mistake appearing to look down your nose at anybody who didn't vote in the last election.

If people don't vote, it doesn't only mean that they've failed, it also means we failed.  

It's not a particularly snappy signature, but here's what I think we need in the next NJ Democratic State Chair.  

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by: Rosi Efthim @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 03:22:59 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Seriously? (0.00 / 0)

I don't do much, but I do what I can do.  I don't consider that a failure.  You do what you can do, which is considerably more than what I do, and I don't consider that a failure.

When people who claim to have serious complaints about how our country or our state or our counties or our municipalities are run, particularly with regards to how the 1% control everything at the expense of the 99%, don't vote, they failed, not any "we" in any sense of the word.

As much as I have argued in the past that progressives should have organized to impact the redistricting process so that there could be more competitive elections that would engage the electorate or that progressives should organize credible primary election challenges against establishment Democrats, our failure to do this does not justify anyone not voting.

What was the voter turnout in LD16?  I am willing to bet that it was higher than 26%.  I am also willing to bet that it was higher than 26% in LD2, LD11, LD14, LD27, and LD38.  I am also willing to bet that it was lower than 26% in LD28, LD29, and LD34, where Democratic Party machine politicians do far more to serve the 1% than they do for the 99%, but I don't see Ras Baraka or anyone else who is going to be occupying Newark doing anything about that.

I don't know what Matt does, but I am going to go out on a limb and guess that he does more than enough to justify looking down his nose at anybody who didn't vote in the last election.  You don't have to, but there is no need to scold someone who chooses to do so.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 05:19:16 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Why shouldn't you look down at people who don't vote? (0.00 / 0)

How can you complain if you aren't voting?  

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by: Matthew Jordan @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 00:59:30 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Agree and Disagree (0.00 / 0)

There are elements of the 1% in Newark, but it does not appear that this has anything to do with that.  This seems to be more of an effort to hijack the OWS movement, which is so amorphous that it is just begging to be hijacked, for intermural political purposes.

Personally, I think that we should be encouraging everyone, Democrats and Republicans, to occupy their election districts by running for County Committee seats in an effort to change both the Democratic and Republican parties and force them to be more responsive to their constituents rather than the highest bidders.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 02:14:01 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

rachael'sdad (4.00 / 1)

Oh, come on.

We just went through an election where only 26% bothered to vote. We elected a bunch of Democrats, which isn't quite as rewarding as it sounds, given how many smart people object to the doings of some of those Democrats.

I'm electorally-focused. You are, too. So are most participants at every level at Blue Jersey. I obviously see the value, as you do.

And I do hope Occupy sees the awesome power they may be capable of summoning and directing it electorally - among other paths. But I can't fancy myself as some smartypants of the electoral path ready and willing to dictate to Occupy what they should be doing. That strikes me as massively disrespectful. At this point they capture the news every night and are ruling the social media we also live by. Barely anyone paid the least attention to our little Nov. 8 election. That suggests to me there's more going on here. Maybe in addition to suggesting what people committed enough to sleep ... outside ... in ... the ... cold should be doing with their 24/7, we should be listening to what drives them, instead of being so willing to tell them what ought to drive them.  

It's not a particularly snappy signature, but here's what I think we need in the next NJ Democratic State Chair.  

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by: Rosi Efthim @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 03:20:34 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

People sleep outside in the cold... (0.00 / 0)

...for a lot of reasons.  I used to do it a lot to buy concert tickets.

Others do it, because it is more fun to be part of a spectacle that everybody is talking about, but hasn't changed anything, than to be focused and organized enough to have an agenda with goals and objectives and the ability to design and implement a plan to achieve those goals and objectives.

I don't believe in street protests.  I do not believe that they have ever accomplished anything other than put protestors in the position to be beaten up or killed.  Yes, political operatives and volunteers get beaten up and even killed from time to time as well, but it doesn't happen nearly as often, and they accomplish far more in both the short and the long run.

I am sure that there are some serious people in the midst of all of the nonsense and maybe they do have a plan on how best to harness the energy of this movement, but I think that it is just as possible that the serious people are purposefully keeping this movement from having agendas, direction, and leaders, because this movement may have been conceived by the same dark forces who created the Tea Party Movement and is serving the same dark ends by distracting those who might have otherwise been engaged in the political process, but instead are camping out and partying.

Yes, this theory is far-fetched and hopefully completely untrue, but neither implausible or impossible.  You don't have to fancy yourself as some smartypants of the electoral path ready and willing to dictate to Occupy what they should be doing, but that doesn't mean that I can't.  And yes, it is massively disrespectful, because I choose to not have any respect for what they are doing and will not have any respect for them until they come inside and start doing instead of talking.

That said, I do hope that they do their best to stay safe and avoid being beaten up or killed.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 05:45:43 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

The historical record suggests otherwise... (4.00 / 1)

I don't believe in street protests.  I do not believe that they have ever accomplished anything other than put protestors in the position to be beaten up or killed.

Are you suggesting that the movements lend by the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, just to name two, didn't accomplish anything? Right there are two examples, that of the US Civil Rights Movement and of the Indian Independence Movement, that did accomplish a great deal. I could go on to mention several others throughout human history, all have the common theme of people rising up and taking to the streets because the political system in which they lived refused to reflect the popular will.

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by: Alex @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 12:29:31 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

As if (0.00 / 0)

on cue:

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/2...

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by: SmartyJones @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 12:51:15 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Both are exceptions... (0.00 / 0)

...that proved the rule.  In both cases, the oppressed people had no or very limited access to a democratic process that could change their situation, although after seeing Laurence Fishburne's one-man performance as Thurgood Marshall, I would argue that Marshall's work in the courts were as impactful if not moreso than King's street protests.

Aside from the success of the civil rights movement, which ultimately depended on an otherwise ineffective President having his brains blown out (do we really want to see this happen again?) and his replacement being effective enough to take advantage of a terrible situation, street protests led to the debacle at the emocratic National Convention, which played a huge role in electing an already discredited and disgraced Richard Nixon President.

Primarily because the Secret Service has become as good at their jobs as they are, I think that a repeat of what happened in 1968 is more likely than 1963.  Am I the only person who thinks that an occupation of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions are an inevitability?

And because the Republican convention is first, I predict that they will be smart enough to allow the OWS movement to wreak havoc on their convention, making themselves look sympathetic.  Conversely, the Democrats, who will typically be unable to commit to either embracing or rejecting the movement will try to do both and look very bad in the process.

Yes, our democratic process in this country and state is dying, but it is not dead.  If this was 2001 or 2002, I would agree that we would have plenty of time to allow the OWS movement to evolve and mature organically, but it is 2011 going on 2012, we are in the midst of an existential crisis, and OWS is a wild card that has the potential to make the situation dramatically better or dramatically worse.  I don't think that we have the time to wait to see how things shake out, especially when we shouldn't have to.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 14:02:25 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Then there must be a lot of exceptions (0.00 / 0)

If two mass movements that awakened those in power to the need for change, when the powerful would have been otherwise happy to maintain the status quo, are "exceptions" then I guess there are a lot of exceptions. Human history is filled with mass movements of people willing to risk arrest, torture, and loss of life to achieve something that was impossible by simply waiting for those in power to catch up. I'm simply offering examples to counter your assertion that such movements have never (emphasis added) accomplished anything. They most certainly have.

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by: Alex @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 16:43:26 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Occupy because voting hasn't made a difference (0.00 / 0)

I'd offer another interpretation. It may very well be that people support OWS precisely because they see little point to voting in the first place. For example, I was looking at a graph shares of  income in this country over the last four decades and what becomes readily apparent is that this has become an increasingly unequal society regardless of which of the two parties has held party in DC. It is precisely in that context that so many people are alienated from a political system that they view as corrupt at its core and uncaring with respect to the real problems people face. Add to that the fact that (a point frequently made by rachel's dad) the electoral map is so often rigged to protect entrenched office holders, and voters are left with the impression that their vote fundamentally doesn't mean anything. What is left, then, when people feel that this political system is hopelessly broken? They will either tune out or take to the streets.

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by: Alex @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 12:39:50 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Over the long haul... it appears pretty consistent (0.00 / 0)

United States, 1922-2007.
Bottom 99 percent Top 1 percent
1922 63.30% 36.70%
1929 55.80% 44.20%
1933 66.70% 33.30%
1939 63.60% 36.40%
1945 70.20% 29.80%
1949 72.90% 27.10%
1953 68.80% 31.20%
1962 68.20% 31.80%
1965 65.60% 34.40%
1969 68.90% 31.10%
1972 70.90% 29.10%
1976 80.10% 19.90%
1979 79.50% 20.50%
1981 75.20% 24.80%
1983 69.10% 30.90%
1986 68.10% 31.90%
1989 64.30% 35.70%
1992 62.80% 37.20%
1995 61.50% 38.50%
1998 61.90% 38.10%
2001 66.60% 33.40%
2004 65.70% 34.30%
2007 65.40% 34.60%

"Where ever you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Bonzai

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by: William Weber (WjcW) @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 13:50:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Sources!!!! (0.00 / 0)

Can we PLEASE have an informal rule here that you ALWAYS source a statistic like this!!!

As to consistency: variations of 20% to 44% are not, to my mind, "consistent." A 15% difference between 1976 and 2007 is quite significant.  

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com

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by: Jersey Jazzman @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 02:37:44 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Below (0.00 / 0)

Sources: 1922-1989 data from Wolff (1996). 1992-2007 data from Wolff (2010).

Average is 32.38%, standard deviation 5.5%.

As of 2007 (long time ago), we are 6% off the mean.

"Where ever you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Bonzai

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by: William Weber (WjcW) @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 14:07:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Link to researcher. (0.00 / 0)

http://www.levyinstitute.org/p...

"Where ever you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Bonzai

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by: William Weber (WjcW) @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 14:16:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Actual government-published data, on the other hand,.. (0.00 / 0)

...suggest otherwise:

CBO

and

Census Bureau

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by: Alex @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 16:38:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You will need to (0.00 / 0)

expand your scope to include the same range... not just from 1967 on...

"Where ever you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Bonzai

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by: William Weber (WjcW) @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 17:00:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Why... (0.00 / 0)

...will I need to? Data ranges are arbitrary, the ones you cite no different than the ones I do. If that's your only response to my citing of actual government-published data, I'm afraid you'll just go around and around. All the published data show a worsening in the US Gini index. If you choose to ignore that, so be it. Meanwhile, you're avoiding the main point I was making: that of popular alienation from a political system that seems insensitive and uncaring of people's real concerns prompting many people seeing street protest as the only means to express their frustration.

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by: Alex @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 17:06:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

My point... (0.00 / 0)

was that it's not considerably different than where we were 100 years ago...

Yes, it's much worse than 1976, but 1976 was a historical lowpoint.

I've no opinion on the protesters (other than the ones I know personally).


"Where ever you go, there you are." - Buckaroo Bonzai

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by: William Weber (WjcW) @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 17:24:24 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

voting isn't enough (0.00 / 0)

Voting is the bare minimum that people must do to enable a democracy to function at all, but to make it function effectively, citizens need to be educated, engaged, and organized.

I think that the numbers above prove that change is minimal if not nonexistent if the only thing that people do is vote.  However, the Dean campaign in 2003-4 provided us with a model for grassroots organizing that the Obama campaign perfected in 2008.  The only problem is that they stopped organizing after they won and to varying degrees, we allowed them to get away with this.

We also have to stop organizing around Presidential elections.  We need to recognize that organization has to take place at every level of government and every level of the political system.  This is why occupying our election district is so important, but it is only the first step towards reclaiming our country, our state, our county, and our municipality.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Tue Nov 22, 2011 at 14:20:17 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The injustice that begins on Wall Street (4.00 / 1)

manifests itself in Newark.  It is the perfect place to occupy.  Besides the occupation is in the shadow of Prudential which just got a $250 million property tax credit while Newark residents will be paying 4.6% more for their property taxes next year.  Newark has been living under the shock doctrine for decades while private industry takes every advantage.  It is time someone pointed that out and not just talk about the violence that is symptomatic of the situation.

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by: koleary @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 20:27:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

OWS in Newark and Throughout NJ is a Positive!!! (0.00 / 0)

Anything that brings people out to demonstrate their progressive activism is a good thing.

Frankly, I suspect that the politcal establishments in NJ, of BOTH parties, shit bricks at the prospect of anything that mightgreatly  increase voter turnouts.  

Bringing another couple of hundred thousand new voters into the mix could represent a threat to the status quo......it could mean that primary challenges might succeed.....it could mean that we actually get some real change/turnover of our elected officials........and that is anathema to the existing machinery that feels like it owns our state.

The tactic of staying overnight should be permitted in Military park.  It's not any kind of area where anyone would be much bothered by a few people camping out for a few days or even weeks.

The mayor and the cops should be working WITH peaceful demonstrators to make everything go smoothly.  There is NO need for ANYONE to be arrested in these situations.

Anything that RAISES consciousness and that informs and motivates people in NJ to become more politically informed/motvated is a public good.  

Having said that, let us remember what Frederick Douglasss had to say obout powerr not conceding anything without a struggle.

Rosie is right, the low voter turnouts are as much our fault (I include myself in that too) as progressives.   Weshould be doing much more than we are to register MASSIVE amounts of new voters in our state..and to motivate and mobilize the ennormous numbers who may be registered but who don't show up to vote.

If we leave voting to the same small numbers of peole who do it now...then nothing much will ever change.....and New Jersey is in great need of fundamental change, as is our nation and our world!

As for Matthews concern about the expenses of policing......they SHOULD not be high.   That only happens if the police choose to see a peaceful protest as if it was some kind of alien invasion by terrorists that needs to be dealt with in a miltary stles repression which then causes people to be riled up and angry......thereby generating/escalating into more overtime and more opportinities to play with all the new toys supplied by grants from homeland security cash.

The PEOPLE are not the enemy of democracy, they are the well from which it springs.  To the extent that our government sees the people massed/engaged  in peaceful free speech as a subversive threat to the stautus quo...THAT is the extent to which that government is itself illegitimate and corrupt and in need of being removed from power.

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by: Nick Lento @ Wed Nov 23, 2011 at 19:36:50 PM UTC