Posted on 09/17/2014 6:48:12 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The movement descends into litigation. “We can either go and beat him up or we can go to court.”
WASHINGTON — Activists who organized the dormant Occupy Wall Street movement are suing another activist for control of the main Twitter account, and one of the plaintiffs says there was no other option but to turn to litigation to solve the dispute.
The conflict centers around @OccupyWallStNYC, one of the main Twitter feeds that distributed information during the movement’s heyday in 2011. The OWS Media Group filed a lawsuit against organizer Justin Wedes on Wednesday, which is also the third anniversary of the beginning of Occupy Wall Street. The group, led by activist Marisa Holmes, is seeking control of the Twitter account as well as $500,000 in damages.
The Twitter account, which used to be shared among several activists, is now under the control of Wedes, who explained his decision to take over the Twitter feed in a blog post in August:
A thread about “self-promotion” became just another shaming session. If we start from a place of assuming bad intentions – i.e. discouraging “self-promotion” over encouraging solid, relevant content – we will end up with rules that shame rather than empower. Group members took on the task of limiting others to “1 to 2 tweets per day” (or week) on a topic, a form of censorship that would never have been allowed in the earlier days of the boat. I had to say enough!
“We can either go and beat him up or we can go to court,” Holmes, a video editor who was part of the core organizing team of Occupy, told BuzzFeed News. “And quite frankly if we go and beat him up then we could end up with countersuits against us, and that puts us in a more damaging position and we don’t really want to do that anyway.”
“So this is actually the least harmful for ourselves and him given the fact that he won’t give up the account without any kind of punitive measure,” Holmes said.
Holmes said that there had been numerous attempts to get control of the Twitter feed from Wedes, and that suing him was a last resort.
“I’ve given him many many chances and so have a lot of other people,” she said. “For the last six weeks there have been conversations online, mainly on Facebook and through intermediaries.”
“There has been conversation about it and Justin knew he was going to get sued.”
She accused him of using the feed for his own projects, especially his activism surrounding water rights in Detroit.
His taking control of the account is “equivalent to someone running off with a bunch of money or selling off assets,” she said.
This is the second time in the past year that there have been major fights over control of Occupy’s still-extant social media accounts, though the movement has for all intents and purposes died. Activists clashed in February over the @OccupyWallSt Twitter account, which was wrested away from other activists by Google engineer Justine Tunney, who claimed to have founded the account.
Wedes did not return requests for comment.
lol
....so OWS is a corporation?
Why don’t they just get Bammy to issue a fatwa?
I vote for the former.
Whatever.
Hypocrites.
The police car poopers are probably wondering what their cut will be. LOL
They’ll take their cut in weed.
One of the OWS bigwigs landed a nice 6 figure job with google and then turned on OWS.
Stupidity hurts. Anarchistic stupidity hurts even worse.
I was hoping someone had put Nelson Muntz up for this one. YOu have to love a good leftie catfight - “Why can’t they all just get along” LOL
As I dimly recall, Occupy Wall Street wasn’t organized per se, but a bunch of so-called 99 percenters who probably needed a little cash and were paid, possibly from constitutionally indefensible Stimulus Programs funds, to take up space on sidewalks in rain and snow and tell their friends to watch them on CNN, hoping that their friends wouldn’t ask them what they were doing there.
Otherise, OWS wasn’t necessarily organized imo.
Somebody please refresh my memory.
The real “movement” includes all kinds of people from left to right, so conflicts are no surprise. Chaos.
I’d pay to watch!
The OWS organizers and their culture of anarchy have proved they are worthy of the road apples of history cleanup clowns.
Having been living in DC when Occupy was ‘hot’....I went and visited the DC site. What I came to realize quickly...there were two sites...about half-a-mile from each other.
Site A, was run by a bunch of young college-degreed punks (one block north of White House). No toilets, no organization, no support structure. They had someone or some group that took up the job of media control and making statements...but I got the impression that this was just a middle-person and someone was jerking their chain on statements. I noted various local news and international news teams interviewing this crowd.
Site B? Run by a bunch of 1960s/1970s-style hippies. Nobody was under the age of 30. They were a block east of the White House. They had toilets, water, organization. A lot less interviewing going on....mostly all international crews...no CBS or NBC type units operating there. They were fairly courteous...and more detailing than the site A crowd.
The big picture? Site B had no health issues, and the cops didn’t have many issues with their site. Site A with the young punks? Overrunning with mice and rats, unhealthy, and they were noted on numerous occasions doping up on the big stuff (crack, cocaine, et). The neighborhood around Site A was a health-mess and business operations were begging the city police to do something to clean up the mess.
So, they operated like this for months, and then one day...the city kinda told site A punks that they’d have to dismantle their site, and join up with site B (they’d allow them to continue there). Then, the whole mess started to just dissolve. The two groups couldn’t work together...because they were on separate agendas, and I suspect the young crowd were losing enthusiasm for their cause.
You could write a book over the two groups...they were like night and day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.