Posted on 10/17/2011 3:39:29 AM PDT by SkyPilot
In a quiet corner across the street from Zuccotti Park, a cluster of 25 solemn-faced protesters struggled one night to give Occupy Wall Street what critics have found to be most lacking.
“We absolutely need demands,” said Shawn Redden, 35, an earnest history teacher in the group. “Like Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand.’ ”
The influence and staying power of Occupy Wall Street are undeniable: similar movements have sprouted around the world, as the original group enters its fifth week in the financial district. Yet a frequent criticism of the protesters has been the absence of specific policy demands.
Mr. Redden and other demonstrators formed the Demands Working Group about a week and a half ago, hoping to identify specific actions they would formally ask local and federal governments to adopt. But the very nature of Occupy Wall Street has made that task difficult, in New York and elsewhere.
Although Occupy Seattle has a running tally of votes on its Web site — 395 votes to “nationalize the Federal Reserve,” 138 for “universal education” and 245 to “end corporate personhood,” for example — Mike Hines, a member of the group, said the list would soon be removed because the provisions had not been clearly explained and because some people were not capable of voting online.
“It feels like we’re all in a similar boat,” Mr. Hines said of other Occupy movements. “We all want to include as many voices as possible.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
How about; “Communism Now!”
“Send all those who disagree to reeducation camps!”
(Just be honest for a change.....)
The protesters’ anger is misplaced, if they’re angry about the mess the economy is in. They should be furious with the Obama administration, but the Administration, aided by the MSM, have diverted the anger to “Wall Street Bankers.”
The protesters have been vague about what they want, but a unifying theme has been anti-capitalism. Unless they vote Socialist, Green, or some similar impotent faction, they’re in Obama’s pocket.
He’s got the best name recognition among the anti-capitalists who will be on the ballot.
“We absolutely need demands,”
The OWS-gang can disclaim them all they want, but it just points to this being their unfiltered demand set:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.
When “Occupy Wall Street” first started, there were anti-Obama signs and he was being criticized in interviews with protesters (the original ones). The cameras attracted the animal rights groups and other assorted malcontents, and the media was able to divert the original focus (which was decidedly anti-government, INCLUDING OBAMA); hopefully the public can see through it.
Many of these people will not be voting for Obama; he’s acted like the stereotypical CEO with his detached extravagance.
You’ve actually nailed it.
They are protesting because their ideology has just been demonstrated, through an attempt at its implementation,
to be hollow and unworkable.
Their “demands” could be summed up easily - “we want stuff, and don’t want to work for it”.
Oh, they have demands. Gimme, gimme, gimme and let someone else pay for it. We are living in a nation of adult children looking for mommies and daddies to take care of them.
“We’re a group of protesting young people...we aren’t sure what we’re protesting, but we are!” Maynard G. Krebbs
“We absolutely need demands,” said Shawn Redden, 35, an earnest history teacher in the group.Okay, I speak English and understand it pretty good for a dumb American. But WTF is an 'earnest history teacher'?
According to Dictionary.com that word should not be there and the sentence makes no sense. (yeah I know, it's the NY Slimes so I shouldn't expect perfection)
The demands, when they come, will not be theirs.
They are being written right now, inside AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington. Your 60’s revival movement has been hijacked, kiddies. You are what they used to call “useful idiots”. The biggest joke here is that you all seem to think that you’re still in control.
Please, please save us all from the demands of "earnest history teachers"...
Laugh if you must at the “Honk if You’re in Debt” sign.
But this country has so many people who are so deep in debt that such positions will prove a powerful attraction to a political movement. Even one that is nuts, anti-Semitic, and dangerous.
Its fundamental meaning is immediate gratification self-indulgence and the pleasure of iconoclasm--nothing deeper than that.
The Tea Party is resistance to American Decadence.
Wealth breeds indolence and lassitude. That is the basis of decadence.
The wealth generated by the men and women who prevailed over the Great Depression and World War I (and the men who walked into machine-gun fire on the beaches of Normandy) nurtured a generation of overindulged, over-privileged brats, whose highest aspiration was immediate-gratification self-indulgence, indolence, and lassitude. They sashayed onto the polished dance floor (polished by the hard working parents and forefathers whom they deigned to scorn) in the 1960s chanting "sex! drugs! and rock and roll!" and "if it feels good--do it!".
Not all pampered children succumb to such nihilism and irresponsibility. The Tea Party proves this. So do my children, all raised in wealth and luxury and all highly responsible, self-reliant, politically conservative, still ascendant people of whom I am very, very proud.
The forces of decadence and ascendancy are locked in a manichaean struggle in America today (and the rest of the world as well). The outcome is unpredictable, but one thing's certain: ascendant individuals will survive and come out on top!
I hear tell there’s a Senator in Minnesota who takes it to heart.
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