Brilliant but leaderless anti-bank action could succeed where organized demos failed

[marmar]

from NOW Toronto:



Crashing Wall St
Brilliant but leaderless anti-bank action could succeed where organized demos failed

By Betsy Reed


New York City – Everybody has a piece of advice for the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. They should put their clothes on. They should stop raising their fists. They should fact-check their handwritten signs. They should appoint leaders who can give pithy quotes to reporters. They should get with an electoral program.

Indeed, their failure to present demands is the most frequently heard criticism of the OWS protesters, not just in the mainstream press but from veteran leftists as well. What do these wan, angry young people want anyway?

It’s not that the demands being suggested by OWS’s policy advisers in the blogosphere are not worthy ideas. At a time when we desperately need to rein in financial speculation and change the incentives on Wall Street, a financial transactions tax is a terrific policy proposal.

The thing is, we don’t have a scarcity of policy ideas. We are positively bursting with them. Create a housing trust fund! A national infrastructure bank! And, yes, sure, eliminate the carried interest loophole so fat cats don’t get a bigger tax break than working people. (Some even have more radical ideas, which are quite sensible, too.) ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=183052

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[Cool Logic]

2. I have not seen or heard the ideas you cited being advocated by the protesters...

[marmar]

3. I cited? I posted an article.

nt

[Cool Logic]

5. What I meant is that I have not seen an official, this is our platform, citation.

[Occulus]

8. You still don't get it, do you?

That's really sad.

[Cool Logic]

9. A movement that does not advocate specific ideas...

is nothing more than an undefined social gathering.

[bemildred]

10. Not giving your enemies clues is good strategy.

This is a war, the objective is power, taking power, not some political marketing campaign to distinguish two otherwise indistinguishable candidates from the ruling elites.

[Cool Logic]

12. War...? Well then, where are guns...?

Seriously, politics is the means by which civilized nations circumvent civil wars.

A rational debate and exchange of ideas are the attributes of a well-developed and sophisticated culture. On the other hand, the lack of a cogent alternative ideology, suggests an absence of purpose. And a movement without a purpose will eventually devolve into a helpless throng.

[bemildred]

6. Non-hierarchical organizations are like that. nt

[bemildred]

4. Leaders are just bottlenecks and single points of failure.

One is better off to minimize the need for them, to keep them nameless, and to change them whenever the media tries to focus on them.

[jwirr]

11. Leaders also provide a target that if eliminated often ends the movement.

We have had plenty of experience with that. I can actually be argued that the deaths of JFK, MLK and RFK was the beginning of the end of the rule of liberalism. We are still here but we have a hard time getting anything we want done.


As to knowing what they want - they want this mess fixed.

[L0oniX]

7. Move to not for profit credit unions. Enough with the bank shit.