Are OWS tactics such as blocking rush hour traffic & subway traffic effective strategy...

[book_worm]

or will it turn public opinion against them?

[sam11111]

1. it will greatly harm OWS

[sam11111]

6. 1.Marches are OK..traffic re-routed -2.but suddenly blocking traffic traps folks for hours:some sick

folks trapped. Many others are on urgent errands of many other kinds...

Sudden unplanned blocking antagonizes not only drivers but also millions watching TV news. Viewers probably think "Why are they harming ordinary people like ME?"

There are better tactics.

[girl gone mad]

14. How many times have you said that now?

And yet they only grow stronger.

You should give up the prediction game.

[EFerrari]

2. Um, that is public opinion in action.

[Earth_First]

4. +10,000 n/t

[HopeHoops]

3. Tough call. A couple days ago I didn't agree with that approach, but they seem to have new momentum

Damn I wonder how this would unfold without the Internet.

[Newest Reality]

5. OWS is public opinion in action.

What the polls and media says and influences is another matter, altogether. Those who choose to form their opinions from the gabbing, corporate mannequins in the halls of McPravda may or may not be forming their own understanding of what is going on.

As for the strategy, I guess testing various ways and means will be a way to find out. Civil disobedience and disruptions are nothing new. I imagine that, if all that matters to those affected is their day and where they are going, then they may not have a clue, (or care) about the hows and whys of what is going on and what is at stake. It is not a movement of trivial proportions.

[brentspeak]

7. No, it is poor strategy. Bad idea to inconvenience and pi$$ off everyday folks.

[EFerrari]

15. Being "orderly" has gotten us exactly HERE.

[FarLeftFist]

8. Hurt the cause.

[Demit]

9. Which public opinion? the 1% or the 99%?

The public will eventually realize which group they're in.

[Barack_America]

32. The 50% of the 99% who foolishly think they're the 1%?

[redqueen]

10. It is what it is. if a large enough group of people is oppressed for long enough

and their pleas for justice are ignored for long enough, eventually they will necessarily make things just ever so slightly inconvenient, until the significant grievances which resulted in such actions are addressed.

[Huey P. Long]

21. Exactly. Pressure points need application.

[Douglas Carpenter]

11. yeah remember how quiet and orderly the civil rights marches, the anti-war demonstrations and in

earlier times the labor unions actions were? Whether it was the March on Selma, the sit-in protest at the Pentagon, or the 1969 Stonewall demonstration for gay rights in Greenwich Village or decades earlier the great labor demonstrations in in Chicago - They were always so careful not to offend anyone and they never did. Meaningful change has never succeeded when the public has been inconvenienced or annoyed.

[Wind Dancer]

13. Thank you!

Well said!

[WildNovember]

27. Can't tell if you're joking or not.

This is an aerial view of marchers crossing a bridge during the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. (They shut down half the bridge in this one, not to mention pissing off a hell of a lot of those nice ordinary people.)

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AntiFascist]

16. I recall during the AIDS crisis...

ACT-UP often used some very inconvenient tactics, which ultimately proved to be highly effective. "Coalition to Unleash Power" just sounds powerful.

[Fire Walk With Me]

17. Sorry for the inconvenience; we are trying to change the world.

[backscatter712]

18. Bad press is better than no press.

Activists frequently have to play the role of trolls in order to get their message out.

And sometimes, the tactic includes deliberately pissing people off.

[treestar]

19. People ought to ask whether it would be OK for opponents

Remember when the religious fundies blocked the freeway in California to protest the Temptation of Christ?

They drove their cars onto the freeway with protest signs and caused a huge traffic jam.

[backscatter712]

22. The teabaggers disrupted town-hall meetings, threatened members of Congress...

That's their equivalent.

And they won the last election cycle.

Turns out that pissing people off is a highly effective psychological tactic. And for us, blocking streets is an effective way to do that.

[AntiFascist]

24. That was a stupid protest...

blocking traffic in order to try and suppress someone else's right to free speech? How unAmerican.

[WildNovember]

20. Not judging from all the honking as they cross the Brooklyn Bridge.

The main people it will "turn" are those who were already turned in that direction anyway.

People who think there's a problem that needs fixing aren't going to be outraged if they have to sit through a traffic jam (like *that* never happened before, yeah).

[Tx4obama]

23. Regarding 'public opinion'

New Poll Shows Occupy Wall Street Protests Waning In Popularity
http://www.mediaite.com/online/new-poll-shows-occupy-wall-street-protests-waning-in-popularity/

[Occulus]

28. Why are you always supporting the wrong side of everything?

[Tx4obama]

29. I don't know what you mean.

Posting a link to a poll
doesn't show my support or non-support of anything.

Perhaps it is you that is reading more into the comment than what is there.

[Douglas Carpenter]

30. oh they mean well. They just don't understand how the politics of change works in the real world.

[backscatter712]

25. See my earlier thread on this topic.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2329013

(exerpting my entire OP because I wrote it and give myself permission...)

OWS is dropping in the polls! It's costing taxpayer money! Roll with it! We're White-Hat Trolls.

That's right. We're trolls. Trolling on the street, pissing people off. But we're trolls for a cause, trolling for the right reason, and trolling our way to victory! We're good trolls!

So when people complain that we're raking up gazillions of dollars of bills to the taxpayers so the cops can don riot gear and crack our skulls, or whine about how our blocking streets and disrupting traffic makes people mad, or that we're costing businesses money, or that we're burning flags or hanging them upside down, or otherwise alienating people, I say that's part of the desired effect!

We WANT to piss people off.

We want people angry.

Because we tried playing nice. Writing letters and sending petitions to our Congressmen, participating in election campaigns, getting out the vote, trying to elect more and better Democrats. And we learned one thing. When we play by the rules, the sociopathic fucks with all the power ignore us, and the people in general tune us out and don't hear us.

The only way to get heard in a system designed to drown out our voices is to troll. You have to go and piss people off. Make people mad. Fuck with them.

It works. It worked for Martin Luther King. Ever notice how he was only lionized after he was killed? When he was alive, a lot of people HATED him. He was very disruptive. He was trolling. He had people blocking streets, he provoked police into committing acts of violence, his people sat in at whites-only restaurants, getting screamed at, hit, spat on. He was trolling. I need to find or make an MLK Jr. Trollface.

People worried about alienating potential supporters are fallaciously conflating two things: The popularity of the group doing the trolling (in this case, OWS), and the causes they're supporting. You ask the same people who are disapproving of OWS what they think of Wall Street and economic inequality, and most of them will tell you they're sick of being fucked! Except the teabaggers, but that's alright - they can't be reached anyways. We're looking at sticking our ideas in everyone else's minds, and pissing them off is surprisingly effective at getting ideas out there.

The Republicans know this. That's why they've been disrupting the legislative process non-stop - they don't care if Congress is unpopular. They keep deliberately pissing people off. And they keep winning elections.

So get out there, go piss some people off! Block those streets, shut down ports, maximize the disruption. Burn flags, blaspheme in front of the fundies, be as offensive as possible! Do things that make people mad enough to get you arrested, or even get you assaulted!

BE AN ASSHOLE!!! That's how you get heard when no other way works.

In the words of Malcolm Reynolds, I aim to misbehave!

[sam11111]

26. so- to those who block- no tactic drives our base away, because we are trying to change the world?

As I said, choose better tactics. They exist.

[lbrtbell]

31. They should only block off areas where the rich are

Don't piss off the people who support you, or you can lose said support. ;)