Speaking of Occupy Wallstreet..

[newarkhiphop]

Did anybody attend of the occupy movements around where they live?

where and how was it?

I went twice to the NYC occupy movement, went on the day times square was flooded, really really crazy day , here are some of the more interesting pics i took during the day time

my city newark,nj also had a very brief occupy movement was down there almost everyday for the month or so it lasted

lol this is a video of the police taking down the tents in newark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgD_Cw4rIeU

Overall i was very disappointed in both movements there seemed be hidden agendas everywhere and nothing close to the arab spring

 

[Miracle Violence]

 

[OsO]

i got to develop relationships with folks from occupy NY, occupy boston, and occupy oakland... and ironically all scenarios developed along similar lines.

many people in the occupy movement agreed on the problems (greed, banks, exploitation, etc) but not necessarily the solutions.

there were pockets of leadership but no unified leadership so that did not create cohesion.

then you had pockets of racism and classism within the occupy movement itself... blacks would form their own cliques because they felt like they were being segregated from the decision making process. then you would have middle class folks discriminating against the homeless or the extremely poor folks. it was like a little microcosm of society.

it's definitely not over though. the visible enemy has been spotted (the banks, economic sector, etc) by the public, and occupy folks are still networking and involving themselves in community activism in their own ways.

 

[Czerka]

Is this shyt still going on?

 

[Street Knowledge]

I lean towards the left, but honestly a lot of these nikkaz just seem bitter and jealous of rich people. For lack of a better word "mad"

 

[newarkhiphop]

i got to develop relationships with folks from occupy NY, occupy boston, and occupy oakland... and ironically all scenarios developed along similar lines.

many people in the occupy movement agreed on the problems (greed, banks, exploitation, etc) but not necessarily the solutions.

there were pockets of leadership but no unified leadership so that did not create cohesion.

then you had pockets of racism and classism within the occupy movement itself... blacks would form their own cliques because they felt like they were being segregated from the decision making process. then you would have middle class folks discriminating against the homeless or the extremely poor folks. it was like a little microcosm of society.

it's definitely not over though. the visible enemy has been spotted (the banks, economic sector, etc) by the public, and occupy folks are still networking and involving themselves in community activism in their own ways.

yea i seen that happened too, especially here in the occupy newark movement

guys from occupy ny came here to provide "advice' but instead wanted to run the show

hood dont play

 

[Dead End]

Been involved in things here in Minneapolis. It started, like most other places, with an occupation of a large public square. The one here was in between two government buildings. As the weather got colder and some people got more experienced things have branched out a bit. The occupation at that particular place went away, but some of the better organizers started 'Occupy Homes' which is doing anti-foreclosure work. They just recently postponed an eviction on the Northside of a black family by bothering the living hell out of U.S. Bank and occupying the house to prevent police from throwing the family out. There's a couple of other houses as well that are in the process of eviction and there's people staying at them 24/7 ready to do chain themselves and do lockbox stuff to dissuade the police from kicking the families out until the bank and the homeowners have settled.

There's also a group called Space Liberation that is loosely associated with Occupy that have taken over a couple of abandoned buildings to highlight the fact that there's tons of empty properties while people are homeless or without community resources in some places. They haven't been able to hold these buildings for much more than a day or two until the police kick them out.

Then there's a very small occupation at a park downtown, but since most of the good organizers are doing other work, these are mostly homeless folks, runaways and very poor white/biracial/Native/black kids kinda just chilling, sleeping there. Recently, a story broke about the Minneapolis police grabbing people and offering them drugs to then evauluate them as part of some Drug Recognition program and then dropping them back off at the park. Needless to say, this has contributed to the problem of substance abuse there, and its something that folks don't really know how to address.

It can be a clusterfukk of a movement sometimes, but that's what mass movements look like. The whole talk or criticism of Occupy having no coherent leadership is disingenuous, because most things that involve hundreds of thousands or millions of people do not have "leadership" in the formal sense of Executive Committees and Chairpersons. Even looking back to the old labor movements of the 20s-30s or the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s-70s, the issue of leadership in that definition has been exaggerated. MLK could draw huge crowds, but when it came down to it, the ghettos would burn regardless of what he thought about it.

 

[Dead End]

There's also some crossover between Occupy and other movements here. For example last month, during the big national protests around the Trayvon Martin killing, there were 5,000 people at a rally. This was probably the biggest rally type thing here since the Republican National Convention protests in 2008.

As the rally dragged on with bullshyt white Democratic politicians getting on and trying to act hood (seriously, there was a white Democratic lawyer who attempted to talk 'ebonics'), some of the Occupy people, a bunch of younger black/Latino kids and members of a union I'm in took off on an unpermitted break away march through the streets of a university area.

Also, on May 1st, there was a number of things that happened through Occupy May 1st, which is a subcommittee of the Occupy Minneapolis. There was about a 300 strong march on U.S Bank HQ against foreclosures, a gathering at a park with free food and workshops on immigrant rights. Then later there was a march directed towards people in the food and retail industry that had teams of people entering restaurants and stores handing fliers to the workers about their rights on the job and rights to organize to better their conditions.

 

[zerozero]

interesting... good writeups

 

[Dead End]

I know some people in Oakland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Iowa City, Duluth, Rochester, Atlanta and Portland, too that are involved in things, but an overview of what's going on those places would take me too long to write up haha

 

[TheBigBopper]

These niccas would make better use of their time occupying that career services office or college STEM classrooms.

 

[Dead End]

These niccas would make better use of their time occupying that career services office or college STEM classrooms.

Meh. What makes you think everyone involved is unemployed or that full employment for everyone is even a possible thing?

 

[Tommy Fits]

These niccas would make better use of their time occupying that career services office or college STEM classrooms.

Who says large number of these people haven't been to the career services center several times over ?

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

Been involved in things here in Minneapolis. It started, like most other places, with an occupation of a large public square. The one here was in between two government buildings. As the weather got colder and some people got more experienced things have branched out a bit. The occupation at that particular place went away, but some of the better organizers started 'Occupy Homes' which is doing anti-foreclosure work. They just recently postponed an eviction on the Northside of a black family by bothering the living hell out of U.S. Bank and occupying the house to prevent police from throwing the family out. There's a couple of other houses as well that are in the process of eviction and there's people staying at them 24/7 ready to do chain themselves and do lockbox stuff to dissuade the police from kicking the families out until the bank and the homeowners have settled.

There's also a group called Space Liberation that is loosely associated with Occupy that have taken over a couple of abandoned buildings to highlight the fact that there's tons of empty properties while people are homeless or without community resources in some places. They haven't been able to hold these buildings for much more than a day or two until the police kick them out.

Then there's a very small occupation at a park downtown, but since most of the good organizers are doing other work, these are mostly homeless folks, runaways and very poor white/biracial/Native/black kids kinda just chilling, sleeping there. Recently, a story broke about the Minneapolis police grabbing people and offering them drugs to then evauluate them as part of some Drug Recognition program and then dropping them back off at the park. Needless to say, this has contributed to the problem of substance abuse there, and its something that folks don't really know how to address.

It can be a clusterfukk of a movement sometimes, but that's what mass movements look like. The whole talk or criticism of Occupy having no coherent leadership is disingenuous, because most things that involve hundreds of thousands or millions of people do not have "leadership" in the formal sense of Executive Committees and Chairpersons. Even looking back to the old labor movements of the 20s-30s or the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s-70s, the issue of leadership in that definition has been exaggerated. MLK could draw huge crowds, but when it came down to it, the ghettos would burn regardless of what he thought about it.

Good post, lot of valid points.

Still though, obv central leadership is tough, but they really do need to communicate things better. Someone posted this on another forum... I went through for a long time, and got nothing but vague platitudes about art and awareness. The shyt you listed (preventing foreclosures etc) lends much more credibility to the movement than drum circles, forced police clashes and anarchy grafitti tags. Central leadership isn't easy but then again neither is any fight worth fighting. They need to figure out what they are and more importantly AREN'T doing/endorsing.

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

I know some people in Oakland, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Iowa City, Duluth, Rochester, Atlanta and Portland, too that are involved in things, but an overview of what's going on those places would take me too long to write up haha

I wish there were some sort of central website to see all this stuff. All the stuff I have seen out there doesn't get into any of this.