Occupy Wall Street Shows up at DNC, Bashes Obama
CHARLOTTE – The Occupy Wall Street movement has materialized in zombified form near the venues of the Democratic National Convention. In Marshall Park, a leafy city property complete with a shallow pond, a camp of approximately 50 tents has sprung up in typical Occupy fashion. It's not as developed as some of the camps that appeared during the "American Autumn" but its occupants are cantankerous and disappointed with President Obama, much as they were almost a year ago.
When I visited their encampment, they were mustering for a march that focused on Bradley Manning and unmanned drone strikes. The Occupiers were maneuvering a close to life-sized replica of an unmanned drone that they would later parade through the police-lined streets like the statue of a saint on a Catholic feast day.
"People like Obama garnered support from a lot of people when he was running. Once he got into office he basically turned his back on the working class. He said he was gonna end the wars, he escalated the war in Afghanistan, he continued use of mercenaries in Iraq, he said he was gonna close down Gitmo. He hasn't done that," said Travis Cummins, 27, of Mobile, Alabama.
Cummins, wearing a "Can't Have Capitalism Without Racism" button, said that he definitely would not vote for Obama in the fall because he is a "murderer." Alternatives like Green Party candidate Jill Stein or Libertarian Gary Johnson were out of the question because they still support capitalism.
"I think capitalism is the crisis, is the problem," he said.
Obama supporters-turned-Occupiers feel like like they were sold a lemon.
"We thought we were getting the anti-Bush and instead he's gone ahead and put forward many of Bush's policies," said Michael Glaizer, 27, of Chicago.
Glaizer was such a big Obama fan that he volunteered on his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign and even heckled his then opponent, Republican Alan Keyes, during his concession speech.
"He said he was not gonna deal with state sovereignty and now he's cracking down on (medical marijuana) like crazy. He wants to pass the dream act and then he deports all these people," he said, noting he'll probably support Vermin Supreme in the fall elections.
As the march started, several hundred protesters started chanting "Arrest Barack, Free Manning!"
Occupy supporters and California delegates Chris Robson and Chris Duvali looked on from behind the police barricades, taking pictures and cheering them on.
"When the Occupy movement was originally established it was 'OK, there's a separation of class.' What we need to do is inform these Occupiers that the Democratic Party is all about investing in every class, we don't segregate," said Duvali.
Robson wasn't too thrilled about the idea of some of the Occupiers not voting for Obama in November.
"We think everybody should vote for the president but if they choose not to that's their right. It's not like Australia where they're required to vote, which I personally believe. I think you should require people to vote," he said.
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Faust!
If this guy thinks the Greens support Capitalism, I have to wonder how he got so far left without falling off the edge of the earth altogether.
The Daily Show did a bit where they proved Obama wasn’t a socialist because a bunch of self-proclaimed socialists said he wasn’t. No one mentioned a Scotsman though.
In what universe is Obama more of a socialist than any other mainstream American politician? Like, Bush?
I’d say he’s a little bit more socialistic than Bush, but not as much as most people would claim. Bush and Obama are pretty close (though not identical) on economic issues.
in the one that judges policies and intentions – nationalizing GM, the health care measure that moves toward nationalizing that, the willful destruction of the middle class, nationalizing student loans while saying nothing about ever-rising tuition (sounds a bit like loan sharking), to name a few.
Obama sought out to destroy the middle class?
Did he accomplished this by causing a financial crisis as a senator from Illinois?
Spending a trillion dollars to invade a foreign country is every bit as much socialism as spending a trillion dollars to deliver healthcare.
Yep. We’ve got statism. That’s what statism gets us. Both Bush and Obama are shit-flavored statists.
In what universe is Obama more of a socialist than any other mainstream American politician? Like, Bush?
Bush is a socialist.
We still have a problem here?
I mean, the Greens generally do support capitalism – small business, eco-friendly “capitalism”. They are virulently anti-Wall Street and anti-corporate welfare, but being anti-corporatist and anti-big business is not the same thing as being anti-capitalist.
They support socialized healthcare, but they don’t support, say, the military-industrial complex, TARP, or the subsidization of Big Agriculture. They do support the subsidization of small businesses, small farmers, etc. Reprioritizing who gets subsidized compared to the Democrats and Republicans does not make them any less inherently capitalist – just more populistic.
In fact, eliminating state-limited liability is a more free market stance than even most libertarians hold.
“Capitalism” means something different from what you’re describing.
The Greens are not exactly in favor of any real property rights.
And Republicans and Democrats are? It’s all relative.
To answer your point more directly, the Greens aren’t calling for an end to commerce, entrepreneurship and property rights. Sweden is a hybrid of capitalism and socialism, and that’s what they Greens advocate as well. They believe the regulatory state should be extremely biased against any possible externality, especially for big businesses, and the little guy should be subsidized. The mainstream for the major parties believes the cost of externalities should all be socialized if they can’t be regulated in advance, and that big AND small business should be subsidized.
The word “socialism” implies nationalization of private resources and mandatory elimination of commerce, property rights and inequality to me. While socialism is surely a large part of the Green Party, they are calling for a hybrid system, just like the Republicans and Democrats do, just without the subsidization of big business and the socialization of externalities. So in some ways, they’re worse and other ways they’re better from a libertarian perspective.
Occupy Wall Street is why nobody takes anti-capitalists seriously.
And even THESE guys are understanding how much of a POS Dear Leader is. I have to give them some credit, I guess.
and yet, who are they going to vote for? Might want to reserve that credit; this criticism aims to push him further left.
If they’re facing south, they can move left to Cuba and vote there. Everyone will be happier as a result. Except, perhaps, the Cubans.
It shouldn’t be surprising that there are plenty of people on the far Left who have firm principles and believe that the Democrats are little more than a slightly re-prioritized party of corporate shills. They are few, just as the number of true fiscal conservatives bashing Bush for his spending and overseas adventurism were few.
a slightly re-prioritized party of corporate shills.
Give money to green tech companies and insurance companies…shut down biotech and drug companies!!
Party of the people!!
Not really. I dont take anti-capitalists seriously because there is no other economic system as consistent with freedom.
Thanks for playing, Carston. Johnny, tell him what he’s won…
See, I disagree. A free market means that individuals organize themselves into the social and economic systems they desire. Nothing is consistent about starting a voluntary Marxian commune within a free market economy. This only becomes impossible when government imposes an economic order that determines how individuals should operate, contract and work.
The world is a free market economy, and people have set up voluntary mixed economy communes all over it. They call them countries.
I have been reading Marco Polo and in chapter 18 the book describes paper money and how it is used and how it is regulated and enforced on people and says that the system makes the Great Khan the most powerful ruler in the world.
It was written over 700 years ago.
As interesting as that is, how is that relevant to Heroic Mulatto’s or T o n y’s point? Aside from being an example of a country that isn’t a “voluntary mixed economy commune”?
no it’s not. If the world WERE a free market economy, you could sell whatever product you wanted in any country. It is a struggle to do that in the US, where big companies pay Congress to prevent competition. It is Everest-sized trying to do so overseas.
Well, it’s really not, as a free market is a fantasy nonsense concept.
One must add the caveat that such communes be democratic, but if they are, then what I’m trying to explain is that we’ve already accomplished Proprietist’s ideal society. People have organized in freedom to create the types of societies they want out of a “natural” “free” “economy”. And they, nearly universally, do not want laissez-faire markets.
Not to go White Indian, but private property is also inherently coercive.
You live among other human beings. There will be coercion. It’s utterly inescapable.
I don’t know why you don’t just appreciate that you happened to be born into one of the freest societies that has ever existed instead of one of the much more common authoritarian hellholes that populate history.
But working within that system isn’t enough for you. You want absolute freedom, a level of autonomy no human really has any right to expect. And as for the fact of children… I guess if Ayn Rand can ignore them, so can you.
You want absolute freedom
How about we just start with the freedom I have 4 years ago (or 12 years ago)…then work our way from there.
Also I am pretty sure most people here claim to be libertarians and not anarchists…and yes unlike you we have read our Hobbes.
Quit beating strawman Tony.
You cant call it free when you are forced to be a part of it. The only way you could do that is if there were an actual anarchist landmass out there to move to.
To add to that, these aren’t voluntary mixed economies, these are mixed economies forced onto us by those who follow the orders of those who have assumed authority. Assumed authority by giving out guns and goodies to those who will enforce your rule.
a.) I added no such caveat. What one does on their own property is generally their own business. A commune built around a charismatic “dictator” is legitimate if they are the owner of the property and their followers voluntarily agreed to follow the leader.
b.) Government requires force to control their subjects. Economic organization in a free market is voluntary. Democracy does not equal voluntarism for the political minority.
So political minorities should be able to do what? Opt out of paying for certain aspects of their society that they will nevertheless get to enjoy as they are still a part of it? Form their own countries in already-claimed land without so much as fighting a civil war?
If you want to be a political majority, convince people you are right. Your preferred form of society is not any more legitimate than the political majority’s, and even if it were, you won’t be able to establish it just by asserting your moral superiority.
It sounds like a society dominated by mafia dons. It doesn’t sound good at all. It is an argument, in and of itself, for collectivization of resources and the legitimacy of the rule of law conferred by democratic processes and bureaucracy.
Your moral requirements of a society don’t necessarily make it a good society. Which makes your moral requirements extreme and immoral.
For practical purposes, let’s not go to Darius’s extreme that every individual can secede, although I don’t exactly oppose that.
Let’s instead say there’s a national law that any county can secede from any state, and each state must have at minimum two designated counties.
Alternately, let’s say any 500 adults can petition to found a new state on a physically connected area of private property they reside in, owned solely by the petitioners. They are required to purchase all existing public infrastructure within the boundaries from the current political jurisdiction, and the current jurisdiction must sell at cost of construction, inflation-adjusted. The new state is responsible for their own services, taxes, security, etc.
The neighboring state is not required to extend their own roads to meet the new state if they choose not to. Individuals in neighboring states can levy torts in the event the activities individuals engage in within the new state violate their individual or property rights.
So a bunch of smaller nation-states. You take the number of nation-states in the world and add a few to it. How is freedom enhanced by weakening the established country in this manner and merely transferring government authority down to a more personal and inevitably more capricious form?
The disconnect is arguing the moral points against government, then admitting that yeah societies require, and demand, governments. Just not the ones they’ve already chosen.
No, Tony. I invented a scenario to most closely approximate politically your assumption that democracy = voluntary self-governance. Also, I’m no anarchist and never said we don’t need a government. This scenario is not necessarily the same thing as the free market I advocate, with a consistent and simple, clear and consistent legal structure and a minimal formal government in general.
That doesn’t change the fact that localism would be the next best option to a truly libertarian free market at the national level, where individuals self-govern beyond the minimal precepts of non-initiation of force or fraud.
And how is the country weakened by allowing mobile individuals to weigh political opportunity costs about where they live with the other opportunity costs of living there? It should only be stronger if people are happy with their lives. Since we all currently live under the national government, we have no choice in the matter, as we are forced to live under federal law at minimum. How you can equate that to any form of voluntary choice goes beyond reason straight into the realm of stupidity.
Are we supposed to ask every newborn infant if he wants to remain where his parents have chosen to live, or emigrate somewhere else? We do “voluntary” the best we can given the realities of human gestation.
Because everyone is a child to the government….
You do have to incorporate the existence of children into a concept of how the world should be organized… do you not?
But when every adult is treated as a child, and not allowed to make their own decisions about their lives, than your claim to it being “voluntary” goes right out the window. It’s obvious that you’re full of shit.
You do have to incorporate the existence of children into a concept of how the world should be organized
“We use drones to monitor dairy farms to prevent raw milk from being consumed by children”
– message brought to you by the same organization that drone bombs babies in Pakistan. Government For The Children.
Are we supposed to ask every newborn infant if he wants to remain where his parents have chosen to live
Why not ask them when they turn 18. And why have them move? Can’t regulations and taxation be based on choice? and why can’t different states/cities/counties choose different then the Federal government? And why can’t we change out minds say when ever we want?
You do not understand what “voluntary” means.
You’re not being coherent. You do have much–though not absolute–freedom on your own private property (property being a legal concept enforced by government guns). The reason you have to live by social rules when you leave your property (i.e., enter society) is because other people than you exist. The same social-contract-based processes that prevent or punish murder (which presumably you’re OK with) make the other rules of society. What exactly are you arguing you’re entitled to here?
Sometimes you don’t get your way when you live among other people. This is the case whether we’re talking about a household or a country. Again, what do you expect from the world? You seem to think it owes you a kingship.
They are. We elect legislators.
So you are OK with people electing people who would throw poeple in jail for being gay?
If elected officials can choose if you drink raw milk or not can’t they choose if you can engage in homosexual activity?
Are there rights that the government cannot tread upon?
Why is it OK for the government to monitor my dairy farm but not ok for it to monitor your bedroom?
Anyway your whole argument comes from what you want and what you can get. Not even Ezra Klein agrees with you. Your argument resembles that of a selfish child more then one an adult would make.
I am not gay nor do i have a dairy farm nor would I ever drink raw milk…in my personal life i could give a shit about these issues. I only mention them because on principle i believe in the freedom of adults to conduct their lives as they see fit.
This is how adults think. It is children who want to the world controlled for their sole benefit.
By the way you know full well it is near impossible for someone to emigrate out of the US and is probably harder to do then immigrate into it. Furthermore you use past tyrannies as an argument. 400 years ago there was no where to go cuz everywhere sucked….why is now so very different then 400 years ago. Where can one seeking freedom possibly go?
Where can one seeking freedom possibly go?
I should point out that over the past 400 years my ancestors have been fleeing governments.
I find myself often on the west coast of the US looking out into the pacific ocean.
It should be a thing of beauty…instead i see it as the wild…and wonder how i could survive in it…and if i could figure out a way to survive how long would it be before the government followed me there.
We can start by not obligating people to pay for others.
You constantly make this argument and it is patently unlogical, since there is nothing remotely voluntary or contractual about a government’s relationship to an individual.
There is only one possibility that could make your argument remotely possible, and it has never, ever occurred in real life: a country without a federal government where every town or county is able to secede from political control by any overarching “state” region at will and individuals can freely move between the regions at will.
Since there is no country in the world with that level of democracy and autonomy, your argument is null and void. I do look forward to you now advocating for a non-existent or minimalist federal government, however.
What makes a town or county any more voluntary a society than a country? People are still born into them and subject to their rules. Sure there’s more mobility from a smaller jurisdiction, but there’s mobility out of a country, so I don’t see what makes the federal government inherently less legitimate than a county or city government.
All you seem to be saying is you prefer the city-state model to the nation-state model, while living in the 21st century.
There exists the right to secede. You just need to make sure you have a big enough army. What possible motivation would a sovereign entity have to let you take away some of its land via mere assertion?
Because my land isn’t anyone else’s.
Electing to ignore practical reality is to talk about nothing.
When I was a young child, I would build houses out of Legos and make up stories about the families who lived in them. This was not a fruitless activity. It helped me to develop storytelling skills. But I thought we were talking about what type of society is best, not being a child engaging in frivolous amusements or writing speculative fiction.
You should know that I view all “rights” through a practical lens. You don’t really have a right to secession. You could form an army and assert it, and you could even claim God gave it to you. No part of our social contract gives you that right, though, and the matter was explicitly decided when the last civil war was won by the US government.
The mobility between jurisdictions and the true choice of one’s political master IS the central point of localism. You don’t automatically have that level of mobility on the national scale, so you have little choice.
Even localism is not a free market, but it would be as close as could get utilizing your false “democracy = voluntarism” trope.
My local government wants a lot more control over my daily life than the feds do.
Within a localist country, if you live in a city with a controlling, abusive government instead of a more libertarian town, that’s your choice. You don’t require a government’s permission to migrate from one town to the other, so you can weigh the opportunity costs between what services are worth being taxed for and where you really want to live.
One can’t choose to live in a libertarian town under an federal government because the federal government has laws that are unlibertarian that we are forced to comply with involutarily.
What makes a town or county any more voluntary a society than a country?
Easier to move and it allows for a diversity of government systems and policy.
Perhaps i want a safety net only smaller then the one being payed for with my tax dollars by the federal government.
With government power allocated to smaller units (counties and cities) I can then pick and choose which one fits me best.
One can already do this and poeple do do this (a large number of people have moved to Texas and a large number of people have moved out of California. Why not let the diversity grow and let it happen more?
THIS IS WHAT CAP ITAL-ISM LOOKS LIKE!
Can’t you all see that this is CLEARLY a false flag scam being run by the Evil Genius? rat fucking tea baggers???!!!!11!
Sheesh! Do they have to SPELL IT OUT for you??!!1
No kidding. It’s got “Kochtopus” written all over it.
I wonder if they will still be portrayed by news media as a serious movement, blazing this message.
“We think everybody should vote for the president but if they choose not to that’s their right. It’s not like Australia where they’re required to vote, which I personally believe. I think you should require people to vote,” he said.
It’s every American’s right not to vote, and it’s a right I believe we should take away.
We should vote on it.
Why in bloody fuck should Americans be forced to vote in Australia?
To save the airlines maybe…??
Oh. Good idea!
OF COURSE IT’S A GOOD IDEA!
/God in “Holy Grail”
Americans already elect leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. etc. So it only makes sense to extend that policy further.
Which is weird because the HitnRunpublicans swear up and down in other places that the Constitution only applies to US citizens.
come on, now; you know perfectly well this “voting in” leaders in other places applies to Dems, too. Why do you hate bipartisanship?
Hell, why not just count all eligible voters as voting for the incumbent unless they specifically opt out by voting for someone else.
“The ayes have it!”
The delegate thinks voting should be mandatory AND everyone should vote for the president. 100% turnout and 100% of the vote for Dear Leader. At least he’s honest.
This is why the Tea Party/Occupadoes piss me off. Even when they get the problem right, they are so off base with the underlying cause that it would be physically painful to agree with them. Even that wouldn’t be a dealbreaker if they would at least advocate the right solutions, but they always get that wrong too.
Jeez, Hugh, what do you want? Them not to be complete retards?
That’s expecting a lot.
At least the Tea Partiers don’t blame “capitalism.” And their events are 100% rape-free. And the public-health authorities don’t have to hose down the places where they demonstrated.
Astroturf is pretty durable.
Yeah Rachel Maddow and Saul Alinsky bankrolled those months of occupations for the teevee cameras. They must have paid a lot more than the Kochs did to get them to stick aronud for so long.
Nope, communist movements did. No joke.
I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt that a lot of those distinctions have more to do with the average age and socioeconic status of the people involved that with their political beliefs.
Old middle-class white people tend to be more well-behaved than any gathering of young people.
And I’m firmly convinced that those TP rallies are actually rape-fests but the Kochtopus and CORPORATE MEDIA are covering it up.
Or maybe it’s because the Tea Party doesn’t camp outside for months on end.
Yeah, don’t they have, like, jobs since many of them have useful skills? It’s easy to imagine why a women’s studies major has plenty of time to protest and write angry blog posts.
I don’t agree with a lot of what Occupiers have to say, but they are a legitimate protest movement responding to real-world abuses. But Wall Street certainly appreciates your glib dismissal and stereotyping of Occupiers.
The Tea Party is a bunch of old people on Medicare protesting socialized medicine.
I’m not saying that they don’t have legitimate grievances, only that a lot of them are spoiled, entitled college punks who think they have a right to have other people pay for their college self-actualization process while blaming evil capitalism for a problem that is inherently the result of government.
Considering the measurable value a college education has to personal and collective economic success, your stereotypes seem a bit like sour grapes or something.
The cost of higher education in this country is unsustainable and a scandal. And if we think it’s something valuable for people then I think Occupiers have a valid complaint. Sure protesters have often been college-aged people focused on their own immediate concerns–but Occupiers are about a lot more, such as the central moral hazard and greatest abuse of capitalism of recent history.
I think they pervert each other. The way in which capitalism has been perverted has not been entirely by democratic action either, but by the outsize influence of private wealth on government.
You’re arguing that we could solve the problem of capitalism abusing the rules by eliminating the rules. Hey I think I’ve found an easy way to solve murder completely!
I thought they blamed socialists. The Tea Partiers blame Muslims the way Occupy blames Jewish conspiracies: sporadically, and only by a few members.
Wow. So much stupid, so little time. If stupid was a valuable commodity the occutards would be multi-billionaires.
Capitalism. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
So how many Occupy chicks will J. Edwards nail before the convention is over?