Occupy Detroit

[Wesley Mouch]

Occupy Phoenix - Premobilized Police

At 1:15 this guy says "they turned off the cell towers."

So one guy says this, and its true? Don't be so eager to believe this, just because it fits the narrative of evil police controlling the world.

Other's do not report this, such as:http://www.moderntimesmagazine.com/p...ted_101611.php

"There were reports of cell service being out at the park, although that was heavily disputed. When Modern Time Magazine staff was at the park Saturday night, cell phone service was not interrupted."

I am disappointed that the conspiracy nuts of the left are getting so wrapped up in the 'fight against the man'. Its distracting from the most important issue -- to draw attention to what Wall Street has done to its benefit and the detriment of ALL OTHERS, not just left-wing kooks who are looking hard for black helicopters of W / Cheney.

[Lowell]

Occupy Detroit Encampment in Grand Circus Park on Oct. 24, 2011.

[Detroitnerd]

Wait. Did they move to the other, east, side of the park? Or did it expand to both sides?

[Lowell]

They are on the westside only.

[Detroitnerd]

Oh, I see. My eyes were playing tricks on me.

[Jimaz]

...At 1:15 this guy says "they turned off the cell towers."

So one guy says this, and its true? Don't be so eager to believe this, ...

I don't necessarily believe this. That's why I included the words "this guy says"—so other readers can know to judge for themselves.

I do however believe he was an eye witness and that cell towers, like most all electronic devices, do have an off switch.

[Scottathew]

Detroit has handled everything perfectly. Let the people exercise their right to protest. Don't even worry about them. We don't have the resources.

This does two things:

1) Allows free people to exercise their freedoms
2) Doesn't add any more fuel to the fire

[canuck]

whats wrong with "vandalizing" vacant structures if nobody cares about them anymore? I couldnt care less about whoever paint splattered all that stuff but whats so "disgusting about it? Only reason you should care is if you own these things that he "vandalized" and if you do....
shame on you

What if somebody cares about them enough not to give in to the timid uninspired defacing of property that you seem to enjoy. The problem is people who defend the "right" to damage private or public property without permission from the owner dont stop at older abused or disused premises. They paint over new trucks and rolling stock and buildings all the time. If Detroitpole owns a shack 4 miles from his home that sits vacant for years, it doesnt mean he is inviting people to vandalize or destroy said property, no matter how mean it looks. And it doesnt shame him, it does you Autoracks...

[animatedmartian]

Detroit has handled everything perfectly. Let the people exercise their right to protest. Don't even worry about them. We don't have the resources.

This does two things:

1) Allows free people to exercise their freedoms
2) Doesn't add any more fuel to the fire

I'm surprised what happened in Oakland hasn't happened in Detroit. Both sides are to blame for what easily could have grown into a riot. It just needed those few drunken idiots to throw something at the cops.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...st-dozens.html

[Russix]

I'm surprised what happened in Oakland hasn't happened in Detroit. Both sides are to blame for what easily could have grown into a riot. It just needed those few drunken idiots to throw something at the cops.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...st-dozens.html

No broken bottles at Occupy Detroit.

[Scottathew]

On my lunch yesterday my daughter and I walked down to the Occupy protest. It was VERY quiet. There's a lot of signs of people expressing their opinions. There was a surprising amount of tents. I think most people must have been inside of their tents because of the cold+wind.

I didn't wander inside of their encampment though. I would have felt safe going in, but I wasn't will to risk my daughter's safety on the unlikely event of sh!t hitting the fan while we were there.

[animatedmartian]

I drove by earlier today expecting people to be out on speaker phones or something. Like in NYC, but it was pretty toned down. Not good or bad, just my observations. I totally missed the Kid Rock backdrop that was a block over even though that's the street I came up to GCP from. I wonder if KR has an opinion on the camp...he has an opinion on everything else...

[tangerine]

What are they carping about? Their man Obama has been in charge for two years. The best of their policies [[e.g., increasing taxes) will lead to more unemployment and more misery for Americans. Certainly, however, these are legitimate issues for resolution through the democratic process. But I think a good portion of them -- and certainly the instigators -- are in fact outright Communists [[e.g., "End Capitalism"). How can people support this? Are they aware of the deprivation of Communism and the complete lack of political freedom that system almost alway entails? Have they ever cared to Google "North Korea" and read about hte parade of horrors in that workers' paradise? I'll never forget my German teacher who was literally shot while trying to escape East Germany and spent 5 years in a labor camp. I wonder what she thinks of all this.

These Marxist protestors would be almost comical to me -- if they weren't so dangerous. Americans are paid fantastically high wages on a global scale -- thanks to capitalism -- and now that we're making 10-15% less than fantastically high wages they want to throw out capitalism and inflict the horrors of Communism on the rest of us.

Plus -- not rant on -- but this fallacy about corporate profits rising while American wages fall needs to be called out. Profits of large US companies are often generated abroad where many have the majority of their operations and sales. So it's not like a zero sum game where evil coroporations are prospering on the backs of poor Americans. Strong profits of US companies pour wealth INTO the US particularly in the form of taxes they pay. We should be on our knees thanking God that US corporations are profitable. Can the OWS crowd imagine what dire straights our balance of payments and currency would be in without the success of our US-based, global corporations? No, of course they can't. Their actual knowledge of market economics is gleaned from Twitter posts.

And moreover, the furor against globalization is incredibly hypocritical. Amercians are wealthy by global standards. Why then is it necessarily wrong that jobs are flowing to poorer countries? Over a billion people have been lifted out of poverty by trade and capitalism since 1960. Have you been to India? Look at the transformation of South Korea since 1960 -- not to mention China since 1990. My income has gone down too just like everybody else. But why is a 10% dimmunition in the US standard of living [[already extravagent) through global trade and outsourcing so bad if the result is to lift a billion people out of abject poverty. Do you think an omniscient God who valued all people equally would frown on trade because some guy in India can now afford to eat while his counter-part in the US has to sell his second car?

[tangerine]

I'm not so sure I want to end capitalism.

The combined profit of Bank of America and Goldman Sachs [[$12B) represents about 0.08% of the US GDP. That's less than one-tenth of one percent.

Market style capitalism has lifted over one billion people worldwide out of abject poverty since 1960. In fact the trend has accellerated over the past 5 years. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/l...educed-poverty

It is an amply documented fact that Communist governments murdered upwards of 100 million of their citizens during the Twentith Century. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Com.../dp/0674076087. Communism is almost always associated with totalitarianism, material deprivation, and near total loss of individual freedom and human rights.

[kathy2trips]

Amen to that, Tangerine.

[PaulieG63]

Here Here!!!

Theres nothing to see here folks...just keep shopping.

Paul

[Scottathew]

Here's a rebuttal that's probably more in line with how I feel:

http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/atta...-am-53-53-.jpg

The basic idea is that only 53% of us end up paying federal taxes each year. Life is tough. Try hard. It's OK to fall here and there, but make sure that you always get back up.

[MikeM]

The basic idea is that only 53% of us end up paying federal taxes each year. Life is tough. Try hard. It's OK to fall here and there, but make sure that you always get back up.

http://www.politicususa.com/en/half-americans-taxes

[BShea]

The official Facebook page for the Occupy Detroit encampment currently includes a thread debating whether Colo. Gaddafi was a hero and victim of American imperialism, or whether he was a 24-carat shithead despot-thug who killed his own people and reigned through terror for more than 40 years.

Link

This is coming from the leaders of this leaderless local occupation. This initial comment was from someone angered by a show of support for the late colonel. The resulting string of replies is very enlightening about the mindset of the movement. It certainly is split, at least among the people occupy that official Facebook page.

This is the sort of thing this movement locally gets bogged down upon - debating stupid stuff like that, holding soviets about everything, bitter fractious debates about race that accuse anyone born white of being guilty of racism, etc.

This is why the movement remains fringe.

Here is a comment from the thread: "I do agree it shouldn't be the voice of "Occupy Detroit", but the 99% of us come from many places, so acceptance of difference of opinion has to be tolerated."

That acceptance includes, apparently, support for Gaddadfi and for groups that outspokenly support the regimes in North Korea, Syria and Cuba -- the World Workers Party that has been handing out literature and participating in OD.

LaRouche backers, however, were physically chased out of Grand Circus Park. I imagine Birchers would be, too. So the message is that extreme Leftist points of view are welcome, or at least tolerated, but right wing POV, or whatever the hell the LaRouchies are, are not tolerated.

I see no difference difference in the extremism of supporting Stalinist North Korea [[as shown by the Wobblies in GCP) and the extremist support of the LaRouchites.

Edited to add: I should say, there are several people on the thread expressing frustration that people are wasting time on the topic, and they don't see enough discussion of the core issues that brought them to GCP in the first place.

[gnome]

and speaking of complaints...

I hate facebook. Just about everything about it. Being friended and de-friended. Pointless updates about nothing. I hate the interface, can't make heads or tails of the message feature, and in general resent having to be one of their members.

There, I said it.

And most of all, I hate clinking on links to facebook that forces one to log-in to view.

[mwilbert]

Market style capitalism has lifted over one billion people worldwide out of abject poverty since 1960. In fact the trend has accellerated over the past 5 years. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/l...educed-poverty

True. Actually, I think probably more than a billion, although one could argue about exactly how capitalist the Chinese system is. On the other hand, there were only 3 billion people on the planet in 1960, and there are still 1.7 billion people living in absolute poverty [[current standard under $1.25/day) so the actual number of poor people hasn't declined much, if at all, over that period.

It is an amply documented fact that Communist governments murdered upwards of 100 million of their citizens during the Twentith Century. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Com.../dp/0674076087. Communism is almost always associated with totalitarianism, material deprivation, and near total loss of individual freedom and human rights.

Also true, although "murdered" is a bit strong--to get to 100 million you probably have to include people killed by bad policies in addition to people deliberately killed. If Communism and capitalism were the only two options, that would be a strong argument for capitalism.

The Occupy folks seem rather proud of the fact that they don't have a specific program, but I haven't seen anything that sounded particularly Communist. At this point they appear to be more about critiquing the current system than about proposing solutions, not that the movement hasn't attracted the usual crop of loons. And I don't believe that bailing out the financial industry is particularly capitalist, nor the corruption of the political process through vast contributions by rent-seeking entities.

[13074Glenfield]

and speaking of complaints...

and in general resent having to be one of their members.
.

Why do you have to be a Facebook member? Plenty of people aren't.

[ridgeabilly]

What are they carping about? Their man Obama has been in charge for two years. The best of their policies [[e.g., increasing taxes) will lead to more unemployment and more misery for Americans. Certainly, however, these are legitimate issues for resolution through the democratic process. But I think a good portion of them -- and certainly the instigators -- are in fact outright Communists [[e.g., "End Capitalism"). How can people support this? Are they aware of the deprivation of Communism and the complete lack of political freedom that system almost alway entails? Have they ever cared to Google "North Korea" and read about hte parade of horrors in that workers' paradise? I'll never forget my German teacher who was literally shot while trying to escape East Germany and spent 5 years in a labor camp. I wonder what she thinks of all this.

These Marxist protestors would be almost comical to me -- if they weren't so dangerous. Americans are paid fantastically high wages on a global scale -- thanks to capitalism -- and now that we're making 10-15% less than fantastically high wages they want to throw out capitalism and inflict the horrors of Communism on the rest of us.

Plus -- not rant on -- but this fallacy about corporate profits rising while American wages fall needs to be called out. Profits of large US companies are often generated abroad where many have the majority of their operations and sales. So it's not like a zero sum game where evil coroporations are prospering on the backs of poor Americans. Strong profits of US companies pour wealth INTO the US particularly in the form of taxes they pay. We should be on our knees thanking God that US corporations are profitable. Can the OWS crowd imagine what dire straights our balance of payments and currency would be in without the success of our US-based, global corporations? No, of course they can't. Their actual knowledge of market economics is gleaned from Twitter posts.

And moreover, the furor against globalization is incredibly hypocritical. Amercians are wealthy by global standards. Why then is it necessarily wrong that jobs are flowing to poorer countries? Over a billion people have been lifted out of poverty by trade and capitalism since 1960. Have you been to India? Look at the transformation of South Korea since 1960 -- not to mention China since 1990. My income has gone down too just like everybody else. But why is a 10% dimmunition in the US standard of living [[already extravagent) through global trade and outsourcing so bad if the result is to lift a billion people out of abject poverty. Do you think an omniscient God who valued all people equally would frown on trade because some guy in India can now afford to eat while his counter-part in the US has to sell his second car?

I remember the same reactions when we protested the Vietnam War back in the 60's- " If you don't love it....Leave it " type of BS. Thousands of folks killed in a trumped up war. Nobody held accountable. Then Iraq comes along- nobody held accountable. If you are satisfied and happy with the way things are, you are whistling past the graveyard. The patriots are downtown at the park, time to put your TV remote down and leave the couch.

[Searay215]

Heard a rumor that over 70% of those tents are empty durring the night and they are spending time in their nice warm homes. I wish I had a thermal imaging camera, I would find out for sure....Maybe I can rent one.

[noggin]

I remember the same reactions when we protested the Vietnam War back in the 60's- " If you don't love it....Leave it " type of BS. Thousands of folks killed in a trumped up war. Nobody held accountable. Then Iraq comes along- nobody held accountable. If you are satisfied and happy with the way things are, you are whistling past the graveyard. The patriots are downtown at the park, time to put your TV remote down and leave the couch.

The real heros are the ones driving by these so called "patriots" on their way to work to provide for their families and themselves instead of laying around telling everyone to pay for their problems. No remotes involved.