I don’t know, but wasn’t it focused on the wrong thing? Like hating the player rather than the game. Didn’t the politicians let it happen? Wall St follows the rules or gets in trouble. You can say wall st influenced the politicians but that’s still on the politicians.
It started out as a movement against banks, their power and their meddling with politics, had wide popular support, then it was then taken over by leftist groups and the popular support went away.
Around the same time a new technology was published that allows people to be their own bank.
Indeed. And we had a decade of extremely low interest rates that basically broke the power of banks.
The more important causes in 2024 are:
- Taxing the rich
- Climate change
- Protesting against war and genocide
Indeed. And we had a decade of extremely low interest rates that basically broke the power of banks.
Haha what? Banks are bigger than ever before, regional banks are being absorbed by megabanks, banks know they are “too big to fail” and can gamble however they like.
The banking sector is not bigger than before.
The fact that smaller banks merge and consolidate does mean that some banks are bigger than before.
And that’s also what regulators want. They want a handful of big banks that they can more easily monitor and control.
But the power of the sector has greatly weakened.
The big money is now in tech and energy, not the financial sector.
And that’s also what regulators want. They want a handful of big banks that they can more easily monitor and control.
Oh sweet summer child…
Those low interest rates were the banks borrowing American tax money for free and getting paid to lend it out, no risk all gain. You look at many bank’s sheets since the interest hikes last summer and they are usually taking huge losses now that it costs them to lend. The big money is in tech? Like Nvidia being 2/3rd owned by “institutional investors,” aka banks? You are literally part of the problem if you think you are educated while being so clearly disconnected from reality.
If you want to call BlackRock a bank…
Then you’re gonna be right in your bubble, but it’s a pretty big leap. And you won’t find many people agreeing with you.
And no, banks are making profits again with rising interest rates. They were making way lower profits at low interest rates.
In terms of being disconnected from reality, I think you’re projecting.
They are an investment company, they take assets and invest them, similar to how a bank takes deposits and uses it to lend. That one is open to regular deposits and the other is more exclusive is not the hill to die on. Also are you able to name banks that are enjoying the rate hikes? Because literally just this week a few banks such as Citi and JPMorgan revised their outlooks downward since they no long see interest rate cuts coming this year.
Right, investment company.
In particular, they are Not a Bank.
If you just Google you will see JPM and Citi did quite badly under the low interest regime and bounced back after interest rates went up.
Citi had a more pronounced bump with Covid stimulus.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JPM/jpmorgan-chase/gross-profit
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/C/citigroup/gross-profit
They are still making nice profits, but Apple and Microsoft are at no risk of being overtaken by any bank any time soon.
They forgot to bring these decorative objects along with them.
How do you envision the usage of one of these playing out at Zuccotti Park in 2011?
Because it was one of the only time the “racists” and the “communists” (before they were called that) actually came together against the only people holding them down.
how can we start it back up again
Stop buying into petty, culture-war “Parade of Politics.” This goes for both sides.
Normally yes - agreed and upvoted - but the current petty, culture-war “Parade of Politics” has ramifications that will make Occupy, protest, and rights in general a lot harder or more dangerous to fight for.
It seems shit to fight the politicians instead of the money driving them, but they don’t intend to stay subservient to the money once the choices are gone.
Personally, I think its because its message became diluted. At least here in Portland, it started off strong, in solidarity with the rest of the country. But as the days went on, it became unclear what anyone was actually protesting. Then as the week dragged on, it became less of a protest and more of an opportunity for vagrants to join in and camp. As all that happened, there was less discussion about the protest and more about the giant camp that was building downtown, the drug use, the fighting, etc.
So the message was just never strong and clear enough to cut through the problems that surrounded it.
(From someone who was there)
Was part of a qualitative research study put on by a university and related to a local chapter of the Occupy movement.
My thoughts on 2 reasons why the larger movement died:
- No unified list of attainable objectives.
- The physical persecution ended.
While no one in the movement disagreed with the main tenants that the group stood for, when Wall Street came calling to know what the Occupy movement wanted, the distributed leadership model made it hard to form a coherent list that went beyond “overturn Citizens United”. It really was a leaderless movement for awhile there, and that has downsides.
Regarding the physical persecution, I first got interested in the movement because of the news coverage I was seeing from independent channels. US citizens were being beaten, gassed, and corralled in a way that infringed on civil rights and usually without incitement (Occupy was vehemently non-violent). Once those acts of injustice started to fade, I think people lost some of their zeal.
It was a wild time, though, and I’d be happy to talk about it further. From limited news coverage by US MSM, to folks coordinating carpools to NYC and DC, not to mention the unique style of communication at rallies to get around the ban of sound amplification by police… a lot happened.
No unified objective us why we on the left tend to lose.
It’s not a surprising issue; whenever we get a unifying leader, the FBI assassinates them.
What’s this about the unique communication style?
At the Occupy meetings, there were no defined leaders, which meant everyone’s voice equally deserved to be heard. As such, people who wanted to speak would generally queue up and then be given a few minutes to address the crowd (which was sometimes in the thousands).
Since PA systems and megaphones were prohibited by police early on (and would often be used as an excuse by police to break up a gathering), Occupy Wall Street gatherings began using the “human microphone” method of making sure speakers were heard.
In short, a speaker’s words would be repeated back by the crowd so that the words of the speaker would project back further in the crowd. With thousands at a gathering, it often took 2-3 waves of repeating the speaker’s words until they reached the back of the group.
If you stood at the right spot, you could kind of hear the sound “roll” back over the crowd. It was a strange feeling of unity to know that everyone at the gathering was truly understanding the speaker, because they weren’t just hearing what was said, but were echoing it back to others.
Here’s a wiki page that talks a bit more about the technique: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microphone
I also remember that the OWS movement had made up some hand gestures which could be used for holding votes among large crowds during their meetings. I can’t recall what they were exactly, but I remember that gaining consensus was important to the group and anyone in the crowd could hold up a “veto” hand signal and be given the ability to address the crowd about why they disagreed.
I was impressed by the creativity of it all.
Let’s not take our analysis from ancaps please. They are not anarchists, not leftists, and the only problem they have with banks is that they’re too regulated.
Also, they were ignorant enough to become ancaps, which should also disqualify them if their aims weren’t already so abhorrent.
If you never listen to anyone outside your ideological bubble, you’re in for a dangerous time.
I meant to link to the video inside that thread of an OWS rally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCwhlZtHhWs
So one person said some stuff that sounds dumb without context. Wow, what a powerful illustration of how badly you want to blame identity politics.
It wasn’t one person, it was the entire group, and everyone went along with it. That directive came from leadership.
So great how your single video clearly demonstrates that all of that is true and also how it totally led to the failure of OWS. What an airtight argument.
Unplug your eyes and ears comrade.
Let me know if you ever come up with an argument that’s more than “this person sounds dumb I reckon”. This was it. This was your chance to let me hear something outside my bubble, and you said almost nothing. So far I’ve found the experience to be deeply, tragically unconvincing.
You linked to a subreddit that links to a 4chan image of someone explicitly saying women and minorities ruined OWS. Who even are you, dude?
Lack of centralized messaging and organized leadership
You probably can’t name a single person who came to national prominence as a direct result of their participation in OWS, and that’s exactly why it fizzled, movements don’t need leaders necessarily, but absent that they absolutely need a gameplan, which OWS did not have, just a general anti-rich sentiment without many proposals for change other than “lock them up.”
I think this is the broad issue with most would be revolutionary groups, they never plan further than “just do a revolution bro” beyond dreaming of the utopia they’ll surely usher in when the enemy is defeated. Revolutionary movements need to operate more like John Brown, man didn’t just go south and start shooting, he gathered a convention of black leaders to sign a new constitution to inaugurate in the event that he won. Granted it was a bit loco, part of it literally involved turning black America into a settler nation in the Appalachia’s, but the point still stands, the man knew what victory would look like and that’s how he was able to gather the following he did before his capture and death.
The problem is that figureheads can be discredited and taken down. You need a figurehead who isnt only has an unimpeachable background, but so do their parents, their friends… they need to have the right education, the right job, the right EVERYTHING
I’d even go so far to say that you would almost NEED to have a woman of color because a few grand slipped to the right girl and all of a sudden "Occupy Spokesman John Smith"standing up to Wall st is “Alleged Rapist John Smith”
I have no doubt they would find a way to discredit them.
The problem is that figureheads can be discredited and taken down
The problem is that Leftists always eat each other because of their ridiculous utopian ideals. Anyone who has even the slightest whiff of something wrong with them is immediately attacked and cast down, so no leader can ever emerge.
If y’all ever want to have any sort of influence, you need to reject the idea of purity tests. People are flawed, and people are different. Embrace it, don’t keep hoping for a perfect messiah.
Quit projecting, it wasnt the left who continually pointed out that George Floyd had a criminal record and somehow that justified a cop kneeling on his back for 7 minutes until he suffocated. It was the right wing boot lickers.
The right are the ones that accuse the left of being groomers but keep getting busted on child sex offenses. The right are the ones campaigning on family values and then getting busted sucking other men off in airports.
Any leftist leader who isnt squeaky clean lets the right turn it into a discussion about the person not the movement, lets them muddy the waters with endless whataboutim and if they cant do that, they will pay someone to create mud.
Not the parent commenter, but: That’s not what projection is, no one brought up George Floyd, being a sex offender isn’t the only thing people get canceled for, and leftists absolutely eat their own on a regular basis.
I think this was because occupy was a product of the internet and there are very few leaders that come out of the internet in the social justice space. There are a lot of voices, but few stand above the crowd and even if they do manage to, when you’re dealing with controversial topics, there is a very good likelihood that such a person’s opponents would dig up some dirt on them or exaggerate something they did or said in an effort to cancel or make them into a joke.
It’s a built-in feature of internet groups that they are bad at producing messages and leaders for a wider audience. The dynamics of facebook groups and internet forums reward preaching to the choir and punishes compromises, both with opposition, moderates and reality.
The most potent spiritual successor I’ve seen is the whole GameStop thing: an attempt to exploit a recursively over-leveraged predatory derivative scheme. Over-leveraged derivatives are the characteristic underpinning of most of the Wall Street fuckery that the Occupy movement was fighting.
I don’t have any particular love for the company, but it’s impossible to overlook the similarity. If I was going to hit Wall Street where it hurts, I’d pile onto an exploit like that. The more people on board, the better.
Oh shut up with GameStop. Not trying to be rude but how can you bring it up without mentioning the ways that the “protesters” helped the very same hedge fund managers get a fat payday? Or how notorious anti-capitalist Elon Musk supported it? Come on man wake up.
Then again OWS was a joke so I guess that absolute joke of a protest would make a fitting successor.
For all their passion, they lacked focus.
I talked to one in Portland as the protest had gone on for a while.
“What can the big banks do to make you dust off your hands, go ‘my work here is done!’, and go back home?”
“I want them to fucking die!”
Well, clearly that’s not going to happen, but he had no backup plan.
there was a handful (like about 3 or 4) of the movement that actually came up with serious economic analysis and ideas for reform, there were a few youtube video presentations of their work from that time but i have no idea if they still exist
I read an anecdote from Reddit about a protestor’s experience in Occupy Wall Street. Some people just went along to the protests for the sake and experience of it. Many people didn’t know what they were doing. I think this is why protests require some sort of organisation and leadership. The civil rights movement was so effective because they more were organised and had focus. Any movements after that haven’t gained more momentum because of disparate structure and factionalism.
I’ve attended a few pro Palestine protests here in the UK and I was so unaware of what I was attending for the first one. I’m in a very liberal city and had previously gone to pride marches and trans pride ‘protests’ that were effectively demonstrations for fun as it was largely preaching to the choir.
Showing up to the first pro Palestine protest and realising that it’s a coordinated effort to block roads and generally financially harm the companies that support Israel made me realise how naive I was being by conflating peaceful demonstrations to drum up support with a coordinated effort to harm the opposition.
Nothing has changed since then it seems. I constantly read comments with similar sentiment towards rich people here.
Lemmy users would never post images of a guillotine on a serious discussion post, it goes against our collective morals 🦑
Sounds like what happened at CHAZ, except with less murder investigations in the follow-up
That was just hilarious to watch, first the tanks were fawning all over it and clambering for their own AZ districts to institute tyranny of the faithful over, and then when it went bust suddenly it was anarchists and they all knew it was doomed from the start.
Sounds like a typical lemmy.ml user.
Their goal won’t be accomplished without violence AND it won’t start again until a major event makes people on both sides realize that they should be fighting together (like the economic crisis back then) against a common enemy.
Be prepared for violence? Of course. Do what you can to stay armed, trained, and active in your local community defense and aid organizations.
But we don’t NEED violence to effect this change. We aren’t Russia (for now).
Is it difficult? Of course. But it’s not impossible to effect change.
I don’t want to wait either. I can see my people suffer this way of life. I wish we could rush to a better place as much as you do. Its all I ever think about when I don’t have my nose stuck in a video game machine or a book. Instant depresso when I leave my basement and behold our twisted visage of a “civilization”.
This is just the jungle with extra steps.
Find a major change in society like OWS wanted that didn’t come from a violent revolution. The US had its war against Great Britain and its civil war and more, Canada had its war against the US and against itself (GB vs France, against the patriots in Quebec and so on), there’s been too many violent revolutions in Europe to count…
The day people truly have had enough with the ultra rich and realize that they’re manipulated into fighting each other instead of fighting for each other, there will be blood on the street.
The people from OWS just wanted a piece of the pie, to get the whole pie someone’s gotta leave the table.
I feel like my first major advice into programming best somes up this to. “Knowing whatyour are wanting to do is way more important than the how, you learn or make up the how later”
Occupy Wall Street was a movement that wanted to protest the banks and financial markets actions that lead to the recession.
They did that, successfully, they protested the heck out it, they occupied wall street for a while really. The question is what do want to actually do? I mean the sentiments they raised made Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump more viable in 2016 presidential election, is that it, debate facism vs socialism again?
Some anecdotes from my experiences during this time:
I lived and worked in downtown Chicago at the time, right next to the Board of Trade. The local OWS was set up right next to it. I remember the traders had dumped out a bunch of McDonald’s job applications from the window onto them below. I would walk by them everyday for months and absolutely no one was paying them attention. It was a small group of people and eventually one day just like that, they were gone.
A week or so after OWS started I was visiting NYC and we ended up at Zuccotti Park where it all started. I think there were more people selling pins, buttons, and various arts and crafts than there were actual protesters. I remember my FIL asking each one if they were trying to supplement a living or if they were purely a for-profit capitalist venture taking advantage of an opportunity at an anti-capitalist protest. I just couldn’t stop laughing. He was serious.
Went to a wedding in Tulsa a few months in the whole OWS movement and their main park had an encampment of tents with signs but didn’t see any activity.
The big thing I noticed was there was virtually no people of color present, no organization, was a gathering of almost entirely white (mostly young) Leftists, that like usual, failed to cobble together a coalition from other demographics and really just seemed like a spectacle.
I remember my FIL asking each one if they were trying to supplement a living or if they were purely a for-profit capitalist venture taking advantage of an opportunity at an anti-capitalist protest.
Out of curiosity, how would he draw that line? When does it stop counting as a living and start being a purely for-profit venture?
No idea. I tried to get him to just simply observe and either buy something or not. I still have my pin somewhere, I think I know where it is. I’ll look for it tonight and post it.
God, you nailed my experience of this protest. I was going to college in New York when they happened. It was a joke.
Oh god, we missed the don’t vote squad when they were at their least threatening!
OWS existed because banks were getting bailed out and ordinary people weren’t.
Since then, an alternative money supply with no bailouts has gained tremendous momentum.
So we’re still protesting, just in a way that’s harder to shut down for “public safety” reasons. And instead of participation making you worse off, it makes you better off. Over time, adverse selection will leave only bailout recipients using bailout money.
People are still getting hosed with that “alternative money system”. It’s the rare person that makes enough and bails out with profits, even rarer gets enough to be wealthy. It’s the “influencer” of money. Everyone thinks they can be the winner, but there’s tens of thousands of failures for each person on the top.
If you’re referring to bitcoin for that alternative money supply then I regret to inform you that it’s manipulated to hell and back, from "stable"coin printing to now ETFs.
Believe it or not, it used to be even worse! The big step forward IMHO is that there’s no privileged party that has an advantage manipulating the price. Congress should be prohibited from owning anything but long-term dollar bonds.
The big step forward IMHO is that there’s no privileged party that has an advantage manipulating the price.
Until Elon Musk tweets out that he will exchange Tesla vehicles for Bitcoin or that Dogecoin is a good investment.
Digital currencies are somehow worse than gambling unless you’re famous enough to do a pump-and-dump.
