[pheaton]

So here is my kind of timeline for this deal. .

A few months ago. . I saw this occupy or 99% or whatever movement popup. . I was like, "WOW, finally people that are tired of the BS are standing up". I pictured this as the Tea Party times 10, people that were tired of goverment spending, businesses that are too big to fail, the bailouts, the golden parachutes, etc..

A few days later, it seemed more apparant that this group didn't really have any one kind of thing they were protesting, they were just wanting to be heard. So at this point I was thinking WTF, there are legitimate issues with bloated government, taxes, spending, etc.. why not protest that? There is plenty to protest, pick something!

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago and they are still "occupying" but I still don't hear a message coming from them. . With so many things that they could be protesting, why haven't they picked a few of them? I hear interviews and they talk about the 1% and their decisions and thier power, but what about it? How do we fix it? Don't just complain, give us some solutions!

Jump ahead again and it's getting stupid. Who knows what is really going on at these things? The occupiers didn't think this out too well. Now they are outside in the cold, freezing, so they put up tents and their whole deal is starting to look like Skid Row. So the city has to order the parks and things cleared out so that they can be cleaned up. The "occupiers" are fighting back saying their rights are being violated, or whatever. . I still hear no clear message other than the 1% are evil or whatever.

Today I see news stories about people all over the country just straight up getting pepper sprayed. The media is portraying this as some travesty to human rights, but I see no news story about what the crowd is doing to get pepper sprayed? Why are they getting sprayed? Are we supposed to believe the cops are just showing up and spraying a peaceful crowd? I don't think I buy that. Something else is going on.

To top it all off. I still don't hear a message here, the image of the occupiers is now one of people just trying to cause trouble. So I think it's time to give it up and go home. . Maybe re-organize in the spring or something. Come back when you don't need tents and firing barrels to stay warm and come back with a good idea and solutions to these issues.

[McBain II]

Originally Posted by pheaton

So here is my kind of timeline for this deal. .

A few months ago. . I saw this occupy or 99% or whatever movement popup. . I was like, "WOW, finally people that are tired of the BS are standing up". I pictured this as the Tea Party times 10, people that were tired of goverment spending, businesses that are too big to fail, the bailouts, the golden parachutes, etc..

A few days later, it seemed more apparant that this group didn't really have any one kind of thing they were protesting, they were just wanting to be heard. So at this point I was thinking WTF, there are legitimate issues with bloated government, taxes, spending, etc.. why not protest that? There is plenty to protest, pick something!

Fast-forward to a few weeks ago and they are still "occupying" but I still don't hear a message coming from them. . With so many things that they could be protesting, why haven't they picked a few of them? I hear interviews and they talk about the 1% and their decisions and thier power, but what about it? How do we fix it? Don't just complain, give us some solutions!

Jump ahead again and it's getting stupid. Who knows what is really going on at these things? The occupiers didn't think this out too well. Now they are outside in the cold, freezing, so they put up tents and their whole deal is starting to look like Skid Row. So the city has to order the parks and things cleared out so that they can be cleaned up. The "occupiers" are fighting back saying their rights are being violated, or whatever. . I still hear no clear message other than the 1% are evil or whatever.

Today I see news stories about people all over the country just straight up getting pepper sprayed. The media is portraying this as some travesty to human rights, but I see no news story about what the crowd is doing to get pepper sprayed? Why are they getting sprayed? Are we supposed to believe the cops are just showing up and spraying a peaceful crowd? I don't think I buy that. Something else is going on.

To top it all off. I still don't hear a message here, the image of the occupiers is now one of people just trying to cause trouble. So I think it's time to give it up and go home. . Maybe re-organize in the spring or something. Come back when you don't need tents and firing barrels to stay warm and come back with a good idea and solutions to these issues.

Pretty much covers it.

[Raphael07]

Occupy Wall Street Divided - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 11/16/11 - Video Clip | Comedy Central


Good summary.

[hamellr]

Originally Posted by billiefan2000

yeah, there are a few nuts, but at least the tea party 's people are people who arent assaulting people, or vandalizing property

Nope, just verbal assault, name calling, intimidation, and trespassing.

Political showdown creates conflict in Roseburg park | The News-Review - NRtoday.com (http://www.nrtoday.com/article/20110720/NEWS/110729987 - broken link)

[pheaton]

Originally Posted by hamellr

Nope, just verbal assault, name calling, intimidation, and trespassing.

Political showdown creates conflict in Roseburg park | The News-Review - NRtoday.com (http://www.nrtoday.com/article/20110720/NEWS/110729987 - broken link)

I'm to the point that I don't believe any news story from any source. Google anything you want and some news outlet has a story about it.

Want proof:

Google: "tea party racism" you find a news article. Are Tea Partiers Racist? - The Daily Beast

Google "tea party not racist" you find a news article. Tea party not a racist movement, Biden says - politics - msnbc.com

Literally, the news has a story for anything you could ever imagine for any side of any argument. The news is such garbage anymore. I don't take any one story as the truth, because it's always wrong to some degree. It's always a reporter that has spent 5 minutes talking to someone about a topic, then trying to do a story about it. Junk.

[hamellr]

Originally Posted by pheaton

I'm to the point that I don't believe any news story from any source. Google anything you want and some news outlet has a story about it.

I totally agree with you on this. It feels ironic that I now have to go to Middle Eastern and Asian news sources to get less biased news reports on happenings in the US.

[billiefan2000]

Originally Posted by pheaton

Literally, the news has a story for anything you could ever imagine for any side of any argument. The news is such garbage anymore. I don't take any one story as the truth, because it's always wrong to some degree. It's always a reporter that has spent 5 minutes talking to someone about a topic, then trying to do a story about it. Junk.

u are right the media is a joke nowadays

this proves this JibJab video is much more than satire

[pheaton]

Another news story blowing up about the UC Davis protestors that were peacefully protesting and got pepper sprayed. You hear about the chancellor apologizing and demanding an investigation, you hear about the shocked and freighted students. You hear about the officers on administrative leave, but you hear nothing about why the pepper spray came out. They want you to believe that it was for no reason and maybe it was. But what do the police say? Why did they do it?

From what I can gather from reading literally a dozen or so stories is that the police (for some still unknown reason) were called to disburse the crowd. Maybe they were afraid it was going to get violent, maybe a few other reasons, but they were told to disburse the crowd. So they went in to do that. A few of the students decided to sit down and refuse and were therefore pepper sprayed and a few of them arrested.

So where does this leave us? Personally, if a police officer comes up to me and says I have orders to disburse this crowd, I'm going to leave. Even if I think I'm within my rights to be there, I'm going to leave. Because these are the cops and they have ways of making me leave whether or not I think it's legal and/or whether I want to leave. I can go home, make some calls and reassemble later if needed, but for now I'm going to leave. I have to assume they are disbursing it for reasons of safety or some other related reason.

If I decide that I'm right, and they are wrong, so I'm going to prove this and sit down and lock arms with a bunch of people and refuse to leave. Well then, I need to be prepared to face the consequences. In this case, the consequence was pepper spray. I suppose they could have smacked them with a baton, or maybe used pressure points to force them to comply, but I think pepper spray was probably the most effective way to force a rather large group of people to follow orders to go away.

We have to remember that while we are guaranteed the right to peacefully assemble and protest, it has to be within the law. Just because you are doing something peacefully, doesn't mean that it's 100% legal and that nobody can touch you.

So were these police wrong? Maybe. It depends on the circumstances. I assume they were within their rights to do this if they had a good reason to break up this crowd and these students flat out refused to cooperate. Peaceful or not, you have to cooperate with law enforcement in certain situations. The particular officer in the video seemed to possibly be enjoying himself, which makes him look a bit like a jerk, but it doesn't mean it was illegal.

[MountainMen]

Originally Posted by pheaton

if a police officer comes up to me and says I have orders to disburse this crowd, I'm going to leave. Even if I think I'm within my rights to be there, I'm going to leave.

America is the land of the free and home of the brave because our ancestors knew they had rights and they fought for those rights. They didn't back down to the people who were trampling on their rights.

Earlier this year, the governor of Pennsylvania said something I really like -
"Our country was founded by incredible risk-takers. They were an army of farmers and shop-keepers, and they fought knowing that if they lost, they'd be hung. We seem to have lost our boldness." -Gov. Ed Rendell

[pheaton]

Originally Posted by MountainMen

America is the land of the free and home of the brave because our ancestors knew they had rights and they fought for those rights. They didn't back down to the people who were trampling on their rights.

Earlier this year, the governor of Pennsylvania said something I really like -
"Our country was founded by incredible risk-takers. They were an army of farmers and shop-keepers, and they fought knowing that if they lost, they'd be hung. We seem to have lost our boldness." -Gov. Ed Rendell

That's true.

This may have in fact been an abuse of power, but all of the facts haven't come out yet. This is a situation where their own elected representatives at the local level decided that their gathering place was no good (for reasons I still can't find, thanks to crack news reporting) and they needed to be cleared out. If this was in-fact illegal for the police to do this, well then they should be punished.

While we have the right to protest and assemble, we can't really just do it anywhere we want and wherever we want. If I wanted to protest something, I certainly can, but if I choose the middle of the street at the 72nd and Dodge intersection I'll probably be forced to leave. The fact that I'm "peaceful" doesn't matter. I can leave by request, or they will come and remove me. Defiance isn't always a defense.