@Alligator Ed

It had to be upsetting the PTB or why else was the police response to break it up so organized? Mayors all over the country worked with the DHS to make it go away. I'm betting that some people in high positions didn't want the attention to the bank bailouts. The Vietnam protests were also effective on bringing the war to an end.

Whatever happens will need enough people working together so that they won't be ignored. I think that big enough boycotts can work, but again, a lot of people have to be involved in it. Hillary was concerned about the BDS movement against Israel as are some members of congress. I think that there are a few ways that we can get our government's attention.

Arizona is also making laws against who can be punished if they are doing it.

ARIZONA CONTRACTOR REFUSES TO CERTIFY HE WON’T BOYCOTT ISRAEL, SUES OFFICIALS

#3 The link suggests that we (the 99%) cognitively organize an assault of the 1%. It won't work. It never has. People are motivated by emotion, not reason. Reason is the icing on the cake but not the cake. The beginning of change may be conceived by a small and reasonable (i.e., rational) group of people. Yet the momentum needed to continue the overthrow of the existing regime will be fueled by raw emotion: hunger, hate, anger.

Sitting around a conference table with microphones and bottles of water produces only hot air. The real action comes from small rooms filled with intense individuals, capable of stirring EMOTION into the desired direction of change.

Utopia means "without a place". By definition, utopia can never exist. One cannot replace "something" with "nothing", which is what utopia is, pious dream of what shall ever remain "nowhere".

A people-directed popular uprising, not co-opted by other power groups for their own selfish purposes (see Women's March) will never succeed. Ghandi succeeded only because Britain's management of India became more costly than the Empire could bear and were unwilling to commit military force when so depleted by WW2.

Some may call my approach hard-hearted or non-empathetic. I call my approach (and others here agree) acknowledgment of historical reality. Many empires have come and all have gone. Ours is tottering, weakened from within and without. What the final blow will be is hard to know but it will NOT be an altruistically-based popular uprising. It will be driven by a small group of determined individuals, either foreign, or more likely domestic, unafraid to inflict pain and damage on their opponents, no matter how much popular support such an overthrow can accrue.

@joe shikspack
for starts.

#4

i think the yippies will provide an abundant source of organizing ideas.

personally, i lean towards the formation of an art and cultural movement that points to obvious moral truths about wealth, politics, inequality and exploitation.

@WaterLily
in my neck of the woods on the St. Lawrence river, second home of riverlover. If he didn't start "Save The River" he joined that effort early on. He went by another name, and most locals didn't know his true identity until his death. Abbie always the activist, didn't give a damn about the "fame."

#4 Simple to implement, and indeed sparks reflection and conversation.

I kind of love "Make Socialism Great Again" and might have to buy one!

@Mark from Queens Simple, cheap, anybody can do it. I like your shirts too. Of course I can see "Health care for all" being met with "hurr durr health care isn't a right!" rubbish.
When I went to Occupy Minneapolis, 'Tax the rich' was the sign I made. Had a dude pull over and say "So you think only rich people should pay taxes?" Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Idiots. *eyeroll*

#9
"This Is What Pseudo-Democracy Looks Like"

First few paragraphs of Norman Solomon's:

Oligarchy prevents democracy. That explains the gist of why the United States became more undemocratic in 2017.

With vast income inequality and corporate power, this country’s oligarchy keeps consolidating itself—largely hidden in plain sight—normalized and embossed on the wallpaper of mass-media echo chambers. Several decades of ominous trend lines have brought us to dire tipping points.

“In the American republic, the fact of oligarchy is the most dreaded knowledge of all, and our news keeps that knowledge from us,” historian Walter Karp wrote. “By their subjugation of the press, the political powers in America have conferred on themselves the greatest of political blessings—Gyges’ ring of invisibility.” Those words appeared in 1989.

Nearly 30 years later, the power of billionaires, huge banks and Wall Street over U.S. politics is far more dominant, while a propaganda fog diverts attention from their antidemocratic leverage. An array of news media (including big “public” outlets like NPR) and corporate politicians, unwilling to acknowledge let alone challenge the reality of an oligarchy in the United States, love to point accusatory fingers elsewhere.
Advertisement

Days before the end of 2017, I googled the phrase “American oligarchs” and found that it appeared scarcely one-tenth as often as “Russian oligarchs.” Yet the gravest injuries and threats to democracy in the USA are overwhelmingly coming from massively capitalized individuals and corporations at the top of the U.S. power structure.

Oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson, Jeff Bezos, Charles Koch, David Koch, Robert Mercer and Rupert Murdoch are wielding enormous power at many levels of the political economy and social zeitgeist, while corporate America functions with expanding latitude and increasing impunity. The extreme concentrations of wealth and economic power equal extreme concentrations of political power.

That's the real fight, the one we're being divided and conquered and distracted from.

And that's our job, to keep people re-focused on the brilliance of the simple Occupy message, framing it as the 1% vs. the 99%.

After Occupy I began to carry on my person a Magnum (I think it is) black Sharpie. I suggest everyone get one and carry it around. It's almost like having a can of spray paint, without the bulk, sound and spray to deal with. It amazingly wields a surprisingly wide swath on most all surfaces. You can get it at one of those corporate behemoths (which I hate) but will make an exception because shot of an art supplies store, I don't know where else to get one that size.

At some point I just didn't care anymore if I was on camera in this hideous Orwellian surveillance state, and would imagine how ridiculous it would be for them to spend all this energy and time trying to find someone who wrote a message that many themselves would probably agree with and what I would say if hauled in. I'd give my defense of what a dystopian world we've been forced into by greedy entities who control everything and reduced government to playground for the rich to get richer, and offer to clean it off myself. Go ahead and fine or ticket me. It wouldn't be a deterrent. I would answer the way Lynn Stewart did and how I did when a cop asked me "Would you do it again?," as I went to collect my bag and computer from a precinct I was taken to during the massive protest of the 2004 RNC Convention in NYC, before being shuttled to two different detention halls (including a bus depot on the West Side in which people were forced into tight groups on filthy floors full of oil and grease, which of course there was a lawsuit suing the Bloomberg admin and NYPD, who incidentally as a tag team racked up massive amounts of money hemorrhaged during their fascist reign) over an 18 hour jailing that ended with a stint, alongside hundreds and hundreds of others, at the infamous Tombs prison downtown. I looked that cop in the eye and never hesitated, "Yes, I would."

Get bold. Scrawl messages on the front windows of banks, subway cars, restrooms, gas station pumps, walls, over corporate logos. I like "Corporate Welfare Recipient" on banks. "Tax The Rich" or "#BlackLivesMatter" or "We Are the 99%" anywhere. How about just "Revolt." Get creative.

As Alligator Ed noted above, these public messages, statements and actions are the fertilizer for the beginning of a revolution.

@Mark from Queens
thank you.

My contribution would be on my backpack, which I carry around everywhere. I will carry a box of poop with me all the time. May be my T-shirt will say:
"99 percenters, drop your poop on the 1 percent. Feed the revolution".

Na ja, big words, I don't believe in my own words. But that's what I would like to do, if I were a US citizen.

#9
"This Is What Pseudo-Democracy Looks Like"

First few paragraphs of Norman Solomon's:

Oligarchy prevents democracy. That explains the gist of why the United States became more undemocratic in 2017.

With vast income inequality and corporate power, this country’s oligarchy keeps consolidating itself—largely hidden in plain sight—normalized and embossed on the wallpaper of mass-media echo chambers. Several decades of ominous trend lines have brought us to dire tipping points.

“In the American republic, the fact of oligarchy is the most dreaded knowledge of all, and our news keeps that knowledge from us,” historian Walter Karp wrote. “By their subjugation of the press, the political powers in America have conferred on themselves the greatest of political blessings—Gyges’ ring of invisibility.” Those words appeared in 1989.

Nearly 30 years later, the power of billionaires, huge banks and Wall Street over U.S. politics is far more dominant, while a propaganda fog diverts attention from their antidemocratic leverage. An array of news media (including big “public” outlets like NPR) and corporate politicians, unwilling to acknowledge let alone challenge the reality of an oligarchy in the United States, love to point accusatory fingers elsewhere.
Advertisement

Days before the end of 2017, I googled the phrase “American oligarchs” and found that it appeared scarcely one-tenth as often as “Russian oligarchs.” Yet the gravest injuries and threats to democracy in the USA are overwhelmingly coming from massively capitalized individuals and corporations at the top of the U.S. power structure.

Oligarchs like Sheldon Adelson, Jeff Bezos, Charles Koch, David Koch, Robert Mercer and Rupert Murdoch are wielding enormous power at many levels of the political economy and social zeitgeist, while corporate America functions with expanding latitude and increasing impunity. The extreme concentrations of wealth and economic power equal extreme concentrations of political power.

That's the real fight, the one we're being divided and conquered and distracted from.

And that's our job, to keep people re-focused on the brilliance of the simple Occupy message, framing it as the 1% vs. the 99%.

After Occupy I began to carry on my person a Magnum (I think it is) black Sharpie. I suggest everyone get one and carry it around. It's almost like having a can of spray paint, without the bulk, sound and spray to deal with. It amazingly wields a surprisingly wide swath on most all surfaces. You can get it at one of those corporate behemoths (which I hate) but will make an exception because shot of an art supplies store, I don't know where else to get one that size.

At some point I just didn't care anymore if I was on camera in this hideous Orwellian surveillance state, and would imagine how ridiculous it would be for them to spend all this energy and time trying to find someone who wrote a message that many themselves would probably agree with and what I would say if hauled in. I'd give my defense of what a dystopian world we've been forced into by greedy entities who control everything and reduced government to playground for the rich to get richer, and offer to clean it off myself. Go ahead and fine or ticket me. It wouldn't be a deterrent. I would answer the way Lynn Stewart did and how I did when a cop asked me "Would you do it again?," as I went to collect my bag and computer from a precinct I was taken to during the massive protest of the 2004 RNC Convention in NYC, before being shuttled to two different detention halls (including a bus depot on the West Side in which people were forced into tight groups on filthy floors full of oil and grease, which of course there was a lawsuit suing the Bloomberg admin and NYPD, who incidentally as a tag team racked up massive amounts of money hemorrhaged during their fascist reign) over an 18 hour jailing that ended with a stint, alongside hundreds and hundreds of others, at the infamous Tombs prison downtown. I looked that cop in the eye and never hesitated, "Yes, I would."

Get bold. Scrawl messages on the front windows of banks, subway cars, restrooms, gas station pumps, walls, over corporate logos. I like "Corporate Welfare Recipient" on banks. "Tax The Rich" or "#BlackLivesMatter" or "We Are the 99%" anywhere. How about just "Revolt." Get creative.

As Alligator Ed noted above, these public messages, statements and actions are the fertilizer for the beginning of a revolution.