What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[FireIceTalon]

Taken from another thread.

Does it surprise you, if these things have nothing to do with each other, that they are all operating under the same brand (Occupy Wherever), complaining about the same things (bailouts for the rich, cutbacks for the poor) and are happening at the same time?

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I think it's pretty clear the economy sucks, people are suffering, and they're sick of seeing the "rescue" being something reserved for AIG and Goldman Sachs. Tax policy is some piece of this, but mostly, it's about the response to the crisis: Save the rich, let the poor go hang.

And, it's hilarious how mad these people are at the banks. The banks are suffering the most and are all about to go under due to new cash reserve requirements, zero percent interest and the imposition of Dodd/Frank restricting their income.

I don't have television, so I get my news from the internet from the following sites: NPR News (center) and Fox News (far left) and CNN (right). Between the three, I feel fairly informed about most issues. The issue I'm having now is with Occupy Wallstreet. It was a vaguely mentioned movement in the last few weeks of almost unknown purpose which has had the ability to attract many followers.

So it finally hit home. Ventura and Santa Barbara counties are hosting Occupy [City Name] rallies in the courthouse parks in both county cities and I have to drive by them to make deposits at my works banks. They [many of the protesters] are holding up signs saying their tuition is too high. From my own personal observations, many of these protesters are college age students. Do they know it's the privatized (non-government) banks that hold your loans for banks? And that you can go to an non-accredited school for like 1/100th of the cost? Are they complaining about the fee the government charges the schools to get accreditation, or the fees the [private] (non-government) universities charge for their schooling, which has nothing to do with the government... If their issue is with the schools themselves, or perhaps the teachers and their pay rates, then why protest against the government? Perhaps their beef is with the banks that hold their student loans, but student loans are traditionally much lower than standard loans, and with current interest rates... WTF are they [student protesters] protesting about anyhow??? I don't get it!

Seems like others in the crowd are/were protesting the way Congress can't seem to agree on anything in this lame-duck season.

Again, others seem to be protesting bank fees and how your money is invested.

Others seem to be protesting the way Wallstreet runs, from hedge funds, to the system as a whole.

And others seem to be protesting the government giving money to banks.

While these systems share the common thread of money, they couldn't be more separate in terms of who runs them. Just because the government regulates certain aspects of each of these institutions does not make them the owners of said institutions.

It's pretty much pandemonium from what I can gather! No clear voice, just much dissidence aimed at nothing in-particular - perhaps people angry because they are out of work? I had a nice talk with my brother-in-law today whom told me he went to a rally in Santa Barbara yesterday to support the opposition to higher taxes and tuition fees. We had a nice talk about the tuition fee part, to which he yielded that the protest against the fees didn't make much sense in the overall spirit of what he feels is "the movement" (no more government controlling privatized institutions). Is this what Occupy Wallstreet is really all about? I don't know. I hoping someone here can explain it better to me, because at this point, it honestly just seems like a bunch of wankers on a worldwide scale.

Its a grassroots movement against the corporate take over of our government, and thus the erosion of our democracy. They are protesting the fact Wall Street (and other corporations) continue to get tax breaks and bailouts while the rest of us get, well, diddly squat. I guess you could say it is a reaction to the transnationals privatizing profits and socializing losses with taxpayer dollars. They basically want economic and social justice, and an end to the corporate oligarchy that now runs our country. Unless you are somehow extremely wealthy, you should support their cause, even if it needs a more fixed direction or message.

The banks are not suffering. It is business as usual for them, raking in exorbitant profits while normal citizens struggle from paycheck to paycheck. Fox News, btw, is not left-wing, but rather is the far right, and it is no wonder you do not support the Occupy movement. Faux, er, Fox News is pretty much the vanguard for corporate kleptocracy, and is pretty much in contrast to what this movement represents.

It really comes down to this:

When you cut taxes for billionaires by 3 trillion or so over the course of a decade, Bailout Wall Street to the tune of almost a trillion, and putting 2 wars on a credit card in the name of global empire/capitalistic expansion and nation building/counter-terrorism to make oil companies and the military industrial complex richer while telling blind, patriotic 18-year old boys getting their head blown off in Afghanistan is an honorable duty for their country, not realizing they are fighting not for their country; but for enriching the cartel of banks, oil companies, weapons contract companies like BlackWater, and politicians. Not to mention outsourcing millions of jobs to China than selling their wage slave/pennies on the dollar earned, non tariff products at Wal-Mart so kids employed by them for minimum wage can sell them to try and merely pay the interest on their 50k-100k+ student loans each month after graduating (if they even graduate) that they most likely will be paying for the rest of their lives. There is now more student loan debt out there than there is on all the credit cards in the nation. Its one big ponzi-scheme system, designed to shell out wage slave after wage slave to create a caste system of serfs and/or indentured servants to fund the war and oil machine, so politicians, bankers/hedge-fund managers, and transnational corporations continue suck the blood of the poor and what is left of the middle class (not much). Rocket science it isnt. The American public is being duped, and most of them don't know it, because we are too busy watching sports, being consumers, and worrying about who Britany Spears is dating, among other mindless trivial issues; and not paying attention to politics. But I, and others like me, know better and see right through this system for what it is. I guess this rant could summarize the cause of the Occupy [city] Movement. The christian right wants to privatize every service under the sun, because anything that is socialized is money out of the elites hands.

Damn, that was probably the most anti-american/unpatriotic, Marxist post ever. And I make no apologies about it. Cause its the truth.