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Philadelphia Is Going To Get Its Own Sloppy, Unfocused Occupation

That whole Occupy Wall Street “protest” that has been little more than a two-week-long shit-show in NYC has inspired people all across the country to get out there and protest in the name of protesting. And now, we introduce Occupy Philadelphia.

Where the New York protests had faced surprisingly lackluster media coverage, the Philly edition has already seen pieces in the Inquirer and Philadelphia Weekly, and the thing hasn’t even happened yet. The second planning meeting is tomorrow night at Arch Street United Methodist Church where the agenda will be selecting a date and place, but not necessarily a reason for doing it. According to Philadelphia Weekly, at Occupy Philly’s first meeting, when no actual reason for the occupation was decided upon, “A handful of people voiced their displeasure—’Choose something!’ yelled one; ‘What are we waiting for?’ shouted another—and a few left in a huff.” Also in PW’s report, it says that the first meeting was begun when some of the group, “marched from Wooden Shoe to [the meeting].” WE KNEW IT!

We’re all for standing up to the top 1% and all, but doing it in a sloppy, unfocused fashion only makes it that much easier for the whole thing to be undermined. It will be seen as a bunch of spoiled 20-somethings protesting for protest’s sake. We don’t want it to be like that, we want to like this and believe in it, and “down with the man” and all that, but until it finds a focus, it’s just a bunch of people causing traffic jams. But hey, if this starts getting some national attention, maybe we can have our own Radiohead hoax.

Plus, the Staphmeal dude is going to totally go help out, and who wouldn’t want to be associated with him?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2011 at 3:30 pm.

  • http://www.yourdaughterstiedupinabrooklynbasement.com notefortheplaintiff

    So you’ll be at the meeting to help make sure it doesn’t get undermined?

  • zangtron

    Once again, Philebrity’s cynicism is terribly tiring. If you are ” all for standing up to the top 1% and all” then why don’t you participate in the process and live-blog the meeting and the action? Your complacency and blase attitudes are fully complicit with the 1%. Wake up.

  • tips

    Here, then, is a movement with a borderline personality disorder.

  • Haywire

    To not make a point,is pointless.

  • mcry93

    thanks, you know i always appreciate your economic analysis!

  • Zombie Larry

    And you people laugh at the tea party!

  • scissor.noise

    your ignorance on this topic is stupefying.

  • chuck63

    The Zombie makes a good point.

  • safay

    “Does anyone really not know what the basic message is of this protest: that Wall Street is oozing corruption and criminality and its unrestrained political power — in the form of crony capitalism and ownership of political institutions — is destroying financial security for everyone else?”

    http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/28/protests_21/

  • nullsub

    “we want to like this” is the shittiest attitude and practically pervades this entire has-been site

  • emmkay

    I’m totally with Philebrity on this one. I want to be with the protest, but I can’t figure out what the GOAL is. I went to the website on Friday. The only clear message I saw was that Radiohead wouldn’t be playing. Beyond that, I saw a list of grievances, but no objectives. It’s like that girl you’re dating who is upset, but you’re supposed to know what you did wrong and how to fix it with no clues from her.

  • Zombie Larry

    No, seriously these people are like a two year old at a mall who is screaming ,kicking and crying for no discernible reason beyond embarrassing their parents.

  • Zombie Larry

    or, it’s just a great place to smoke some weed, pick up a hippy chick and spend the night talking about “the coming revolution” while fucking her brains out.

  • MichaelJackSauce

    Amen Tips. Also, Wall Street is only 2 hours away… why do we need an auxiliary protest here?

    Here in PA our Republican Gov and Legislature have proposed policies (voter identification, splitting the electoral vote), aimed directly at disenfranchising poor and urban voters. This is happening across the country because Republicans have taken over state legislatures. The Tea Baggers are equally inarticulate and uniformed as the Occupy crowd… but they are winning because they vote for viable candidates in EVERY election. It’s a sad truth that some of these protesters giving up a week of their life to the cause of incoherence, often can’t be bothered to take 15 minutes out of their year to vote.

  • kiitymaki

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/youre-creating-a-vision-of-the-sort-of-society-you-want-to-have-in-miniature/2011/08/25/gIQAXVg7HL_blog.html

    Excerpts for those that don’t want to click:
    “DG: It’s very similar to the globalization movement. You see the same criticisms in the press. It’s a bunch of kids who don’t know economics and only know what they’re against. But there’s a reason for that. it’s pre-figurative, so to speak. You’re creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature. And it’s a way of juxtaposing yourself against these powerful, undemocratic forces you’re protesting. If you make demands, you’re saying, in a way, that you’re asking the people in power and the existing institutions to do something different. And one reason people have been hesitant to do that is they see these institutions as the problem.

    EK: So if you say, for instance, that you want a tax on Wall Street and then you’ll be happy, you’re implicitly saying that you’re willing to be happy with a slightly modified version of the current system.

    DG: Right. The tax on Wall Street will go to people controlled by Wall Street.”

  • ultraval

    when people refer to the Occupy movement as unfocused, or “protesting for protesting’s sake,” i can only assume they are unaware of the goals of the movement. they are clear, simple, and straightforward, but they were decided upon very recently so i do understand if people haven’t heard.

    OCCUPY Agenda

    1. Place a fee on a Wall Street transactions and tax capital gains the same as income
    2. End corporate person-hood and overturn the flawed Citizens United decision
    3. Get big money out of politics through substantive campaign finance reform
    4. Create jobs through investment in the public sector and infrastructure.

  • Zombie Larry

    “OCCUPY Agenda

    1. Place a fee on a Wall Street transactions and tax capital gains the same as income
    2. End corporate person-hood and overturn the flawed Citizens United decision
    3. Get big money out of politics through substantive campaign finance reform
    4. Create jobs through investment in the public sector and infrastructure.”

    #1 will destroy private capital in this country.It will hurt pension funds everywhere and clobber the small investor.

    #3 will just drive the money underground. Bad move

    #4 reveals their real agenda. The destruction of capitalism and with it the United States of America.

    This should come as no surprise when you consider that Van Jones is behind these half wits.

  • ultraval

    even better: Occupy Wall Street has released its first official statement. it’s a list of grievances, with a link at the bottom to a page of working goals. the purpose of this protest is to protest not for the sake of protesting, but because the protesters feel they have been pushed beyond their limits. i assure you, i do not care what your personal opinions are, though i’m sure you love expressing them, any more than i care to share my own.

    http://occupywallst.org/forum/first-official-release-from-occupy-wall-street/

  • MichaelJackSauce

    What the hell is a “fee on wall street transactions”? I’m guessing they are reffering to a tax on secutities held for a short period of time… but the point is I have to guess.

    But if goal #5 was to make zombie larry’s dick hard, i guess this hasn’t been a total waste of time.

  • arcticsplasher

    “Fee on Wall Street transactions” is exactly that – a tax levied on financial transactions, i.e. the sales of stocks, currnecy trades, bonds, commodoties, etc. It is intended to prevent the kinds of rampant speculative buying and selling – often done by computer programs and not actual beings anymore – that does harmful things like run the price of oil up overnight for no reality-based reasons. Its been talked about for years, and the EU is proposing to implement it soon. You might not have heard about it if you only get news from teevee or MSM sources.

  • thetk

    it’s nearly impossible to imagine what a philebrity-approved movement *would* look like, so let’s not get too bent out of shape about this cynical dismissal. channeling a huge amount of energy behind a candidate? failed. massive, widespread protests in wisconsin pushing a single issue hard? failed. enormous iraq war protests? failed. clearly, the conventional model has proven inadequate in the face of superpacs, the tea party, and other corporate money. it’s obviously time for the left (ie the non-richest 1% of americans) to rethink strategy and methods, and it’s been incredibly inspiring to see this conversation happen so spontaneously and organically and from the bottom up.

    philebrity’s stock in trade is cynical know-it-all dismissal, but note how none of the judgements or assertions are backed up. why not? because they can’t be. anyone who has been to the park knows it’s not full of hippie goofballs, that there’s a mix of races, and there’s a good cross-section of ages and occupations. the occupy philly event tonight has 600 RSVP’s. the movement has put out a number of very well-produced videos and clear statements.

    yes, the movement clearly needs to work towards more of a clear set of wants, but it has a “focus” right now – building a broad constituency and calling attention to the gross and obvious inequities in the US economy. legislative and electoral concerns come later. if you’re sad because this doesn’t immediately conform to your personal psychological needs of what a protest should be, maybe you should investigate more deeply, or maybe you should wait. also remember that the tea party had quite a bit of corporate and astroturf money behind it – remember those glossy stickers and shirts that magically appeared eveywhere? – and this doesn’t. change takes time. it’s not a snarky blog post.

  • TommyHansen

    “We’re all for standing up to the top 1% and all”.

    But actually doing something would require you get off your comfy asses, wouldn’t it? Stick to gossip and media.

  • sweeneyisablowhardflipfloppingjerkoff

    Very pleased to learn that Philly is joining in. These are really exciting and inspiring developments, offering badly needed hope for confronting forces that have already caused immense harm to the general population and the world, with worse to come unless an aroused population takes energetic stops to reverse this disastrous course. — Noam Chomsky

  • Sam Durso

    Like.

  • MichaelJackSauce

    @articsplasher

    So why do they call it a tax on capital gains, but a “fee” on wall street transactions? If I collected 5 cents on every coffee sold at a Bodega on Wall Street, wouldn’t that be as you said “exactly that”? FTR – I agree that some if not most types of short-term financial transactions should be taxed as I think fiscal policy should promote investing over trading. But what do I know? I get my info from the NY Times, Yahoo Finance, and CNBC… not loose change.

    @thetk
    Your post is silly. You critize Tips for “cynical know-it-all dismissal” in the same post you say:

    “channeling a huge amount of energy behind a candidate? failed. massive, widespread protests in wisconsin pushing a single issue hard? failed. enormous iraq war protests? failed.”

    I’m going to be harsh, but it’s because of individuals like you that this movement infuriates me. Look at what you wrote here:

    “it’s obviously time for the left (ie the non-richest 1% of americans)”

    If you think 99% of this country is on the Left, and George Soros is on the right… I’m sure Fox news reporters will be lining up to interview you.

    The truth is, many Americans and the ones who often decide elections are on neither side.

  • Zombie Larry

    I was blessed to grow up with parents that taught me that envy and jealousy were useless emotions.

    I don’t obsess about what someone else has. I figure out what I want out of life and take the steps necessary to achieve it. I don’t expect someone else to cough up a few bucks so that I can live the life I think I deserve.

    It’s these envious and jealous emotions that the Democrats exploit in their constant desire to create class warfare.

    When I see these protesters, I see young relatively well educated kids that were mislead their entire lives. A leftist education system has taught them to believe society owes them something simply for being born.

    Most haven’t worked a day in their lives and they are crying because they want to immediately start sucking up the entitlements.

    The Tea Party needs to refocus on a long term goal of breaking the back of public unions, changing the school curriculum to a capitalism based learning system so when these kids graduate, they will understand what is expected of them and how to make themselves successful.

    The current crop is no better than homeless vagrants. Both are sitting on the curb, cup in hand, looking for a handout.

  • yourenotactuallyapartofanyrevolution

    Hey, douchebags, let me remind you of a few things.

    1. As my username says, you are not in fact a part of any revolution. The fact that you have the nerve to ever compare yourselves to people who literally get killed just for protesting the conditions you couldn’t ever in your spoiled life imagine shows how delusional and entitled you really are. The fact that you’re as entitled as you are means that when the actual revolution does come, you will be on the same side as the people in Wall Street who unlike you have the balls to not pretend to be working class.

    2. Philly is not New York. Philly is a city built on the hard work of people who didn’t have mommy and daddy pay for everything. There is still massive unemployment in Philly and Delco. I would love to see you take your little attention-whoring fest over to Marcus Hook, where actual working class people lost their jobs when two major refineries just shut down.

    People like you are ruining one of the best cities in the world. Shame on you.

  • Timo

    Larry – you have to admit that there are fundamental problems with the tax code, fundamental problems with campaign finance, and a disconnect when $700 billion of tax money is given to “job creators” who then either sit on the money or pay it as a bonus to the CEOs.

    Having said that, I have no idea what occupying Philadelphia City Hall to do with anything. What’s there, Family Court? The Chinatown bus stop would be a better place to meet.

  • kiitymaki

    @Zombie Larry
    Actually, what these protesters are looking for is the exact opposite. For the “trickle down” jobs these capitalist creators and investors promised when they got their tax loopholes. You continue to show how out of touch you are by painting everyone not you as looking for handouts.