fragments of an attempted writing.

demands, part one.

A friend pointed out to me this dismal post from Dave Ramsey on OWS.


No demands?  No message?


Found in 10 minutes using Google:


Here is the first official statement from OWS.  Herein the protesters do officially state why they are protesting, and while it doesn't make specific demands per se, it doesn't take a PhD in literary criticism or a background in decoding the Enigma machine to infer from this statement what some of the demands are likely going to be. And the statement certainly constitutes a message on the part of the whole of OWS.  


Here is a list of proposed demands from OWS, which are currently being debated informally online, and will be debated formally within OWS general assemblies.  You can follow debate on the forums on the website, or, hell, if you are a well paid pundit writing multiple posts/articles on OWS, you might actually go down to OWS and observe the GAs when they get debated there (I know if I were a right wing pundit who was paid to analyze American political currents I would be doing just that).  The OWS demands working group made the mistake of releasing this list of proposed demands to the New York Times prior to it being made known to the OWS general assembly, which pissed off a lot of OWSers, so we'll see how this goes.  The strongest anarchist element of any American Occupy location seems to be in NYC.  But it seems from easily found online forum texts and from written accounts of working groups and general assemblies that the anarchists in NYC have been surprised at how well these demands resonate with people involved in OWS. 


Here is the first declaration of Occupy Memphis.  I note this one because I am from Memphis.  In it you will find demands.  Broad demands?  Sure.  Hopelessly hopeful demands considering Occupy Memphis is lucky to have 30 protesters spend the night at the occupation on a weekday night?  Yep.  But some pretty clear demands nonetheless.  The declaration also clearly constitutes a message.  


Start googling various Occupy locations and you'll quickly find that most Occupy locations have stated the reasons for their protest and those stated reasons are more precise than "we are upset." A number of Occupy locations have also stated some demands.  Occupy Chicago has made twelve somewhat specific demands dealing with national political matters (I say "somewhat specific" because demands such as "forgive student debt" could mean any number of things in terms of the who pays and the how it gets forgiven).  Occupy Madison has made 6 broad demands.  All of this can be found via Google in a matter of minutes.

1 comment:

  1. For my part, I have been appalled at CNN, FOX and MSNBC (which these days seem to have taken up the ecological niche abandoned or at least relinquished by "The Big Three") for their inaccurate portrayal of OWS or O(fill in the blank).

    CNN and FOX seem to have taken the tack of "those crazy/damn kids", while MSNBC has taken a slightly more generous stance, of 'noble but misguided protesters'. None, though, actually do an accurate job of stating in detail just what they are demanding. Curious that.

    Thanks for doing the newscasters' jobs for them, especially on this important issue.

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