'Occupy' types

[mlmpetert]

This is fascinating/hilarious to me:

So OWS has raised about 500k which is great for their cause, but since OWS doesn’t really have a uniform message its causing some angst inside the movement. OWS, as a microcosm of a socialist society, appears to be sharing the same issues of any socialistic style of government.

Apparently there are different groups within the movement like the Kitchen Group, Sanitation Group, Finance Working Group, Comfort Working Group and of course Pulse Working Group (the bongo guys). All recognized groups are funded with money by the OWS’s General Assembly. Guess what???? Some groups don’t think they are getting enough or don’t like rules the OWS GA imposes on them, Imagine that!

Several days ago the Pulse Working Group had some of its drums vandalized, stolen, or messed up from rain. So they wanted $8,000 to get new drums but were turned down by their own General Assembly! The drummers are a major revenue raiser since people leave tips for their performances and while the drummers get to keep some of that money the GA has been accused of “taxing” the drummers at around 50% of their earnings. Then, to the drummer’s displeasure, the GA voted that the drummers can only play 2 hours a day (apparently nonstop drumming all day and night can get annoying), which was later revised to 4 hours a day. There is even speculation that the vandalism to the drummer’s drums was a inside job as the vandalism happened after the drummers didn’t abide by the rules the GA enforced upon them.

As you can imagine the Pulse Working Group is PISSED! But a lot of the working groups are pissed so a new SpokesCouncil model was created to streamline things. This allows each working group to act independently without securing the will of the collective…. Kind of like a democracy with special interest groups. This was in response because the “GA is unwieldy, cumbersome, and redundant.”, much like any overbearing socialist government we have seen throughout history no matter how well intentioned…..

Imagine if the drummers were free to do what they wanted to do with all the money they raised? So instead of surrendering their money for the collective good they could use their own money to provide for themselves. I mean some of the drummers have to be thinking this right? 18 year old Seth Harper eloquently said in reference to the OWS GA “They’re imposing a structure on the natural flow of music”. I couldn’t say it better myself…..

Sweet quotes:

“And we’ve had issues with the drummers too. They drum incessantly all day, and really loud.” Facilitators spearheaded a General Assembly proposal to limit the drumming to two hours a day.

To Shane Engelerdt, a 19-year-old from Jersey City and self-described former “head drummer,” this amounted to a Jacobinic betrayal. “They are becoming the government we’re trying to protest," he said. "They didn’t even give the drummers a say ... Drumming is the heartbeat of this movement. Look around: This is dead, you need a pulse to keep something alive.”

The drummers claim that the finance working group even levied a percussion tax of sorts, taking up to half of the $150-300 a day that the drum circle was receiving in tips. “Now they have over $500,000 from all sorts of places,” said Engelerdt. “We’re like, what’s going on here? They’re like the banks we’re protesting."

Daniel Zetah, a 35-year-old lead facilitator from Minnesota, mounted a bench. “We need to clear this out. There are a bunch of kids coming to stay here.” One of the hoodied men fought back: “I’m not giving up my space for ****ing kids. They have parents and homes. My parents are dead. This is my space.”

“The sunshine protestors will leave,” said “Zonkers,” a 20-year-old cleaner and longtime occupier from Tennessee. (He asked that his name not be used due to a felony marijuana conviction.) “The people who remain are the people who care. You get a lot of crust punks, silly kids, people who want to panhandle ... It disgusts me. These people are here for a block party.”

A man named Sage Roberts desperately rifled through the pile, looking for a sleeping bag. “They’ve taken my stuff,” he muttered. Lauren Digion, the sanitation group leader, broke in: “This isn’t your stuff. You got all this stuff from comfort [the working group]. It belongs to comfort.”

“When cleanups happen, people get mad,” Glaser said. “This is its own city. Within every city there are people who freeload, who make people’s lives miserable. We just deal with it. We can’t kick them out.”

In response to dissatisfaction with the consensus General Assembly, many facilitators have adopted a new “spokescouncil” model, which allows each working group to act independently without securing the will of the collective. “This streamlines it,” argued Zonkers. “The GA is unwieldy, cumbersome, and redundant."

As the communal sleeping bag argument between Lauren Digion and Sage Roberts threatened to get out of hand, a facilitator in a red hat walked by, brow furrowed. “Remember? You’re not allowed to do any more interviews,” he said to Digion. She nodded and went back to work. But when Roberts shouted, “Don’t tell me what to do!” Digion couldn't hold back.

“Someone has to be told what to do," she said. "Someone needs to give orders. There’s no sense of order in this ****ing place.”

The Organizers vs. the Organized in Zuccotti Park -- Daily Intel