Occupy Wall Street

I like Bill Moyers. I like what he has to say and the way he communicates it. If bias in this case is speaking out in a patriotic voice against the unpatriotic practices of the very wealthy, then it's just the sort of bias required when any enemy threatens the foundation of our country.

Though I still take pause when it comes to Bill, aware of a few questionable things he's done politically in the past, I still enjoy watching and listening to him. He is such an advocate for social fairness, I can only assume he is so, due to lessons he's learned from the past.

 

gee, it sure looks like such violence as there is comes from the nypd. again.

 

I think it's already been established that linking arms is now a crime and a violent act. It would appear that press attempts to report on or videotape the violence is also now a crime.

Freedom of speech
Right to peaceable assembly.....

.....Freedom of the press

"Whoops, there goes another rubber tree plant"

 

The First Amendment is actually a lot stronger then it once was. Traditional Anglo-Saxon free speech was always premised with the idea that one should not be able to commit seditious libel against the government. Per this tradition, as soon as the second presidential administration, the government was jailing its opposition for writing newspaper articles deemed unfair or slanderous. Around the same time, the British government banned seditious speech. To be fair, the second administration was highly disliked and the acts were repealed, but they were never ruled unconstitutional. In the early nineteenth century, abolitionist petitions were banned.

Early in America's history too, several religious tests were applied for state level positions. The co-author of the constitution, John Jay himself, proposed a ban on Catholic statesmen in New York. The Incorporation Doctrine which now extends the Bill of Rights to all levels of government hadn't existed.

Now, you're legally able to stand around in New York after the Fort Hood shootings, with signs celebrating the act of killing infidels. You can put up a sign outside your New York store commemorating the "hero's" that perpetrated 9/11. You couldn't do that in many other countries, democratic or otherwise. You can celebrate the death of soldiers as God's punishment for the liberality of modern society, and, to a degree, you can do that outside their funerals. But, you might notice that those Westboro people are often standing on pretty random stretches of road that aren't directly outside of wherever the deceased is being buried. That's because, even though they can say essentially whatever they like, as long as it's of a political nature, they can't do whatever they like while they're saying things. They can say what they like about soldiers and homosexuals, but states will still use regulation to prevent them from doing that directly outside of a funeral, which is an issue of harassment and assholery, not expression. Similarly, you can say what you like about Wall Street - American's certainly don't mince words when it comes to large companies or large government - but you can't do it with seven hundred friends on the Brooklyn Bridge, and you can't camp out in public space indefinitely. I think you'd find that if you camped on a sidewalk for days, the police would force you to leave regardless of whatever you might be saying. As with the Westboro situation, it's not an issue of expression or assembly.

The 1st Amendment gives you the right to say what you'd like, not the right to do what you'd like while you're saying something. Because of the modern doctrine of applying the 1st Amendment even to sedition and libel of public policy or figures, and because of the Incorporation Doctrine, you have a lot more legal freedom then original Americans did. You still can't camp anywhere you'd like, though. I would think that if it were only some middle class goof camping with his friends in a park for fun, they're removal would be neither surprising nor concerning, but the political nature of OWS has obscured what should be a very simple issue.

 

It's my understanding that the day of action was planned in advance of the latest raids. There are some folks who believe that the raids were timed to make it appear as though the day of action was a response to the raids. Not sure whether it matters.

With respect to disrupting Wall Street physically, with the advent of modern communication technology, much of the business of Wall Street takes place far away from Wall Street.

 

(Sorry, but re-posting entire posts seems so wasteful to me)

The examples you gave to make your point are in such contrast to the OWS movement, I'm still chuckling.
May I add the insane, hate-filled, bigoted rantings of Limbaugh, Beck and others to the list?
And the teachers and school administrators in Minnesota who are now allowed to freely point out the sinful nature of homosexuality to students, in a bill aimed at preventing school bullying.
And the free speech rights extended to corporations who don't participate in the free democratic process and don't extend the right of free speech to their own employees.
So you're correct in your assessment - Freedom of Speech enjoys much more actual "freedom" than it has in times past, sometimes for the better, often for the worse.
And I agree that the right to free speech does not explicitly extend to the right to camp out in tents in a private/semi-public place - But as restricting the when, where, and how can serve to restrict free speech itself, and as the Constitution lays out little in support of restriction, it is merely the teetering tower of legal precedence posing time, place, and manner restrictions.
Protests are messy, disruptive, and down right inconvenient but they're sometimes necessary in a democratic society.
Where would you have them held? Egypt maybe? Seems they enjoyed more freedom of speech and right to assemble than we do.

 

Bill Whittle providing a little insight and perspective to the Occupy Wall Street movement:

 

so what you're saying, new person with the long name (welcome btw) is that property rights supercede the right to withdraw consent from the existing order. that matters of bourgeois convenience supercede political action. that it's ok to register dissent so long as you don't put anyone out.
and you actually imagine that reflects some expansion of freedom of speech from 1787, when it was still the case that the people who made the constitution and bill of rights wanted to protect the right of citizens to revolt above all else--and a withdrawal of consent is a form of revolt.

goes to show you---for all the whinging that comes from the right about democratic socialism being somehow antithetical to the freedom of conservative ideology to keep people isolated and powerless, the fact is that any western european country is more politically free than the united states. in the 1940s the right was freaked out by the increased militancy of unions coming out of world war 2 and recognized the power of strikes--so we got taft-hartley. the entire us system is rigged in the interests of capital. you can say whatever so long as the interests of capital run are paramount.

and the us clearly stands behind scaf in egypt so long as their position remains relatively stable. the problem is that they've been such assholes that they've already undermined their own position (15,000 people arrested for political action and tried by military kangaroo courts for example)...this is what you get with superficial change in an american-style situation--a change of faces in a system that remains entirely unchanged. of course the us is also saying that scaf has to transition out of power--but that's pretty clearly an attempt to position itself a bit ahead of scaf so that they dont fuck up so thoroughly that they undermine their extra-legal status in egypt in the next government and with that undercut the ability of the united states to control policy in egypt by its massive aid (1.5 billion a year) and training ties to the military. but i digress.

 

Withdrawing consent from the existing status quo isn't guaranteed under the Constitution, nor should it be. The right to withdraw consent from the existing order would simply amount to a right to choose not to partake in society whenever it please you. Society requires coercion in order to administer justice and the law, in order to collect taxes, and in order to build roads, schools, water filtration plants, to subsidize healthcare etc. Without the rule of law, I can't imagine a society being stable or prosperous, which is why people shouldn't be allowed to wilfully absolve themselves of the responsibilities of citizenship whenever they're annoyed with whatever is going on.

Now, sometimes, of course, dissent is called for. Dissent from undemocratic, theocratic or socialist rule is quite understandable. That doesn't mean that people from rich democracies should be able to revolt against it without restriction which, as your president Kennedy noted, is antithetical to true democracy:

“For our Nation is founded on the principle that observance of the law is the eternal safegarud of liberty and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny. The law which we obey includes the final rulings of the courts, as well as the enactments of our legislative bodies.
Even among law-abiding men few laws are universally loved, but they are uniformly respected and not resisted.
Americans are free, in short, to disagree with the law but not to disobey it. For in a government of laws and not of men, no man, however prominent or powerful, and no mob, however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could defy the commands of our court and our constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbours.”

The rule of law is paramount. If, in principle, you and people who think like you, can absolve yourselves of the responsibilities and restrictions imposed on you by the current system, then so can everyone. Kennedy should not have been able to use the national guard to force the University of Mississippi to allow James Meredith to attend. Republicans should be able to not pay taxes as a way of "withdrawing consent from the existing order". What we're left with, is no existing order and, therefore, no political freedom at all.

The founding fathers of course recognized this, which is why they put down two revolts within the first administration, and why they wrongly passed the highly oppressive Alien and Sedition Acts. Occasional revolt can be a good thing, but the victorious revolutionaries must not allow perpetual dissent based on a desire to be consistent, they must impose some sort of order, and they did.

In Canada, it doesn't look like the OWS movement - here much younger then yours - will be allowed to last. It's not an issue of American being conservative, or Canada being relatively more left leaning. I myself vote for Canadian left-wing parties and would find your Democrats to be radical conservatives. It's an issue of enforcing the cooperation of individuals that makes society function. Now, I don't necessarily support the removal of the OWS movement - I don't live in one of the occupied cities and I have no idea what it's like - but the removal is not in breach of the constitution, it's perfectly understandable as in the public interest, and it certainly has nothing to do with capital or political oppression.

America enjoys a lot of political freedom. I don't imagine that celebrating 9/11 or the Fort Hood shooting or dead soldiers would be as tolerated in other countries as it is in yours. Still, mass camping in a public area, doesn't really fall under the purview of political freedom, which is why such things aren't really tolerated in any developed country.

 

The Greenham Common women lasted 19 years of course

 

I don't know what list this is being added to. I don't agree that corporations should be able to freely donate money to parties or candidates. I don't think that teachers should be able to criticize someones sexuality. I do think fat people should be allowed to be idiots on the radio.

I think the massive increase in freedom enjoyed by Americans is almost entirely a good thing, with rare exceptions. Restrictions on enfranchisement or office based on Catholicism, or imprisonment being the punishment for making fun of the president, were terrible, but were done.

I've always thought that your constitution, in the context of precedent, was admirably clear. There are Canadian laws that are centuries older then Canada itself(including, for example, a law that mandates the head of state must always be Anglican, as irrelevant as that law is seeing as our head of state is always the head of the Anglican church). My Canadian law teacher taught me to apply the 1st amendment to the government motives. For example, the government cannot arrest someone standing outside of a hotel because of an opinion they're expressing, but they can arrest them for flailing their arms around, and harassing people as a way of bringing their point home. Similarly, the government can't bother people for criticizing Wall Street, but that doesn't mean they can't prevent them from hogging a implicitly public area either. Laws restricting where you can be are as old as government: you can't be in someones home against their will, you can't be blocking traffic and, apparently, you can't occupy a park for weeks on end. This doesn't restrict freedom of assembly, which is plainly understood as the right to protest in public, but not necessarily in any place or in any form; it has always been subject to many common sense restrictions.
--- merged: Nov 18, 2011 1:22 AM ---

I stand corrected. However, these campers were evicted multiple times, indicating that they weren't protected by some sort of legal immunity that Americans are bereft of. And, of course, this was around a missle base, not in the center of dozens of high density cities, which is quite different. Similarly, Occupy Nova Scotia and Occupy London have already been cleared out.

I mean, for goodness sake, I'm not allowed to loiter outside my local grocery store. I see no reason why people should have more rights then me, just because they're protesting something in a large group.

 

there comes a point at which the legitimacy of the legal order comes into question. that is eminently democratic. for example (a historical digression) the sit-down strikes pioneered by the cio were illegal from the viewpoint of property law, but politically the situation was that the law was superceded by the political mobilization of the workers--and there is an ethical question about ownership in such a situation, the extent to which those who own a space of production can or should impose their property rights on an action carried out by people who work in that space. this was one of the motivations behind taft-hartley, which was a drastic curtailing of the right to strike. and ows can be seen through the lens of a strike action--limited at this point, but with the potential to become quite other than that. ((an unlimited general strike that held would bring the entire socio-economic system to its knees---such an action (which was entirely illegal) shut down the suez canal and provided one of the last blows that took out mubarak in egypt....)) the informal media coverage is already creating a situation in which actions geared toward enforcing property laws at the expense of political speech are functioning to undermine the institutions that carry it out. so it's not smart, not in the interest of the existing order, to act to enforce the legal justifications that they either have or create to act against the occupation.

it's also the case that political actions can--and at times should and even have to--inconvenience people. it's a perverse view that sees it otherwise, a consumer view, a bourgeois view. to give up that is to give up a very basic freedom--the freedom to act to place the legitimacy of the existing order into question.

the view of democracy that kennedy outlined is deeply reactionary. it's in keeping with his politics more generally. it places the procedural legitimacy of the existing order over everything else. it erases the notion of popular sovereignty. what ows could become, if things go as i think they might, an assertion of popular sovereignty as over against the plutocratic system that is currently in place. it assumes that the existing order in its legal expression is necessarily legitimate because it exists. and it reduces democracy to merely a word in the process. its a synonym for an assertion that the existing order is necessarily legitimate. every reactionary has tried to argue that about the system that they benefit from, that puts them into power. but the reality is that the political framework that enables the existing order to operate is movable. and that moving that framework is what i think the occupation movement is about. but it is not really revolutionary in doing that. it is, however, after an undermining of the legitimacy of the plutocratic form that currently dominates the united states.

it is also the case that the occupation is a reassertion of a notion of public space that runs across 30 years of ideologically motivated politics that undermines the notion of public space, that privatizes it. there are consequences to that. and we're starting to see them. this is far from over.

 

Really? Are you sure?



http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/17/occupy-london-business-eviction-deadline

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/occupy-london-protesters-defy-order-to-quit-st-pauls-cathedral/story-e6frg6so-1226198720094

 

Oops, wrong London there. Still, apparently for the other London as well, evictions have been ordered, which still gets to the crux of the issue if we're thinking that eviction orders would be unique to America within the first world.

 

its pretty clear that (a) these evictions are co-ordinated in part because (b) the occupation is beginning to do what it set out to do, which is undercut the hold on power of the american plutocracy. but because it would be politically a real problem to admit as much, the rationales have been made on quite limited, property-oriented grounds. which is making of those grounds political issues. which is not, i suspect, the idea.

 

The London eviction will take months, even if it's successful, which is no legal certainty.

(There are other Londons? )

The initial statement from London - http://occupylsx.org/?page_id=575

 

London, Ontario, Canada

 

Yeah, hence my smiley

But, really. was that the first place to spring to mind when someone says Occupy London?