The Occupation of Wall Street Spreads

[Zinegata]

Somehow, the idea that anything non-gandhi= violent protest doesn't sit well with me.

Riot police are empowered to use force to disperse crowds. But that doesn't neccessarily mean that protests are violent if they resist arrest. If they use force to resist arrest, sure, but linking arms?!?!?! Where the potential harm to the police or other bystanders in that?

Since I know there are plenty of fucking morons in this thread who want to turn this into a OWS pity party regardless of the evidence, I will keep it short and sweet:

Somebody tried to compare OWS movement's "non-violent" protest with Gandhi's own non-violent protest movement. This is what they said:

I mean by that definition wouldn't Gandhi have been committing "violent protest"

I demonstrated that no such comparison can be made. The OWS folks tried to resist arrest, whereas Gandhi's tennets are clear: You do NOT resist arrest.

OWS non-violence = Gandhi non-violence is not true in this instance. It's that fucking simple.

====

Also, you can cry and complain about the supposed purity of arm-linking, but IMHO Gandhi was correct: A true non-violence movement would not resist arrest. They prove their convictions by enduring injustices and suffering through things like serving jail time.

Not by trying to avoid it by "non-violent" resisting of arrest.

[Keevan_Colton]

At what point does not assisting in arrest cross to resisting arrest?

[madd0ct0r]

ahhh. got it!

linking arms is a form of passive resistance, a step up from making the police drag you to the wagon instead of walking.
While the protestor is not commiting an act of violence, he is forcing the authority representative to commit one instead.

A truly non-violent protest would give the authority representative a chance to avoid committing violence too as otherwise the protestors are guilty of assault upon themselves with a blunt instrument (to wit, a policeman). To put it a less sarky way, the protestors take responsibility for not allowing potentially violent situations to develop. I know if I'd been on that front row, I'd have lost my temper.

They should have allowed the tents to be taken down, and returned anyway.
just as a question though, why are they occupying the university? surely there's better and public targets?

[Zinegata]

At what point does not assisting in arrest cross to resisting arrest?

Semantic bullshit. Linkings arms is not trying to "not assist" in arrest. That's resisting arrest. Aiding and abetting and all that.

And again, Gandhi's tennets are clear: No resistance. NONE. None of this "Oh, but I was just innocently blocking the policeman's way to Gandhi!".

If you want to really be like Gandhi, step the fuck aside and let them arrest Mr. Gandhi. If you want, join him in jail too. If they beat you up for shits and giggles, you let them. If policement get into trouble five minutes later because the crowd got mad at them for blatant injustice, you get between the policemen and the mob and sacrifice your own life to save the policeman if you have to.

Because that's how you earn being compared to Gandhi.

[Shroom Man 777]

I say the protesters should eat a fuckton of Big Macs for one week and turn themselves into morbidly obese 500 lbs Americans, so even if they get pepper sprayed and maced and rubber bulleted and batoned (their fats will protect their spleens from rupturing), Kamikaze Sith and SVPD will still need forklifts to get these fat guys off their lawn. All these guys have to do is to beach themselves like a bunch of whales.

Holy crap. Fatty nerds will save America.

[Zinegata]

I say the protesters should eat a fuckton of Big Macs for one week and turn themselves into morbidly obese 500 lbs Americans, so even if they get pepper sprayed and maced and rubber bulleted and batoned (their fats will protect their spleens from rupturing), Kamikaze Sith and SVPD will still need forklifts to get these fat guys off their lawn. All these guys have to do is to beach themselves like a bunch of whales.

Holy crap. Fatty nerds will save America.

And people wonder why OWS had become a joke.

[Keevan_Colton]

Given that legalism is simply semantic bullshit...

Anyway, do remember that Ghandi also was of the opinion that they Jews should have marched themselves into the gas chambers to shame Hitler into stopping the Holocaust...so, take his advice with a pinch of salt.

[Shroom Man 777]

And people wonder why OWS had become a joke.

Your nation has become a joke.

[Zinegata]

Given that legalism is simply semantic bullshit...

Anyway, do remember that Ghandi also was of the opinion that they Jews should have marched themselves into the gas chambers to shame Hitler into stopping the Holocaust...so, take his advice with a pinch of salt.

Given that the discussion is not a legal code, but a set of guidelines on non-violent protest, I can definitely play the semantic bullshit card. Quibbling over "not assisting" and "resisting" has zero relevance when we're talking about Gandhi's guidelines on non-violent protest, which is pretty clear in this instance: Step the fuck aside and let them do the arrests and take your stuff.

Wanna blame someone? Blame the guy who made the Gandhi comparison.

Secondly, nice jab at Gandhi, except of course we're talking about his methods of non-violent protest. Which the OWS folks didn't follow, and these methods were in fact instrumental in India's independence movement. Hey, ever wonder why the OWS is a joke while India got its independence?

Also, thanks for invoking the Godwin's Law. Are you that much of a fucking moron by comparing Hitler's Germany, the Obama's America? Really? Because that's exactly what you're implying when you say Gandhi's methods of non-violent protest are irrelevant in this day and context.

Where are the gas chambers in the US preparing to kill the OWS members? And don't give me this "Guantanamo!" and "Rendition!" crap. Where are the facilities for killing millions of people over things like race and sexuality? Where is the genocide? This is a bullshit comparison and you know it.

[Zinegata]

And people wonder why OWS had become a joke.

Your nation has become a joke.

Haha! I'm from the Philippines. We were always a joke! :p.

[Shroom Man 777]

Did he say that America was doing this? He was just saying that Gandhi, and his opinions, are not the end all be all of non-violent protesting since some of his opinions, like the whole Nazi thing, can be silly. Though Gandhi was a swell chap overall.

[Shroom Man 777]

And people wonder why OWS had become a joke.

Your nation has become a joke.

Haha! I'm from the Philippines. We were always a joke! :p.

Well, I can't argue with that. At least now you guys can have your turn being laughed at, just like the rest of us. Joke redistribution is part of the socialist agenda!

[Zinegata]

Notice the use of the word "implication". He did not say it outright, but pointing out one of the flaws of the Gandhi non-violence doctrine ("It lets bad people genocide you easily") based on Gandhi's own words does imply that the OWS people are facing the same conditions as Jews in Nazi Germany, and thus alternative methods should be used. Otherwise, why try to pooh-pooh the Gandhi doctrine?

While I acknowledge the flaws of the Gandhi non-violence tennets (definitely don't do it if you're a Jew in Hitler's Germany), it would be a gross exaggeration to say that it has become inapplicable in present-day America.

[madd0ct0r]

the humour has been allocated equally, from each according to his ability, to each according to their need.

I think it might also be a little early / stupid to compare the Indian independence movement to OWS, they want pretty different things, done over pretty different timescales.

Also, I'm not entirely sure a Ghandian level of non-violence would actually work in America, there's too much of the main population suspicious of them.

[Shroom Man 777]

Even if (well, duh, it isn't) it's not applicable to America (because it isn't), it doesn't change the fact that Gandhi's opinions aren't all perfect and like anyone, sometimes he can be wronggo.

Bringing up Gandhi's ideas on Nazis and Jews is just a big way of showing one instance of him being full of crap.

[Zinegata]

Doc->

In my opinion, the OWS needs to adopt Gandhi non-violence precisely because many in America are suspicious of them. It needs to dispel the idea that they're just disgruntled anarchists, and they'd do that by not making any fuss when the authorities try to arrest them.

But this is just opinion, I'm not guaranteeing results :p.

Shroom->

Gandhi's views are far from perfect, but then again if you want to discount an opinion then you should dissect the opinion instead of launching attacks against the man who made the opinion. Otherwise, ad-hominem.

No such dissection happened aside from "But that means the Jews should let the Nazis kill them!", which again is totally NOT the situation in America.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, bringing up Nazis is a quick and easy way of saying "well, that guy had some dumb ideas too". I guess it's piss poor for actual debate and substantiation, but what the hell. Nazis.

[Alkaloid]

In my opinion, the OWS needs to adopt Gandhi non-violence precisely because many in America are suspicious of them. It needs to dispel the idea that they're just disgruntled anarchists, and they'd do that by not making any fuss when the authorities try to arrest them.

They can't do that though, it won't work. Gandhi non-violence worked because the English simply didn't have the resources to deal with the massive numbers of people protesting. If you're outnumbered 20 to 1, even when people are voluntarily being arrested and taken to prison, there is only so much you can do, and I don't have the numbers on hand but I suspect the security forces in India at the time were even more numerous than that. It's not uncommon to hear of the police at these protests actually outnumbering the protestors, and that is without calling in the National Guard or similar to bolster their numbers, which means if they adopt the Gandhi approach, protests will never get above a few dozen people tops because the police will just move in and arrest and temporarily detain anyone protesting. The situations are not even remotely similar and comparing them is at this stage completely pointless.

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe we should look back into other protest movements in America's past. Those civil rights guise, those Vietnam war guise, and so on.

[Raw Shark]

From my purely anecdotal point of view in my taxi, I've been going out of my way to bring up Occupy Denver in a neutral context and casually poll the passengers every time I drive somebody past it for a month or so, and I noticed a definite shift in the opinions of moderates (ie: everyone who was not predisposed to open support or contempt for it) right after that one cop got pushed off his bike by one loose cannon malcontent here. That's it, that's all it took for the "undecideds" to turn their noses in their air and sniff, "Well if they weren't violent, they wouldn'tve gotten tear gas and rubber bullets."

Mind you, rubber bullets weren't used in the original bust-up a couple Saturdays ago, but it was initially reported that they were and the mindless middle is A-OK with it.

Not that I'm advocating that they go Full Gandhi here, either, because we'd need a lot more protestors for that as pointed out already, but more effort to control and weed out the volatile rogue elements among the people they do have might go a long, long way for their image.

[PainRack]

Shouldn't someone has made the obligatory comment that Gandhi protests were as successful as they were because of the presence of violent revolutionaries elsewhere in India?

[derp vader]

Ghandi believed that when an individual was too weak to sacrifice his own life in non-violent struggle, that it was probably better to use violence than risk using "non-violence" as a cover for cowardice; creating a just society was also important to him. He understood non-violence as being more of an "effective method" than violence for winning struggles, specifically as non-violence forced the guilty party to confront its guilt. But he also believed that violence could be justified in cases where this guilt couldn't arise.

[Shroom Man 777]

Why should anyone feel guilty that such violent pieces of shit like these... people are getting tear gassed, rubber bulleted, and batoned? Who would lose any sleep at night at all, because of these things? Are not all things right in the world? I say that law and order is being upheld, and good for it.

[Kamakazie Sith]

In Denver, the protesters came back to the park. At least in the last hour, the police have been pepper spraying anyone recording their presence and are refusing to give out badge numbers or explain why they are arresting people.

Damn. Has any video been made available?

[Losonti Tokash]

About half our group that went to Denver are still there, so I'll have to wait until they get home. They put some videos on facebook Sunday night but then had to lay low since the police were apparently targeting people that were obviously recording and were also deploying tear gas.

In Portland, it looks like the stand off was mostly peaceful with the police backing off like at Berkeley, once protester reinforcements from Seattle, SLC, SF, and Oakland arrived. Like Berkeley, however, there was a brief push by police which resulted in an officer being shoved off his bike by some idiot and a protester was beaten about the head by police and lost the use of his right arm. No word if it's permanent or any other injuries.

Scott Olsen released a statement earlier and is going through physical and speech rehabilitation.

Police in Chapel Hill, NC stormed an abandoned dealership that had been taken over by an affinity group. A crowd gathered around shouting "Shame!"

Toronto reneged on its agreement with OT and are kicking them out of Victoria Park.

OWS got their generators back after their legal team pressed the NYFD to return them.

Occupy Lincoln (my group) had a march Saturday that didn't result in any arrests like last week's and we're planning some kind of block party this coming weekend instead, to encourage people to come down and chat with us.

Busy weekend.