The plutocrats are succeeding at changing the narrative and I don't know what to do about it.

[Ed Suspicious]

The narrative for me has unfortunately changed from the crimes of wall street and corporate influence to the "in your face" crimes of police and their "crowd control" tactics. I wonder if that's the reason police seem to have been given the go ahead to affront civil liberties. It's a David Copperfield-ian deception. it's really ingenious on the corporate and political criminal's part. It takes the power of our cameras and focuses their lenses on the police, turning our angst toward the black uniformed guys with truncheons and away from the problems we set out to address in the first place.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I don't think the point of the police brutality is to refocus people.

In fact, the brutality is an old technique, intended to intimidate the recipients and discourage them from what they're doing.

The pigs haven't yet learned how to deal with YouTube, and their violence is being turned against them. I don't think they realized how readily the connected society can dispel their lies and classic techniques of information management. They're getting their asses handed to them in the public space. They will eventually revise their tactics, but for now they're calling plays from the old playbook, and it just doesn't work any more.


I think people are smart enough to track the connections between the crimes of the 1% and the violent means by which they attempt to quell popular objections to their larcenous agenda.

[Ed Suspicious]

3. Thanks for the response.

That's hopeful that the thuggishness is some sort of ignorant buffoonary rather than some nefarious plot from higher up. I guess it means we can eventually win by continually exposing (provided laws like Illinois no filming without consent fail to take hold).

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I have a great deal of faith in the new process.

And I think it is a new form of social organization that we are seeing. Older structures had to be much more dependent on hierarchy to disseminate information & instructions. Now we have something like a global mind starting to emerge. It may make no more sense to ask who is the leader of OWS than it would to ask which of the neurons in your brain is the boss. I think that our social media (i.e. media that permit one-to many communications in all directions) are attaining a higher level of self-organization in which groups coalesce for specific purposes, disband when the purpose is fulfilled, and regroup as needed for further actions. Think of the Human Mike. It arose almost instantly when needed. Whose idea was it? Who knows? Who cares? Is there actually a person somewhere who can say "I thought of the Mic Check?" Or did it just sort of arise as a product of the emergent group-mind?

[Ed Suspicious]

2. ugggh this thread got duped. sorry.

[DuaneBidoux]

5. I don't agree. History has shown (see Arab Spring) that repression strengthens people's movements.

I think what you are seeing as a changed narrative is a sub-plot within the larger narrative.

Photos like a policeman walking up and down a line of protesters sitting peaceably sparying pepper spray like he is watering his pettunas ultimately strengthens this movement.

Just my opinion. The only exception we have seen to this recently has been Iran--and I still don't believe that our police are willing to put bullets through the eyes of young attractive women wearing Nikes. At least not yet. And if they do I predict the outcome will be nothing similar to that seen in Iran.

[kctim]

6. Convince OWS people to stop breaking the law?

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Convice the rebels to stop breaking the law

And pay that damn stamp tax!

Silly wabbit.

[kctim]

8. No comparison

Get a hundred million Americans out there showing their support and then we can talk about OWS being some kind of a real revolution. Until then, they aren't even on the same level.