Comments on: Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood – Reflecting on Two Months of Occupy Wall Street

By: Forex Training

Forex Training — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:22:48 +0000

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By: skelley1

skelley1 — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:38:49 +0000

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I agree that all the activity around our building has been a hassle, but perhaps less so than the Yankees parade or any other sports celebration that takes over the streets. For me, the lack of a single message seems appropriate for where our society is today. Change is uncomfortable, but if each person gets to choose which things they want to focus on changing first, then it allows an opportunity to generate a sense of responsibility for what happens next.

By: skelley1

skelley1 — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:32:34 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Carolyn. I read this article about gardening and thought of you. Growing your own food is a small action that can make a difference.

http://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/what-does-gardening-have-do-occupy-movement.html

By: Peggy

Peggy — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:52:40 +0000

Good job, Sophie. I recommend reading “Justice: What’s the Right thing to do?” by Michael Sandel as a start on getting a handle on what justice might be and how we might go about defining and living it as a community of caring people. It seems that the protesters on college campuses in California have an agenda: protest tuition hikes. That seems reasonable. All of us might stand up and protest the privatization of wealth to the richest few percent and the socialization of loss to the great masses of us in the recent bailout of banks and financial institutions “too big to fail.” I did visit Occupy Austin a couple of weeks ago and was also impressed by some speakers there talking sense to the gathered faithful about how to prepare for potential violence (rubber bullets and tear gas) and how to take care of each other (massage tables and sharing food and drink). This old lawyer is still pondering her next step–protest the xl pipeline and support responsible candidates in the next election if any can be found, most likely.

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:13:43 +0000

I feel like problems this big need a multi-faceted and sustained approach. You’re (blogger) right on about the need to pinpoint and act to work out all the ways we are personally responsible or passively accepting and reaping benefits of a 99%/1% system. In some ways this country has spent a good number of years playing the 1% to much of the globe’s 99%. Now the funds are distributing a bit more, away from the US and out into other countries while US consumers reap the rewards of (one example: cheaper goods). I admire the OWS movement for being strong enough, staying out long enough, casting its net wide enough, working web 2.0-enough, and for the most part, being peaceable enough about an issue that seems diffuse given how deeply and broadly it permeates the fabric of our US lives. I think that’s what makes it hard for me to criticize the movement for feeling kitchen sinky. That’s how wide and tightly connected the web of issues is, I think. If we follow the money and big corporate control, it impacts everything from the textbooks kids read, to the food we eat, the water we drink, the bills that get passed, the jobs that get killed, the medical conditions we develop, the insurance we can’t afford, the union-busting because states are bankrupt and have to cut somewhere, the list can go on and on because it does and that’s what makes this a tough movement to make and a tough movement to criticize. Problems in the 60s and 70s were big, but the place to lay the blame and the solutions were a bit more obvious. There are so many culpable, hence the personal responsibility dimension of this that the blogger points out, that a “leaderless” sweeping set of issues is likely the only way the public will start to get a handle on how big the injustice really is and how much work we really have to do to turn things in another direction.

By: Teagirl

Teagirl — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:10:01 +0000

The protestors are anoying and that is exactly what they want to be. Duriung the anti war demonstrations of the late 60′s and early 70′s the public knew exactly what the demonstrators wanted. But this is different. What really annoys me is OWS’s lack of clarity of message and what can be done to resolve it. They have HUGE press coverage and we are all still wondering what exactly they want or what can be done about…what…the 1% who are rich???

I was swept aside the other evening as I tried to get on a train by camera wielding, chanting, pushy protestors whose occupation of the subway car was ending as they, in a rather frolicking mood, were off to their next site. Having one day walked downtown to see the occupation site, these were my only 2 encounters. Neither enabled me to either identify with some aspect of a solution to whatever it is they want so that I might either get on board or ignore them. So I ignore them as much as possible until I hvae an idea of what exactly it is I can do if I want to assist with whatever their cause is.

By: Carolyn Hestand Kennedy

Carolyn Hestand Kennedy — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:50:18 +0000

My friend and I took our boys to the check out the Occupy Dallas effort on the same day. After talking to several folks, I took away the same sense of needing to take personal responsibility to make any difference. Still working on a way to do so.