Occupy Seattle protests itself

But, but, but... aren't we all supposed to be  peace loving vegans?
Caption by me, cartoon by Mike Armstrong

This morning Instapundit linked to the Strangler's post Occupy Seattle Disrupts Pro-Occupy Wall Street Forum, Drives Away Supporters which reports on an Occupy protest at an Occupy forum discussion. If such cannibalism makes little sense to you, the beginning of the article explains:

No sooner had the panel finished opening remarks last night than a woman scampered up onto stage and yelled, "Mic check!" It was an orchestrated effort by several dozen activists to use the People's Mic to interrupt a forum at Town Hall—a forum in favor of Occupy Wall Street, featuring three wonks and three activists from Occupy Seattle. Their stunt replaced what was supposed to be an informed discussion of the movement with an uninformative, shout-a-thon about process that consumed most of the evening. They booed opinions they disagreed with and drove supporters out of the building.

"I walked in supportive and left unsupportive," said 69-year-old Mary Ann, who declined to provide her last name. "I’m turned off by the negative shouts, repetition, and all I can think about is a cult. And I believe in every one of their damn principles."

The panel had been introduced explaining the process it was going to follow before being introduced. However, the mic check people objected to the "power dynamic created by speakers on stage talking into microphones".

A vote was held as to whether to follow the original procedures or the General Assembly style procedures of people's mike, uptwinkles and what-not. The General Assembly style lost the vote. However, that was not the end of it:

By a show of hands, Nick Licata—the moderator, who some activists later claimed was a proxy for the partisan political establishment—determined the activists had been outvoted. The event would proceed as a planned, right? The activists refused to lose. They demanded another vote and even insisted that, before we could vote again, they would first explain how a General Assembly worked. So for 15 minutes, the activists read the rules and we repeated them back.

"Assembly time is precious," the man yelled without a hint of irony. "Assembly time is precious!" we all yelled back, wasting precious time.

Then they insisted that everyone discuss the issue among their neighbors. If people opposed, they were drowned out by the people's mic. So we talked about their proposal. One activist slept on the floor in front of the stage, spread eagle. The place reeked of BO. A man next to me worked through half a tin of chew. Eventually, we took another vote and activists demanded a count by hand.

It was 8:30 p.m. at this point, one hour after the event began, and we'd only heard opening statements. The forum was supposed to conclude by 9:00 p.m. "We have only a half hour left," Licata announced. "This is very interesting."

Needless to say a number of the people who came to hear the original panel discussion were furious over the turn of events. The article was written by somebody sympathetic to the Occupy movement. One of his closing remarks in it was:

Let's think if the tables were turned: These activists would be outraged if Town Hall set up a stack of speakers at the General Assembly and blasted them with an amplified panel discussion. It was equally selfish to destroy the panel with their People's Mic.

And no, neither he nor the numerous progressive commenters to the article saw the huge irony in that statement. I'll just pull one of the comments, #67 by seandr, as an example:

This sucks.

OWS started out with broad appeal, but the shortsighted and completely arbitrary theme they picked to symbolize the movement - occupying various public spaces - meant that as time passed and the weather grew cold, the movement would dwindle to the self-marginalized lefty fringe, homeless people, and junkies.

It would be nice to see this energy and organization transform into other forms of activism, such as disrupting conservative political functions and getting out the lefty vote, but that seems unlikely.

The article and the comment thread are an interesting read, and well worth your time. What frequently jumps out is that while they are livid over the small group that wrecked havoc on their meeting by trying to dominate it via screaming, chanting and intransigence, not a one of them connect the dots that this is what they do to others.

So close, and yet so far.

Occupy's next move?

At Chicago Boyz Sgt Mom has a post So – Whither Occupy What Street? where she wonders what sort of end game the Occupiers have for their protests. Specifically, she discusses how Tea Party folk moved from their early demonstrations to the trenches of local politics and wonders if the Occupy crowd has it in them to do the same:

I do have to hand it to the Occupy Whatever Street – the major national news media are already giving the various protest events the warm sloppy tongue-bath, even to the point of serving your public relations functions. It took the SATP a good six months of outreach and conferences with various local TV news directors and newspaper editors to get any respect at all. But, as a sort-of PR professional, I have to say that this good-will towards the OWS probably will not last, and may already be shriveling. A long-established protest site in the heart of a big city can only be made to seem cool, subversive, and glamorous for so long, in the face of ongoing noise and vandalism, reported harassment of local residents and law-enforcement personnel, and just the general rat’s nest appearance of the average OWS protest camp. This will not go over well in the long run with ordinary, hard-working, peace-loving citizens, even those in general sympathy with some of the stated goals. There are a fair number of new reports indicating that your immediate neighbors in your various venues are growing sick and tired of your presence. This is something that you should pay attention to; bad optics, from a public affairs point of view. Which brings me to my next point –

A street protest is just a starting point for a truly broad-based and ground-up political movement. Getting together in a public space all those who are moved enough to be unhappy about things as they are  . . .   that is only the first step. The next one is to go home after a decent interval, to fully understand the issues and the various options that would perhaps alleviate those of most concern, and to continue the outreach, the consultations, the epic convention calls, the even-more-epic meetings among the most dedicated and skilled – the formulation of email lists, the cultivation of donors  . . .  all of that. It’s much more of a job and not as attention-catching as a simple temporary event. It’s work, and it’s hard and dedicated work. It is not fun – hardly a romp in the park, if I may be so kind as to draw that analogy. It’s work. Hard work and it will almost always take a lot more temporal and psychic energy than you might think at first. Been there – done that, ever since working to resettle Vietnamese refugees in 1975-75.

My own guess is no. I would guess that their immediate hope is that city authorities get fed up with their camps and close them down. That way they'll be able to go home, escape the bums pestering them, swap tales of police brutality and claim a moral victory of sorts. The alternative is the arrival of cold weather and the whole thing fizzling out and ending like a Cindy Sheehan book signing.

At any rate, with their Progressive Stack of Speakers, People Microphones and unending concensus building they have a different style. I think if you asked them they would consider local and state politics part of the problem, and would go off on a rant about needed to entirely rebuild the structure of politics -- which is to say they'll do a lot of vague talking, but their actions will be protests in bank lobbies, at businesses leaders homes and other such protest theater pranks.

I would expect to see something more along the lines of the Madison protests, which started out with an occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol Building and edged towards odder and more confrontational tactics as the protest's energy spun down.