More than 50 Juneau residents participated in the second Occupy Juneau demonstration Saturday.
The group maintained its route and messaging, but with five times the participants of the first event.
Beginning with a general assembly and discussion at Marine Park, the march continued up Seward Street, stopped at Wells Fargo Bank and KeyBank, where protesters took a left on Fourth Street to stand before the Capitol Building. The last stop for protesters was at the intersection of Egan Drive and 10th Street, a high traffic area for downtown.
There was further discussion regarding the message and purpose of the Occupy Wall Street movement, on which protests worldwide are based. James Marcus, lead organizer in Juneau, said the group is prepared to continue the Saturday demonstrations. It is uncertain how long the protests will persist, though Nov. 5 is meant to be a big day for those protesters who have vowed to move their accounts from “too big to fail” banks to smaller regional and local banks or credit unions by that date.
Comments (7)
Add commentGood fot them
Good for them, past time to stop the welfare for the wealthy and the explosion of the poor and middle class. Past Time to stop the constant stream of lies to manipulate the public. Too bad the Tea Baggers lost their way after the Koch brothers captured them. Now the Tea baggers represent the very thing they originally opposed ..
What's to say the Occupiers
What's to say the Occupiers won't be captured by the left the same way the Baggers were captured by the right? And pragmatically, if the Occupiers don't align with a political party, can they be effective? The baggers are effective because they took control of the republican nomination process - do the occupiers need to do the same to the dems?
I don't think shouldn't use the TP as a model.
Latitude. I can see your reasoning but I think it would be better to for the OWS to continue to raise issues and not take control of the Dem nomination process like the Tea Party did to the Republicans. We got crap out of that.
Oh yeah, the word bagger is considered an insult, I know the Tea Partiers invented the word Tea Bagger without knowing other meanings. Now they want to recant it and I can't blame them. That the word bagger is insulting is one of a very short list of things I agree with them about.
The TP targeted left leaning republicans and had some success but their success is already waning. The Tea Party started with a large amount of energy from people dissatisfied in a recession and instead of fixing the Wall Street and banking deregulation, they went after parts of the system that work like Social Security and Medicare. The TP saw the middle class was vulnerable so they tried to finish it off.
The OWS will continue to succeed as long as they focus on issues rather than individuals. They are shaking the foundation. Politicians will have to act in favor of the 99% because their ideas and their enthusiasm for change will spread. I think the OWS will last longer than the TP if they keep their message more foundational.
Hiker
I get what you're saying about 'issue purity', but what's the path to "shaking the foundation"? Laws are made by the politicians. Politicians are elected by the voters. I'm not seeing how the OWS guys can have real influence without engaging politically.
How about this...the TP (I like 'baggers' more, but I'll defer to you on this) has achieved some lasting influence by getting a bunch of their candidates elected to congress. Are we going to see a full slate of OWS candidates? If so, under what party? And how will their campaigns get financed.
While I like their message, I think there are some hard realities that need to be faced. In an ideal world their righteous message would win, but in the real, dirty world of politics and government, I'm not sure they will compete.
Exploitation
Exploitation is the word
Latitude
You might be right. I am still mulling this around.
The foundation I was talking about is the voters themselves. Joe Miller is a great example of a failed TP attempt and not just his failure. Miller was well funded with Koch money and instead of raising the issues dear to the TP, he went after a standing republican senator. The TP gained in other parts of the country and certainly still hold power but I think it's waning. It will take time to undo that damage but I have patience.
I think the OWS should operate differently and go directly to the voters on issues. Begich is a good example. They could target Begich because he cozies up the right too much but what would that get them? Begich has considered cuts to Medicare and Social Security in the recent past but he is much less apt to do so knowing that thousands of people will take to the streets if he pulls and crap like that.
I think it plays out like that all over the country. While the OWS pressure is on, politicians become wary of trickle down policies because quite frankly there are people that won't put up with that type of rhetoric or policies any more.
I could be wrong on this. Maybe the OWS needs to sell their sleeping bags and buy a politician. I don't think that would work because unlike the TP, they don't have the Koch brothers to bank roll them.
What they'll do...
...is push centrist dems to the left, just like the TP pushed centrist repubs to the right.
The OWS will have no measurable effect on the repubs - they're nearly all hard right already, thanks to the TP. Their base won't be swayed by any OWS messages - they get their marching orders from Fox and Koch.
So there are a few ways to go:
1. Stay in their tents and win a moral victory...and that's about it.
2. Start a 3rd party, which would siphon off votes from the dems, but not the repubs, giving the repubs even more political power for them and their corporate overlords.
3. Infiltrate the dem party from the inside, nominating OWS candidates and voting in primaries.
4. Or??? I just don't see another alternative. Wish I did.
Most important thing is that the OWS get off their asses and vote...in EVERY election. The most important elections will be local and state since each vote carries more weight. If the OWS could take over a bunch of state legislatures, there would be a far more realistic chance of some much-needed constitutional amendments.