What makes me sad about Occupy Oakland is that my city is already so completely in shambles that the OO thing is making it worse. It's a broke-ass city that already can't afford necessary police. And its very delicate downtown infrastructure (economy-wise) can't withstand the losses. So the effect of this protest against the 1% is ONLY fucking other 99%. Can't they go somewhere that actually targets the 1%?

I think in general, the OWS movement is necessary. But I don't agree with a lot that's happening around it.

The point of the projects originally was economic injustice; but the camps have become about the camps themselves, so far as I can tell. They're losing the middle ground of citizens who won't or wouldn't participate in the occupation, but have sympathy for concerns about the economy. The more the narrative becomes about the occupiers themselves and the conditions inside the encampments, the less it is about the inequities in the financial system.

I'm seeing this too, and it's unfortunate.

Exactly, Connie. EXACTLY.

the camps have become about the camps themselves, so far as I can tell. They're losing the middle ground of citizens who won't or wouldn't participate in the occupation, but have sympathy for concerns about the economy.

This is my feeling on it, too.

One little protest that was making the Facebook rounds a couple of weeks back was for people to return those prepaid envelopes that come with credit card offers - since the banks only pay postage on those once they're mailed, returning them empty would (a) give the post office some desperately needed revenue and (b) flood the banks with junk mail and postage fees. I thought it was nicely poetic.

I actually blame the police/people ordering the police more -- because if you don't make it a capital-D Drama the press loses interest and in a couple months the protesters move on to other places.

In the northern cities, the advent of winter is virtually certain to reduce the size of the occupation to token size.

It's not for nothing that the Civil Rights city campaign that was least "effective" was the one where the sheriff went to the library, read up on non-violence and countered all the protests with great restraint. Not much media fodder if you're not breaking ribs, hitting people with rubber bullets et cetera. The protest doesn't turn into a riot, there was next to no property damage, hospital emergency rooms don't fill up, you don't have to fill out a whole lot of paperwork, run out of fingerprint ink, and so on.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes, y'all!

Seriously, what the police should be doing in some of these Occupy places is going around giving the protesters tickets for camping on public property, littering, walking on the grass. With great but firm politeness.

Occupy Oakland was just cleared out and the tents ripped down by cops, and Occupy Portland had 50 arrests last night.

The Occupy Atlanta group seems to be protesting a different random injustice every day. They're occupying a park that has several regulations that are intended to punish the homeless. They're in violation of all of them, but the rules are inherently unfair. The mayor keeps coming up with estimates of what they've cost the city, but most of that is overtime for an excessive police presence. There haven't been any major confrontations, though.

I think the Occupy movement has started an important conversation, but needs to move on to other ways to continue it. They could assign small groups to "occupy" different banks, as Connie says, or to protest at evictions.