• RalphFurley@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Some anecdotes from my experiences during this time:

    I lived and worked in downtown Chicago at the time, right next to the Board of Trade. The local OWS was set up right next to it. I remember the traders had dumped out a bunch of McDonald’s job applications from the window onto them below. I would walk by them everyday for months and absolutely no one was paying them attention. It was a small group of people and eventually one day just like that, they were gone.

    A week or so after OWS started I was visiting NYC and we ended up at Zuccotti Park where it all started. I think there were more people selling pins, buttons, and various arts and crafts than there were actual protesters. I remember my FIL asking each one if they were trying to supplement a living or if they were purely a for-profit capitalist venture taking advantage of an opportunity at an anti-capitalist protest. I just couldn’t stop laughing. He was serious.

    Went to a wedding in Tulsa a few months in the whole OWS movement and their main park had an encampment of tents with signs but didn’t see any activity.

    The big thing I noticed was there was virtually no people of color present, no organization, was a gathering of almost entirely white (mostly young) Leftists, that like usual, failed to cobble together a coalition from other demographics and really just seemed like a spectacle.

    • Jojo@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      I remember my FIL asking each one if they were trying to supplement a living or if they were purely a for-profit capitalist venture taking advantage of an opportunity at an anti-capitalist protest.

      Out of curiosity, how would he draw that line? When does it stop counting as a living and start being a purely for-profit venture?

      • RalphFurley@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        No idea. I tried to get him to just simply observe and either buy something or not. I still have my pin somewhere, I think I know where it is. I’ll look for it tonight and post it.

    • TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      God, you nailed my experience of this protest. I was going to college in New York when they happened. It was a joke.