This is more of a threat to the establishment and the status quo than were the 1960's...

[kentuck]

I was there in the 1960's. It is my opinion that this Occupation of Wall Street movement is larger and more of a threat to the status quo than were the marches and demonstrations in the Sixties. Simply because it is about the unjust economic system and they are energized by the large number of Americans that agree with them. The demonstrators in the '60's did not have the luxury of having the majority behind them. This is historic, in my opinion.

The Sixites are the benchmark for social rebellion and demonstrations against the powerful. But they were never able to organize in so many cities and in such large numbers. This is phenomenal and the powers that be are attempting to figure out how to handle it? It will do no good to shut one occupation down if there are a hundred more to take its place. They must figure out how to shut them all down simultaneously if they can?

However, there is a small truth that we must come to grips with. America is a militarized society. They are much more militarized than Egypt or Libya or any of the Middle East countries that have risen up against their exploitive leaders and system of government. If the local police forces cannot handle the problems, they will not hesitate to call out the National Guard. If that is not sufficient, the chances are that there is a military base close to every city where these occupations are taking place. Our government has the military and they are not afraid to use it against their own people. That is my greatest fear at this moment.

I think there may be a massive crackdown tonight or tomorrow? What do we do when that happens? We must pass the word that violence is not the answer.

Make no mistake. This is the greatest threat to the status quo since the 1960's.

[ixion]

1. they can move people from one place to another

but they can't shut down and idea. That is what gives the Occupy Movement it's power, in my opinion.

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. Important insight, thank you very much, and thank you for your part in the 60s

without which, as you say, this could not be possible.

"He'd send in the army..." -Gang of Four

Well, "May you live in interesting times."

Just remember that this is similar to the horrible events at Kent State back in the day. Any police or military violence will cause two reactions: immense public support of the victims and a mobilization of the violent members of the 99%.

To varying degrees. Much still rests upon the powers that be on this count.

[AverageJoe90]

5. Seconded. =)

Truth is, I'm also surprised the Sixties weren't nearly as violent as they could've been...........Kent State could have been much, much, worse, though.

[AverageJoe90]

3. I'm not as pessimistic per military crackdowns, as I believe most are loyal to this country.........

....however, I DO worry about those few crooks who would follow any wrongful directive to shoot at anyone in sight.

[kentuck]

6. I would agree that the military is a last resort but....

I am not convinced they would not bring out the military if they thought they needed it to control the "riotous mobs". There are posse comitatus laws etc, but laws mean little to our government in recent years. However, police forces and national guards are nothing more than military units.

I don't mean to be pessimistic but when the powerful are threatened, them may act in unpredictable ways. We must simply refuse to let them beat up on our citizens. We are the 99%.

[lbrtbell]

13. The military is loyal to Republicans

That's why they've always been so disrespectful toward Clinton and Obama, while brown-nosing Bush to a nauseating degree. Yes, there are Dems in the military, but they're in the minority.

If called upon, they'll be happy to squelch the "dirty hippie libruls" in a heartbeat. Don't ever think otherwise.

[socialist_n_TN]

35. I assume you're thinking about the officers

I think that the EMs are closer to us than the officers are. We need soldier soviets...er, excuse me :), assemblies for the working class soldiers. And those guys who are the ones who actually carry out the orders of the officers.

They need to be reminded that they people they'd be moving on are their grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters and buddies.

[SomethingFishy]

4. They are in panic mode...

They are trying to stop this but it keeps getting bigger. They tried making fun of the protesters. No good. They tried degrading them on Fox news. Nada. They tried fences and nets. Nothing. They finally said fuck it and sent the cops in to fucking beat the protesters down with nightsticks and pepper spray. The next day? MORE PEOPLE SHOWED UP.

So now they contemplate their next move. Control. Ok, "since the taunting, the degrading, the fences and the beatings didn't work you guys can stay as long as you do things exactly the way we want you to"

What kind of desperation shit is that? These politicians are really in a spot. Whatever they do they are going to look like either cowards or idiots. Eventually cops are going to tire of beating on unarmed non-violent protesters. What's after that? National Guard?

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. Aren't the National Guard volunteers? Many of whom have been abused with multiple Iraq stationings?

I hope that they would refuse to harm the protesters. One would also hope that any military called in would not be so mindless as to follow such illegal orders as to harm the protesters.

However, "Ignorance defends itself savagely". If they fuck up that badly, they'll solidify this movement as nothing else could. It would be world-wide GLUE.

[kentuck]

9. One would hope so but...

The military tends to take orders without question. That is the nature of the military.

[SixthSense]

8. You can go back farther than that

This is the greatest threat to the status quo since the late 1700s.

[kentuck]

10. I am old but...

I was not living back then. :-) I can only form my opinion from what I have seen and experienced in my lifetime.

[socialist_n_TN]

36. Disagree with the late 1700s.........

However it does go back further than the 60s. This is analgous to the 30s. Same type of issues too.

[county worker]

11. OWS us how old? How many years in "the sixties"?

I think it is too soon to make a comparison and I don't think a comparison is reasonable.

The sixties were about civil rights, women's rights, anti war protests which all took more than 10 years.

OWS is about economic justice in my opinion and the sixties where about changing the authoritarian status quo.

The sixties had many years of protest songs and underground new papers. Haight-Ashbury alone was bigger than Occupy New York. The Grateful Dead, the Diggers, the Panthers, the SDS, the Weather
Underground, the Yippies and on and on.

I was there.

Occupy Wall Street has some growing to do before you can compare it to the 60's.

[kentuck]

12. The Sixties had all those...

But, except for Woodstock and the peace marches of Martin Luther King, most of the political actions were initiated by small groups of activists, such as the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, etc. They never had the support of the people as do the OWS. Perhaps it is too soon to make a comparison but I think they are perceived as a great threat by the status quo.

[county worker]

16. All the activists of the sixties formed a whole and yes they had a great number of followers.

Those who took part in the anti-war movement alone out number the Occupy movement. The Civil Rights years and all those who were involved were bigger than the anti-war movement.

The Panthers had chapters in every major city with school breakfast programs and community organizing.

I don't know why you say what you do. It seems revisionist to me and it is a shame that young people agree with you. You should spend some time reading history books about the time.

[kentuck]

17. And we lost JFK, Martin Luther King, RFK, Malcolm, and others...

You are right about the huge numbers that were involved but they were never in the majority as I recall. However, I must admit that I was in Vietnam from 1967-69 when much of the activity was happening. For me, Watergate was the culmination of the Sixties.

It is too early to make statements of certainty but this is only my opinion.

[county worker]

20. I am just like you and we have been here at DU for about the same length of time

I had a different name before. I was in Viet Nam April 67 to March 68 when I joined the anti war movement and lived in San Francisco. No the 60's radicals were not the majority and neither are those who so far have taken part in the Occupy movement.

I hope that the Occupy movement has as profound an effect as the 60's had but so far I don't think you can say that it could have a lasting effect on society.

[kentuck]

22. I can see the potential...

Of course, I say that as my opinion. True, nothing profound has happened yet. But, we probably have not had as much hope since the 1960's. However, most of the polls, for what they are worth, show a huge majority of Americans agree with the occupiers. The "hippies" did not have that luxury, as I recall. We were the George McGovern voters, by and large. I worked for McGovern campaign in '72 and later worked for his campaign manager, Gary Hart. We had hope but we didn't have enough of the people behind us. That is what makes this movement special, thus far, in my opinion. I was in Vietnam from Sept '67 til April '69, with a short "vacation" back home.

[Raksha]

21. That's one of the big reasons the OWS actions try to stay leaderless...

Nobody wants to see the "decapitation" strategy used as per JFK, RFK, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and others.

[kentuck]

23. A very wise move, imo...

If you can kill the leader, sometimes you can kill the movement.

[jwirr]

29. When you are talking about the numbers you need to remember that

there are a lot of us out here who support the protesters today. We are on the internet, and all other forms of media. In that sense I think the present group out numbers the 60s which was very much a generational event. Remember how it turned mom and dad against their children? Today in this economy it is hitting all generations, races, sexual orientations and genders. Emotionally we are larger today.

In the 60s we were just large enough to make a real nuisance of ourselves and they finally gave in to stop us. Let us hope that they realize how big we are now before this gets really out of hand as the post suggests.

[anAustralianobserver]

30. I started listening to this 1976 interview with Timothy Leary after he was released from prison.

Very interesting political snapshot of the time so far:
http://www.matrixmasters.net/salon/?p=402

[marions ghost]

14. I think the numbers are too big

and Americans won't stand for obvious fascist tactics.

If this is to be a movement that can move mountains, it has to be sustained as non-violent civil disobedience and grow as much as possible. The fact that people are willing to CONTINUE to occupy is the ONLY way anybody in a position of power will pay any attention to this. It must be continuous occupation. And it is important to attract endorsements by liberal groups, politicians, and people who have the clout to help defend against any Gestapo-like aggression...

The protestors represent the Majority. Yes --this is historic. :patriot:

[villager]

15. King was on his way to Washington to protest the unjust economy when they shot him

Their usual tools -- like gun down the leaders and pin it on a "lone nut" -- are eluding them now. They must be scrambling for counter-tactics...

False flag distraction? Hence the Iran "plot?"

[Fire Walk With Me]

18. Excactly. There are no "Leaders" to easily excise. There is only US.

[marions ghost]

24. right

:patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot:

X millions

[Raksha]

19. I was there too, and my take on it is the same as yours.

This is a much greater threat to the PTB than the demonstrations of the Sixties. Because it's much broader based, among a host of other reasons. The corporatocracy has to be shitting its collective pants now that the trusty old divide-and-conquer tactics have stopped working. Now they are facing unite-and-conquer, and that's a hell of a lot more powerful. It must be scaring the crap out of them.

[socialist_n_TN]

37. Agreed. And the issue is different too

In the 60s VERY few of the protesters made the connection that OWS has made between economics, politics, and power. Some did true, but most were focused on single issues, the war, civil rights, women's right, etc. Now, more and more people are seeing that ALL of these single issues have a root based in Wall Street's domination of this system. THAT'S what scares the PTB. The general public making THAT connection.

[KoKo]

25. The Big Plus, too...compared to 60's is cell phone cameras, computers, Twitter & Facebook.

Instant communication so that that "the People" know what's going on.

My worry is how they will work to shut that down...and how they will manage it without shutting everyone's access down. That would be the sticking point. Unless they ban the use of cell phones and computers in the occupations...(claim they can be used to incite riots by communicating with terrorists or some such thing.)

I remember at a protest we did here in my state when Chimpy was in town and the police put us behind a metal barracade and made us remove the stakes some of us had for holding our signs. They claimed the stakes could be used as "weapons against the President." Now since Bush was in a fortified Limo that spend by us at a healthy clip, that seemed ridiculous but the police still forced us to remove the stakes.

I suspect they will try all kinds of things before they move in the National Guard...but, it will come. They right now have to figure out how they can shut down access to "public places" all over the country as the first step. :-(

And, yes...I believe it's much more of a threat than the 60's particularly because there so much more access for the movement to spread.

Nice post, Kentuck.

[Douglas Carpenter]

26. if it grows and sustains - yes it is

Much of the 60's rebellion happened within the world of idealistic middle class liberal arts university students - most of whom went on to live the American dream with comfortable middle class careers. As righteous as opposition to the Vietnam Was was - this issue along with the whole imagery of the new 60's counter-culture conflicted at times with the intense cultural conservatism of large sections of the American working class thus facilitating a rift on the liberal/left end of the political spectrum. This movement happening now seems to reflect the frustration of large sections of the American population who do not even have the option of choosing to pursue the American dream and comfortable middle class careers. In spite of all the upheaval of the 60's - for the majority of Americans - they were prosperous times where most of the youth looked forward to materially abundant lives. We now have a generation looking forward to ever declining living standards. The focus of this frustration is now directed toward the very center and core of economic power. This movements is much closer to a classic popular left-wing rebellion.

[barbtries]

33. i think that's the biggest difference

there was not that kind of overt economic injustice apparent in the 60s.

as a side note, my brother who joined the VVAW and protested against the war is now a fox watching union bashing low information conservative. i still love him because he's my brother but our conversations are limited to family matters.

[WinkyDink]

27. You are 100% correct about the govt's willingness to use whatevr force necessary.

There are plenty of dead Americans as proof.

[jwirr]

28. You have voiced my fear from the beginning. As I read the posts

here it occurred to me that if they are planning to shut the occupations down now is the time to get ahead of them and change tactics. Switch locations, times of day, methods of protest, etc. Keep them guessing. Shut down this period of protest and organize something else later. Or just stand and take it which is going to be dangerous.

Stay safe protesters.

[MadHound]

31. Nowhere near close to being the threat to the establishment that the sixties protests were

The sixties weren't just about being anti-war, but also about being for civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, experimenting with new communal living structures, new family structures, establishing the environmental movement, on and on. The combined weight of all these movements changed our society in ways that we all still feel.

OWS is a great first step, and it is still growing, but it is nowhere near close to having the impact that the sixties did, at least not yet.

[annabanana]

34. And how much stronger would we have been with the Unions by our side?

The OP is correct. This is broader based and potentially Country shifting.

[glowing]

32. Its worldwide as well.... that's a big deal as well. the young are inspiring one another

and they want the world to look differently than what they were born into.. Thank God.