This was mis-named. It actually seeks help working through and around the occupying force. Evidently the company has not actually approached the occupants themselves about sweeping through the area without confrontation.
Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly
New York City Police Department
One Police Plaza
Room 1400
New York, New York 10038
Facsimile: (646) 610-5865
Dear Commissioner Kelly:
As you know, for over three weeks, Zuccotti Park (the “Park”) has been used by “Occupy Wall Street” and other protesters as their home base. The Park is owned by a Brookfield affiliate and was recently renovated at Brookfield’s considerable expense as an amenity for the general public. It is intended to be a relaxing tree-filled oasis in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Lower Manhattan. We fully support the rights of free speech and assembly, but the manner in which the protesters are occupying the Park violates the law, violates the rules of the Park, deprives the community of its rights of quiet enjoyment to the Park, and creates health and public safety issues that need to be addressed immediately.
5.0 out of 5 stars Helps Understand OccupyWallStreet–Solid 5 Misses Mark on True Cost Economics,October 13, 2011
I was given this book as a gift, and could not have–in a million years of planning–gotten a better book relevant to OccupyWallStreet (OWS) than this book. I read it this morning while my MGB was in the shop recovering from my trip to NYC OWS 6-7 October (shredded the generator). Halfway through my notes, advanced here, I observe that the book is a pleasure to read and a substantial advance on the earlier disruption explorations.
While I sympathize with those who do not “get” this book and downgrade it, I gave it a solid five and seriously considered a six star plus (only 10% of my reviews go there) but kept it at five because any book that considers Walmart disruptive (which it is) without observing the “true cost” to society, the environment, government, and small businesses, is completely missing the big picture.
This book does go beyond the earlier book that I have also reviewed, The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business, and while Clayton M. Christensen has been churning books out with variations on the theme, I do see in this book very important, useful, immediately applicable insights and would recommend buying the first Christensen book and this book (to which he writes a Foreword).
I am less interested in the emphasis that the author places on Disruption Theory being able to build a bridge from the art of successfully guessing what innovations with succeed to the science of increasing by 5% or more which innovations will succeed, but that is, as the author points out, very significant when you consider that the percentage improvement is on hundreds of billions of dollars of investment.
QUOTE (5): Disruption's central claim is “that an innovation has the best chance of success when it has a very different performance profile and appeals to cusomters of relatively little interest to dominant incumbents, and the organizaton commercializing it enjoys substantial strategic and operational autonomy.”
Could that be a description of OWS and the 99% that have been screwed over by the two-party tyranny that has shaken down Wall Street and the military, intelligence, health, energy, and prison complexes for political contributions (bribes) while discounting the public treasury by 95% (the going rate for an earmark is 5%)? The 99% are of no real interest to Wall Street or the two-party crime family that has hijacked democracy, and OWS is demonstrating substantial strategic and operational autonomy. What neither the left or right “get” right now about OWS is that it is a manifestation of a broad view that we need to dismantle both parties and end institutionalized politics while restoring the sovereign individual.
Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, Paulette Goddard Professor in Dept. of Nutrition at NYU.
A fantastic overview of the state of the American food system from food safety to marketing to children (Frosted Flakes & Froot Loops marketing budgets = $20million+), corporate lobbying against soda sugar tax, to the “food revolution” of more people demanding local organic foods, farmer's markets (over 6,132 in 2010), calorie labeling, and much more.
At this mark she mentions that campaign laws are the source of all government corruption and that “we” should run for office, inserting ourselves into the job positions filled with corrupt persons.
The wild story put out by the Justice Department about an Iranian assassination plot smells suspiciously like something passed through a bull’s digestive tract. But the U.S. should hope that it’s true. Because it makes Iran’s fiercest terrorist organization look like blithering idiots.
According to the criminal complaint brought against Mansour Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri on Tuesday, agents from Iran’s feared Qods Force, a buck-wild branch of the already buck-wild Revolutionary Guards Corps, plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in Washington, D.C. They might move on to the Israeli embassy to raise hell. And if the prospect of starting a regional war — the likeliest outcome of murdering diplomats from Iran’s Mideast rivals, on U.S. soil no less — weren’t bad enough, the Qods Force allegedly sought inroads with Mexican drug cartels.
It’s a fusion-cuisine salad bar of U.S. security anxieties. Crazy Iranian terrorists and violent Mexican narcotraffickers. No wonder FBI Director Robert Mueller called the plot straight out of Hollywood.
There's no question that the Occupy groups have done a great job with constructing the outlines of resilient communities in the heart of many of our most dense urban areas.
People pitch in to do work. They are considerate despite the difficulty of the arrangement. Food gets served. The area gets cleaned. There is entertainment. There's innovation (equipment, tech, workarounds). There is education (lots of seminars being taught). There is open, participatory governance. All of this is great and this experience will definitely pay off over the next decade as the global economy deteriorates, panics, fails. It will make building resilient communities easier (there are lots of ways to build a resilient community, we're trying to document all of the ways how on MiiU).
However, is this experience building a tribal identity? An Occupy tribe? Something that can eventually (there's lots to do in the short to medium term) go beyond protest and build something new? One even strong enough to create new resilient economic and social networks that step into the breach as the current one fails?
How to Manufacture a Tribe
How do you manufacture a strong community that protects, defends and advances the interests of its members? You build a tribe. Tribal organization is the most survivable of all organizational types and it was the dominant form for 99.99% of human history. The most important aspect of tribal organization is that it is the organizational cockroach of human history. It has proved it can withstand the onslaught of the harshest of environments. Global depression? No problem. (for more, see: Tribes!)
To build a tribal identity, the Occupy movement will need to manufacture fictive kinship. That kinship is built through (see Ronfeldt's paper for some background on this) the following:
Here is some thinking that you might find interesting. Remember, history rhymes but doesn't repeat.
Here's a simplification of the historical pattern of Reformation. Think of it in terms of the global Capitalist system:
Universal system.
Compliance and participation enforced by violence.
Bureaucratic and lethargic. Corrupt and unfair. Hardship and misery.
Loss of legitimacy.
Challenged by reformers. Corruption exposed.
New technology unleashes a cacophony of criticism.
Reforms are rejected by the existing bureaucracy.
New, competitive systems are launched.
An exodus begins. People leave the old system to join the new.
The old system fights back. It reforms itself.
A fight ensues between the old and the new.
Eventually a peace is achieved and a new era begins.
Note that a Reformation doesn't mean complete rejection of the current system. It means a rejection of the existing implementation/hierarchy/rules due to corruption, failure, and injustice.
I fear that everyone is losing the perfect opportunity to demand electoral reform. Here is what I have done on this with zero traction. Based on discussions in NYC I have dropped the Coalition Cabinet for now and am focusing only on Electoral Reform, but if we really are to change this system, an Independent candidate with a Coalition Cabinet has to defeat BOTH Obama AND the Republican challenger. I don't see that emergent at this point.
My Interpretation of the Emerging Message:
CORRUPTION is the common enemy, both in government and in the private sector.
Edible Education: The Politics of Food
