I don't know what general assembly he went to but the one's I went to in Oakland (and like he said, Cenk was there) were more like a committee as they are suggesting. A specific example was after the vet had been wounded by police the prior day, we went to Oscar Grant Plaza took down the fences and the general assembly met that night with a few speakers who announced the General Strike on Oakland Port and everyone followed suit. Sure, everyone has a say in that situation but the main agenda was being brought to Occupiers by a few with loudspeakers. So I'm not sure what they are trying to say.

I remember having this conversation with my brother few months ago. I compared the Occupy movement with the Stop SOPA/PIPA movement, and how the Stop SOPA movement was so successful in such short period of time, when Occupy movement has been going on for a longer period of time but couldn't materialize any 'real change'.

For one thing, the occupy movement started out demanding accountability in the bank/finance industry. Then the agenda blew up to having social equality of laborers, minority rights, states rights, environmental rights etc etc. It tried taking in EVERY social reform agenda that was out there, taking the focus away from the original efforts demanding real reform in the financial industry.

Last year I remember Occupy protesters coordinating a march on Martin Luther King Jr day. Now I'm sure this is all a good message, but what does this have to do with Wall Street? This only goes to show that this mass movement is lacking focus, and in desperate need of core representatives, like we did during SOPA/PIPA movement when Reddit.com first lead the march, and other giants such as Wikipedia had moved in.

>> ^legacy0100:

I remember having this conversation with my brother few months ago. I compared the Occupy movement with the Stop SOPA/PIPA movement, and how the Stop SOPA movement was so successful in such short period of time, when Occupy movement has been going on for a longer period of time but couldn't materialize any 'real change'.
For one thing, the occupy movement started out demanding accountability in the bank/finance industry. Then the agenda blew up to having social equality of laborers, minority rights, states rights, environmental rights etc etc. It tried taking in EVERY social reform agenda that was out there, taking the focus away from the original efforts demanding real reform in the financial industry.
Last year I remember Occupy protesters coordinating a march on Martin Luther King Jr day. Now I'm sure this is all a good message, but what does this have to do with Wall Street? This only goes to show that this mass movement is lacking focus, and in desperate need of core representatives, like we did during SOPA/PIPA movement when Reddit.com first lead the march, and other giants such as Wikipedia had moved in.


I think the major success of the SOPA/PIPA protests was that there were several very large corporations like google and facebook supporting and participating in the protests. It made it very hard for the media to ignore and detractors to dismiss the protestors as jobless smelly hippies.

And I think you're right about them losing focus. If they start to include every liberal cause under the sun they're going to alienate a lot of people who support financial reform, but may not support gay marriage, or increased environmental regulations.

While more successful over all, the tea party also lost a lot of support when they started subverting the economic reform message with social conservative agendas.