Tensions Between Archivists and 'Occupy' Protesters Over Preserving the Movement 153
An anonymous reader writes "At one point an NYU librarian literally got into a shouting match with a protester at an Occupy protest, trying to make the case for why a digital record should be kept of photos, videos, audio recordings, posters, and other materials, so future scholars and activists can recount what happened. Academics are taking unusual steps to preserve the protesters' stuff, including 'distributing postcards promoting archiving at protests, developing automated systems to download photos posted online, and asking participants to vote on which images are most important for the historic record.'"
Re:Achievement (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps none that we can see today, but I can imagine why there's such a push to archive absolutely everything that happened with these protests.
Maybe I'm being a bit too hopeful, but some time decades in the future, perhaps these protests will be seen as 'what got the ball rolling' to vast, sweeping changes.
You never know what the future holds, but I for one hope that these protest started something bigger than they could ever have imagined. It just takes a while for that snowball to grow at first.
And IF those protests were indeed the start of eventual mass changes... would it not be beneficial to have documented as much as we can on them?
Re:Golly! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Ok. Aside from our iPhones, iPads, Androids, YouTube, high-speed wireless to watch YouTube, light, cheap aluminum for our tent poles and backpacks, MRI machines for our broken noses, and worldwide jet travel that supplied how to cook mutter paneer and sushi on the same Sterno..."
"And the Sterno!"
""And the Sterno. Aside from that, what has capitalism done for us?"
Re:First non-assholey post! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Achievement (Score:3, Insightful)
"In the future they wont even be a foot note, just a bunch of spoiled brats with no goals or directions running around creating havoc and tearing stuff up."
sounds like our current government.
Re:Golly! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Brought peace!" [demon.co.uk]
...wait. Shit.
Re:Golly! (Score:4, Insightful)
Splitters!
Yes, that was called the "Tea Party" (Score:3, Insightful)
but some time decades in the future, perhaps these protests will be seen as 'what got the ball rolling' to vast, sweeping changes.
What you are thinking of there is called the "Tea Party".
The funny thing is that mostly the two groups had the same complaints (the Tea Party dislikes big banks just as much as Occupy folk). Only instead of camping illegally The Tea Party stayed outside for just a few days each month to show people they existed, and then went back inside - to occupy the only thing that REALLY can have an impact.
The primary system.
The Tea Party has been going through and cleaning out (to the degree they can) the Republican system, starting at the lowest levels. It will take time but over time the Republican party will become much more libertarian and less big government as a result. The Tea Party already had substantial impact in the last elections, especially in primaries, and frames the debate even today.
All of that, without people getting arrested, or breaking laws.
That's why the occupy movement doesn't really matter, it's all a stage show at this point to prop up what already exists, not to really change anything. It's not directing any energy at anything that can actually make change occur.
They could have done the same things for the Democrats that the Tea Party has done for the Republicans but with no real goals defined and a basically crazy unwillingness to accept that leaders can make things happen, Occupy just drifts along now to be used by whomever wishes to do so.
Isn't it all the information public now? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Occupy events were held on public property where there's no reasonable expectation of privacy. They uploaded information about the events to public websites. They handed out materials to the general public. There was far too much media coverage. Why should they get ANY say in what's retained in a permanent record? They already made it themselves.
Re:Achievement (Score:1, Insightful)
Can there ever be a better illustration of how Slashdot is populated by moron leftists than the fact that any comment even mildly critical of the OWS "movement" is modded into oblivion?
OWS served as an illustration to tens of millions of America children of what not to do and how not to behave. I drove by the Austin OWS camp. My son looked at it and without any prompting said, "we read about these people in school today. They look as dumb as they sounded."
Re:Yes, that was called the "Tea Party" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup, they did. They gave us Eric Cantor and all the uncompromising, "our way or the highway" Republicans who refuse to negotiate and were willing to run this country off a cliff for the sake of ramming bad policy through. No real plans to solve the problem, just cutting taxes more and more and ensuring any and all social safety nets are burned to the ground.
Then they gave us all the fundie legislators and men like Santorum, who insist on waging a misogynistic war in the name of "social conservativism" while solving exactly zero problems.
Re:The anonymity they deserve...? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Tea party does not give a shit about republicans.
They want small government, constitutional, conservatives.
Of course the lefties in the group will call small government "anarchy" and constitutional "weird idea people" and conservative "Clinging to God and Guns out of fear".
Re:Yes, that was called the "Tea Party" (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been hearing people bitch about "negotiating" and compromise for decades. Turns out, their version of compromise is when you agree with them.
Re:Yes, that was called the "Tea Party" (Score:1, Insightful)
Santorum? He was out of office before the Tea Party ever existed. Maybe you should look at what the true Tea Party stood for instead of just mindlessly believing what their enemies say. The Tea Party was about fiscal issues, nothing more.
Meta-post about social tensions evident on posts (Score:5, Insightful)
Most are unaware of it, but the social tension evidenced in this conversation comes from changing living conditions. The world is full. Further economic growth is neither possible nor desirable.
A growing economic pie allowed large disparity in income. A shrinking economic pie directs people's attention back to large income disparities.
Most OWS and Tea Party (they may distrust and fear each other, but they have more in common than either will admit) real grassroots sympathizers & supporters know there's something going on that they don't like, but they're not sure what to do about it. Last year a wave of popular revolutions swept the Arab world, driven by the same feeling. Liberals and Conservatives use different words to describe seemingly different things, but the origin of their discontent comes from the end of growth. This impending paradigm shift is at the origin of the social conflict played out on this page.
It is foolish of people to focus on redistributing wealth, scapegoat, bicker, or wage war, when the entire edifice is in peril. Yet it is in our nature to behave so in the face of a bottleneck predicament. Know Thyself [jayhanson.us]
Re:The anonymity they deserve...? (Score:2, Insightful)
They want small government, constitutional, conservatives.
Except for the ones that want government controlled marriage, government controlled internet, government controlled drugs, etc. etc. etc. And don't forget: Keep government out of my Medicare!
I'd be all for it, except that all they want is for everyone else to be free to do what they approve of.
Re:Why Ask Them To Vote On What To Archive? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to call bullshit here... but I'm not saying that as a defense of the current movement, but rather I'm objecting to your idealization of the 60's. All too many baby boomers seem to have a fuzzy, romanticized version of what happened in the 60's.
There was no shortage of bad actors mixed in with more idealistic folks then, just as is the case today. We have, with varying degrees of success, already sugar coated a lot of 60's history. All of the negative aspects you point out in the current movement have analogous issues in the 60's movement.
Of course, there were a lot of good things that happened as a result of the counterculture movements of the 60's. If we pretend there were no such negative aspects to these movements, and then use this optimistic but false dream of the past to condemn modern movements via a flawed comparison to an idealized version of the 60s that never actually existed... then it seems we have missed the entire point of these counterculture movements.
Re:Lol (Score:5, Insightful)
You're trolling, but there is truth to the point that many of the people at the protests didn't even know why they were there.
Does that make their concerns any less valid?
It's so much harder to actually effect change by contacting politicians, convincing the public, studying the law, and generally having an impact on the legislative process so that something actually comes out of any of it.
Exactly. Especially when you don't even know exactly why you're so pissed off at society. Maybe you don't realize it's because you didn't like that cop's thuggish attitude the other day when he pulled you over for "weaving across lanes" and then pressured you into a drug search. Maybe subconsciously your mind is still pissed off from when the TSA hassled you at the airport. Maybe those taxes, and the 10x as many hidden taxes disguised as fees, charges, and a hundred other words are really fucking dragging you down. Maybe you don't appreciate the child services people harassing your neighbors because the dad got put in jail for possessing three marijuana plants.
Maybe it's all that and more. Not all of us are fucking scholars enough to understand exactly why we're pissed. Doesn't mean the anger isn't real, and doesn't mean it's just going to magically go away if we wish hard enough. If the same tyranny and oppressive bullshit remains in place, then the anger will continue to build, until it can't build any more. It's that simple. You don't want to be there when it explodes.
The difference is they knew what they wanted (Score:2, Insightful)
By and large, the big civil rights movements and protests, like those in the 60s, had defined goals and real, reasonable demands.
Like, say, the civil rights movement of Dr. King. They could clearly articulate their grievance: Blacks are treated differently than whites because of the colour of their skin. They also could say what they wanted: Equal protection under the law.
Same shit with Vietnam war protests. They wanted the war to stop. Some may not have had good reasons for it (though most did) but they could articulate what they wanted.
That is what makes the Occupy crowd such a bunch of wankers. They can't even say what the fuck the problem is or what they want. They just whine about "the 1%," or corporations, and so on. They can't say what problem they want solved and what the solution is they want. All I've ever been able to dig up is an "unofficial" list on their site which includes a whole shit ton of stuff that spans the gamut and will never happen (like banning private gun ownership, stopping all foreclosures, eliminating the federal reserve, and so on). The other was a Mad Magazine looking chart of all sorts of random words and connections that told you absolutely nothing, mostly on account of it being incomprehensible.
THAT is the difference. If you ever hope to sway people, you have to have a message, a goal, an ideal. You can't just come out and say "We are mad about shit and we don't know what!"