Occupy Harvard.

[WillowTree]

The conservatives or this board need to realize that their fringe political opinion does not even resemble the opinions of "Regular Americans". What the hell is a regular American anyway?

Well, if you don't know what a "regular American" is how do you know what it is that the "conservatives OR this board need to realize"? this is most puzzlink hey?

 

[Katzndogz]

The regular Americans are getting sick of the occupiers. They are getting ready to take care of business since the police have refused to do so. Now the police are clearing the parks and returning those parks to the people who pay for them. Failure to recognize this powder keg would have resulted in the 99% taking matters into their own hands.

Oh the brutality of it all.

Let them occupy Harvard and shit in the academic halls. I cannot think of a more deserving institution unless it's Berkeley.

 

[georgephillip]

"Harvard Students Join the Movement
by Richard D. Wolff

"Over the last 10 days, Harvard students twice stopped business as usual at this richest of all US private universities. An Occupy Harvard encampment of tents followed a large march of many hundreds through the campus protesting Harvard's complicity in the nation's extreme inequality of income and wealth.

"A week earlier some 70 students walked out in protest of Harvard's large lecture course in introductory economics.

"They too explained that they were acting in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements.

"They specifically criticized the narrowly biased economics they were learning that both reflected and reinforced the inequalities and injustices that fuel the OWS movements. The walkout in the economics lecture deserves our special attention."

Richard D. Wolff, "Harvard Students Join the Movement"

The author of this post sat in one of Harvard's large introductory economics courses in the early 60s. He later taught as a graduate assistant in a similar course at Yale, and then over the last 35 years taught his own intro econ courses at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

He's come to the conclusion that "celebrating capitalism is not the same as understanding it, let alone evaluating its strengths and weaknesses."

So... the students were protesting 'Harvard's complicity in the nation's extreme inequality of income and wealth.'... essentially they were protesting against themselves then, as they are Harvard students, which would make them part of the problem, or at the least, complicit with Harvard itself.

Morons.

What makes you think all incoming Freshmen at Harvard are part of the problem?
They are not all from the 1%.
Some will oppose the rule of the few and some will sell out to it.
The problem lies with a political economic system that values property rights over political equality.

 

[Inthemiddle]

Regular Americans are feed up with their ignorance, greed, self serving agenda.

I'm sorry, are you talking about large corporations here? Or the modern day ilk of politicians?

 

[Inthemiddle]

"It is a good sign that today's Harvard students include many who recognize the important political and ideological breakthrough accomplished by the Occupy movement.

Oh bullshit. Everybody knows that Harvard students are nothing but a bunch of lazy, entitled, good for nothing idiots who are so busy being jealous of what other people have they can't bother to make anything meaningful out of their lives.

Wait, what?

 

[georgephillip]

So in essence we have students walking out of an economics course because it doesn't reinforce "their" views of how evil capitalism is? The amusing thing about Professor Wolf's denunciations of how capitalism is "celebrated" at Harvard is that when he taught at UMass capitalism was apparently scorned yet he has no problem with that. God forbid that students should hear both sides of an argument about this!

Professor Wolff replies:

"In the early 1960s, I sat as a student in that same Harvard large lecture class.

"With many fellow students, I grumbled then at its narrow, technical celebration of the status quo. The interests we brought to the course -- to understand the causes of economic instability (recessions, depressions, inflations, crises), how economic change shapes political and cultural history, why so many are poor and so few rich, and what alternative economic systems might be preferable -- were largely evaded, ignored, or trivialized.

"Without an OWS movement, we did not walk out. We sat and endured..."

Richard D. Wolff, "Harvard Students Join the Movement"

As I understand Wolff's article, students are walking out because they are not getting both sides of the argument.

s0n..........time to look into some EffexorXR..........and Im not kidding. OCD is a fcukked up thing and many dont even realize they got it going on. This rich/poor obssession. When you become convinced that in some tiny corner of the internet, you are THE VOICE of creating class warfare, its a problem. Google SSRO and SSRA. Shit opens up a whole life for people who perseverate on thoughts.

And ps.......as long as the earth is still here there will be rich and poor. Hate to break it to you but its not going to change if you post up 1,000 threads a day........and its ALWAYS going to be that 1%-2%. Its just the way it is in any society s0n.

How much more income and wealth are the richest 1% entitled to?

If the concept of one person one vote still has any meaning, there has to be an upper limit on how much money the 1% and corporations can inject into our elections. I guess you're right about the rich and poor always existing over the past 5000 years or so. That's only because every society that's existed during that time has had 1% of its population consolidate state power and use it for private gain.

War and debt have been their chosen instruments, and both of those tools could be taxed into extinction if 90%-99% of voters started voting in their class interests.

PS "Choosing" between Republican OR Democrat won't work any better than 1000 threads a day.

 

[georgephillip]

yes, those plucky harvard students put up tents and occasionally even go inside them for brief periods (when the weather is temperate and there's naught else to do)

oh, the humanity

Some of those Harvard freshmen come from the working classes:

"This is a valuable lesson for the American working class and their right to stand up and defend their jobs in factories and enterprises from being 'disappeared.'"

"The crash and recession of 2008 only heightened the concerns that we have about the capacity and willingness of liberal capital to provide for justice and equity for the overwhelming majority of Americans.

"The lack of societal concern by the large hierarchical capitalist firms and financial institutions has never been so clearly manifested.

"OWS represents a momentous breakthrough that demonstrates that we can indeed come together at this crucial time as workers, social movements, intellectuals, and labor unions, and use this critical opening to move forward to confront capital-labor relations throughout America."

Peter Ranis, "Occupy Wall Street: An Opening to Worker-Occupation of Factories and Enterprises in the U.S."

What sort of humanity are you expecting from Goldman Sachs or Bank of America?

In other parts of the world tent cities and demonstrations of support on elite universities have lead to exploring ways that worker-managed factories and enterprises can serve as alternatives to traditional capitalist firms and companies.

Why not here?

 

[Trajan]

why yes of course, after a few beers, bong hits and free credits from your gender studies course to attend, head out to the commons, berate the very system that put that tuition of $39,849 into mommy and daddys pocket so they could you send you there...

anyone seriously paying attention this must be very bored, dumb or desperate.


wow sounds just like our media!

 

[Dot Com]

That Wall St/Fed water-carrier Summers used to be Pres there. I just finished reading a book by a former Harvard grad too.

 

[georgephillip]

So in essence we have students walking out of an economics course because it doesn't reinforce "their" views of how evil capitalism is? The amusing thing about Professor Wolf's denunciations of how capitalism is "celebrated" at Harvard is that when he taught at UMass capitalism was apparently scorned yet he has no problem with that. God forbid that students should hear both sides of an argument about this!

Professor Wolff replies:

"In the early 1960s, I sat as a student in that same Harvard large lecture class.

"With many fellow students, I grumbled then at its narrow, technical celebration of the status quo. The interests we brought to the course -- to understand the causes of economic instability (recessions, depressions, inflations, crises), how economic change shapes political and cultural history, why so many are poor and so few rich, and what alternative economic systems might be preferable -- were largely evaded, ignored, or trivialized.

"Without an OWS movement, we did not walk out. We sat and endured..."

Richard D. Wolff, "Harvard Students Join the Movement"

As I understand Wolff's article, students are walking out because they are not getting both sides of the argument.

As a graduate of UMass and having taken Macro-economics with Professor Wolff I can assure you that he seldom concerned himself with giving both sides of the argument. I had to "sit and endure" his views about the evils of capitalism which is why I find his view now on what is being taught rather ironic.

You obviously have some views of Wolf the rest of us don't.
Did he encourage debate on contested issues, or was it his way of the highway?

Has anything you learned about Marx during that time proved prophetic?

"Marx predicted that companies would need fewer workers as they improved productivity, creating an 'industrial reserve army' of the unemployed whose existence would keep downward pressure on wages for the employed….

"It’s hard to argue with that these days…. The condition of blue collar workers in the U.S. is still a far cry from the subsistence wage and ‘accumulation of misery’ that Marx conjured. But it’s not morning in America, either.'

"Bloomberg Businessweek seems unaware that Marx viewed the reserve army of labor as applicable not just to developed countries like the United States, but also to labor throughout the globe.…"

Monthly Review, An Independent Socialist Magazine

 

[georgephillip]

I thought Harvard had been occupied for a long long time.

Mostly by the 1%.

Based on what I remember about anti-war protests during the US occupation of South Vietnam, Ivy League schools got more press with fewer numbers than just about anybody else. We'll have to wait to see if it spreads to other elite right coast instituions.

 

[georgephillip]

capitalism is evil... unless you're the one benefiting from it I guess.

Finance capitalism seems pretty evil to me.
It appears some Wall Street banks stand to lose big in Europe, possibly before the election.
When their pet pigs in DC start squealing "martial law" again, how should citizens respond?

 

[Mr.Nick]

Wow guy, are you in for some rude awakenings next year. Keep sticking up for the big banks and demonizing the protesters and you will find out just how fringe you are.

I love how the democrats force banks to lend via the CRA and now those who abused the forced lending are blaming the banks now that its time to pay...

Leftists are a piece of work...

Maybe you should be blaming democrats???????

This whole OWS movement shows how dumb progressives actually are....

Go blame Jimmy "peanut head" Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Sharpton - they're the ones responsible for our economy and our modern banking system..

 

[Mr.Nick]

"Harvard Students Join the Movement
by Richard D. Wolff

"Over the last 10 days, Harvard students twice stopped business as usual at this richest of all US private universities. An Occupy Harvard encampment of tents followed a large march of many hundreds through the campus protesting Harvard's complicity in the nation's extreme inequality of income and wealth.

"A week earlier some 70 students walked out in protest of Harvard's large lecture course in introductory economics.

"They too explained that they were acting in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movements.

"They specifically criticized the narrowly biased economics they were learning that both reflected and reinforced the inequalities and injustices that fuel the OWS movements. The walkout in the economics lecture deserves our special attention."

Richard D. Wolff, "Harvard Students Join the Movement"

The author of this post sat in one of Harvard's large introductory economics courses in the early 60s. He later taught as a graduate assistant in a similar course at Yale, and then over the last 35 years taught his own intro econ courses at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

He's come to the conclusion that "celebrating capitalism is not the same as understanding it, let alone evaluating its strengths and weaknesses."

So... the students were protesting 'Harvard's complicity in the nation's extreme inequality of income and wealth.'... essentially they were protesting against themselves then, as they are Harvard students, which would make them part of the problem, or at the least, complicit with Harvard itself.

Morons.

What makes you think all incoming Freshmen at Harvard are part of the problem?
They are not all from the 1%.
Some will oppose the rule of the few and some will sell out to it.
The problem lies with a political economic system that values property rights over political equality.

Well, if they don't come from wealthy backgrounds then they must have epic student loans which they're demanding shouldn't be loans at all but free tuition..

And these kids are supposedly intelligent people yet it's obvious they know nothing about economy, obviously lack morals and clearly demonstrate ignorance to the history of legislation and the ideas that are responsible for them protesting in the first place..

 

[georgephillip]

The regular Americans are getting sick of the occupiers. They are getting ready to take care of business since the police have refused to do so. Now the police are clearing the parks and returning those parks to the people who pay for them. Failure to recognize this powder keg would have resulted in the 99% taking matters into their own hands.

Oh the brutality of it all.

Let them occupy Harvard and shit in the academic halls. I cannot think of a more deserving institution unless it's Berkeley.

Occupiers are regular Americans.
Wall Street consists largely of parasites.(and their groupies)
There's no shortage of parks and places to occupy around this country.
The Occupation is more visible if it moves around.

Did you know the UN has declared 2012 the international Year of Cooperatives?

"...This only adds to the imperative for exploring the many ways that worker-managed factories and enterprises can be seen as an alternative to traditional capitalist firms and companies.

"Cooperatives as worker-managed enterprises, for a number of institutional and societal reasons, represent alternative productive vehicles attempting to override the impact of deindustrialization, globalization, and the neoliberal ideological offensive..."

Peter Ranis, "Occupy Wall Street: An Opening to Worker-Occupation of Factories and Enterprises in the U.S."

Upwards of 25% of the US industrial rust belt lies idle.
Think there might be a few good campsites there?
Maybe you should think about joining?(bring your own potty)

 

[Stephanie]

Wow guy, are you in for some rude awakenings next year. Keep sticking up for the big banks and demonizing the protesters and you will find out just how fringe you are.

they aren't protesters, they are FINGE KOOKS with the backing of Unions and the Democrat party.
I see in a few places the REGULAR FOLKS in the cities these occupiers are in are GETTING SICK OF THEM ALREADY..

 

[georgephillip]

"It is a good sign that today's Harvard students include many who recognize the important political and ideological breakthrough accomplished by the Occupy movement.

Oh bullshit. Everybody knows that Harvard students are nothing but a bunch of lazy, entitled, good for nothing idiots who are so busy being jealous of what other people have they can't bother to make anything meaningful out of their lives.

Wait, what?

Yale.

Yale students are lazy, entitled, good for nothing idiots who are...

Wait...

Maybe it's Berkeley, or Stanford....SOMEBODY is so busy being jealous of Goldman Sachs...

What??

I know!
It's the damn business schools.

"It would focus on analyzing the actual workings of the economic system and leave the celebratory work to the economics departments. That alternative track is called Business Schools."

Glad we got that settled.

Richard D. Wolff, "Harvard Students Join the Movement"

 

[georgephillip]

why yes of course, after a few beers, bong hits and free credits from your gender studies course to attend, head out to the commons, berate the very system that put that tuition of $39,849 into mommy and daddys pocket so they could you send you there...

anyone seriously paying attention this must be very bored, dumb or desperate.


wow sounds just like our media!

Is that $39, 849 a year?

Speaking of "year:"

Did you know 2012 is the international Year of Cooperatives?
The UN says so.

"Cooperatives as worker-managed enterprises, for a number of institutional and societal reasons, represent alternative productive vehicles attempting to override the impact of deindustrialization, globalization, and the neoliberal ideological offensive..."

Please stop yawning and go back to sleep (work, to you)

Peter Ranis, "Occupy Wall Street: An Opening to Worker-Occupation of Factories and Enterprises in the U.S."

 

[georgephillip]

That Wall St/Fed water-carrier Summers used to be Pres there. I just finished reading a book by a former Harvard grad too.

Summers, Geithner, et al, should probably be spending all their free time in a courtroom.

If there's any way of electing a president who's neither Republican NOR Democrat, maybe they'll both die in prison along with a few hundred of their closest, richest friends.

 

[Unkotare]

"A week earlier some 70 students walked out in protest of Harvard's large lecture course in introductory economics. ."

You didn't finish the story (of course). A group of students and alumni then walked INTO that same lecture in support of the professor and the course, and received a warm round of applause by those students (you know, the ones who were there to learn) remained.