Occupy Wall Street Sign of the Day

I feel like there are so many excellent signs at these Occupy Wall Street (and Everywhere) protests, we should just be featuring one a day on Boing Boing while the movement lasts. All these mainstream news reporters keep saying "But what do they want?," so maybe posting one excellent sign a day is the way to show them.

This one, via Wilco's Mikael Jorgensen, was shot and posted by the great Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth and other things, on Twitter. Lee, we love you man!

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: occupy wall street • ows

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chellberty

but I see three signs, and shitiit.
shamocracy79

Actually, the best way to handle the “but what do they want” idiocy spouted by the MSM is to point them at this youtube video of Keith Olberman reading a statement released by the protesters last week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8o3peQq79Q

Putting up pictures like the one you’ve posted just reinforces the stereotype of the aimless movement, a stereotype that strengthens the establishment.
- Remy Porter
  
  I think this sign is a clearer and more succinct message that expresses everything important about the protests.
  
  And, unlike the statement Olbermann read, it fairly represents the feeling of everyone in the country.
  - http://www.theartolater.com/ Jeff
    
    @google-23d4db193d0d091f12e7db64ab3ca284:disqus , perhaps represents the feeling, but certainly not for the same reason.
- flagler23
  
  I watched the Olbermann clip and I still don’t know what they want. All they said in so many words was “corporations are bad”. Just what do they want done about it? This is just one big, open, decentralized forum for people to complain. Even the tea party from the outset was politically oriented – it had a practical purpose. But when your message is an indictment of the system itself that kind of precludes the transformation of these entirely negative energies into a political engine for change. So if it makes you feel good keep complaining, but don’t pretend this is productive.
  - Cowicide
    
    I watched the Olbermann clip and I still don’t know what they want. … So if it makes you feel good keep complaining …
    
    Then you’re not looking/reading enough. Also, critical thinking and comprehension skills are in order.
    
    Even the tea party from the outset was politically oriented – it had a practical purpose.
    
    Then go to a tea bagger rally, they desperately need you and unlike Occupy Wall Street, their numbers at rallies are dwindling to pitiful amounts. You are useless here.
  - PhosPhorious
    
    ” Even the tea party from the outset was politically oriented – it had a practical purpose.”
    
    Not to put too fine a point on it, but. . . Bullshit. The Tea Parties stood for nothing but rage. Against what is anybody’s guess. Remember Glenn Beck’s much hyped Tea party Rally on the anniversary of King’s “I have a dream” speech? What was that about? Restoring homor or something, as I recall.
    
    The Tea Baggers were not one bit more “focused” or “coherent” than this bunch, and yet the MSM took them deadly seriously.
    
    And seriously, the Tea Baggers “transforemd negative energies into a political engine for change?”
    
    Seriously?
    - flagler23
      
      From the two responses I think it’s clear there isn’t anyone following these threads who is cool headed enough to think critically about OWS. I mentioned the tea party in my post to make a specific point that had nothing to do with the content of their message. But the tea party mention is what you guys fixated on and suddenly I’m a tea bagger. I can’t stand the tea party, and believe it or not I agree with much of what OWS’ers are saying. My point about the tea party being politically oriented is not that their message was coherent or distinct from the traditional GOP platform, because it wasn’t. My point was that at least the tea party movement could be picked up by political candidates and carried into the system to seek reform from within. Mostly because much of the support for the tea party was from disgruntled republicans angry about the democratic takeover of congress and the white house. But with the failings of a democrat led government over the past couple years the OWS movement has no existing party to channel their energies through, and even more fundamentally, their anti-establishment message pretty much precludes politically based solutions from within the system.
- http://disqus.com/Kimmoth/ Kimmo
  
  How come this Olbermann vid hasn’t been featured?
  
  It packs more punch than anything else I’ve seen in favour of OWS; I’d even go so far as to suggest it has the power to change the occasional mind.
- Cowicide
  
  I wish Boing Boing would put this video on the homepage. It’s historic stuff.
- miasm
  
  bottom to top; chock full o’ win.
http://thebird-feeder.com/ Ben Carlsen

I think it just reinforces the idea that this guy is bad at cussing.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7OL6GKTE55IAZU3GXUWBNUX7DA B Zimm

A couple of my favorite signs at Wednesday’s march were “GIVE A SHIT” and “SHIT’S GONNA GET WEIRD.” My favorite sign was “FIGHT SMALL MINDEDNESS.”

The best chant was:
TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT
WALL STREET FUCK YOU
- http://kibblesbits.wordpress.com/ Ann
  
  That is SO NY. :D
http://twitter.com/HumanPrototype0 Brian

Am I the only one who read that sign in the voice of Dr. Lexus?
- Spikester
  
  I read it in the voice of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
http://twitter.com/sqlrob Rob

“Private ownership of industry is theft”

Public is worse. Guess who owns most of those banks that caused the problem?
- Cowicide
  
  Guess who owns most of those banks that caused the problem?
  
  Corporatists that we are fighting against.
  
  And please note I’m saying this as someone who worked in the top headquarters of the bank (Signet) that started Capital One in the early 90′s. I also handled major accounts including the Republican National Committee and I saw every penny they took in and spent.
  
  If you think “the public” truly owns the banks via the gub’mint, you’re on crack. And the “bailouts” didn’t even happen until after the corporatists throughly raped the public.
  
  What’s your point, again? Why are you here? What do you want to achieve with your rhetoric anyway?
  - http://twitter.com/sqlrob Rob
    
    The government isn’t the only way the public owns things, so forget your rhetoric.
    
    Every single one of those banks is on the stock market, e.g. PUBLICLY held. And until the law stops encouraging companies to be short sighted, there’s huge problems with public companies.
    - Cowicide
      
      The government isn’t the only way the public owns things, so forget your rhetoric.
      
      Right. Nice tactic. Move the goal posts and (as an added bonus) you miss the point (or act like you did).
      
      You just don’t have a clear message here, Rob. How can you expect to have anyone agree with you if your message is so scatterbrained?
      
      Every single one of those banks is on the stock market, e.g. PUBLICLY held. And until the law stops encouraging companies to be short sighted, there’s huge problems with public companies.
      
      So you’re against the stock market because it’s tied to the public?
      
      So what’s your point, again? Why are you here? What do you want to achieve with your rhetoric anyway? Your message is muddled.
      - bcsizemo
        
        No I believe his point was he is against the short term goal of publicly traded companies to supply share holders with profits at any cost to the company. Layoffs and off shoring come to mind as first step moves to increase/maintain profit margins.
        
        -A solution to shareholder profits could be a one year holding period on dividends for stocks. That keeps short term traders happy, and allows the company to focus on long term growth, not short term profit.
        
        So Cow since you seem to understand the goals of OWS, what is their plan to make those happen? So far I’ve heard a bunch of lovely things they are upset about (which I share similar feelings on a few), but nothing about how they will actually achieve them.
      - Cowicide
        
        No I believe his point was he is against the short term goal of publicly traded companies to supply share holders with
        
        Ah no, that’s after he moved the goal posts maybe. He first went off on some obscure statement about how private industry is best and how the public owns the banks and caused “the problems” – which is ridiculous.
        
        He then went on to explain to me (who has already told him I’ve worked in the headquarters of a bank) how banks “work” in extremely simple terms that would seemingly support his first broad, ridiculous statements.
        
        I could tell where he was going with it and it would be a misadventure into trite semantic details instead of getting to the root of the issue.
        
        Trite semantic arguments do NOTHING but derail and misdirect from important points and goals and frankly bore me to death anyway.
        
        So Cow since you seem to understand the goals of OWS, what is their plan to make those happen?
        
        Please don’t be obtuse with me. If you know anything about the OWS, then you’d know it started literally about 3 weeks ago. So no, I don’t think there’s a specific detailed plan on how to change the stock market right now.
        
        But what is in the works is plans on changing how corporations interact with our government.
        
        You can squawk all day long about changing the stock market system, but you will be powerless to do so until larger, systemic issues are tackled. If you’d like more help in understanding this, I suggest going here for starters:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street#Overview_of_goals
        
        So far I’ve heard a bunch of lovely things they are upset about (which I share similar feelings on a few), but nothing about how they will actually achieve them.
        
        Open your ears and eyes and you won’t have to ask everyone else what’s going on and whine about it. If you don’t like what you see and hear then get involved and put in your input. Otherwise, you’re just more noise from the distracting peanut gallery, aren’t you?
http://twitter.com/openfly ǝɔʎoſ ʇʇɐW

Down with this sort of thing!
neurolux

End The Shenanigans!!!
http://twitter.com/Arturo_Ulises The Ethnic Hipster

My favorite poster reads, “Mr. Obama, tear down this Wall”.
- Timothy Krause
  
  This one, perhaps?
  
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/33498942@N04/6187459832/
  
  This one has the real Boing Boing spirit, methinks:
  
  http://www.flickr.com/photos/33498942@N04/6221738854/
Cowicide

Kind of looks like Richard Metzger.
Frank Diekman

I bet he watches Shit’s Fucked Up Hospital. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkC7dcxZ5_Q
ymendel

I’m sure that sign is not the way to show the mainstream news reporters what the protesters want.

Don’t get me wrong — I like the sign, and for many reasons. I like the idea of highlighting signs. I just don’t think you should try to pretend it’s going to help them understand.
EeyoreX

If we may get back to the idea of a “sign of the day”, wich is a good idea, here’s one that actually sums up a lot of the protest in a rather snappy and concise way:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=228256510565404&set=a.228255920565463.54839.100001431703156&type=1&permPage=1

And here´s one that’s a personal favorite:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=228298293894559&set=a.228255920565463.54839.100001431703156&type=1&permPage=1
- Cowicide
  
  Beautiful Eeyore, thanks for getting us back on topic!
Cowicide

One of my favs as far as inspiration goes…
Rephlex

Really waiting to see this pop up somewhere.
beowulf

I’m totally behind the OWS movement but really? That’s the best you could find? No wonder the left seems helpless against the right.
10xor01

Troll perhaps? Seems like something a Young Republican agent would would write on a sign to make this effort look silly.
- Richard
  
  Actually the young man in the photo quite looks like a conservative Republican I used to know, although I’m not sure he would be in NYC !
EH

The Tea Baggers were not one bit more “focused” or “coherent” than this bunch, and yet the MSM took them deadly seriously.

Well yeah, because it was a manufactured movement and the establishment journalism industry loves prepackaged news. You might say it’s an addiction, hence many papers just being local AP reprinters.
- codesuidae
  
  My impression was that the early Tea Party was very much like OWS, with a bit tighter political focus, but was quickly manipulated by a major political party and then remade into a kind of controllable power base which has fringe opinions but that can contribute to a party without letting it’s fringiness taint the party too much.
  
  The early OWS fomenters deliberately tried to get the movement positioned in such a way as to make it more difficult for various existing organizations to co-opt it and redirect it to their own ends.
  - Cowicide
    
    I hope your nuanced thoughtful thoughts actually stick with some of the detractors who read it. You worded that beautifully, thank you.
Chris Fiore

Don’t think the movement is about sytlin celebutwerps giving shoutouts to their cool friends on their hiptster blogs, but hey, we all have our bubbles.

Cute dude, cute sign, but missing the point.
http://twitter.com/JustinKresty Justin Kresty

Justin Kresty likes this awesome sign.
http://twitter.com/criminalcrafts Miss Demeanor

Yes, to sign of day, make it so number one
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_AECDMU2HOZJMGKEHVGEJ6TIFB4 Ben

Is it OK if I just think the sign is funny? Does there need to be a point?
Cowicide

There was a lot of naysayers in these Boing Boing threads saying how this movement would flop flat on its face for assorted wrong reasons. What say you now, naysayers?

How about watching this news story below and afterwards, show some dignity and self-respect and admit you were wrong? And, now that you know you were wrong and we were right – please, try some introspection and self-reflection and wonder… just wonder what on Earth else you (yes you) could be wrong about?

Personal growth. Look into it. And, now join your sisters and brothers…
IN THE NEXT AMERICAN REVOLUTION!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFLmDKs4MK4
http://adavies.org/ Andrew Davies

Great editorial in the New York Times today supporting the protests…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/protesters-against-wall-street.html

It’s also important to remember that Occupy Wall Street is a grass roots movement. I think we’re so used to professional activism, we’ve forgotten how messy a mass movement like this really is.
- Cowicide
  
  So when do you think FOX “News” will come around? Haha…