The Occupiers

Last week, I pointed to an amazing set of "Occupy Wall Street" protest portraits by Boing Boing reader Eddie McShane, aka Macdawg. He has been going down to Zucotti Park, setting up a little portrait booth and lights, and doing formal photographic portraits of people at the Occupy Wall Street protests. The collection has grown so much since last week—there are a hundred images, and growing. He's down there every day, looks like.

Eddie says:

I live in New York City and until last week had not gone to Zucotti Park to see the Occupy Wall Street protests for myself. I wanted to see who these people were so I decided to set up a portable studio and make formal portraits. I feel that these stripping away all of the background noise and just showing the people demonstrates their undeniable humanity. Their faces tell their story. What I learned is that these people are not whackos, anarchists, or indigents. They are overwhelmingly working and middle class people of all backgrounds who feel that their government has failed them and does not represet their interests. They are there to protest corruption, not to tear the rich from their penthouses and drag them down in to the streets. They just want the basic promise of America; that everyone has a fair chance to live with opportunity and dignity. These people are your friends and neighbors, their children, and your own. They are Americans, they are Patriots, and they have a right to be heard.

Above, "Pockets, 19, From Washington D.C." Below, "Ken, 60, and Alice, 49, From Maryland." Full set here.

• [NefariousNewt]

  Soooo… this is what all those hippie dope-smokers Limbaugh was talking about look like. Funny… they all look like us. In fact, they look more like your average American than Limbaugh does. Of course, popping pills and swilling booze will do that to a man…

• [franko]

  gorgeous portraits. i love this kind of thing.

• [rafterman]

  I cannot wait to see the delicious memes /b/ cooks up with these photo’s. So many lolz…….

• [GeorgeStanton]

  These people are not “your friends and neighbors”. They represent a small, leftist, segment of the population. There is now evidence of this from recent polling

  ” The movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse.”

  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576637082965745362.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

  • [UnholyMoses]

    The author at the link you provided claims that the “Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people.” Yet it is the author who is out of touch (and I’ll even ignore the fact that his polling data comes from his own biased polling firm).

    A majority of the American people (and, in some cases, a majority of self-identified Republicans) support a great deal of what OWS wants: higher taxes on the rich, accountability for those who destroyed our economy via fraud, and an end to austerity measures that have never, ever helped an economy in a deep recession. 

    So unless you live in a place full of investment bankers and hedge fund managers, OWS does, in fact, represent most folks’ neighbors — at least, a heckuva lot more than the teaparty crowd did.

  • [Timothy Krause]

    In whatever gated community of the human soul you seem to reside in, sure, I’m most definitely not your neighbor. But I and the other Occupiers pictured in these images are your fellow Americans, like it or not.

    I met Eddie and was photographed last night. A moving experience, a kind and lovely man, and incredibly conscious of the debt he and the rest of us documenting the movement owe the protesters. Here’s a picture of the man himself, I only wish it was as formally good as his own work!

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/33498942@N04/6255537011/

  • [Sergio Toporek]

    Citing an article from the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal? Yeh, I’m sure they are objective and unbiased.

  • [JProffitt71]

    There is so much wrong with that article that I am not sure I am qualified to tackle it all on my own; I simply don’t have the credentials to give it the thorough smack down which it so deserves. Though I will pick a couple points I feel is within my league to discuss. 

    First off, the point of this article is to suggest that the demonstrators do not represent a significant amount of people, that it is nothing more than a mere fringe group. The author goes about this by suggesting that the group is not ideologically diverse and attempts to substantiate that by citing statistics claiming that “fewer than one in three (32%) call themselves Democrats, while roughly the same proportion (33%) say they aren’t represented by any political party.” 

    Given the extreme partisan politics of late (especially felt among the demonstrators) it seems fair to suggest that the unaffiliated 33% would be the seemingly unrepresented “moderates”. Meanwhile there is NO information on the remaining 35%, which constitutes a whole third of the poll! Given that there are two predominant parties, and the remainder must feel represented by one party or another, that leads me to believe that the entire remaining third consists of conservatives and small parties. So it would appear that this demonstration cuts directly across party lines suggesting very diverse ideological backgrounds (with converging sentiments), though with 35% of the data unaccounted for, it is equally valid to conclude that that statistic as it is used is simply garbage.

    Secondly, and I thought this was rich, they cite their own findings that “the vast majority of demonstrators are actually employed, and the proportion of protesters unemployed (15%) is within single digits of the national unemployment rate (9.1%),” and use this as grounds to discount their association with the majority of Americans. They have just used statistics to clearly show that this movement does not consist merely of legions of unemployed Americans, that people with jobs are sharing if not driving the sentiments of the movement. These results seem to contrast sharply with the arguably stronger argument that they are merely the young lazy minority unable to cope with financial independence.

    It would seem to me that they set out to prove that this would be a horrible group for the Democrats to embrace because the group does not align with the Democrats “base”, which is apparently unemployed and very supportive of Obama, and they provided a strong case for that: this movement consists of people from all over the political spectrum, “regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education”. Therefore this group is in fact a fringe, relative to the minority that fervently support Democrats. The group is not trying to appeal to partisan politics; it is trying to appeal to the common grounds that have been lost among the entire country.

    Also, Wall Street Journal? Seriously? That is your go-to source for detailed analysis of dissent directed at Wall Street? I hope you don’t mind then if I just go ahead and call myself the quintessential authority on the GOP and Rupert Murdoch’s wet dreams then.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    GeorgeStanton,

    You linked to an opinion piece.  Please review the Comment Policy and your own standards of proof.

    • [GeorgeStanton]

      The linked article describes polling data. While it appears in an “opinion” section of a newspaper, I’m sure you will have no trouble separating the facts from the editorial content.

      • [UnholyMoses]

        And that’s the problem with the WSJ editorial page: it’s damn near impossible to do any such thing. They’ve willingly spread so much bs disguised as “facts” that their editorials can be rightfully ignored about 99%* of the time. 

        (* See what I did there?)

      • [UnholyMoses]

        Not to beat a dead horse, but the poll to which you linked is bunk, and the author willfully misrepresented it’s results.

        Here’s a link: http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2011/10/3790409/survey-many-occupy-wall-street-protesters-are-unhappy-democrats-who-

        So, once again, YOU = FAIL

• [Layne]

  Anyone can get posed for a nice photo – not sure why this might make them more or less virtuous.   
  If they look great but have incomprehensible demands…should that make a difference? 

  Interesting WSJ link. Granted, polling data can get manipulated just as easily. But you gotta love this stat from the article:
  “Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost.”

  The perfect cure for mountains of debt – Free stuff for everyone!

  • [UnholyMoses]

    Those demands could easily be met by halving the defense department budget.

    But, for some folks, spending hundreds of billions of dollars dropping freedom bombs on innocent civilians is worth the cost.

    Making sure our own citizens don’t have their lives destroyed due to an illness, are educated, and don’t have to worry about dying in abject poverty?

    Well, that’s just too expensive, apparently …

    • [Brian Cain]

      Feel free to back that up with some real world numbers.

      • [UnholyMoses]

        My comment was actually meant as hyperbole to point out that, as a nation, we never question our absurd military budget, but claim poverty when it comes to educating kids, keeping ourselves healthy, or taking care of the senior set.

        But I’m bored, so how’s about we crunch some numbers? (Note: Lots of links and really long, so not sure if this will get past the spam filter.)

        Education
        This could, in fact, be paid for by halving the DoD budget.

        The proposed FY12 DoD budget is $691 billion (numbers from http://comptroller.defense.gov/budget.html).

        Estimating tuition is difficult since there’s such a huge disparity between 2-year and 4-year colleges, public and private, etc. The average (according to my calculator) is around $15K a year, which is probably a bit on the high end. (Some numbers from here: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2010/08/24/the-average-cost-of-a-us-college-education. Others from here: http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html.)

        There are a total of around 12 million full-time college students at degree-granting institutions, and 20.4 million total enrollees (2009 numbers, and includes all colleges/universities, and full and part time students. Source: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98.) I’ll even be quite generous to your side and count those 8 million part-time students as paying full-time tuition costs.

        So … according to my calculator … **carries the one** … that’s a total of $306,000,000,000. And, again, that’s waaayyy over-counting some people’s costs.

        It’s also less than half of the DoD budget.

        Health Care
        Fixing our borked health care system would require a major sea change in our politics on both sides of the aisle. But simple math shows that Medicare for all makes an absurd amount of sense, financially and morally. To wit:

        The avg. American pays more than $132K in premiums each year (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2009-09-15-insurance-costs_N.htm). The median American earns around $50K a year (which is higher than avg. income, but used for a reason; source: http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-02.pdf).

        Say we raise everyone’s taxes by 10% (with an exception for those below the poverty line) to pay for Medicare for all. Folks would most assuredly lost their minds, right?

        But there’d be no more premiums, which would save the avg. American family $13,000 a year. Sure, that would be partially offset by an additional $5,000 in taxes, but it’s a net gain of $8,000 a year!!

        Sadly, this would ever happen because it just makes too much sense. Instead, we’ll just let more than a million Americans go bankrupt each year just because they got sick.

        Retirement
        This one is easy: Eliminate the limit on income to which Social Security tax applies (currently around $106,000ish) and treat capital gains and dividend income as regular income.

        **POOF!**

        Problem solved! We can ensure all of our seniors have a minimum safety net. When combined with a financial transactions tax of one half of one percent, we could raise an additional $200 billion a year to bolster Soc. Sec..

        Conclusion
        While I admit I was wrong that we could take care of all of these by chopping the DoD budget in half (again, due to the fact it was hyperbole, not a statistical analysis) we can, in fact, pay for these things quite easily if there was the political will, and without increasing the national debt one red cent.

        Or, shorter: The writer Stanton linked to is full of shit.

        • [Brian Cain]

          Nicely done.  And I agree with much of what you have put down there.

          And this is what irritates me.  It took you 30 mins to come up with solutions that would solve a ton of problems and make America a much better place.  Why can’t enough people get behind something like this and actually make it happen?

          That’s what irks me about these protestors.  They’re all over the map, doing petty shit,  getting arrested by the NYPD  and yet if they would think straight for a minute or two they could really change things.

          Take that guy in the first photo.  Get rid of the Grateful Dead t shirt and candy bracelet.  He should be down there protesting in a nice suit.  Hell, every single one of them should be. 

          There should be a group inside the protestors who do nothing but figure out 5 and 10 year plans on how to get these protestors elected to local, state and national political office.

          Then when someone asks what theire game plan is, they can reply:  By 2025 one of us will be President and 200 others in this group will be US Senators and House Reps.

          That would scare the shit out of the banks, evil corporations, and the right wing.  And it would actually get the change they want.

        • [EH]

          getting arrested by the NYPD

          LOL. Your mind is already made up anyway, isn’t it? What exactly did protestors do for you to blame them for getting arrested?

        • [UnholyMoses]

           First off, thank you for the kind words — though it did take me a bit longer than 30 minutes. :-)

          Next, (and IMHO), the reason none of that stuff will happen is simple: money. Or, rather, a lack of it by those who really want — and even need — fundamental change. They simply don’t have the power, and probably never will given that corporations are now “people” in terms of election law. There will simply be too much money spent to keep the status quo.

          And thirdly (see how good I am at the counting!) I agree 100% that OWS needs some sort of coherent plans/policy demands/actions. Granted, that didn’t stop the media from typographically and/or videographically* fellating the Tea Party, who was all over the map with its demands, but OWS doesn’t have billionaire backers and an entire network promoting them, either. The tricky part of that, however, is keeping a truly populist movement from becoming the corporate-type movement it doesn’t want to become.

          I guess figuring out how to provide health care is easier for me than figuring out how someone should lead a movement … which is kinda screwed up, ain’t it?

          (* Yes, I just made up that word.)

        • [EH]

          The tricky part of that, however, is keeping a truly populist movement from becoming the corporate-type movement it doesn’t want to become.

          I don’t think it’s as tricky as you portray. To wit: it is still a populist movement despite yours and others’ “need” for coherence. Consider that “coherence” may be how populist movements are destroyed. What does history tell us?

          Actually, you don’t say that you need OWS to have coherence, you say “OWS needs,” in the spirit of “Hey bub, do yourself a favor and…”, which I was taught is a rude thing to say.

        • [UnholyMoses]

          I can assure you my intention was not to be rude. It was merely to point out that, IMHO, OWS won’t be able to affect change unless they have some suggestions on what that change is and how it’ll be accomplished.

          Populist movements throughout history didn’t succeed just because they existed. They succeeded because they had an idea of where to go and how things should be afterward.

          (For the record, our family attended the Occupy KC rally on the 15th. So it’s not like I’m against it, or buying the media narrative that this is all the work of pot-smoking hippies* who are just mad they didn’t get a pony. I do believe, however, that it has to move beyond just words and marches into actual action on a policy level.)

          (* Not that there’s anything wrong with that, being one myself … )

          EDIT: My contention that OWS needs such a thing has less to do with OWS and more to do with our current media reality. The media has done all it can to marginalize OWS, and the only way to counter that is to play their game a bit. Having a concrete list of what OWS wants is a relatively easy way to do so. Again, IMHO — I’d hate for you to think that I’m telling them what to do or anything …

        • [Brian Cain]

          I’m not sure I agree that they can’t make a difference because they don’t have the money.  Obama didn’t come from wealth and he made it to the top.  Surely some of those guys down there have it better then he did at their age.  Maybe the difference is drive and the ability to recognize what the real potential is?

          And a big 10-4 on needing a coherent plan of action. One of the reasons that the right wing is so successful is that they always seem to have a concrete plan and a catchy message.  Why can’t liberals do that as well?  Sure, the billionaire backers and media network really helps to get their message burned into people’s minds but surely there’s enough creative mojo in that group to overcome that.   

          I keep thinking back to the Obama’s Hope poster.  Why hasn’t OWS come up with something that visually exciting?  Pictures of people holding up long winded rants on paper that end with ‘I am the 99%” ain’t cutting it.  People need a symbol to rally behind

          Hell, maybe Boing Boing could provide the platform to see what can be dreamed up.

        • [Navin_Johnson]

          Obama was not impoverished, and he had the good fortune to come up in a time before neoliberal policies began in earnest.  I don’t see what comparing one successful person to millions upon millions of Americans achieves as an argument though.  Wealth has stagnated in this country for most of the population, while it’ s skyrocketed for a tiny elite.

• [Mister44]

  From the thumbnail, I thought this was an ICP shirt – lol – http://www.flickr.com/photos/macdawg/6250279030/in/set-72157627753926729

• [Guest]

  http://radicalhub.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/anarchist-politics-inform-occupy-wall-street/

  These protests have already failed. They’ve been co-opted, and they do NOT represent me. I’m out.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Fjt5hHuFCzQ

  • [marilove]

    I can’t take that seriously.  The awful grammar and complete lack of capitalizing is highly distracting.  If you want to be taken seriously, at least attempt to write properly!

  • [Teller]

    Interesting links and pov. Don’t get anarchy, but there’s plenty more in there. thx.

• [marilove]

  That site and that man is awful.

  http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/10/14/hot-chicks-of-occupy-wall-street/

• [EH]

  Actually the whole thing is distasteful, but I’m guessing you’re impervious to criticism on this topic.

• [GeorgeStanton]

  To what would you like me to respond? I’ve said what I wanted to say, I doubt I’m going to change anyone’s preconceived opinions on here.  It just seemed worthwhile to point out that the 99% is actually more like the 10%.

  Nor am I enraged. I’m sure the protesters are nice people with good intentions.  But I also think they’re woefully misguided.

  p.s. I recommend not voting for Palin.

• [Mister44]

  If the porno featured bankers taking it up the ass, it might be the best selling gay porno of all time.

• [marilove]

  Interesting that you never replied to JProffitt71′s quite succinct take-down of your “proof”.