Thursday, October 27, 2011

Occupy Portland Fears it has Lost up to $20,000 in Donations

What is it they say? "There's no honor among thieves!"

Organizers of Occupy Portland say they fear as much as $20,000 donated to the group through a PayPal account has disappeared. They also say the group's finance committee has hijacked the demonstration's Internet domain name and filed for incorporation against the wishes of the group's decision-making body.


Decision making body. Yeah, the "general assembly" (some assembly required). So, the individual protesters are getting their stuff ripped off around the country, some occupiers are more equal than others when it comes to "spreading the wealth", and now we have factions fighting over the name of the movement and the internet address where the goodies flow from.

It's like watching one of those Mad Max movies, except, instead of a post war apocalyptic break down of societal norms, we have a group of malcontents who were in the process of rebelling against societal norms when thieves, other criminals and the homeless started agreeing with them.

Welcome to Anarchy 101. Other than "Eat the rich" and "Forgive my student loans", there is little cohesion to these ranks of rank amateurs and ranker political noobs. If one wants to siphon off cash and another wants to take control of your Internet domain name, who's to stop them? And if the "general assembly" of Portland decides to act contrary to a decision of occupy Wall Street's general assembly, who decides who is right? These people can't even manage a bread line without drama, resentment and the type of acrimony generally reserved for Glenn Beck! The food police were even raising their own posse comitatus to chase off the vagrants and others deemed not politically pure enough to receive of the occupiers' largesse.

The longer this "movement" continues, the more fractious it will become. Will they legislate their own rules? Adjudicate their own laws? Enforce their own punishments?

Good luck with that! Anger against the unfair treatment and injustice from the establishment will be replaced with anger against the unfair treatment and injustice from the leaders of the movement. The hardcore homeless and the charlatans gaming the system will stay. Eventually, I think the majority will realize that it is easier to reform the old system than to build a new one from scratch.

H/T Mememorandum

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

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