"Thousands of people are saying that they've had enough of Wall St, DC, and an economy that only works for 1% of us."
It seems a bit ironic that the economy is working just fine for many of the people that will attend this gathering, which will make the whole 1%/99% thing visibly inaccurate. "We are the seventy-something percent" doesn't have the same ring to it, though.
Inequality has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation's history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high.
I don't see how it's ironic to care about these problems even if we happen to have nice jobs
Good stuff. I've been involved in Occupy Oakland which has been growing amazingly since Monday. They have a pretty savvy web and tech team, they got a donated generator yesterday to power all the equipment, they're setting up a livestream, they are currently running a Wordpress site that could use some sprucing up http://www.occupyoakland.org There are a ton of other ideas that could use volunteers. Anybody on this side of the bay with some time and skills should stop by, it's pretty easy to plug in, there's an info tent onsite, there is contact info at the website, and if you ask there's also an irc site. I would suggest getting in contact with them if possible, Occupy SF probably has similar needs.
As far as ideas I think there is a need for a trusted decentralized network for inter-city communication, occupations are sprouting up all over the world and communication would help with the spread of good ideas and coordination. Dave Weiner at scripting.org has been blogging about these types of things this week and is offering occupyweb.org subdomains for webapps.
Maybe Dave wiener can provide showers and common sense to some of the protesters. Wall Street isn't the problem -- the problem is the White House. These protesters love to scream about Wall Street all while tweeting about it on their computers that were built by companies that are traded on Wall Street. Many of the people that read HN are hoping to one day have an IPO -- all handled by those same banks that are supposedly 'bad.' Perhaps they should e protesting the Solyndra loans where billions was given to a company because they bribed the right people in the White House.
I support people's right to express their opinion, but when hypocrisy such as demonstrated by these protests reaches this level, I have to call bullsh#t.
I would much rather see a 'Smaller Government Tea Party Hackathon' or perhaps an Occupy the White House Hackathon. The problem isn't the banks it's the government. A government that feels like profits are something to be punished when in fact, profits are the reason innovation happens. No one is forced to have a Bank of America account, but all Americans are forced to pay for bad policies every day. Any time the SIEU is involved in a protest you know the motives are suspect.
Aren't you falling into the same trap? You claim it's all the governments fault. I say you're wrong: it's not all the White House's fault neither is it all Wall Street's fault. It's both.
(And it's irrelevant if the protesters "use computers" or "use banks". Should they write on parchment and exchange stone tokens with each other? No.)
Hey brother, if you can get a small government hackathon going more power to you. There are no simple solutions and the more people advocating their point of view and having a discussion the better.
We invite you to join Hackmeet, a hacktivism unconference Oct. 15th and 16th at Noisebridge. Many folks who've been involved with #occupysf and #occupyoakland will be participating. More info: https://hackmeet.org
We're going to work on making that really easy for anyone who's interested to see the ideas we come up with. Probably going to use google moderator to source ideas from occupations, and definitely using github for code that's created. We'll stick it up at occupyhack.com when it's ready (this is all being pulled together last minute)
It seems a bit ironic that the economy is working just fine for many of the people that will attend this gathering, which will make the whole 1%/99% thing visibly inaccurate. "We are the seventy-something percent" doesn't have the same ring to it, though.