Ana—no need for sorry.

dont think twice, it’s all right.

heterochromatic—If City Harvest is as down-to-earth as you say, and your contact with it is as you say, then your ignorance is incomprehensible.  As I say, I don’t get it.

I was visiting a friend today and in her mail pile, still on her kitchen table, was a nicely printed communication of several pages from City Harvest with little smiling pictures asking for a money donation.  She’s on some list and those lists are bought and sold, sometimes for substantial amounts.  In any case, that kind of publicity doesn’t come cheap.

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To all give a check
To tax-deductible char-i-ty or-gan-i-zaaaa-tions….

Sorry, I couldn’t help it.  I realize we are going to need tax-deductible charity organizations big time as long as we keep on worshiping capitalism.

Ana, yup City Harvest is just a big old bunch of people that sit around earning
enormous salaries and doing nothing to help folks…....and my wife was an
officer in the organization, being an RD, used to write the newsletter that they
put (and which the Fed govt pays for) called “Diets and Dollars”.

My own particular expertise was in helping to organize (and supply equipment
for) all them middle-class drones such as myself that used to carry all the food
from the very large donation sites.

maybe you might look up City Harvest, find out that almost no one gets any
salary except for the people who drive the trucks and do the regular pick-
ups….and every last one of those folks are people who first came in contact
with City Harvest because they were recipients of food aid.

heterochromatic, February 23 at 5:01 pm:

‘Ana, I’ve got years of experience with City Harvest’

I imagine City Harvest is a typical bourgeois charitable organization, which means it has an imposing hierarchy of officials and other employees, who spend a lot of time, energy and money passing papers around, filing filings with the government, having meetings, doing advertising and promotion, and hobnobbing with the rich to get big contributions.  As I said, charity is a big business.  If so, you could spend fifty hours a week with them and never handle a cabbage or see an actual poor person, which would explain the ignorance implicit in your remarks about food being ‘left to rot’ at OWS.  Otherwise I don’t get it.

Now our favorite propagandist claims expertise in the area of public service.

It would be believable if he hadn’t just taken an unbelievably silly and unrealistic position on the distribution of foodstuffs.

Oh what a tangled web Hetero weaves…..one almost feels sorry for him,her, it.

Ana, I’ve got years of experience with City Harvest

Maybe you shouldn’t assume you know everything there is to know.  A little experience with Food Not Bombs or some other similar outfit might prove most enlightening.

It isn’t overweening ego possibly, only an overriding agenda, as was the case under his earlier sobriquet, GRYM. He does not seek knowledge , only to demean OWS, and in a rather silly, shallow and petty way.

Your post, Anarcissie, is a model of concise and deflating critique.

Does anyone want to speak to the subject of the article?  A call for a general strike seems a bit premature to me.  We in the U.S. have not yet achieved Egyptian or Greek conditions (although I suppose our Great Leaders are working on it).  May One might be a good day to raise widely distributed hell, but a general strike requires pretty strong support among the population to be effective.  And some people still have jobs.

heterochromatic—If you had any experience with food distribution you would have encountered situations where you can’t give all of it away.  Not everyone hurrying up and down Broadway wants to stop for a bowl of vegetable soup at Zucotti’s.  As for marching off to a nearby park with it, I’ll remind you that OWS was closely supervised by the police and it is illegal to give food away without the proper credentials from the authorities, which of course OWS would not be given, any more than they were given permission to have a dumpster or port-a-potties, which they offered to rent and maintain.

Maybe you shouldn’t assume you know everything there is to know.  A little experience with Food Not Bombs or some other similar outfit might prove most enlightening.

By heterochromatic, February 22 at 3:58 pm

Speaking of rectums; one possibly true ,possibly not, incident of wasted food, in one OWS encampment and you cannot shut up about it.

You, like your sycophant, Rico/IMax/sometimes man, sometimes not, are exposed.

ardee, stop going out of your way to be an asshole. my antipathy to Cheney runs
deep and it’s fueled by personal concerns.

OWS has screwed up in many ways, as young movements will…. ignoring the
mistakes, benefits no one.

and of course our resident Dick Cheney fan will never ever let go of what may very well be a one time screw up or worse an outright lie.

no Ana, i did not start out saying complaining that OWS left food out to rot
when they could have gotten City Harvest to pick it up.

MY complaint was that they needlessly left donated food out to rot…....full
stop….

OWS could very well NOT have left that food to rot.  .....

you’re bringing up excuses about how it would have been some great burden to
act responsibly because of “bureaucratic” obstacles, but it’s silly. there were
people in the OWS food lines who were experienced food handlers and probably
half a dozen with food protection certificates.

aside from that, it’s not any great problem to simply give food away in this town
without any oversight at all. people who are big and bold enough to take over a
park probably could have handled it pretty easily if they cared to.

heterochromatic—You complained that OWS left food to rot when they could have gotten City Harvest to pick it up.  We have now seen that this was vacuous b.s. on your part—City Harvest would not have picked it up because OWS did not, could not have, its papers in order.  Some of the food was redistributed by Food Not Bombs and other such groups because they don’t care about the papers being in order.  Officially sanctioned charities do, in fact, operate with a lot of bureaucracy because, as I said, it’s a big, lucrative business employing hundred of bureaucrats—the bourgeois (capitalist) way of doing things, but not always the most efficient, which leads them to other means besides collecting food and checking papers.

As part of the competition for market share, official (bourgeois) food charities have been sending investigators around and complaining to the police about unregulated activists like Food Not Bombs.  In response, the national (dis)organization is proposing April 1, 2012, as a national food-sharing day; see http://www.foodnotbombs.net/food_is_a_right.html and other related pages on that site.

Your part will be to laugh at it and pretend that all that is not sanctified by state bureaucracy is deadly poison.

Ana——safely handling perishable foodstuffs is not “bureaucracy”, it’s biological
science…....

A web site with telephone numbers does not tell us much of anything.  But going by what is implied, any surplus OWS came up with would not have been accepted because it was collected and maintained with insufficient and incorrect bureaucracy.  Therefore, it would have to be distributed by other people (probably in contravention of numerous laws) thrown away, or allowed to rot on the site—exactly the result we observe.  So I don’t know what you’re complaining about—the system is working exactly as it’s supposed to work.

Ana—-here’s how hard and “regulated” and bourgeois it is to get food picked up
and distributed…..

the whole of it is that the food has been properly and safely stored and there’s
enough of it to merit sending a truck.

http://www.cityharvest.org/donate-food/

heterochromatic—Those who want to work with bourgeois institutions must get their papers in order.  It’s not so easy to get one’s papers in order if one is not another bourgeois institution, for example some sort of ‘horizontal’ thing like OWS without a hierarchy of officers.  Some Food Not Bomber chapters have solved this problem by having two parallel ‘organizations’, one of which appears to be a bourgeois institution and the other a normal FNB thing (‘horizontal’), both with mostly the same people.  Even so one must hire lawyers and waste time, energy and money in other ways.  Charity is a big business in the U.S. and if you want to participate without getting busted you must subscribe to the rules and get along with the major players and the government.

OWS complainers:  Please read the Rebecca Solnit update on OWS. There are other sites that bring you up to date on particulars, but the Solnit article is, I think, the best and most inclusive.  Just Google Rebecca Solnit.  I think it’s on Common Dreams, and I wish it were on Truthdig.  Apparently Truthdig has gone temporarily to sleep on politics and social movements recently, missing much interesting news. OWS is far from dead, in spite of all the clubbing and the poor mainstream coverage.

and as long as you’re full of shit while doing so it won’t provoke fear at all, ardee.

I said that food was left to spoil at OWS and it’s nothing bu truth.

called it anything you wish, right wing propaganda, liars or call it
gumdrops…...you’re just closing your eyes and worshipping idols….

OWS has screwed up in many ways, as young movements will…. ignoring the
mistakes, benefits no one.

By heterochromatic, February 21 at 7:26 am

You are welcome, Het, and never fear that I will stop pointing out your extremism and increasingly strident right wing propaganda.

gerard, have you witnessed many mass protests about food being wasted????

and were those protests met with armed suppression?

I must have missed quite a bit of interesting stuff.

The “system” thrives on waste, up to and including wasting people by the tens of thousands. Do you wonder why we are in trouble? We not only permit war and mass starvation; we promote it. And when people protest against such evils, we send in the armed suppressors.

it’s not more than theoretically illegal, there is no enforcement and it’s rather easy
to get in compliance by having an RD sign off, and yeah, it’s fear of being in
violation of a city ordinance that’s stopping OWS from a better usage of the
donated foods…sure.

ain’t no calumny Ana it’s just the way it is…...

a lot of work with City harvest and other orgs in NYC has left me knowing that
OWS could have arranged a daily pick-up and distribution of the excess

In regard to food wastage at OWS:  I know something about this because of my connection with Food Not Bombs.  We and similar groups were often asked by OWS if we wanted food, or if we could provide transportation for food which was donated and could not be given away at the site.  Sometimes we could, sometimes we couldn’t.  Our resources are limited. 

Food wastage is not peculiar to OWS.  I have been told that, in the United States, about half the food which enters the food distribution system is thrown away, and what I observe accords with that claim.  Since OWS was not permitted to have dumpsters, as supermarkets and restaurants are, its wastage was overt and noticed, whereas the wastage of the latter is not.  I am surprised I have to explain this.

If we had more volunteers we could move more food now being wasted to people who can use it.  Instead, we have people complaining that we attract poor people and demanding that the police suppress our activities.  In most of the U.S., it is now theoretically illegal to give away food without bureaucratic approval, or in some places at all, even if people are going hungry.

I realize this is off the subject but I am unable to resist the temptation to refute calumnies.

heterochromatic - Your comments on this particular thread have absolutely nothing to do with the subject. Could you be more obtuse?  (probably)

here’s another person, Madaline, talking about wasted food

http://www.nycga.net/groups/kitchen/forum/topic/steps-needed-to-fix-the-
spiraling-dysfunction-of-the-food-working-group

ardee____ don’t doubt that what I wrote is the literal truth. It is…..

but thanks anyway for calling truth lies.

By heterochromatic, February 20 at 3:07 pm Link to this comment

ardee___my nephew used to stay behind the OWS meetings and look at the disregarded and untended piles of extra donated food left out to spoil.he would gather up a sackful and distribute it across the neighborhood before going on to his next stop.

I have been to only a few such gatherings (Oakland mostly) bringing food and blankets. I have found OWS to be much more organized than your post suggests and have never personally witnessed wastage as you claim. But that doesnt, all by itself, cause me to doubt what you note.

Of course I would never call you a liar, what good would it do to state the obvious? I would just refer to your ridiculous denials re: the Taliban in another thread as proof of your deterioration as a poster to be trusted.

I registered and logged in as requested.  Why was my comment not immediately posted as promised for those who register?

ardee___my nephew used to stay behind the OWS meetings
and look at the disregarded and untended piles of extra
donated food left out to spoil.
he would gather up a sackful and distribute it across
the neighborhood before going on to his next stop.

Perhaps Het, if you had noted this:

heterochromatic, February 20 at 9:22 am Link to this comment

ardee, it’s lousy timing and a poor tactic. you don’t call for a strike when you’re strength has ebbed.

you first build back up before trying to go big.

before you posted this:

By heterochromatic, February 19 at 11:15 pm Link to this comment

although it’s a good bet that OWS will comply with the No Housework and No
Shopping part of it among themselves (assuming that the free donated and
delivered food gets delivered to them that day, they may very well not clean up
after themselves after dining)

I might have agreed with you.

I like the idea of tactical strikes against limited
business areas. They should be focused on those who are
using “Super PACs” to subvert our government. Say the
Koch Brothers or BofA.

Big B - vector56 wrote this as a response to Lafayette on the thread about Paul Krugman’s interview with Playboy. I think it has a great deal of resonance here:

“You remind me of my truck driver brother-in-law who makes $10/hour less today then he made 15 years ago. Even though the system (capitalism) has screwed him out of thousands of dollars of his “surplus labor” over the last 15 years, he would still fight, die and kill to maintain it. During American “human” Slavery (the natural conclusion of capitalism) Black people spoke of “good masters” and bad ones. Like most Keynesian groupies you see Capitalism as a ‘Good Master’ that can on occasion go bad.”

I think it’s important for Americans to define clearly who the “enemy” is in this big, sloppy, foul-tasting thing we call “the American Dream” today. Nowadays, when people want better schools or social services, when they want a reformed tax system or new infrastructure they are dismissed as parasites, freeloaders…..and oh my god…socialists. But if corporate interests are involved, it’s funny how everyone, including all those low-paid truck drivers come to the rescue of capitalism. They’ll make their contribution….........by accepting less, by compromising their time and energy. They are the scared, serfs like diman who wrote below:

“The reality is, that people who are lucky to have any job these days, will be more than happy to keep it, rather than joining with you on a strike whose purposes are not entirely clear and more likely not to achieve anything significant in terms of change.”

But of course, general strikes would “inconvenience” people and businesses and politicians and the elites, and diman….and we wouldn’t want that would we? After all, (I’ve said this before) CORPORATE AMERICA GIVES US WHAT WE WANT 24/7 and that’s all we need, right? It’s because we can have state-of-the-art cellphones, instant pizza delivery, 999 channels of ESPN and frost free refrigerators that OUR LIVES ARE SOOOOOOO MUCH BETTER. Right?

mrfreeze

your 9/11 analogy is spot on. But we americans in the know are aware that this will be a long battle. The biggest problem we face is that a majority of regular rank and file americans still believe in that oldest of fallacies, they believe in american exceptionalism. They still believe that things will get better for us here the ol USA because we are this milleniums chosen people. They think that we americans can just will success.

Once things get bad enough, the lightbulb may come on. But I fear that once we come to the realization that we have been being used by Oligarchs and Plutocrats all along, the body count may get very high.

that’s what we need: OWS with VOWS and effective
protests such as no schools, no shopping, no work,
etc., for one or more days.
forget the words, supplication, plaints, etc. but do
carry the biggest stick you can find or make yourself.
for the ONE PERCENT would never understand any
language you may use. and, folks, that’s 100% for sure.
thanks

ardee, it’s lousy timing and a poor tactic. you don’t call for a strike when you’re
strength has ebbed.

you first build back up before trying to go big.

I have written on a number of occasions here on TD that general strikes would be a powerful tool for Americans to wield against the system. Parking in front of the “rich people’s land” does not intimidate the rich or powerful, especially in this country. They simply send out the Media (which they own) to propagandize against anything that would challenge their “moral authority.” All the sheep (called Americans) hear two things: “the occupiers have no purpose” and “the occupiers “don’t like capitalism.” OH MY GOD, the sheep run into their pens and hide….

Imagine for a moment the last time EVERYTHING stopped in this country and the impact that it had: The last event that triggered a total stop of activity similar to a national, general strike were the 9/11 attacks. Yes, it was an attack from outside forces but basically, our whole system came to an utter and total standstill in a matter of hours. Its impact is still felt today. The owners of this country hate when things stop. They hate being out-of-control. I would be willing to bet that 9/11 wasn’t considered so much a disaster because it was a brazen “terrorist attack” but that it stopped commerce dead in its tracks. To the capitalist elites, it wasn’t a matter of a few thousand lives lost…...it was, and it always is about the money. (and yes, I believe that the wealthy elite really couldn’t care less about the actual 9/11 attacks…they only cared about the loss of profit and productivity…..sociopaths don’t care about such trivial things as people)

Now imagine several peaceful, national strikes that essentially shut down the country in much the same way. Imagine targeted strikes: No flying today! No shopping at Walmart for 3 days! No banking today! No working today!

The days following 9/11, as I remember them were quiet, intense days of reflection, introspection, anger, questioning and…..yes….fear. The skies were silent, the streets empty, the big mouthed politicians and media idiots lacked a voice. In some ways sanity was, at least for a few days, restored to this country.

I realize my 9/11 example will not sit well with some of you, but the fact is, this country will continue down its current path so long as the American people “play the game” as it has been present to them by the corporate masters. Their answer to everything is: “The American system works because IT GIVES YOU WHAT YOU WANT, 24/7.” Well, what if it doesn’t? What if we want to TAKE TIME OFF, from the never ending treadmill of consumption? What if we simply “don’t show up” for the party every once and awhile?

Don’t flatter yourselves OWS movement organizers, almost nobody will show up or join the strike. The reality is, that people who are lucky to have any job these days, will be more than happy to keep it, rather than joining with you on a strike whose purposes are not entirely clear and more likely not to achieve anything significant in terms of change.

Could the release of David Graeber’s forthcoming book be around that time?

We shall see.

http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/02/the-choices-we-make.html

Sign me up. I will be there..

While a one day general strike in the US would probably not bring the disaster capitalists to there knees, it may serve as a small harbinger of things to come.

We know that we will never win over the dye-in-the-wool GOPers, but Rome wasn’t built in, nor did it fall in a day. The next step after a general strike should be a summer of witholding all support to Pres. Obama, culminating in a general strike at the DNC convention the likes not seen since 1968. Daley’s brutal thugs and a copitulent DNC snuffed out the liberals that summer. Threatening O’bama with a november loss is a good first step for liberals (not progressives) to re-take the democratic party and in turn, change the fate of america.

We have to prove to Berry and the DNC that we are willing to sacrifice the white house in 2012. Sometimes you have to tear a house down in order to properly build another.

Oh we could just stay the course, elect Barry with no demand for change and die of a thousand cuts. Or we could elect a repug, and steer the plane into a mountain right now. Either way, without radical change, the destination will be the same.

Despite the pessimism of Robespierre115, February 20 at 1:08 am or the childishness of
heterochromatic, February 19 at 11:15 pm
the call for a general strike is just a continuing effort to show people that they are not alone in their dissatisfaction.

“not issue any demands, but rather take what is ours.”

What the hell does that even mean? Once again the promise of the movement is tainted by vague, postmodern rhetoric. So people strike on May Day, and then what? The corporations and politicians will get nervous and stop being a corporate state? In Greece people have bled and fought but with at least one clear demand: STOP THE EU-IMPOSED AUSTERITY MEASURES. Yes there are different political groups within the Greek protests ranging from Communists to anarchists to just plain normal people seeing their society collapse, but they are unified in that one demand. Here the idea is…?

although it’s a good bet that OWS will comply with the No Housework and No
Shopping part of it among themselves (assuming that the free donated and
delivered food gets delivered to them that day, they may very well not clean up
after themselves after dining)

in seriousness, what the hell sort of a stupid idea is this?

will OWS call for a general strike result in as much as a !%
compliance…............??????

probably not among those employed.

A report or two on the success or not of general
strikes in Europe would be useful. In general children
should be kept away from street demonstrations. OWS
needs to make its tent as large as possible. There are
many other interest groups.