Editor:
Interestingly enough the connection to world politik, American cultural complacency and widespread public ignorance could not be more clear. A battered Occupy movement now relegated to tabling in front of a courthouse. I guess the anti-Occupy won. The silent majority spoke, within their designated lines a few Fridays ago, as well as in the local media with the Journal’s Feb. 16 cover, “Concrete Activists: As the courthouse camp crumbles, occupy protesters seek more fertile ground.” The feature inside, while being fairly sympathetic to the movement, signals a departure from the traditional liberal leanings of this county’s demographic.
Generally, when print media, yes even the purported liberal media here, pigeonholes one activist and highlights only the critical comments of those “activists” who don’t like the direction the current Occupy is going, it can only be counterproductive to those who are still pounding the streets with the message. It seeks to tokenize the occupiers as archaic, arcane, and ineffective, while at the same time media rhetoric continues padding the nests of the current “privileged caste” in this county. The Occupy questions still remain: Why are there rich people? Who writes the rules in Humboldt? Who owns the land? What public officials kowtow to property holders and exclusive members of private clubs? Why is police intelligence targeting those without home and the poor? Is “white collar” crime not as, if not more, nefarious as crimes committed by economically underprivileged people?
Unfortunately, the Journal article frames Occupy as losing members. Even Howard Zinn (rest his soul) said that “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Is this Humboldt Occupy not in that same revolutionary vein as well? When good people do nothing, they are about as bad as the criminals. But have hope, Journal readers, and maybe go down to the courthouse and join.
Tobin Steiskal, Fortuna
This article appears in Going Once.
The “ineffective” label seems to have touched a nerve. Yet OE cannot point to a single meaningful accomplishment. It took them no time to become entirely self-referential. When a movement becomes mainly preoccupied with itself, it is no longer relevant.
“Bloody Romans”
-The Life Of Brain
thank you brian and thirdeye for the comments; fortunately for us, OE is Not Going Away, and personally I wouldn’t have it any other way; maybe consciousness will increase, one at a time, of course, brick by brick, wall by wall!
Can Thirdeye “point to a single meaningful accomplishment” in his life?
I wonder if this ‘blog’ is a space for meaningful dialogue; does all ‘four eyes’ have to talk about is about others personalities? i mean, its just words on a page, right? It would be nice if those whom made comments on the page did so in a respectful manner that worked towards public dialogue, rather than blatantly wording idioc banter. thats the revolution, yes? within the postmodern world we all live in, can we not stop the infighting and ‘ad hominem’ attacking; maybe this idea could help the OE garner more support in the public sphere.
It was simply awesome seeing one of the frequent flyers of the OE movement dining this evening at a franchise of one mega evil national corporados, otherwise known as McDonalds.
Dude, shouldnt you have been eating at Stars, or one of the other local burger bars, paying eight bucks for a burger and fries, instead of grazing from the dollar menu? YOU have deprived local employees from a living wage by partaking in MickeyD’s yummylicious value menu.
The decline of empire is inevitable, the collapse is always preceded by the empire cannibalizing on its own citizens. Witness the NCJ cover story, government and private interests conspiring to steal the only capital most Americans had…their homes….before looting the U.S. Treasury.
Tyranny always has its supporters anxious to silence a social-justice protest however “motley”….even on a rural blog, in a tiny weekly, in an isolated, social backwash.
Pathetic fools.
do ‘buzz’ and ‘p’ have names, ot just facades of acronoyms and anonymity? the revealing of names would kind of make this blog a bit more proactive; instead of socially digressing. class dismissed, again. maybe people should have a little more substantive proof (qualitative and/or quanititative) with their claims, rather than spilling out drivel, banter, and catiness. that would be Reasoned Discourse for this site; maybe I should apply for moderator here; I actually wrote the article in the first place. Feel free to email me comments if you like meaningful dialogue, not second grade banter.
thank you brian, for claiming your comments, they seem to be the only attempt at increasing the public dialogue about the ninety nine percent on this ‘blog’ page; however small, however rural, all voices need to be heard and have have worth (even words on an internet page). Solidarity to those still at the courthouse that have the courage to Rise Up and Act Out!
@Tobin
And you are???
When Heraldo, Plain Jane, Buzz, and others decide to put their names to their posts, I will happily do the same; as far as these local Occupiers rising up and acting out, the certainly have – making a mess and cursing at passersby.
Between frequent shouting matches between the mentally indigent who are there every day, mixed in with threats ( I’ve been called a “motherfucking one percenter” recently when going up the steps of the courthouse, perhaps because (gasp) I was wearing a suit, any message is lost.
That was the point of this article. Name one meaningful accomplishment the local OE’ers have acheived.
Occupy might not be over, but nobody really gives a shit about you scum anymore. Sooner or later you’ll be hanging out with other failed movements, such as the War of Northern Aggression and the Weathermen.
CC: ‘P’ and ‘ANON.R.MOUS’
1) Hate speech is Bad.
2) You can’t judge the whole of a movment by the actions of every single individual that you have ‘faced’ at the courthouse.
3) Even if that person yelled at you, there still is a valid question behind that aggression, have some empathy.
4) Both you two use rhetoric that divides the movement and buttresses YOUR OWN Privliege. This Is Bad, Divisive, and socially Counterporductive; and also EXTREMELY ARROGANT..
5) If you want my resume, I can post that up here; a curriculum vitae can also be added; just ask!
6) Those fighting daily for Food, Clothes, Shelter, Health Care, a Job, have it WORSE than your trite comments on this page. thats probably quantifiable and I don’t even have to be down at the courthouse to assert that.
7) There are countless others whom have worked harder than Me on the Occupy movment here in humboldt and eureka specifically; i am no vanguardist, just one dude writing about it.
8) My point remains. it is personally Offensive to see people HIDING behind monikers. my name (since birth) has always been Tobin Steiskal, not ‘p’ or ‘anon.r.mous’. i’m calling both of you out; my records public is yours?
9) Please Debate real issues and get out of your own little ‘Id’ bubble; my invitation for public forum is here! Bring It.
10) If either of you two, ‘p’ and ‘anon.r.mous’, need citations for anyone of these 10 points, please email me, I can provide them in both MLA and APA formats.
thank you, come again.
Wow, no responses yet!!!! Solidarity with all peoples struggles currently happening throughout the world. All Power to the People, direct democracy NOW.
1) Hate speech is Bad.
No, limiting speech is BAD.
2)You can’t judge
Sure I can!
3) It’s OK for ME to YELL
It’s OK for ME to JUDGE
4)PRIVLEDGE!!!111oneone
Says someone who has enough free time and income to have been in college since 1997.
5)Resume!!!!
HSU and Boise State. Since 1997. Professional Student. Big Woop. Highe School before that. Another imported wacko from outside Humboldt County.
6)MONEYS!!!!!111
You have enough money to still be in school, like it’s cool. I don’t care what you have to say about poor people.
7)I am not a hard worker!
Try harder, be a leader. SET SOME REALISTIC GOALS.
8)it is personally Offensive to ME and I MATTER.
Ben Franklin wrote behind monikers, same with Mark Twain. Why should I care what a professional student who types random caps does?
9) Debate REAL iSsues!
It’s been brought dawg, you don’t have any issues, real or fake, you just have noise spittle flying out of your mouth because you think that your opinion on anything matters.
10)I maKe pOiNtS!!!1111
Here, I’ll use a movie quote system for you:
Anon.r.mous: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Tobin Steiskal: Are my methods unsound?
Anon.r.mous: I don’t see any method at all, sir.
Run along Tobin, the grown-ups are talking here.
OMFG YOU DIDN’T POST A REPLY ALREADY RAWR RAWR RAWR.
Ok, that was uncalled for, but fun.
“The Occupy questions still remain: Why are there rich people?”
Simple – They, or their ancestors, did something to get lots of money. Maybe they built a railroad so goods could travel across the country, maybe they invented a way to communicate across the world, maybe they invested in what somebody else dreamed up or maybe they simply starred in a movie lots of people went to see.
Why is that wrong? Do you honestly believe there can be a society anywhere with absolutely nobody who has more of something (food, shells, money) than others?
on your answer to my 1):
Limiting my speech is bad too (which answers your claim as well), but read Herbert Marcuse’s argument on why hate speech is bad; also look to the contemporary german experience and their court system too, which punishes speakers of hate. Also, personally, words hurt; sometimes they have more meaning and can cause more damage than carceral pain. You can also read Michel Foucaults whole body of work on this.
on your response to my 2 and 3 (group em’):
you are not a licenced attorney, so you can’t even be a judge. i judge you too as an intellectual supremacist (whom only uses quips/ad hominem)
Now to deal with your banter responding to my original points 4- 8 (group em’), and i quote,
“Says someone who has enough free time and income to have been in college since 1997.”
“HSU and Boise State. Since 1997. Professional Student. Big Woop. Highe School before that. Another imported wacko from outside Humboldt County.
“You have enough money to still be in school, like it’s cool. I don’t care what you have to say about poor people.”
“Try harder, be a leader. SET SOME REALISTIC GOALS.”
“Ben Franklin wrote behind monikers, same with Mark Twain. Why should I care what a professional student who types random caps does?”
Now, My response:
1) I have not been enrolled at HSU since 2007 (that is what my FB page says if you read it)
2) I have lived since then on less than $10,000 a year since then. I am poor; I don’t have a full time job right now.
3) I don’t see the relevancy of you attacking even my ability to comment on poverty in the first place. You are an elitist.
4) Your rhetoric is classist and perpetuates the literaly daily dichotomy of rich/poor. Your opinion buttresses the privileged.
5) Have you been published in print?
And, finally grouping your last two trite comments:
1) and who are you? still hiding behind ‘anon.r.mous’?
2) do you want my real resume’ or do you just read the short one that is on facebook?
3) what have you done today to help someone?
4) can you even comprehend what my article is really talking about or will you just continue your charade behind the wall of anonymity.
5) Silence is consent. Speak truth to power. You don’t have to be educated to know that.
Not only have I been published, I have been discussed in print.
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/101906/towndandy1019.html
In this very paper!
Sadly Hank Sims never could explain this:
http://anonrmous.blogspot.com/2008/06/times-are-changing.html
Also Tobin, please relist your questions in a correct format for a college student, anyone should know that you should reuse 1/2/3 listings 3 times in one go, it’s a god damned mess. Also, I don’t care what you make, other than it is rather sad that you do the very same job that anyone can do right off the street, and you have 10 years of college behind you.
Not a outstanding statement for BSU/HSU grads.
what is more sad? a commentator commentating, or a commentator warranting every claim in an article, in every blog post, and in every sentence he makes towards the public, like I have done? my responses are to increase public dialogue, not about the article, not about the posts, but about the ideas behind those whom are Occupying. Do you get the point now? The very fact you got so twisted up in my commnetary is reason enough for me to continue writing on these topics on the ‘left’ persuasion. I don’t use a pen name, because I have never felt the need to hide behind a moniker, and I will take to the bank any comments I ever have, and still currently, articulate. I made my point; and I think Patrick Henry’s enshrined quote about liberty applies here, and would tie up the ends of my comments here (i still believe him), “I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This still applies; I’m still an American citizen, and my oath to this country was given to me with my social security number; to be the ‘ruthless criticism of everything existing’ as marx penned over 150 years ago, or to sprinkle a little of consistent hope for a better humboldt and a better america; i kinow my limitations, and the limitations of ‘mass media; so its the least I can do if my words raise a little bit of consciousness.
Oh, and your banter about documentation and citation: I asked you to give a format that would suit your prowess to read; that also entails Your Claims to be supported. When you give me real evidence, I will debate it. Continue on with your derogatory comments about who I am and whom you think I should be though; I still can forward you a copy of my full resume to highlight ‘my’ accomplishments for you so you don’t discard peoples opinions becasue you feel they’re still in ‘college’.
Still, my TURN of every word you have penned remains; who are you?, followed by, if you want to talk to me, show your face/name and put down your rhetorical cowardice, please.
My dearest Toby,
Nuts.
Truthfully,
Anon.r.mous
my dearest anon.r.mous,
‘Hick’, ‘redneck’, ‘bumpkin’, or dolt:
thanks for using the colloquial racist term for my name. have you even read alex hayleys Roots, or just seen the movie?
Truthfully, ‘en perpetua’,
Tobin W. Steiskal
born: 6th of August, 1979
p.s.; Also, I sincerely thank you for yet another inadequate verbal response to a simple question: i’d shake your hand and smile, would you mine?
oh for anon.r.mous: 1979 was/is the Gregorian year I was born in; do you really want to continue with your seperatist, xenophobic, and exclusionary conversation, and sound even sillier doing such? i’ve been ready and your’e quips are still baseless. Do you need help with some reading materials or contacts within the community to increase your cultural sensitivity?
a third post in a row! just for good measure refer to my March 3, 2012 thought:
“I wonder if this ‘blog’ is a space for meaningful dialogue; does all ‘four eyes’ have to talk about is about others personalities? i mean, its just words on a page, right? It would be nice if those whom made comments on the page did so in a respectful manner that worked towards public dialogue, rather than blatantly wording idioc banter. thats the revolution, yes? within the postmodern world we all live in, can we not stop the infighting and ‘ad hominem’ attacking; maybe this idea could help the OE garner more support in the public sphere.”
copied and pasted from a few days agos post:
There are countless others whom have worked harder than Me on the Occupy movment here in humboldt and eureka specifically; i am no vanguardist, just one dude writing about it.
and, to respond to ‘pwatson’s post point at the end of that post, quote, “Why is that wrong? Do you honestly believe there can be a society anywhere with absolutely nobody who has more of something (food, shells, money) than others?”
1) the theory, ‘. . . to each according to their ability, each according to their needs. . . ‘ (marx) and Michael Alberts modern book, ‘Participatory Economics’
2) the quantification:
a. the mondragon cooperatives in the Basqe country in spain.
b. the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico.
c. the Kibbutz system in agrarian Israel.
d. Virtually all the social democracies in modern Europe; that fund health care, employment, education, and housing for all, regardless of class or caste.
e. a theoretical/pragmatic idea for humbodlt:
i. public elections for police officers.
ii. proportional representation for governmental elections.
iii. direct workplace democracy.
iv. harm reduction programs and community based rehabilitation systems and ‘criminal’ justice tribunals.
v. a people driven, collectively decided, Universal Declaration of Human Rights; applicable to all whom live, reside, and work in the County.
vi. an accountable public ombudspersons office to check publically those companies and individuals whom ‘violate’ these terms in the afforementioned ‘v.’
And these are just a few ideas. As always, I would be willing to help in any part of building any of these instituions within humboldt, as long as they are governed and created, ‘. . . by the consent of the governed. . . ‘
Word salad and misdirection, how wonderful.
thank you for your compliment. do you ever have anything nice to say? again, who the hell are you? (pardon my word choice with ‘hell’). do you have a name, whom gave you it, and why? thanks again, for six trite, cursory, and absolutely insignificant words. have you or do you answer arguments?
again, cut and paste is fun!!!!:
“The very fact you got so twisted up in my commnetary is reason enough for me to continue writing on these topics on the ‘left’ persuasion.”
would you shake my hand or turn your head? I certainly was raised better than that, again I’ll use the word to describe your words; dolt; keep hiding.
Are you trying to repeat the lie enough in hopes that it becomes true, or are you hoping that you’ll gain more followers to worship your false gods?
I truly hope you’ll stop feeling so guilty for being who you are, and be able to move on, but sadly I doubt it. You speak volumes about yourself, and your self lothing,and anyone who reads your posts sees it.
May you find peace is this life Toby, and hopefully use your degrees to something better than “lawnboy”.
Don’t you see the humor in someone who spent so long in school, a gift that not everyone can afford, and you waste it, and then scream and yell about privledge? But I’m sure you’ll shit out another twenty posts, most of them cut and pastes, and at the end of the day, you’ll still feel guilty, and do nothing about it.
Toby. Stop posting, go look for a better job, and better youself instead of wallowing in your own filth. Try TeachAmerica or the Peacecorp.
I asked you not to call me Toby, that is not my name, and I have never been introduced to you in person; thank you for using my ‘slave’ name, and as Red Foreman would hopefully agree, you are a ‘jackass’.
I was raised better than that though, I would call you by your first name, if you had one. You are creating the excact type of insular community in which you profess to hate, with your own rhetoric.
I still believe that the only stupid question is the one not asked, and I find no humor in the fact that my ‘gift’ of being educated was won with my own two hands, not given to me by a trust fund account. Again, what have you done today? Have you even attempted to help someone out of the ‘gutter’? Do you feel guilty that you can’t even use your first name to CLAIM your posts? Or do you have some silly hippy-esque moniker?
Why am I wallowing in my own ‘filth’ as you so eloquently said? Please address issues, cuz you seem to be still living in wonderland and buying into the uniquely american myth of excluding others, prima facie. American exclusionism is the reason we have the biggest defence department budget on the planet anyway.
Do you still need some research cites? That offer, to help re-educate you, is still on the table as well. Sorry I can’t say these things to you in person, so in the spirit of being nice I’ll ask again, Would you shake my hand or just turn your head? Again, keep hiding.
Why does me wanting to be a writer offend y’all so much? Before you read my story, you really had no idea whom I (Tobin W. Steiskal) was.
If Toby is your “slave” name, then why do you use it yourself?
Not that I can really care.
Also, Che was a total asshole.
you misunderstand my point; people call me that, I don’t; its not my name. Toby insinuates a lesser caste and a slave caste. ‘toby’ was a colloquial southern term used to dehumanize african americans whom worked on plantations, much similar to the ‘uncle tom’ stereotype.
And in alex hayleys book Roots, it was the lead character, Kunta Kintay, which was his original African tribes kingly name given to him; its just that when he got shipped over to the ‘new world’ and sold to rich white people, his white plantation owner gave him the name, Toby to strip him of his very cultural identity. It is colloquially racist for that time during slavery, and is contemporarily racist calling me that now. I am neither master nor slave.
when have I ever said my name was Toby? I’m referring to people calling me that as invoking the horrible atrocities of slavery in this nation (which was in the not so distant past) and still is emblemized with that name meaning one that is of lesser class than that of the white rich majority who indentured whole peoples and engaged in the daily dehumanization of them. anon.r.mous, you are using toby derogitorily in this case, cuz it’s not my name, I am neither slave nor master, it rhetorically invokes times in america that I think all of us want to forget anyway, and finally:
my name is Tobin. It is of yiddish/askenazic origin, given to me, meaning, ‘gift from god/hashem’; and it was given to me be my family (ma and nanna). Not that I really care, but I do find it very disrespectful to:
1) get my name wrong thus trying to delegitimize me, and my family and culture that gave me it, and 2) Cower at the even simple question to ask you what yours name is in return, and for you never to reveal it; this still is pretty cowardly.
So, do you still need help with re-education and sensitivity training? My offer for full citiations on every position I’ve taken is still here too. Again though, you continue to cower and hide behing a nameless post, when all my article and posts are trying to do is try to start and be a part of a meaningful dialogue on matters of social import. It’s also about how to make the Occupiers look more palatable to more people and to broaden the network of support and public dialogue about the legitimate concerns and social criticisms that the Occupy movement as a whole is trying to raise to the public space. This is for praxis; to bring thoughts and actions together for a better future for all of us in humboldt, where all inputs are valued, and collectively, voices from the margins can be heard, by working together, networking together, and reacahing out to those whom want to change the world, and do just that, one mind at a time.