OWS plans to occupy retailers

The Occupy Wall Street movement claimed only to be peacefully occupying public property, in order to send a message and exercise their free speech rights. But now they’ve announced they’re going to occupy retail stores, to prevent them from doing business and, you know, making money. In a November 22 story linked at Drudge, CNBC reports:

Some demonstrators are planning to occupy retailers on Black Friday to protest “the business that are in the pockets of Wall Street.”

Organizers are encouraging consumers to either occupy or boycott retailers that are publicly traded, according to the Stop Black Friday website.

The goal of the movement is to impact [sic] the profits of major corporations this holiday season.

“The idea is simple, hit the corporations that corrupt and control American politics where it hurts, their profits,” states the Occupy Black Friday Facebook page.

A few of the retailers the protesters plan on targeting include Neiman Marcus, Amazon and Wal-Mart.

Their website states the following:

Keep in mind that we are not occupying small businesses or hardworking people—we must make a distinction between the businesses that are in the pockets of Wall Street and the businesses that serve our local communities.

We are NOT anti-capitalist. Just anti-crapitalist.

Below is a shortlist for publicly traded large businesses to Occupy or to boycott on Black Friday. Luckily, most of them don’t have good presents anyway. If you want to see the top 100 retail businesses for 2010 to boycott, click here.

On Black Friday, Occupy or boycott:

- Abercrombie & Fitch [ ANF 44.88 +0.00 (+0.00%) ]

- Amazon.com (yes, we have to stay away from Amazon, too!) [ AMZN 188.99 +0.00 (+0.00%) ]

- AT&T Wireless [ ATT 27.21 +0.00 (+0.00%) ]

- Burlington Coat Factory

- Dick’s Sporting Goods (I was surprised, too!) [ DSG-FF 27.86 +0.115 (+0.41%) ]

- Dollar Tree [ DLTR 76.61 +0.00 (+0.00%) ]

- The Home Depot [ HD 36.52 +0.00 (+0.00%) ]

- Neiman Marcus

- OfficeMax [ OMX 4.25 +0.00 (+0.00%) ]

- Toys R’Us [ JPM 28.38 +0.00 (+0.00%) ]

- Verizon Wireless [ VZN 95.50 +0.00 (+0.00%) ]

- Wal-Mart [ WMT 56.64 +0.00 (+0.00%) ]

Solidarity!

This is not the first time the demonstrators have taken action against corporations by using their money as weapon for change.

On Nov. 5th many demonstrators participated in “Bank Transfer Day” and moved their money from banks to credit unions.

[end of CNBC article.]

Question: since the occupiers’ goal is to damage major corporations “that corrupt and control American politics,” what about occupying and stopping the operations of the major media corporations, you know, NBC, ABC, CBS, the New York Times? Don’t they fit the bill to a “T”? Ahh, but those major corporations have been the occupiers’ major cheerleaders.

The occupiers say they’re only going after publicly traded companies. So, just to be sure, I checked out New York Times Company, which owns the New York Times. Guess what? It’s been a publicly traded company since 1967. I’m really looking forward to reading in tomorrow’s Times how the occupiers took over the lobby of the New York Times building at Eighth Avenue and 41st Street and prevented the editors from going to their offices and writing another editorial praising Occupy Wall Street.

- end of initial entry -

Tim W. writes:

Sounds like they’re getting desperate for attention. Getting in the face of Christmas shoppers might get them the publicity they long for now that their filthy shantytowns have been carted off the city dump.

The Occupiers may not know it, but some of the companies they want to punish are financiers of leftist causes. Home Depot and Abercrombie & Fitch are big supporters of the homosexual agenda, for example.

That reminds me, didn’t same-sex “marriage” pass after Mayor Bloombrain arranged a meeting between some New York Senators and some Wall Street fat cats? Where was OWS when we needed them?

I like your idea of OWS occupying the big media conglomerates. They could also occupy Hollywood. Do the likes of George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Sean Penn actually do anything to merit being multi-millionaires? Is anything more wasteful than movie making? Imagine spending millions to build a huge set only to blow it to smithereens in the film’s final battle scene. Or smashing dozens of cars just to make a chase scene more exciting. People are out of work and suffering from unequal distribution of wealth while Susan Sarandon gets paid millions to recite a few memorized lines while wearing a ten thousand dollar designer outfit. I say it’s time to occupy her dressing room!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 25, 2011 09:51 AM | Send