I present to you; the Bonus Marchers of 1930. Nearly 50,000 ex-soldiers and their families descended upon Washington DC to lobby for an early release of bonus funds promised in 1924 for World War I soldiers. For six months they camped across the street from the White House where Herbert Hoover could see them. They did not allow poor behavior, they punished it. They set up their tents in neat rows with streets and side streets. They set up committees to oversee the cooking, the toliets, and the law.
Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn
You offer an interesting perspective of how peaceful demos could be done, but might i add a few additional points to the debate?The Bonus March, e.g., was a very homogenous mass of people and it was extremely specific demands that related to specific people only. Who probably are more "birds of a feather" than the OWS crowd .
OWS is something that relates to all kinds of people of all kinds of background and of course only the one with erratic behaviour stick out. That can`t be news to you :-). Plus, you don`t need to forget the marketing strategies of paid "vandalizers" from opponent parties present at all such demonstrations to intentionally degrade the movement.
I was protesting in Austria against the right wing government around "Haider" that established a while back. Everyone was completely peaceful , nothing happened until some unidentified crowd with masks came, attacked the police forces for absolutely NO REASON, made a mess, got in the news and then dissappeared and vanished in air. Then of course the protestors were all violent extreme left wing communists. Hello? It`s easy mathematics. News focus on aberratic behaviour and not on what "really" happened. No one would buy a copy of a newspaper when they write that actually nothing has happened. Is that comprehensible?
As to the Bonus March, I reread the march on google, as i did not know anything about it, and i saw there was violence as well. Police and i guess even military violence against the protestors. It is nice that the marchers were a nice mass of people who played by rules, but i still think you have a little idealistic views. Maybe i am wrong. You tell me :-)
Plus :
shitting in park and peeing on streets: as far as i am aware off - the protestors set up camps - which got destroyed immidiately by the police. So obviously they simply did not "let" them put up proper methods of discharging garbage and waste.
Look at these photos.
I am not sure what happened at the "Bonus march" but as i recall from googling it right now, they also had their camp sites torn apart by police and the riots became violent with deaths. So? Not so much difference......