The Republican Governor’s Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street?
1. Don’t say ‘capitalism.’
2. Don’t say that the government ‘taxes the rich.’ Instead, tell them that the government ‘takes from the rich.’
3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the ‘middle class.’ Call them ‘hardworking taxpayers.
4. Don’t talk about ‘jobs.’ Talk about ‘careers.’
5. Don’t say ‘government spending.’ Call it ‘waste.’
6. Don’t ever say you’re willing to ‘compromise.’
7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: ‘I get it.’
8. Out: ‘Entrepreneur.’ In: ‘Job creator.’
9. Don’t ever ask anyone you want them to ‘sacrifice.’
10. Always blame Washington.
Please click over to Yahoo! to read this article. And throughout the course of the year, I suggest revisiting it to see how Republicans follow through. Great lesson in messaging.
Blaming the Obama Administration for a course of events that began well before he even started campaigning would be sadly hilarious if it weren’t having such disastrous effects.
Then again, I still occasionally expect someone on the right to present a picture of a 2 year-old Obama holding a rifle on the grassy knoll in November 1963 and claim it’s authentic.
(via abaldwin360)
It’s hard not to notice that once the right number of white folks are affected, people want to take to the street. Unemployment numbers are high? We’ve had high unemployment for years. People are living in or near the poverty line? Yeah — we know.
When minorities speak up and say there is an issue, we are told maybe we are doing something wrong. Perhaps we are targeted by the police because of what we are wearing. Perhaps we don’t look for jobs the right way. Maybe we aren’t educated enough. But now that it’s affecting other folks, now there’s a problem. Now we need to come together and fight the power. Someone tweeted at me that we need to come together and not point out silly differences like race because we’re in this together!
Ah.
Yes, we can — and have (there is support from various folks of color) — come together within this movement, but you can’t expect us to throw away “race” and ignore history. Even the violence that’s happening with the Occupiers right now is looked at differently because of race. You can’t be surprised that people have reservations about this when you look at how our issues have been dealt with before.
I’m not making an argument for ignoring the movement because a lot of the movement ignored us. But I am saying take a moment to walk away from your righteousness to understand that your newfound plight has been some people’s plight for generations.
We just didn’t have a catchy name for it.
—- elon james white, Dear OWS: Welcome to Our World (via squintyoureyes)
People, read it (via rhymeswithnothing)
Reposted for truth!!!!! (via uryel)
So, the use of pepper spray can be seen as an attempt to gain the upper hand and it can cause “rapid crowd movement” which can lead to injuries in the crowd. Obviously, there’s a difference between police using pepper spray against dangerous elements in a crowd and a citizen using it to gain the upper hand at a Black Friday Sale, but just where do they think she got the idea? Just like the constant drum beat for “second amendment remedies” by conservatives in the press leaks into the subconscious of the unstable, so too do the constant stories of police using pepper spray on citizens leak into the national consciousness. And let’s not forget that too many times, police have used pepper spray on Occupy protesters who were not dangerous, were sitting still, were already kettled, and/or were not escalating violence. Customers using pepper spray on other customers, robberies, and shootings are not things that have been seen at Occupy Wall Street protests. Republicans told us that it was patriotic to shop after 9/11, and these same people have demonized OWS, but what we have seen is that the corporate giants like Walmart and the shoppers who get whipped into a frenzy by their charms are more dangerous than Occupy Wall Street.Is there a stronger word than “appalled”?
Robert Reich breaks some knowledge on the REAL public nuisance. OCCUPY DEMOCRACY.
Every single second of this is relevant. I don’t usually tell people what to do, but you really should WATCH this. ~ Kim
^^^ What she said.
To everyone who is asking, from the start, “what was a pregnant woman doing at a protest she should have known might get violent?” I say this:
We—two white men—write this letter conscious of the fact that the color of our skin means we will likely be taken more seriously. We write this knowing that because people of color are thought to be too biased to speak objectively on issues of race, our perspective in…
