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OWS Needs a New PR Strategy

Today, I walked with the Occupy Wall Street brigade during their march, which was arranged in order “to barrage bank CEO’s with 6,000 angry letters from the 99 percent.” (Clearly the 99 percent aren’t big letter writers.) We took a route straight up Sixth Avenue from 41st, up to Citigroup’s headquarters, where the protesters presented a petition. In response, Citigroup sent down a representative who graciously took a handful of the petitions, but declined to take all of the multiple boxes that OWS had brought with them. This heinous “reluctance to listen” — all part of the plan of course — triggered part two of the festivities, in which the petitions were turned into paper airplanes and thrown at the building.

There is nothing inherently offensive about throwing paper airplanes at buildings, although it is an odd choice in New York ten years after 9/11. But that it became the final plan demonstrates a lack of thought. Ultimately, there is just something asinine about it — something unfathomably childish. More than that, it was pathetic. One hundred people assembled outside an office block and threw paper at the windows; seriously, is this the best that the General Assembly can manage?

New on The Corner. . .


COMMENTS   66

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   10/28/11 17:41

Aren't there laws against littering?

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otherduane
   10/28/11 20:30

Laws are for the commoners, not these elevated, enlightened folks. How can you be worried about things like "laws" and "hypocrisy" when you're engaged in the Glorious Struggle?

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   10/29/11 01:31

That's actually a good point. If this was any other group the NYC cops would have had a field day writing littering citations.

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Michael K
   10/28/11 17:46

Oh oh... the OWS crowd has really gotten Nanny Bloomberg angry. They better get rid of all the salt shakers in the park or Bloomberg might finally send in the cops.

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   10/28/11 17:47

One of the captcha ads should include OWS and at the bottom it should say: "Please enter: @#$%! loser idiots"

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   10/28/11 17:50

How many innocent trees had to die for this stupid publicity stunt?

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   10/28/11 17:58

Monty Python could not have imagined silliness on this scale...
Paging Eric Idle...Paging Eric Idle

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   10/28/11 18:45

Yes, they should have dangled tea bag from their tricorner hats, much less serious.

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   10/28/11 19:01

Well, at least the Tea Partiers would have cleaned up any bags that fell to the ground, unlike the OWS vermin who treat public property like a pigsty.

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   10/28/11 18:30

And yet you are talking about it.

I find it humorous that NRO keeps telling us how utterly ineffectual OWS has been but they need a dozen or so articles each day to tell us how no one is paying attention.

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   10/28/11 18:40

Because Democrats openly supported it, even though they are mostly idiots, it's always nice to point out just how idiotic they are. I'm so glad Obama and his party climbed aboard.

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   10/28/11 18:43

Did you see where parts of Zucotti Park have become so dangerous that people are afraid to venture into those areas? Or where someone from Occupy Portland emptied the group's PayPal account of about $20,000? There's a big difference between "attention-getting" and "effective." You remind me of a lunatic on the sidewalk ranting about the Joooooos who thinks he's making his point because people are looking at him.

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   10/29/11 20:58

OWS has its own ghetto!

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   10/28/11 18:47

Why don't you go camp out with these important clowns?

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   10/28/11 23:46

He certainly doesn't have anything more constructive to do. Must be nice to be unemployed and free to spew stupidity all day long.

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   10/29/11 13:00

Ha! That would involve a) leaving his mom's basement; b) putting on pants; c) probably getting raped/assaulted

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   10/28/11 18:38

Is seems OWS's current "PR strategy" is working fine. It has no trouble getting pundits to write about them (as here) and it's currently viewed far more favorably than it's counterpart Tea Party. If anything, the Tea Party could use a little more savvy PR, especially in honing it's confusing and contradictory message which has apparently led to in-fighting amongst them.

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   10/28/11 18:46

Ha - so the Tea Party has "in-fighting" - part of any developmental process for a successful political operation. And your OWS has actual, you know, fighting. Like people getting beaten and raped. Things getting stolen. Cops getting assaulted. Nice.

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   10/28/11 18:49

Better in-fighting among TEA party factions than rape, assault, drug dealing, theft, and mayhem.

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   10/28/11 18:53

From the Daily News re OWS: "There is a lot of infighting in the park," a police source said. "There is one part of the park where even they don't go at night. They call it The Ghetto."

Ha!!!

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