Check out this section...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sma...darity_unionism

And the corresponding thread at ANI...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...e_system.21.211

I don't know about the block validity and really don't care to look it up, but JzG blocked him indefinitely, then AfD'd his article and posted the standard notice inviting him to make comments on the AfD. Nice guy.

The article is 6-2 keep at AfD right now.

Everyone's favorite asshole, Guy Chapman (a.k.a. JzG) is up to his old tricks, this time putting an indef block on an occasional contributor named Smash the State and then putting the guy's two year old article on Solidarity Unionism up for AfD. Read all about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...e_system.21.211

The only funny thing here is Guy admitting to being 45 years old. It is funny because he has less brains, tact and savvy than the teens and tweens who seem to be running Wikipedia

[Duplicated threads merged to here]

This guy's user page is up for deletion due to "a violation of Wikipedia:No personal attacks and Wikipedia:User page", so here's the text before it sinks into the swamp. I like the cut of his jib :

I was heartened to read this comment:



I had a similar commentary on my own user page, and this outraged Guy Chapman no end.
(See thread on WR under JzG and 'Simon Wessely/claims of harassment)

This comment is interesting too:



Here are clear general key criticisms of WP and real world impact- and once again we have Chapman taking on a role of wiki-rottweiler?

I think I like this guy. He is a BLP victim who has begun the work of deconstructing Wikipedia from his own unique view point. He participated in Wikipedia, like Brandt, only after being forced to do so because of his BLP.

So far he hit on some good themes: community dysfunction; irresponsible psychological and ideological underpinnings motivating Wikipedians; broken and dishonest processes. A pretty good start. His activist background might also add something to the mix. I hope this guy finds his way to the pages of the Review. If nothing else it would be good to have someone other than the usual internet libertarians of the right to disagree with.

I also always have had a soft spot for the IWW. Any union bringing together hobos, lumberjacks, panhandlers and Star Bucks' baristas is OK in my book.

OK, so JzG is a major numpty - but there's at least a hint of sanity still rattling around in his hoary ol' head. He's only doing this to get the few votes necessary to be WR's Dick of the Year again. Hours to go, people!

As for the case itself, he actually explains why he's doing it. It seems he doesn't like it when people call Ayn Rand a psychopath. In Guy's mind this is tantamount to calling Jimbo a wanker. Therefore the offender must be blocked.

I was amused by how the evil perp raised "major red flags for him", considering how SmashTheState (good man!) is an Anarchist (good people!). Smash the State and its JzG's!

The MfD for Smash the State's user page was put forth by Ironholds, a British teenager who has racked up four failed RfAs under a couple of different names. I wouldn't be surprised if he was buttering up Guy for his support in a fifth RfA run.

A biography on "anarchopedia" (what is that? Good grief ) quotes the guy:



Someone buzz this guy on his WP talk page, and ask him him to drop in over here!

WP:SOP4JZG

Ja, Ja, Ja

Guy is currently losing handily on every front of this particular battle... he should go back to the spam blacklist, where he and his clique are still firmly in charge.

Eeeeexcellent.

Lessee....the OPU has a phone number: 613-748-0460.

Also, we have this, wherein people like Scarian accuse Nellis of socking.

I bet Guy really hates Mr. Nellis, because according to the articles I keep
reading about him, Nellis is a very effective activist.

In which case, he belongs here.

(I put a link to this thread on his talk page. Let's see how long it lasts.)

SmashTheState's response to JzG's "apology":

Yeeee-HAW. Rock-n-roll. Etc. etc. etc.
Andrew, thank you for the lulz.
Please PLEASE come to Wikipedia Review and visit us.
We'd love to chat.

A panhandler's union just seems like a really ridiculous idea... just who would they go on strike against? Unions are for workers; who does a panhandler work for?

----------------
Now playing: Carly Simon - Legend In Your Own Time
via FoxyTunes

I moved this from the Hattersley thread. I'm pretty sure you meant to post it here.

I think they mean union in the sense of "direct action." I'm not sure about PHU but many homeless/street persons/runaway-throwaway-kids activists groups address this issue. It usually takes the form of a free speech campaign and civil disobedience around asking for money which is often prohibited speech under various "vagrancy" laws. The activists assert no speech is more deserving of protection than people asking for assistance when in dire need. This also becomes political speech because it illustrates serious failures of the economic system and social safety net. One frequent tactic is to publish a newspaper in which street people can tell their stories or express opinions. They then ask for donations for the paper.

Not really the kind of thing "internet libertarians" are likely to get behind, despite the obvious free speech issue. Now setting a homeless person on fire and posting a video on Youtube is more the kind of free speech Wikipedians can support.

Howdy, folks. Sorry it took so long to reply to you, but I had some difficulty getting an ack from the site here so I could register.

In answer to your statements about the union, the Ottawa Panhandlers' Union is a real union. We are a shop of the Industrial Workers of the world (IU 630), we pay union dues, and we carry a union card just like any other union workers. Your confusion is understandable, since the modern concept of a union is very different from the ideals on which the original unions were formed.

A union is a group of workers who stand together for mutual aid and defence. It has nothing to do with collective bargaining with an employer, although a union can certainly do that, and often does. The IWW has a long tradition of organizing the unorganized; during the Great Depression, for example, the IWW unionized the men in work camps, bringing them together in solidarity to fight for dignity and better conditions. Here in Ottawa, as in many other places, the homeless population has exploded as a result of a perfect storm of neo-liberal doctrines such as the elimination of rent controls, slashing of welfare rates, closing of hospitals and mental institutions, failure to provide drug treatment, and the empowerment of a belligerent and ever-growing police force which openly states that its mandate is to protect business from the poor. These conditions have resulted in a massive increase in panhandling with a concommitant rise in friction between panhandlers and the business lobby which views them solely as a problem which must be eradicated.

The IWW does not work like other unions with which you may be familiar. There is a single paid member for the entire union. All the rest of the work is split up and done by the workers themselves. This is called the "solidarity unionism" model, which is opposed to (and by) the craft unions (which we often refer to as bureaucratic unions). If you belong to a Wobbly shop and you walk off the job, no men in suits from the IWW national are going to show up and seclude themselves in a smoky back room with the bosses where they may or may not be fighting for your rights. The workers themselves negotiate, building solidarity among themselves, but are also able to call on the broader support of the union as a whole. The motto of the IWW is, "An injury to one is an injury to all."

For the Ottawa Panhandlers' Union, this model of organizing fits perfectly with our needs. People on the street are made to feel worthless both by those who want to exterminate them but also by their supposed allies on the soft liberal left, who make people weak and reliant through their myth of the "deserving poor." Most of the members of the Panhandlers' Union are panhandlers only because they are prevented from doing what they really want to do, such as busk, sell arts and crafts, vend newspapers and trinkets, or do artwork on the street. The OPU started a newspaper program, where anyone on the street could by copies of The Dominion, a grassroots Canadian newspaper, at cost and distribute them on the street in exchange for a donation. Under pressure from the business lobby (called BIAs, Business Improvement Areas here), Ottawa City Hall made this practice illegal, forcing people to go back to panhandling.

No one, not even the panhandlers themselves, want a panhandler on every corner. Nearly everyone who is currently panhandling is capable of doing *something*. They are on the street for reasons which almost inevitably include mental illness, drug addiction, or both. These conditions make conventional 9-5 employment impossible, but they are more than capable of engaging in small itinerant self-employment if only they were not constantly thwarted from doing so. I can tell you from personal experience that most of our members are extremely intelligent and highly creative. Stupid, bland, uncreative people don't end up on the street, they end up behind a desk (or in Parliament). If all those who could vend or busk were permitted to do so, there would be few enough people left panhandling that their numbers would not elicit the kind of class rage we see now by the middle class.

Anyway, sorry to be so long-winded, but I wanted to explain that we are not just another activist group, out waving placards and marching in the street -- although we do that too, sometimes. We do a lot of small direct actions with specific goals in mind. For example:

* We shut down the local police station -- twice -- to force them to get rid of a cop who was beating up street people. We occupied the street outside their doors for an hour the first time, and warned them if the cop was not fired we would be back. He wasn't and we were, this time marching right inside and occupying the lobby, flags waving and megaphone blaring, while 200 angry cops surrounded us. This time they acted, and the cop was taken off the street. (They promoted him to detective, presumably because it's easier to promote a cop than to fire him. That's fine with us, as long as he's off the street and not beating up homeless teens in empty parking lots.)

* We helped one of our members sue the Rideau Centre, a large shopping mall in downtown Ottawa, for $70,000 after he got beaten badly by three members of their security staff for the crime of looking poor. The Rideau Centre settled out of court, and the member used the money to buy a car, get an apartment, acquire his A-Z license, and is now earning $25 an hour driving a truck. He also now assists us in organizing the union.

* One of our members is schizophrenic and spends time occasionally in hospitals for that reason. In Russia, before he emigrated here, he was a lawyer, and he is trying to update his skills at university. The hospital would not let him go to classes because they said they did not want to be responsible if he went nuts or something. Another member volunteered to go with him, and we told the hospital they'd face a picket line if they didn't let him go. They complied.

* While one of our members was being held in a detention centre, they denied him the use of his wheelchair because they said it could be used as a weapon. He was forced to literally crawl on his hands and knees to use the bathroom or move anywhere but his bed. They said if he was willing to go into isolation -- alone in a tiny room with no one to talk to, no television, no radio, and nothing to read -- they'd give him his wheelchair back. We paid them a visit and told the detention centre they'd have a picket line outside their gates if he didn't get his wheelchair back. Their response was to pressure the court and release him before our date for the picket.

Those are just a few examples of the kind of stuff we do. Our activities are determined and planned by our members. Not only does it mean they obtain the solidarity necessary to protect themselves and their comrades against the State and the power of capital, but they learn useful skills which will make them valuable activists in their own right, capable of standing up for themselves and others. The JzGs of the world don't stand a chance against us.

(PS: Yes, that's me in the avatar at the 2007 Mayday protest.)

Welcome, STS

Not entirely unrelated to your main cause, you will find a lot of wiki-panhandlers here who could use a few well-seasoned ideas about what to do with their fires besides sautéing fryers in Jimbo's pot.

Jon Awbrey

Welcome STS.

Do you not have the magazine Big Issue in your region?

Another question STS. What do you think about the lack of attention given to "Liberalism in [[country]]" articles on WP? For years they have existed under a timeline/history format until I changed that to background/history, because most of the history sections were themselves only a poorly sourced timeline.

STS, fraternal greetings and internet hugssss. Permit me to award you our most prestigious Barnstar - with oak leaf

Welcome!


edit - GBG thanks for trying but it didn't work even in preview on my SeaMonkey. Maybe we need a proper usage guide Respec dude

You know, JzG is a bit of an activist himself. Not a lot of people know that. He stands up for the rights of all those who like bicycles, but - and this is the clever part - who do not wish to wear bicycle helmets. Or at least I think that's the case. Every time I visit his site to find out I fall into a coma. Life-sapping place alogether, that. He's either for them, or against them, anyway, and that's activism by any standard, probably. Perhaps you could share tips?

PS
Hey! "luke"! You couldn't make that picture bigger, could you? Cheers mate!
Edit : Cheers, "luke"!

Welcome StS.

In a picture I took a few months ago of protestors awaiting the supposed arrival of Sarah Palin (which never happened; she took a different route that bypassed them), one sign-carrier seemed to mention our friend StS...

Welcome, STS, and thank you.
Obviously you have plenty of injustice to deal with in Ottawa,
but at least you can deal with Wiki-injustice without going outside
with a bullhorn.

(Um, maybe. A mob of angry people in front of the WMF office might do
a world of good. Don't know, because nobody's ever tried it.)

Mod note: moved several interesting but off topic posts to "Politics, Religion and Such" Forum.

I've put some thought into this in the past, as over the last couple of years I've seen my problems with Wikipedia escalate from a defamatory biography about me to a full press attack on every article about activism in Ottawa. Before I ever got involved with panhandling issues, I spent years working as an anti-spam activist, and one of the lessons I learned from that is never to engage your enemies on their own turf.

Spammers use email and Usenet as their personal toilets. They have no respect for the medium, and they are careful to protect themselves carefully on whatever medium it is that they're spamming, knowing that most people will go no farther than trying to mailbomb them or writing them a nasty email. This is why, when I was lining up an attack on a spammer, I always did so offline. I used phone calls, I used letters, and once or twice I actually paid the spammers a visit in person. I went after them using their local Chamber of Commerce, the Better Business Bureau, and once in a while, in particularly evil cases, I'd sic the FTC or the tax man on them.

The sorts of people we're dealing with, the ones lording over the Great Nerd Kingdom of Wikipedia, are invulnerable inside Wikipedia. While it's possible to *defend* against them there (as one can take steps online to prevent spam from landing in your lap), attacking them is not feasible. These pimply sociopaths have built networks of support inside Wikipedia. Striking them where they're strong is pointless. What people need to do is find out where they're vulnerable. For the most part, these people are pasty, doughy, pimply, basement-dwelling shut-ins. The whole reason they're using Wikipedia is because they are so totally powerless and helpless in every other forum that the very concept of a place where their Asperger's and OCD and APD is an asset instead instead of a curse sends them totally out of control. It is for this reason that "outing" and legal threats are considered cardinal sins on Wikipedia. The Wikipedian Overlords know that outside their little demesne they are helpless.



Actually, when they deleted the Panhandlers' Union article, I started organizing to do just that. I was in the process of talking to Wobblies closer to WMF's offices in Florida to see if I could get a picket line going at their door. I called it off when the OPU article was recreated, but it's always a possibility in the future. There was strong evidence that the RfD which got the article deleted was part of an organized campaign against the OPU, which included very public death threats against me, identity theft, and the collaboration of Ottawa City Hall and/or the Ottawa Police Services. Wobblies are not the sort of people who take this kind of harassment lightly or kindly. If WMF thinks it can be quietly complicit with this kind of attack and then sit back and wash its hands like Pontius Pilate, they have another think -- and a rowdy picket line -- coming.





Thanks, but you have the wrong team. The Bolsheviks hated and feared the anarchists. They referred to us as "kulaks," a term which doesn't have a direct English translation, but means uppity peasant bandits who act above their station. Trostky, Lenin, and Stalin were so afraid of the anarchists that they wiped out the entire Makhnovshchina (the anarchist army of Nestor Makhno, which, with only 50,000 untrained and unequipped men, drove 600,000 German troops out of Ukraine) and then murdered 10 million Ukrainians to make sure it could never reform. They also assasinated Buenoventura Durruti, the general of the anarchist forces in Spain, thereby allowing Franco and his fascists to seize control.

Incidentally, our friend JzG attempted to delete WR's invitation on my user page. Rather presumptious, not to mention obnoxious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=269824063

Afraid not. By the way, I noticed that this magazine has Wiki-problems too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...t_The_Big_Issue

Good spot.

The Wikipedia article on The Big Issue is really poor. Until that recent linked complaint, it contained very little information on the organization, but carried a largish "criticisms" section that was just a string of barely relevant "complaints" from non-notable individuals. And when someone tried to defend The Big Issue, they got slammed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=270000434

Back to the magazine itself, Ottowans should push to see if they can that project running in the area. The Big Issue is de rigueur for any civilized city in this day and age, and any objections would make the city look ridiculous.

Yep. It could be argued that very soon after the revolution Lenin formed the Cheka mainly in order to get rid of the Anarchists who were "embarrassing" the Bolshies with their anti-authoritarian jibes (and actions). I didn't know until fairly recently that the term "Red Terror" was coined to describe those particular purges.

It's nothing to get concerned about. He knew it would be noticed, talked about, and put back. He's simply marking his territory like the old dog he is. Not that I'm insulting dogs - only Guy.