Not content with how the movement has been covered in the mainstream media, Occupy Wall Street supporters are now buying TV ads to get their message out.
The first ad (embedded below), which aired this weekend on Fox News, CBS Sports, ESPN, and other stations, features several protesters speaking into a camera, one by one, about what they’re hoping to achieve. “I want corporations out of the government, and peopleback in,” one says. “I want the top wealthiest Americans to be taxed higher, and that money to go to education,” adds another.
The 30-second spot, put together by director David Sauvage and composer Glenn Grossman, appears to be an attempt to debunk the conventional wisdom that the movement lacks coherent goals. With a cast of healthy, smiling, well-adjusted-looking activists, it also appears to challenge popular images of the protesters as dirty hippies or fringecharacters.
Sauvage told MSNBC , “I want people to see it and say that the people that are protesting are real people with meaningful concerns that I can relate to. And hopefully, in a subtle way, the ad helps shift the conversation.”
Two more ads are also inthe works.
So how does a leaderlessprotest movement buy advertising on national television? Crowdfunding.
Using a startup called LoudSauce, online organizer Matt Ewing and the ad’s producers cobbled together moneyfrom 168 donors to pay for the first ad, LoudSauce co-founder Colin Mutchler told The Slatest . Though the ad directs viewers to the Occupy Together website, a hub for protests in cities around the country, no official organizers for Occupy Together or Occupy Wall Street were involved, Mutchler said. Occupy Together confirmed in a blog post that it had nothing to do with the campaign.
Ewing, Sauvage, and Grossman are following up with another LoudSauce campaign to buy time for two more ads , plus repeated airings of the first ad. As of Wednesday evening, the site indicated they had raised $2,840 toward the goal of$15,000.
Because LoudSauce uses the Google TV Ads platform, the ads air nationally, but only for customers of DISH Network, Direct TV, and Verizon Fios, Mutchler noted.
The campaign’s page on the LoudSauce website further explains the rationale behind the ads:
The mainstream media doesn't get it. They're trying to discredit the#occupy movement as bunch of uninformed extremists who don't know what we want. But, we know who we are and we know what we want: we're a big, diverse movement that's fighting for an economy that works for all of us, not just the top 1%.

Its funny..

Netflix added Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" that depicted the Nazi Party Congress of 1934 maybe a month ago.

I watched it because I wanted to get a look at how propaganda in film worked.

Watching the film you could get a sense and it would not be a surprise that only a year later at the same venue for the same purpose the Nuremberg Laws would be decried.

I believe someone posted a video a few weeks ago showing educated and articulate members of OWS explaining their positions and the director wanting to show that they were no different than the average person.

However, when you see what is really going on, the videos of burning objects and confrontations with police tells a far different story.

I am not comparing OWS protestors to Nazis, but in terms of using propaganda in film or video, the knowledge of what is happening on the ground doesn't jive with what is being said.

Michael Moore: The Leni Riefenstahl of the Left?

Triumph Of The Will - YouTube
VIDEO - 111 min - youtube.com full

Propaganda has become a science. All sides use it to best effort. The worst abuse of it comes from Mainstream Media who carefully edit to make whatever point they desire. They show points with which they agree over and over and downplay or laugh at bits with which they disagree. It is a powerful way to change/mold opinion.

There has been a concerted effort over the years to paint the Nazis as this right wing extremist group and when you watch the film every speaker addresses the crowd as "comrades" ..

Quite interesting..

the media is no way to get the whole picture on anything, it only shows bits and pieces

with so many people over so many states, I cant imagine that there arent some fringe elements, but I cant imagine that is the norm, as opposed to the exception

I believe they have as much credibility as the tea party to state their grievances and to assemble and I hope they get heard in spite of the diversion caused by those who are not following laws,,,

Of course you would..