50 cents this week.

In any event the Oil Barons are using Peak Oil to their advantage, which is at the heart of what the OP is getting at.

It's wrong to screw up his business with a demonstration, mini or otherwise, and you're going to have confrontations with people who just want to gas up and get to work, not read some leaflet.

The original OWS (accept no substitutes) correctly targeted the group responsible for the economic outrages being perpetrated upon the citizens of this country. Nothing has changed and nothing will until the system that allows these ripoffs is allowed (some would say 'encouraged') to continue. You're right - there is what amounts to an oligarchy manipulating gas prices and pretty much everything else in the economy for their own benefit, but I seriously doubt if showing up a a gas station in a fawkes mask is going to change things very much.

Here's a link you might find interesting.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/02/how-wall-st-is-raising-the-price-of-gas/

Some excerpts:

"What may surprise you, however, is what one of Wall Street’s top regulators has to say about who else you’re paying: speculators on Wall Street.

Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,  the federal agency that regulates commodity futures and option trading in the United States, said it’s time to look at home — in addition to overseas — when searching for the reasons why gas prices are on the rise

<snip>

By Chilton’s calculation, if you drive a car like a Honda Civic, you’re paying $7.30 more than you should every time you fill up — to Wall Street speculators.  If your car is a Ford Explorer you’re paying an extra $10.41.
For a Ford F150,  he says owners pay an additional $14.56 per fill up -or more than $750 a year.

for providing information to the customers that could put pressure on our elite. He only stands to gain - if the price comes down people buy more. At $4/gallon they are only going to buy what they absolutely have to for work and will do their best to accomplish errands on the way home, etc ... The have to be very cognizant of the price at that level because for most workers that adds up to a lot.

but it's more likely he'll call the cops to have them arrested for trespass. Understand I'm not against protest as a tactic, but it's only effective if the ultimate target of the protest feels enough pain to make him change his ways. I just don;t see leafleting at gas stations accomplishing this.

If the price of gas is driven by suppliers instead of by a supply demand imbalance, then the station owners get squeezed.

but wouldn't it make the protests against those who are, more visible across the country? Just emphasizing that they are not protesting the station owners.

Would especially love to see those who lead the way in raising prices targeted. I don't know about elsewhere but here there is one company who always is first to raise the price and the others soon follow.

An idea I've been thinking about recently, and I know it's nothing new, but if we could all do everything we can to cut back on consumption. Combine reasons for trips, car pool when possible, stuff like that. I think things were going this way back when gas went to over $4 a gallon (2008, I think) but I suspect it was somewhat abandoned when prices dropped.

Was just thinking if we could put serious dent in demand it would help our situation.

Just my .0125

Julie

but working folks have already been conserving. I have family members in small towns who work for McDonald's or travel to another small town for work (midwest, job pickings are even more slim in the rural areas). $4/gallon gas makes it hard for them to break even on going to work at their minimum wage jobs, never mind extra trips.

I'm not sure what the ultimate answer is, because like most progressives I'd like to see more mass transportation and alternative energy methods addressed and get off this oil roller coaster. The problem is that something like the price of oil hurts so many people in this country and it's one thing they can relate to because they all have to deal with it. Then they decide to vote republican because they watch FAUX news with all their friends and view it as news as opposed to entertainment. And that's how you end up with a freak like Santorum as president.

I really don't know, it's very frustrating.

I'm in northern MI and many here have to do some driving to get to and from work. Many live "out in the sticks" because it costs so much less but then, @ $4+ a gallon, it ends up costing even more! A catch-22 to be sure!

Julie

Can be done in a legal non-violent manner. Leafleting wouldn't even be needed, appropriate signs would work. This would turn the oil piggies strategy right back on them. Believe me, most working people at the gas pups have a string of silent curses intheir heart because they know damn well they're being downright screwed. Seeing Occupy lend it's voice to what they feel inside will bring their hearts to Occupy. It hits them right where they live, it's not an abstract to them.

Shift work, Part Time, Kids in Day Care home with Grandma...erratic jobs.

Buses and trains work on Profit Schedule...not the New Work force of the 21st Century. There's no way I could find a bus or train schedule where I live that could ever be profitable getting me to and from my Part Time with our own Business which is in another town away from me.

This is true of most Jobs in America today. The jobs are not on a Train or Bus Line but require long walks and when kids are involved the time for this and connecting with day care becomes an impossible challenge. The jobs today mostly involve long commutes to places that aren't on "lines" that can be profitable for cities to fund the schedules to take care of the temporary part time work that most of our workers have been downsized into.

I think that we on the Left forget that these days.. Just saying.

it is the defeatist attitude that we must bow to whatever corporate America dishes out. I could give a fuck about profit.

Just saying.

Despite the fact that Kansas City is built on a chalk bluff, meaning it's cheaper to excavate there than it is anywhere else.

(For comparison, Paris is built on limestone, an easy to excavate material, New York is built on a jagged ridge of glacial deposits and granite)

The federal government actually built underground warehouses in chalk mines to store old documents, because it's so cheap to excavate and climate controlled.

Once again, speculators behind sharply rising oil and gasoline prices

Feb 21, 2012 · Once again, speculators behind sharply ... A McClatchy review of the latest Commitment of Traders report from the Commodity Futures Trading …
www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/02/21/139521/​once-again-speculators...

I have to give you the "Search" where you will have to probably cut and paste link into your browser.. But, it's a good read that "THEY" are doing it again...just in time for US "Consumer's Summer Driving" ... We've been there before.

Local Occupies march on public sidewalks in front of stations with signs bearing the names and pictures of the areas "elected representatives" along with the amounts of campaign contributions and soft money said representatives have received from big oil, gas and other energy profiteers. This directly points out to angry consumer/voters of the 99% the connection between corporate money and politics and how both together make their lives much more difficult for the profit of the 1%. Can it get any more plain and simple than that? Could it be any easier to really piss off the oiligarchs and their congressional shoe shine boys?

And that's the kind of messaging we need to use.

Information, that's our ammunition!