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 Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet 
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Independent reporting of #OccupyWallStreet

Some unbiased reporting of #OccupyWallStreet by a dude who identifies himself as a Libertarian. This is one of the best and most thoughtful analyses of #OWS I have yet seen. You'll note his interesting point about "populism" mirroring totalinarianism. That's a very valid point which has been floating around in the back of my own mind but I hadn't positively identified.

Whether you're for, against, or indifferent - it's an enlightening read.


Blog Link


Quote:
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 06, 2011

Independent reporting of #OccupyWallStreet

I was unhappy with the poor journalistic coverage of the #OccupyWallStreet protests, so I went to Wall Street myself to see what’s going on, and report on it.

It’s the quality of the coverage, not the amount that's the problem. It’s been on the nightly news every night for the past week, but there has been little “serious” reporting.

By “serious” reporting, I mean such things as contacting the park’s owners asking for an official statement. The protesters are occupying Zuccotti Park, owned by the same company (Brookfield Office Properties NYSE:BPO) that owns the adjacent skyscraper. An obvious step would be to contact them asking for a statemen, but I could find no journalists that had yet done so. Well, if “journalists” aren’t going to do this, I can do this myself. I sent an email to their VP of Communications. I got a response, which I posted to my blog. When I posted it, I also Googled the sentences from the official statement, and found no results. I was indeed the first one “reporting” on this. Since then, others have mentioned the official statement, probably by picking it up from the #OccupyWallStreet Twitter hashtag that links to my blog.

Brookfield's official statement expressed their frustration with how the protesters were breaking the rules of the park (my blog post shows a picture I took of the posted rules). In particular, they haven’t been able to do their daily maintenance and cleaning of the park for the past three weeks. For a reporter, that leads to the obvious question: is the park staying clean? and if so, how? The answer reporters would find is this: the protesters themselves are taking care of this. They are exhorting people to not litter, they are making sure the trash cans have fresh bags and patrol the park picking up litter. They make sure the trash bags are set out in the right place to be picked up by the city’s garbage service

If I were a reporter, I would then follow this thread: The protest started as a chaotic event put together haphazardly via Twitter and the Internet, with no actual leader. How, then, were they able to organize a garbage detail? The answer is self-organization. Protestors have developed a General Assembly of all the people that gives authority to the “Central Committee,” made up from the hard-core protesters who are sleeping in the park night after night. The Central Committee has many subcommittees, like the “Media Team” responsible for recording the proceedings or the “Arts and Culture Committee”, responsible for making signs and running the drum circle, and the "Sanitation Committee" team keeping the park clean. They have organized the park into specific areas, dedicated to different tasks.

Let’s follow this thread even further. The protesters aren’t allowed to have a bullhorn or loudspeaker. How, then, can a person address the General Assembly, in the middle of a bustling city, reaching the hundreds of protesters spread throughout the park? The answer is the “People’s Microphone”. A speaker speaks in short phrases. Those nearby then repeat the phrases, shouting so that those in back can hear. The People’s Mic is powerfully emotional, driving home the point of solidarity. Although, it’s occasionally ironic when a speaker says things like “we are all individuals” or “we must think for ourselves”.

More than just the amplifying the voice, there is a system for selecting speakers. There is a "Stack" of speakers expressing desire to speak, with their position on the stack dynamically adjusted so that all points of view get equal time, or so that shy women get pushed ahead in the stack to counterbalance loud males. The audience gives feedback, from up/down thumbs, to raised hands with wiggling fingers to express enthusiastic support, like clapping, but without drowning out the speaker with noise.

This organization is visible on the live streaming video and other efforts the Media Team has used to exploit social media to their cause. Inspired by the New York occupation, other groups in most major cities have already started their own occupations, or plan to do so soon. In my own Atlanta, they plan for this coming Friday. These new occupations share the same organization, e.g. the General Assembly, the People’s Microphone. When somebody writes the definitive book on this, I’m sure this organization model will become a blueprint for protests years from now.

As time has gone on, established liberal/progressive organizations have lent their support to the occupiers. The crude hand-made signs from the first couple weeks are giving way to slick printed placards. The question is, as time goes on, will the movement be lead by the hard-core who slept night after night on the cold hard ground and who have worked to create their own organization, or will it cede control to established political operatives? As we saw with the Tea Party, a grass roots effort was quickly hijacked by skilled politicos.

The point I’ve been trying to make with the last few paragraphs is that there is a “story” here. I started with the obvious task of asking the owner of the park for an official statement about the occupiers of the last three weeks, and following those threads, I saw a story emerge that is different than the standard narrative of “just-another-protest”.

There are many other aspects of this that go unreported. One I find especially important is the loving nature of the protest. If you look at photographs in the news, you see the typical angry protester. This is the sort of action shot newsrooms prefer, i.e., showing the emotion of the scene.

But the protest isn’t angry. Quite the opposite, it is loving and accepting. If you go up to protesters with the opposite political view and debate them, they will express their undying love for you and ask for you to join them to increase the diversity of viewpoints. I did this myself, and watched this happen to others, including cops. This attitude pervades everything they do, and is frequently reinforced by the hard-core occupiers.

This is the opposite of what happened during the protests against the Iraq war, the protests against the last Republican convention in New York or the violent protests during every G8 summit. Not only is this different than most other protests, it is the similar to the hyper-tolerant “Burning Man” festival that takes place in the Nevada desert every summer. Whether it’s Burning Man or Occupy Wall Street, there is a cultural shift somewhere here. Now I feel compelled to go to Burning Man next year, just to track this thread down.

In many ways, the press treats this protest the way they treated the Tea Party, completely distorting the story. Journalists ignored the mainstream of the Tea Party and instead focused on the fringe. Instead of showing the hundreds of signs calling for smaller government, reporters instead focused on the one sign showing Obama as Hitler. In the end, this reporting became self-fulfilling. The Republican fringe disaffected with the establishment were convinced by this reporting, believing that they, too, should join the Tea Party, thus derailing it.

This is a particular danger to the Occupation movement. They still haven’t defined themselves, and risk letting the press define the movement for them. They started out with the idea that occupying Wall Street for weeks would be a good way to get their message out, but they are still trying to come to consensus on what, precisely, their message is. The press (and critics) claim they need a messageand that they need a concrete list of demands, but I’m not sure that’s true. This is something else, something new, something that doesn’t need to be defined by the old.

In that way, it’s like the Internet. When the Internet appeared on the scene 20 years ago, it wasn’t like anything that predated it. Yes, you could define it in terms of the old, as a digital library, as an electronic form of mail, or as a communications network, but none of these descriptions captures the essence of what the Internet really is.

In particular, there is the problem with the “filter bubble”. While the Internet can expand a person’s universe, it gives people the power to shrink it. People create a “filter bubble” around themselves, using tools of the Internet to pass only those things they agree with. For example, Google watches what people search for, profiling them, and sorts the results for that individual. They see their own small universe reflected back, rather than the big universe.

That’s why, despite appearing nightly in the news, the occupiers feel the press is ignoring them. This protest has become the most important thing in the world -- among the people in their filter bubble and those in their social network. It becomes difficult for them to imagine that this isn’t the most interesting thing to everyone else as well. They apparently don’t comprehend that the “news” just reflects what the organizations think their audience wants to hear. If the public doesn’t seem to care, neither does the press.

There is much more to this filter bubble. An obvious problem is that people filter out opposing political views. But they also filter out intellectual arguments that otherwise agree with them. They’ve filtered their view of the world so that political arguments are black-and-white, rather than grey. In their filtered view, politics is about propaganda and rhetoric, rather than debate.

I interviewed the hard-core protesters, those sleeping in the park overnight. I found only propaganda. They could repeat word-perfect the propaganda about the execution of Troy Davis case, but none of the details from the Wikipedia entry on the case. They could repeat the propaganda of Al Gore on Global Warming, but none of the science from the UN IPCC that declares the scientific consensus on the issue. They could repeat the economics of Michael Moore, but not that of Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate, writer of the popular liberal/progressive blog “Conscience of a Liberal” at the New York Times and author of a college textbook giving an introduction to economics. For example, the protesters say “the rich get richer but the poor get poorer,” whereas Krugman says “the rich get richer but the poor go nowhere”. This is due to a profound disagreement about a basic economic concept and the economic data.

As the protesters try to define themselves in order to come up with a coherent political platform, they are hindered by this filter bubble. The forces will drive them to come up with something that excites their small group, but which will prove unacceptable to the larger world. I think they have to learn to reach outside their bubble if they want to actually influence things and to become to the Democrat Party what the Tea Party is to the Republican Party.

I get the impression that the entire Occupy Wall Street movement needs a “[citation needed]” footnote. Wikipedia uses this technique to allow anybody to challenge an unsupported assertion. Anybody can insert this footnote, expressing to the reader that (as yet) the assertion isn’t supported. Anybody else can find supporting evidence, and replace the [citation needed] to a footnote pointing to a reliable source. If no citation can be found, the assertion is eventually deleted.

I’m concerned by the lack of scholarship because of the history of populism. The occupiers were inspired by the Arab Spring, where the people took their countries back from powerful dictators. But they forget that those dictators similarly took power at the head of populist movements that removed their predecessors and that they ruled “in the name of people”. Colonel Gaddafi didn't promote himself to General because that was presumptuous, he was just a man of the people.

I found the occupiers had the same totalitarian attitude, though they don’t see it as totalitarian. Yes, their loving acceptance of those who disagree with them is astonishing, but it’s totalitarian. It asks that people give up their individuality to the state the occupiers are creating. Rather than free speech, the protest has a sort of "managed speech" to make sure everyone has equal time. There is also the flip side, that not to join the movement or to disagree with the protesters means that you are working against the interest of the people.

We have seen this before in history, such as during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. After they ran out of nobles, the Committee for Public Safety started beheading political rivals -- even those of their own party who helped overthrow the royalty. Their implicit thinking was this: I support the people. Therefore, if you disagree with me, you are acting against the people and must be beheaded. Or to paraphrase in the modern idiom, “you are either with us or against the people”.

The protesters have been settling on the idea that the conflict is the 99% against the 1%. But since the country is evenly divided between Democrat and Republican, they represent, at best, the interests of 50% against the 1%. No matter how poor, Republicans don’t see socialism as being in their own interests. Instead of chanting "We are the 99%" they should be chanting "We are the 50%", but they seem immune to seeing things from this perspective.

I personally experienced this duality between populism and totalitarianism. I had chosen a table in an empty area away from the crowd to type up my notes. I didn’t realize it, but it was near the General Assembly area that would soon become crowded. Members of the Media Team came up to me and insisted I move, so that they could set up a tripod and camera on the table to take pictures of the General Assembly. I refused. I tried to do this as nicely as possible, with a pleasant demeanor, but of course, I was being a jerk. I didn't like they way they insisted, but also I wanted to test them, to see what would happen when somebody didn't go along with their demands.

Of the three people, one was nice. He smiled, shook my hand, and said “peace”. I’ll bet he’s been to Burning Man. But the other two were nasty. The second guy, visibly twitching in anger, made unspecified threats that I had better move. The third person, tried to argue. She claimed that the protest had prior right to this spot, since they had been occupying the park for weeks (a fallacious argument, since the owners declare the park open to everyone equally). She then argued that this was for the entire group, to get the word out about the protest, to which I answered that I’m not part of the protest, that I don’t share their views. Her final argument was the totalitarian argument: this is for the people. She then proceeded to say that she was going to setup the tripod anyway, and that if I didn’t move, she would accidentally step on my laptop computer, because her attention would be on taking pictures and not where she was stepping.

Again, I admit to being a jerk here. But I’m a libertarian, which means I’m interested in the connection between populism and totalitarianism, which we libertarians see as the same thing. I wanted to experiment with it.

Back to reporting. I see it as a struggle between the “story” and some sort of “narrative”. Take, for instance, the most reported event of the protest, the arrest of 700 protesters as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. However you treat the story, you have to struggle with the “narrative” that “police oppress protesters”. Here’s what happened. The occupation is of the park in Wall Street. Last Saturday they marched from there intending to go to the park right on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, then back again. The march was planned ahead of time. The protest leaders talked to the police about it. The police told them to stay off the roadway to avoid blocking traffic, and instead use the pedestrian walkway one level above the roadway. The protest leaders widely communicated this to other protesters.

But at the same time, some protesters were hoping for a confrontation with the police, because mass arrests would get them on the news (I overheard two protesters discussing this). Others were passing out pamphlets on what to do when arrested and urging people to write the phone number of the National Lawyers Guild on their arm. Some of those arrested were among the Central Committee, who would have been the most likely to have known they should not have been on the roadway.

When the protest happened, many protesters followed the correct path above the roadway, but many others incorrectly chose the roadway. After about 700 had taken to the roadway, the police closed off both ends of the bridge, preventing them from escaping and arrested them all. Eventually the errant protesters were given summons for causing a public disturbance. Protesters accuse the police of causing the problem by letting protesters out onto the roadway in the first place rather than informing them to take the pedestrian way. They also point out that shutting down the bridge for hours caused much more of a public disturbance than letting the protesters pass for 15 minutes. Regardless of any agents provocateurs on both sides, though, it’s a good bet that the bulk of the 700 who got arrested were just sheep, going along with the crowd.

For me, that’s the “narrative”: stupidity and ignorance on both sides cause things like this, rather than malicious intent - barring a few on both sides who want to see the problem escalate.

The arrests themselves were interesting. The protesters above, on the pedestrian level, were not arrested, but shouted/chanted encouragement to those below. There was confusion about how to act during the arrests. Should they do so in the nice, polite, accepting manner that defines the niceness of the movement? Or should they act like traditional protesters, lock arms, and passively resist? They seemed to be split half and half. Again, I blame the media: protesters watch the news, and try to copy how they see protesters act, making the news retroactively correct.

That “the revolution will not be televised” is a famous political song describing the 1960s political movement. The 2011 alternative is a revolution on Flickr, Tumblr, and streamed live. Look at the photographs from the bridge arrests. Almost everyone, both among the protesters and the police, has either traditional cameras or smart phones. You see a standoff between the police and the protesters, with each side pointing cameras at the others. Pictures taken facing into the crowd show a sea of cameras facing right back. Every one of these cameras is connected to cyberspace. Some of them even use applications to send the pictures and videos live to the Internet, so they are preserved even if the police confiscate the cameras and delete the pictures.
The Internet is a force multiplier. There are actually only a couple hundred protesters sleeping night after night in the park. But their hard-core determination inspires a couple thousand during the day, 10,000 watching the live stream, and a 100,000 participating via social media.

In one incident, there was a traditional news team from Fox News, trying to do an interview. The interviewee went on a tirade against Fox News. Those within the filter bubble of the protest loved it, but of course, it’s perfectly useless to a news station reporting on the protest.What I found interesting about this incident was the claim by the Fox News reporter that the protesters can’t get their message out without the mainstream media. But that's false. The protesters are getting the message out via the Internet just fine. Indeed, neglect is preferable to the distortions as the media tries to pigeonhole the protest into their preferred narratives.

By the way, while Wall Street may be responsible for bad things, it is Wall Street who financed putting a million miles of fiber optic cables crisscrossing continents and under oceans. It is Wall Street that financed the thousands of cell towers. It is Wall Street from which venture capital comes to finance startups like Twitter. Thus, tweeting “Down with capitalism” from your iPhone for those around the word to read seems to be the most ironic thing a person can do. The live stream from the protest site, shared with 12,000 (at this moment) people across the Internet is a testament to Wall Street's allocation of capital that these protesters fight against. [Obligatory Monty Python reference]

That the protest is dominated by Internet savvy youths exploiting social media is frequently mentioned. But what is not mentioned is the fact that the protesters are overwhelmingly college students, or recent graduates who still haven’t found jobs. They aren’t just any college students, but the stereotypical sort that you might expect to be involved in campus activism, such as graduate students in “Gender Studies.” I found nobody with engineering or science degrees, but many from arts and acting colleges. After talking with one guy for a while about unemployment and his difficult in finding a job after college, I found out that he was a “poet.” I’m not sure he understood that employers aren’t looking to hire poets. The only person I met that had a political science degree was one of the police officers “keeping the peace.”

The protesters are also predominantly white with blacks underrepresented. On the flip side, blacks are over-represented in the police force. The protesters often compare themselves to the Civil Rights Movement, but the photographs of the recent arrests often show black policemen arresting white protesters. I don’t know if this is a vindication of the Civil Rights Movement or if there is still more work to go, to get the blacks better ensconced in middle-class American to send their kids off to college with that combination of privilege and entitlement that turns them into protesters.

The makeup of the protesters also led to amusement among the cops, stationed in pairs on all four sides of the park. For some, their normal beat is in the poor areas of New York City. The police, who daily see the struggle of the real poor, had little use for protesters complaining about jobs while they carried around expensive MacBook computers paid for by their parents.

I mention the racial makeup for a specific reason. The Tea Party was also predominantly white, which was frequently reported in the news, despite the fact that guidelines tell reporters to avoid mentioning race when it’s not relevant. They nonetheless reported it because it fit the narrative they wanted to tell about the Tea Party (that it has a racist component). In much the same way, they don’t mention the racial makeup of the Occupation because it doesn’t fit their narrative.

Every night is like a blowout bash you organized in college. After everyone has gone home or passed out, you sit on the top of the dorm with close friends, too excited to sleep, but too tired to do anything else but sit around in small groups and chat. That’s the vibe from the park at 2 a.m.: Quiet hours started at 10 p.m., most everyone has left, many are now asleep over there in the sleeping areas, but many are still too excited to go to sleep themselves. They huddle together in intimate groups around the park, discussing things.

I think it’s the intimacy and restrained excitement at night that is part of the real story here, not the hubbub during the day that the press tries to mold into their narrative of just-another-protest. What makes this different are those protestors staying night after night in the park. Yet, news reporters flock the scene at 2 p.m., but are absent at 2 a.m. I can’t understand why somebody like the New York Times isn’t sending a reporter down there to embed themselves in the occupation, sleeping there for a week and perhaps writing a Pulitzer prize-winning story.

Conclusion

Here's my point: the press and pundits have already decided on the "narrative" that's independent of what's really going on. For example, many Republicans and Fox News commentators insist that this is "planned" by the left for some nefarious purpose. It isn't (although that might change if politicos seize control of the occupation). Conversely, the Left has a narrative about police oppression that isn't quite right, either.

I see a different narrative. The love and acceptance of dissenting views is huge. The intimacy of the occupation over night is amazing. The excitement from the live stream and Twitter feed is infectious. The populism hinting at totalitarianism is frightening. The occasional irony is amusing. More citations are needed.

I think there is something interesting going on here. It’s not just another protest. I think it’s a more enduring addition to our culture. A decade from now, when the U.S. invades France over a cheese dispute, protesters will “occupy” the streets using the same principles being developed now.

Posted by Robert Graham at 4:02 PM

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet

perspective
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Denver clears out occupy
http://www.9news.com/news/article/224539/71/Arrests-begin-on-Occupy-Denver-protesters
!=simple
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!=easy
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Quote:
What do we want again? Occupy Wall St hits here

Oct 14, 2011 7:03pm

IT'S the protest movement that may not exactly know what it's protesting about - and may not have much chance of achieving it.

Demontrators enraged by "corporate greed" plan to spread their message in capital cities across Australia tomorrow as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As news.com.au tracked down Australians at the original Wall Street protest in New York, organisers of the local offshoots said they planned to set up a permanent campsite outside the Reserve Bank in Sydney to highlight "massive inequalities in Australia".

"People are coming will all sorts of reasons to get out on the streets," one said.

However, economist Professor Ian Harper, of Deloitte Access Economics, was unsure what the Australian protest was trying to achieve.

"If they don't have a clear set of demands, I'm not quite sure what this is going to achieve," he said.

"Surely they don't want the destruction of the banks because that's ludicrous. If they're demanding that there be stricter controls placed on banks, well tick, that's happened."

Professor Harper highlighted the fact that the global financial system had failed everyone, not just certain sections of society. "People lost money all around the world. Everybody’s superannuation is worth less that it was before.

"Yes, there are people who have been victims of things such as Storm Financial – but these matters have been taken through the courts - the law is taking its course.

"So what do you want to do? Demand that these people be strung from the nearest tree? Well that's not what we do in a democracy. We prosecute people through the courts and that is happening."

The Occupy Wall Street protest started last month and has since become a permanent fixture of lower Manhattan in New York - fuelled by the economic hardships in the US and anger over bailouts for the banks - and has spread to financial business areas of major cities in Greece, the UK, Ireland.

News.com.au talked to Australians active in the cause, attending marches and frequenting the "live-in" site. If arrested, they face potential deportation under the strict visa requirements in the US..

Amelia Tovey, a 29-year-old filmmaker from Sydney who lives in Brooklyn, tweets about the cause's developments and says the atmosphere at the site is surreal.

“There are young people and professionals down here,” she said. “There’s this new little world that has been created. People have set up camps, there is a library, a kitchen and even a children’s play area.

“(Mayor Michael) Bloomberg can’t get rid of them, and the site is only growing.”

The grassroots organisers of Occupy Wall Street have been widely criticised for the lack of direction in their cause.

However, growing support from labor unions, teachers and students, along with celebrity endorsement from the likes of Kanye West and Susan Sarandon, are building credibility and exposure.

A general message is emerging from Zuccotti Park (the public space in lower Manhattan that protesters have reclaimed as "Liberty Park"): change is needed to close the widening gap between rich and poor at the corporate and individual level.

“We can no longer afford to let corporate greed and corrupt politics set the policies of our nation,” Adbusters, a key organiser of the demonstrations, said in a statement released in July.

General assemblies are held every night at 7pm in the park to shape the movement going forward.

No official demands have been submitted to the US government although a "proposed list" of 13 demands have been posted to the Occupy Wall Street website.

Improved health care, employment, education, migration and racial and gender equality are just some of the requests listed.

Like so many socially driven causes of the last 12 months, social media has played a key role in the pace of the protest’s growth.

At time of writing 184,000 people had Liked the protest community on Facebook, and according to data from TechCrunch 82.5% of tweets have been about the protest with 12.5% of personal blogging platforms sharing information on the subject.

The movement has its own Tumblr blog, ‘We are the 99 percent’ which has gained traction as a place for supporters to publicly display their dissatisfaction.

“I graduated college last year at the top of my class,” one supporter wrote. “I have been looking for work for over a year. I am the lost generation. I am the 99%.”

Episodes of violence between protesters and police have been frequent with 700 people arrested on October 2 alone.

All were taking part in a protest march over the Brooklyn Bridge. Law enforcement officers have also been condemned for inappropriate usage of pepper spray on multiple occasions.

“The people down here are incredibly peaceful,” Ms Tovey said.

“The only thing that makes me nervous is the police - they do not look like friendly people who would look after you in a dangerous situation.”

Matt Huynh, a 26-year-old illustrator from Sydney who is visiting the New York on an extended working holiday, first visited the site on October 5 out of curiosity and “to understand the atmosphere and to talk to people directly”.

Mr Huynh drew an illustration showing the 57 placards that were originally displayed when he first visited the site.

His work has since been included in an exhibition of protest art at 23 Wall Street in a JP Morgan building and his drawings will also be featured in the Occupy Wall Street Journal, a publication geared around the protests.

Brooke Goldfinch from Sydney is a graduate student in Manhattan and has taken a concerted interest in the protests despite a demanding study schedule.

“When you live in New York the divide between rich and poor is so visible,” explained the 28-year-old.

“Young people in America seem much more apathetic. I’ve been studying here for two years and I’ve never seen a protest at school.”

“It’s exciting to see ordinary people. It’s not radicals - it’s just average people saying that the system needs to change.”

The fact the movement is heading home is being celebrated by the Australian contingency protesting in Manhattan.

“The American system has so much influence on our economy. They’re not the only ones affected by the system here – there’s a global impact,” Ms Goldfinch said.

“I feel that personally because my father owns a small business (in Sydney) and he’s suffered greatly in the financial crisis. So it’s something I think about a lot.”

Ms Tovey also believes that while the protests may have started in New York, it’s not a "US-only" situation.

“This feeds into a general feeling of disappointment in our governments being felt all over the Western world," she said.

"I think that it's really exciting that Australians are identifying with the American cause, and vice versa.”

With no end date in sight and large protests that expect tens of thousands to march in New York in the next few days and around the world over the weekend, the Occupy Wall Street movement is definitely not just about Wall Street anymore.


Can't remember which Site this came off, Sorry.

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Occupy protests spread to cities around the world
By Faith Karimi and Joe Sterling, CNN
updated 1:25 PM EST, Sat October 15, 2011

(CNN) -- Thousands of people across the world railed against corporate power, grinding poverty, and government cuts Saturday as the Occupy Wall Street movement spread to the streets of Europe, Asia and Australia -- and took a particularly violent turn in Rome. :nono

Firefighters battled a blaze at an Interior Ministry building near Porta San Giovanni in Rome, the main gathering site of the Italian protesters taking part in the Occupy movement Saturday, said eyewitnesses who reported seeing a Molotov cocktail thrown near the building. Police said hundreds of anarchists confronting peaceful protesters in Rome where demonstrators had gathered as part of the global Occupy movement. :censor

"It's been completely hijacked by these violent factions, and the police are nervous, and the situation is very tense," Barbie Nadeau, a Newsweek correspondent, told CNN. "I myself saw at least -- I would say -- a dozen people who probably needed some hospitalization or some care -- some stitches certainly."

She said two police officers were seriously injured and two young men lost parts of their hands in explosions when protesters torched cars. :rant

In London, protester Peter Vaughn, reflecting the mood of many in the crowd there, said people criticized financial institutions that have "gambled away our money."

"We're giving people a real voice against a government that just ignored us," he said. :clap :heart

One protester said in Belleville, France, referring to the country's leaders, said government isn't listening to the people and dialogue with them is impossible.

"You are not listening to us, whatever we do, however we vote, however we demonstrate. It does not give any result. Quite the opposite, as poverty and austerity plans continue. So we can't go on like this so we are getting out and showing ourselves," he said. Ding, ding, ding!

Read more here:http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/15/world/occupy-goes-global/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Quote:
TygrBright (1000+ posts) Fri Oct-14-11 09:32 PM
Original message

I have two things to say. One to OWS, and one to TPTB:
TO: OWS, and all of the Occupiers and all who support the Occupation

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.

I have tears in my eyes as I type this.

For nearly ten years, I have been sinking into a morass of cynical endurance, certain that the death spiral that has been engulfing my country since 1980 was largely irreversible in my lifetime, and that my grandson's life would be absorbed and darkened by the destruction and the need to rebuild on the ruins.

At times, I'd put on a brave face and grab hard for the remaining shreds of optimism and look wistfully at what I know of human nature and assert that we COULD and we WOULD somehow muster the will to turn back the tide, but it always felt like whistling in the dark. There was no real belief there.

I grew up with people in the streets, marching for justice and equality and for peace and for a society based on the needs of all rather than the wealth of a few. I believed, back then, that justice would roll down like the waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream, if we, the people, demanded it. I saw what happened when those making the demands were attacked with dogs and fire hoses: They were joined by more. Thousands more.

In those days, Saul Alinsky pointed out to us that in order for the powerless to effect change, two ingredients were necessary. Neither, in itself, would suffice. For the powerless to effect change, the required ingredients were: ANGER and HOPE.

I have been watching the anger grow for some years now.

You, my dear friends, fellow citizens... you have brought hope to the table.

We now have anger AND hope, and you are responsible for the latter. If you had no other purpose, no other goal, it would still be a worthy achievement. You are my brothers and sisters, my children, my grandchildren, my parents and my neighbors and my friends and my heart is with you and in every way I can support you I will. It is time. It is time to put our lives and fortunes once more in the path of the juggernaut, and halt it, and turn it back. I am ready. You have showed the way.

And now, to The Powers That Be:

Do you really, really think you can stop this? Do you honestly believe that the thousands in the streets will just... shut up and go away? Do you really believe that by deploying force you can cow and terrorize us out of sight and out of mind?

Do you really believe that?

Look up the word "denial" in the dictionary, because you have a full-blown, virulent, life-threatening case, my friends.

We are not going away. We will not back down.

We have anger.

And we have hope.

No, we will not turn back the tide overnight. We will not create a perfect world. We will not solve every problem. Ultimately, there will be work left undone, for future generations.

But those future generations, too, will have hope.

Change is not "coming." Change is HERE.

The era of top-down authority is drawing to its miserable, dysfunctional conclusion.

The era of bottom-up authority, the authority of the people to govern ourselves in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity is at hand.

Join us, or get out of the way. We're not stopping.

exultantly,
Bright

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x632247

Posted by TygrBright@ Democratic Underground.

Yeaaahhhh bah baby! 2012 and the awakening continues. :yamon

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Sat Oct 15, 2011 11:17 am
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
mountaintiger7 wrote:
Quote:
Meet the Guy Who Snitched on Occupy Wall Street to the FBI and NYPD


Quote:
brags on his blog that he leads "a team called Black Cell, a team of the most-highly trained and capable physical, threat and cyber security professionals in the world." But over the past few weeks, he and his computer security buddies have been spending time covertly attending Occupy Wall Street meetings, monitoring organizers' social media accounts, and hanging out with protesters in Lower Manhattan.

Full size
As part of their intelligence-gathering operation, the group gained access to a listserv used by Occupy Wall Street


From: http://gawker.com/5850054/

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Having spent little time the weekend taking in some of the abundant news on the MSM channels such as BBC and CNN, is it not amazing how they portray the OWS support as negative and almost criminal in their imagery they broadcast? Nice words in the reporter stories but the footage they play makes it look like the people taking part are all intent on destruction.

Perceptions are so easily created by the media!

Interestingly for me that Russian TV station on cable, seemed to be the only station actually covering the real issues and discussing the origins and messages of the protesters. Hmmmm. That's why I really enjoy watching Max Keiser and Stacey Herbert on RT as they have this situation by the throat and are the only media outlet calling the banksters out for what they really are - criminal thieves!


:evil

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Sky wrote:
Perceptions are so easily created by the media!

That's why I really enjoy watching Max Keiser and Stacey Herbert on RT as they have this situation by the throat and are the only media outlet calling the banksters out for what they really are - criminal thieves!
:evil


Yes, and they call ANONYMOUS dangerous hackers!

So basically we're all a CRIMINAL now for wanting Freedom from slavery.

So basically we're all a CRIMINAL now for Wanting Freedom of Speech.

Lets Destroy the Elites because they are the REAL SHEEPLE all tucked up Real nice and cozy in their castles sipping their cups of TEA AGH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA we the People should go Postal on their A$$E$

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Mon Oct 17, 2011 12:05 am
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Nothing the banks can do, huh? Nothing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae can do, huh?

Our hands are tied, huh?

:censor s


Homeowner taps 'Occupy' protest to avoid foreclosure

LA PUENTE, Calif. — Rose Gudiel and her family were squatters in their own home. They had lost a two-year battle against foreclosure, and the eviction date had arrived. They hunkered down in the house on Sept. 28, surrounded by dozens of homeowner advocates and friends, hoping to stave off forcible removal. :mrgreen:

“(The bank) kept saying we can’t do anything. Your case is closed,” said Gudiel. “Our stand was, ‘No, we’re not leaving. This is our home. We worked hard for it and we’re just not going to leave.’” :clap

But instead of the anticipated confrontation, there was a dramatic reversal of fortune. Fanny Mae canceled the eviction notice and offered the Gudiels a loan modification that could enable them keep their home. :slap :roflmao

Why? Fannie Mae and loan servicer OneWest won’t discuss the case. But nonprofit advocates say a series of bold protests — with reinforcements from the “Occupy Wall Street” movement — and a spate of media interest put Rose in the limelight and forced the banks to back down. :clap

It was a small victory — and Gudiel still has to finalize her deal with the bank — but one that Southern California housing activists hope to repeat. It also provides an example of how the sprawling "Occupy" movement — often criticized for its lack of focus — can lend muscle to specific goals pursued by organizations and individuals.

Read more here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44908122/ns/us_news-life/#

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Mon Oct 17, 2011 9:20 am
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
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From the New Yorker Magazine. Big ole hat tip to FarCenter @ Democratic Underground for pointing the way.

:mrgreen:

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
mountaintiger7 wrote:
Quote:
That sucking sound is the tax payer money


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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Occupy Wall Street: How long can it last?
By Alan Silverleib, CNN

snip

While the protesters highlighted a number of causes, the overarching theme remained the same: populist anger over an out-of-touch corporate, financial and political elite.

Three key elements, according to Heaney, are now fueling the movement: continued economic discontent, growing media coverage, and a need to push back against harsh law enforcement tactics initially used against protesters.

"What's happened is that those three factors have enabled the movement to achieve critical mass, which has enabled the diffusion of this protest tactic," he told CNN.

Also worth noting: the role of the internet and social media in bringing would-be demonstrators together.

We're seeing the creation of "a much more decentralized, less expensive model (of social protest) that enables you to mobilize a much bigger group of people more quickly," he said. :mrgreen:

snip

If the tea party was a conservative response to President Barack Obama's economic bailout plan in the spring of 2009, Occupy Wall Street came about partly due to liberals' reaction to the outcome of this summer's acrimonious debt-ceiling debate, Heaney argues. Obama and other top Democrats ultimately agreed to over $2 trillion in spending cuts without any tax hikes on Wall Street financiers or others considered responsible for the economic crisis. :evil

Progressives "watched in horror" during the debt-ceiling debate, he said. "Obama showed that he wasn't able to deal" effectively with the right wing.

As a result, there's now an "acute sense of threat" on the political left that has encouraged certain people to take to the streets.

Until now, however, the tea party and Occupy Wall Street have differed sharply in terms of their emphasis on organization, with tea party activists far more willing to use traditional political strategies such as lobbying and fielding candidates for political office. Anarchist elements of the original Occupy Wall Street movement have neither the experience nor the inclination to do that, Heaney said.

Now, however, the movement has spread to labor unions and other organizations with more political experience and interest in building lasting political institutions. It is unclear to what extent -- if any -- those elements will ultimately co-opt the movement.

snip

Read the entire article here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/17/politics/occupy-wall-street/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
GET UPDATES FROM Joseph A. Palermo


Occupy Wall Street's "Gullible" and "Unsophisticated" Protesters

Posted: 10/18/11 08:50 AM ET
Joseph A. Palermo.
Associate Professor of American History, California State University, Sacramento

In an admirable bit of reporting, Nelson Schwartz and Eric Dash of the New York Times did us all a favor by asking bankers, hedge fund and money managers what they think about the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Said one top hedge fund director who wished to remain anonymous:

Quote:
"Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll."


A veteran bank executive added:

Quote:
"It's not a middle-class uprising. It's fringe groups. It's people who have the time to do this."


And another longtime money manager opined:

Quote:
"Who do you think pays the taxes? Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let's embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people."


This longtime money manager also shared his "disappointment" with Wall Street's political water carriers in Washington: "They need to understand who their constituency is," he said. And yet another financial industry official said about the protests there's "a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing." In general, Schwartz and Dash report, nearly all the bankers they talked to dismiss the protesters as "gullible and unsophisticated."

And then there's the oligarch, John Paulson, who made a fortune on Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre's (Goldman Sachs) peddling junk securities while he bet against them. Paulson states:

Quote:
"The top 1 percent of New Yorkers pay over 40 percent of all income taxes, proving huge benefits to everyone in our city and state. Paulson & Company and its employees have paid hundreds of millions in New York City and New York State taxes in recent years and have created over 100 high-paying jobs in New York City since its formation."


Wow! A hundred jobs, John Paulson must be one of those "job creators" who need to be succored and coddled and generally pleasured for the benefit of all humanity!

And Steve Bartlett, the president of a racket called the "Financial Services Roundtable," which throws around lobbying cash in Washington in behalf of the biggest banking and insurance conglomerates, says:

Quote:
"I don't think we see ourselves as the target. I think they're protesting about the economy."


Okay, Steve, convince yourself of that notion -- then explain to us why they're camped out on Wall Street and not Disneyland?

(Schwartz and Dash also note in their article that Bank of America recently paid out $11 million in severance pay to two hotshots, Sallie Krawcheck and Joe Price -- even their surnames denote money -- while laying off about 30,000 working slobs.)

Judging from Schwartz and Dash's reportage, the financial oligarchs whose power over the political economy is strangling the United States don't seem to understand just how lucky they are to be dealing with orderly, mature protesters who believe in the tenets of nonviolence. In any other historical epoch these same oligarchs might find themselves facing the gallows or a firing squad or a "re-education" camp. Those who find themselves on the wrong side of history often end up in precarious positions. Just ask Hosni Mubarak.

It would be funny if it weren't so damn sad when Erin Burnett set off on her new CNN show, OutFront, to straighten out those protesters by sending a reporter to inform one of the unwashed hacky-sackers that the bankers paid off the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) with interest. But Ms. Burnett left out the fact that the banks had access to a far lower interest rate than the other 99 percent could ever get; and the banking conglomerates are still too big to fail; and they got a cool trillion dollars from the Federal Reserve to gamble with, and the Fed still holds billions in toxic securities. Burnett might have also acknowledged that the banks have paid out obscene bonuses despite the wreckage they left behind and that they "produce" nothing useful to society; or that they misallocated capital during the housing bubble and created enormous risks; or how they distort our nation's politics with big campaign donations and narrow lobbying activities (as well as the revolving door between government regulatory agencies and Wall Street firms); and she might inform her viewers about how they dumped the ruinous effects of their greed-based failures onto the wider society in the form of high unemployment and the gutting of the public sector with "austerity" measures that have slashed social services that used to be around to help make life a little bit better for the other 99 percent. But what do ya expect from a former CNBC "money honey"?

I might add that it was the bankers who left behind higher rates of child poverty and increased incidents of child abuse, suicides, and property crimes; and they left in their wake over-crowded classrooms, layoffs of teachers and child protective services workers and the closing of public parks, clinics, and homeless shelters; they've severely damaged once great systems of pubic higher education across the country, and they've ushered in a concerted assault against public employee pensions and their unions, even those of the "first responders" (police and firefighters) who went from heroes after 9/11 to goats after Wall Street got done with them. It's like living in a Frank Capra movie gone terribly wrong where his most evil antagonists win out in the end with control of the politicians, the newspapers, and the courts.

Yet the bankers, as quoted above, now want the rest of us to love them?

Not one teacher or police officer, social worker or firefighter should have been fired; not one public park closed; not one public school downsized; not one person working for the public sector canned because of the reckless failure of Wall Street's high rollers. Yet over 300,000 teachers have been fired in the last few years and another 200,000 public employees.

The financial oligarchs instead of pouring millions into "Super PACs" and lobbying efforts for special favors in Washington should be forced to contribute to a restitution fund (like BP did during the Macondo oil spill) to offset local layoffs of public employees and to reset underwater mortgages with principal reductions to current prices. The Occupy Wall Street people might want to pay a visit to John Paulson's home (and the homes of other oligarchs) until they pay into a restitution fund.

There's something inherently wrong with a political economy where those in power sell the people a bag of goods: Tax cuts for the rich and corporations; deregulation; "free trade" bills; wars and excessive military spending; slashing social programs. We were told these measures were for our own good. They would be helpful to the lives of the 99 percent. But they never work. Prosperity never "trickles down." And people are finally catching on. The housing bubble went too far. It destroyed too many lives and livelihoods to go unquestioned and unpunished, as Wall Street (and Washington) would like it.

Like the millions of families who have wisely chosen to walk away from terribly underwater mortgages lest they give up their entire life's earnings to Wall Street, millions of other people across the country and the world, who now have little to lose, are voting with their feet and lungs and bodies in full-throated protest declaring: "We Refuse to Pay for Your Crisis!"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/occupy-wall-street-protesters_b_1016941.html

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Sky wrote:
Independent reporting of #OccupyWallStreet

Some unbiased reporting of #OccupyWallStreet by a dude who identifies himself as a Libertarian. This is one of the best and most thoughtful analyses of #OWS I have yet seen. You'll note his interesting point about "populism" mirroring totalinarianism. That's a very valid point which has been floating around in the back of my own mind but I hadn't positively identified.

Whether you're for, against, or indifferent - it's an enlightening read.

I have had concerns also, Sky, and voiced a few of them in comments on FB. For example, there was a video of mounted officers in NYC supposedly "charging into the crowd". I don't know what the reality was since I wasn't there, but the video showed all horses at a standstill, not moving forward, not pushing, simply holding their places in front of barricades to hold back the crowds. I warned whomever read my comment that the movement must be careful to stick to facts and not to exaggerate, distort, or bend the truth for fear of losing their credibility. I have a few comments on the following piece, which I also thought was well=done, which I will place in italics and color. I will omit sections on which I do not comment for the sake of space and bandwidth.


Blog Link


Quote:
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 06, 2011

Independent reporting of #OccupyWallStreet

I was unhappy with the poor journalistic coverage of the #OccupyWallStreet protests, so I went to Wall Street myself to see what’s going on, and report on it.

It’s the quality of the coverage, not the amount that's the problem. It’s been on the nightly news every night for the past week, but there has been little “serious” reporting.

big snip

... people filter out opposing political views. But they also filter out intellectual arguments that otherwise agree with them. They’ve filtered their view of the world so that political arguments are black-and-white, rather than grey. In their filtered view, politics is about propaganda and rhetoric, rather than debate.

I interviewed the hard-core protesters, those sleeping in the park overnight. I found only propaganda. They could repeat word-perfect the propaganda about the execution of Troy Davis case, but none of the details from the Wikipedia entry on the case. They could repeat the propaganda of Al Gore on Global Warming, but none of the science from the UN IPCC that declares the scientific consensus on the issue. They could repeat the economics of Michael Moore, but not that of Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate, writer of the popular liberal/progressive blog “Conscience of a Liberal” at the New York Times and author of a college textbook giving an introduction to economics. For example, the protesters say “the rich get richer but the poor get poorer,” whereas Krugman says “the rich get richer but the poor go nowhere”. This is due to a profound disagreement about a basic economic concept and the economic data.

In a perfect world, everybody protesting, organizing protests, backing protests, would have encyclopedic knowledge of all the factors involved in what they are protesting. However, we live in the real world, and people know something is very wrong, but might not know all the details as to WHY it is wrong, what various experts have to say on the matter, all the arguments that support how they feel. We are talking here of a modern grass-roots uprising, fueled and aided by cyber-space granted, but what is to me absolutely key to understanding the import of this movement is the fact that the "sheeple" (I never liked or agreed with that term) are no longer sleeping, or eating the line being fed them by the MSM. The sleeping giant is waking up and I don't think any blow that can be delivered will put "it" to sleep again; the genie is out of the bottle and we all know there is no putting it back in.



I found the occupiers had the same totalitarian attitude, though they don’t see it as totalitarian. Yes, their loving acceptance of those who disagree with them is astonishing, but it’s totalitarian. It asks that people give up their individuality to the state the occupiers are creating. Rather than free speech, the protest has a sort of "managed speech" to make sure everyone has equal time. There is also the flip side, that not to join the movement or to disagree with the protesters means that you are working against the interest of the people.

From all I have read, there is no move to erase individuality. People of all opinions and political "colors" are present and welcomed.I'm not sure about the selection of speakers; but I doubt that there is censorship. There has to be a way to maintain order; there has to be some planning, when there are such large numbers involved.


The protesters have been settling on the idea that the conflict is the 99% against the 1%. But since the country is evenly divided between Democrat and Republican, they represent, at best, the interests of 50% against the 1%. No matter how poor, Republicans don’t see socialism as being in their own interests. Instead of chanting "We are the 99%" they should be chanting "We are the 50%", but they seem immune to seeing things from this perspective.

I definitely disagree with this painting of the entire population of the US as either Rep or Dem. First of all, I see political parties as a meaningless tool of the puppet masters. that being said, most of the people have bought into it, but fewer and fewer are sticking to "the party line". It is wrong to say that only Democrats agree with what the OWS movement is saying ( which in itself is very fluid and not a specific hard line of beliefs.) I believe that everybody can see how the bankers, corporations, politicians are acting totally in their own self-interest and counter to the interests of "the people".


Back to reporting. I see it as a struggle between the “story” and some sort of “narrative”. Take, for instance, the most reported event of the protest, the arrest of 700 protesters as they tried to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. However you treat the story, you have to struggle with the “narrative” that “police oppress protesters”. Here’s what happened. The occupation is of the park in Wall Street. Last Saturday they marched from there intending to go to the park right on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, then back again. The march was planned ahead of time. The protest leaders talked to the police about it. The police told them to stay off the roadway to avoid blocking traffic, and instead use the pedestrian walkway one level above the roadway. The protest leaders widely communicated this to other protesters.

But at the same time, some protesters were hoping for a confrontation with the police, because mass arrests would get them on the news (I overheard two protesters discussing this). Others were passing out pamphlets on what to do when arrested and urging people to write the phone number of the National Lawyers Guild on their arm. Some of those arrested were among the Central Committee, who would have been the most likely to have known they should not have been on the roadway.

When the protest happened, many protesters followed the correct path above the roadway, but many others incorrectly chose the roadway. After about 700 had taken to the roadway, the police closed off both ends of the bridge, preventing them from escaping and arrested them all. Eventually the errant protesters were given summons for causing a public disturbance. Protesters accuse the police of causing the problem by letting protesters out onto the roadway in the first place rather than informing them to take the pedestrian way. They also point out that shutting down the bridge for hours caused much more of a public disturbance than letting the protesters pass for 15 minutes. Regardless of any agents provocateurs on both sides, though, it’s a good bet that the bulk of the 700 who got arrested were just sheep, going along with the crowd.

For me, that’s the “narrative”: stupidity and ignorance on both sides cause things like this, rather than malicious intent - barring a few on both sides who want to see the problem escalate.

I differ here on tactics of protest. From the beginning I have read that the whole movement espouses non-violent protest. (I have seen with dismay reports of some of the demonstrations in other places becoming violent.) However, it must be understood that there are levels of non-violent protest. Some may follow what the author seems to be saying is the "best" form, taken by those who chose to follow the police orders and march on the pedestrian level of the bridge. However, another valid method of non-violent protest is more in line with Gandhi's non-violent civil disobedience. In his own words:

Quote:
Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.

Every citizen is responsible for every act of his government.

There is only one sovereign remedy, namely, nonviolent non-cooperation.






That the protest is dominated by Internet savvy youths exploiting social media is frequently mentioned. But what is not mentioned is the fact that the protesters are overwhelmingly college students, or recent graduates who still haven’t found jobs. They aren’t just any college students, but the stereotypical sort that you might expect to be involved in campus activism, such as graduate students in “Gender Studies.” I found nobody with engineering or science degrees, but many from arts and acting colleges. After talking with one guy for a while about unemployment and his difficult in finding a job after college, I found out that he was a “poet.” I’m not sure he understood that employers aren’t looking to hire poets. The only person I met that had a political science degree was one of the police officers “keeping the peace.”

The above, as well as the author's backing of Wall Street for its contributions to technology (all very true but something hits a sour note with me), and the following paragraphs on the racial composition of the protesters, makes me feel (no not outright think, but more a feeling) that the author isn't really unbiased... but then he never claimed to be.

The police, who daily see the struggle of the real poor, had little use for protesters complaining about jobs while they carried around expensive MacBook computers paid for by their parents.

Does it matter who begins the protest, when they are protesting on behalf of all? Don't middle class members have a right to jobs, as well as the poor? It seems to me that when there are no jobs for the middle class, that is a sign that the economy is in VERY bad shape. NOTE: I am NOT saying that the poor are to be overlooked, but don't knock the movement because of the members!

I think there is something interesting going on here. It’s not just another protest. I think it’s a more enduring addition to our culture. A decade from now, when the U.S. invades France over a cheese dispute, protesters will “occupy” the streets using the same principles being developed now.

Posted by Robert Graham at 4:02 PM


I definitely agree with his conclusion, and please don't take my comments as throwing out the baby with the bath water.

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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
State Department Agitator Advising ‘Occupy’ Movement

Ahmed Maher helped lead Egypt’s “Arab Spring” that resulted in military dictatorship

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, October 19, 2011

A US government-backed pioneer of the so-called “Arab Spring” in Egypt that eventually resulted in a military dictatorship is now “advising” the Occupy Wall Street protesters in both Washington DC and New York, in another sign that the movement has been subverted by the establishment.

US State Department-funded activist Ahmed Maher “is now giving advice to a new group of protesters: the Occupy Wall Street movement,” reports Wired News.

Maher has been “corresponding for weeks” with OWS activists, offering them “practical advice from a successful Egyptian revolutionary,” according to the report.

If Wired defines replacing a 30 year tyrant with a military dictatorship under which Egyptians enjoy even less freedoms as a “successful” revolution then Maher’s involvement in the ‘Occupy’ movement should be viewed with the utmost suspicion.

As Egyptian activist Kareem Amer writes, “Egypt’s Arab Spring has led not to democracy—but to another cruel dictatorship,” under which “The military is killing minorities and imprisoning dissidents.”

Of course, you won’t have heard that little fact very often on mainstream television networks because the “Arab Spring” was advertised as an organic mass uprising. The reality that it was largely a geopolitical maneuver controlled by the United States, Britain and Israel aimed at overthrowing both rogue states and tyrants who had outlived their usefulness to the globalists doesn’t fit with the fairytale.

con. http://www.infowars.com/state-departmen ... -movement/

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Wed Oct 19, 2011 5:45 pm
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Politicians will have a hey-dey with the movement. The article repeatedly condemns those who support the OWS movement without saying anything about the rhetoric condemning Jews. However, in the article there is not one example of anti-Semitism.

RNC Asks Top Dems: ‘Where’s the Outrage?’ on Occupy Wall Street Anti-Semitism

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/rnc-ask ... -semitism/

I did a little research on the above and found that, yes, some protesters were quoted as blaming Zionists, Jewish bankers, and similar comments. However, as in any movement, these are NOT the sentiments of the majority, or those who are the "leaders". In a free society, there is freedom of speech. Of course I don't agree with any ethnic slurs or bigotry, however I think it is as bad to try to destroy a people's movement by blowing the statements of a few out of proportion. However, this is the coin of politicians.

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Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:01 pm
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet

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Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:36 am
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
I am not sure who this person is but he should become a member here at the Golden Thread.

Enjoy this one GT'rs as this man has practically put into words what we all have been putting into writing for YEARS!!!!!


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Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:27 pm
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Why Are Police Attacking Peaceful Protesters? How OWS Has Exposed the Militarization of US Law Enforcement
As the number of OWS arrests nears 1,000, instances of police brutality continue to pile up. Now all of America is seeing the result of police militarization.
October 20, 2011 |

As the number of Occupy Wall Street arrests nears 1,000, instances of police brutality continue to pile up. Felix Rivera-Pitre was punched in the face in New York during a march through the city’s financial district; Ryan Hadar was dragged out of the street by his thumbs at Occupy San Francisco; and at Occupy Boston, members of Veterans for Peace were shoved to the ground and dragged away for chanting and peacefully occupying a local park.

These efforts to intimidate the protesters are symptoms of three decades of policies that have militarized civilian law enforcement. Sgt. Shamar Thomas, a U.S. marine at the Occupy Wall Street protests, was so appalled by the behavior of the NYPD that he loudly confronted a group of 30 officers, shouting at them:

Quote:
"This is not a war zone. These are unarmed people. It does not make you tough to hurt these people. If you want to go fight, go to Iraq or Afghanistan. Stop hurting these people, man, why y’all doing this to our people? Why are y’all gearing up like this is war? There are no bullets flying out here."


:heart

Police repression in America is hardly new. Low-income neighborhoods, communities of color and political activists have always had to deal with unneccassary shows of force by some police officers. Thanks to a populist uprising threatening a status quo that benefits the top tier of American society to the detriment of the bottom 99 percent, many Americans for the first time are witnessing the U.S. police state in action.

Read more here: http://tinyurl.com/3seve4h

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Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:54 am
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
mountaintiger7 wrote:
PTBe

...........
the corp is the matrix
"As anti-capitalist protesters take to the streets, mathematics has teased apart the global economic network to show who's really pulling the strings"
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2051008/Does-super-corporation-run-global-economy.html
..............
at least Canada gets it
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/canadian-supreme-court-you-can-post-hyperlinks-without-getting-sued.ars
................
wolfs guarding the sheep

.............
media is owned
Image
.............
Fair and balanced?
Image
................
Not all corps are bad
http://current.com/shows/the-young-turks/blog/93500680_the-top-1-percent-shows-up-to-support-occupy-wall-street.htm
...............
4 banks hold 95.9% of bad paper
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=27106
...............
keep informed
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.scannerradio&feature=search_result
..............
make sense


..................
The Dem eat there own why Alan Grayson lost the election (he was looking for the truth)

.....................
BOMBSHELL - Massachusetts Supreme Court Rules That Most Foreclosure Sales From Previous 5 Years Are VOID
http://dailybail.com/home/bombshell-massachusetts-supreme-court-rules-that-most-forecl.html
............
Who's fault?
http://dailybail.com/home/bombshell-massachusetts-supreme-court-rules-that-most-forecl.html
.................
Banks are socialist, wallstreet is not Capitalism

.........
Root of problem
Image
................
Tea anyone?

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Sat Oct 22, 2011 6:59 am
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
mountaintiger7 wrote:


Image

Both sides lie like they breath air


Now they need permits to Occupy
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66553.html

America Is Not A Democracy - Noam Chomsky


Common ground
Image

Image

Stop and frisk without probable cause

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Sat Oct 22, 2011 6:59 am
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Post Re: Either you are a rebel or a slave - Occupy Wallstreet
Lynnwood wrote:
Now here's an idea whose time has come... WHAT IF!!

# The Occupy Movement needs to start taking real action.
The ‘Podfather’ Adam Curry has created OccupyCoke.com.
Is occupy ready to rumble?

SOURCE: Posted on October 22, 2011 by maxkeiser
http://maxkeiser.com/2011/10/22/occupycoke/

# Action that underscores the message and the power of the people.

# There is universal agreement among the occupy movements worldwide that corporations run governments. Wall Street is their pimp.

# It is time to strike, and cause a real casualty to the cabal

# This casualty needs to be a worldwide corporation, one who’s product everyone uses, yet anyone can easily live without. A rich and powerful corporation that has great influence over governments worldwide.

# That corporation, is the Coca-Cola Company

# It operates in 200 countries, seling 1.7 billion servings daily. It distributes almost $2 billion in cash to it’s shareholders annually on revenues of $35 billion.

# On average, every single person on the planet consumes 89 servings of a Coca Cola beverage per year.

# If we all stop drinking their product, a product that has no nutritional value, we can take this corproation down. We can show the true power we have.

# To kill Coke, would directly threaten every corporation on the planet, forcing them to fear that they might be the next to be targeted. This will be the start of a return of the power to the people.

# All we have to do is announce and enforce a world wide ban on drinking coca-cola.

# Occupy Coca-Cola, Occupy Coke.

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Mon Oct 24, 2011 6:03 am
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