#OccupyWallStreet

[Merry]

Could #OccupyWallStreet be the start of a much-needed we're-not-gonna-take-this-anymore proletariat (and everyone else, really) movement? I hope the momentum doesn't wane.



Why We're Joining #OccupyWallStreet

by Jon Kest, Executive Director of New York Communities for Change

It has been amazing watching #OccupyWallStreet grow over the past two weeks. As someone who has been involved in the social justice movement in New York for more than 30 years, it's a rare occasion that I get to watch a movement like this develop from the outside.

Over the past several years, while the big banks have destroyed our economy and working people have fought to make do with less and less, the richest 1 percent of Americans continue to take of more of the pie.

That's why I'm excited to announce that New York Communities for Change and many of our allies in community organizing and labor will be showing our support for #OccupyWallStreet next week.
No place is more symbolic of that gross inequity than Wall Street and there is no better symbol for what all of us are working to achieve than seeing Zuccotti Park full of people who are ready to say that the American people are not going to take it anymore.

The levels of inequity in this county, and in New York especially are out of hand -- and no one knows that more than the working families that make up the members of New York Communities for Change.

We've seen our mayor and our governor slash our social safety net in the name of austerity while turning their noses up at new sources of revenue such as renewing the millionaire's Tax and seeking claw backs for improperly used public subsidies. Even when elected officials like New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman take a stand against the big banks, corporations and the politicians in their pockets do everything they can do derail his efforts.

That's why NYCC members joined thousands of New Yorkers on May 12 to demand that Wall Street banks pay their fair share and it's why we'll be back on Wednesday Oct. 5 to continue our stand against the big banks and show our support to the protesters who have been on Wall Street for days.

Wednesday's solidarity march will be a precursor to a week of actions planned by many of the groups that participated in the May 12 coalition. The action will draw attention to the levels of inequity that exists in New York and demand that the wealthiest New Yorkers don't receive a tax break when the millionaire's tax expires at the end of this year. We hope that the energy, spirit and voices that are present in Liberty Plaza will be with us as we demand the governor renews the millionaire's tax.

When the big banks tanked our economy they took away millions of people's shot at achievingthe American Dream. It's about time all these people come together and hold Wall Street accountable for what they've done to our futures and the future of this country. Whether you're a union worker whose rights have been under attack, or a parent whose watched the funding for your child's school go into the pocket of a Wall Street CEO, or one of the millions of people, young and old, who are looking for work with no avail, on Wednesday we will stand together to demand justice.

And hopefully it will be the first day of many.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-ke..._b_989544.html

[Merry]

...but taxing the rich is not the solution, unfortunately.


Occupy Wall Street Protest Spreads To San Francisco

by Robin Wilkey, Carly Schwartz



SAN FRANCISCO -- "Why is life a bitch? Cause we don't tax the rich!"

Such was the chant of the nearly 200 San Franciscans who surrounded the Bank of America building in the center of the Financial District Thursday afternoon to rally against bank bailouts and the country's uneven tax structure. The rally was a west coast offshoot of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests that have continued in New York City for nearly two weeks.

The initially-peaceful crowd included families, children, dogs and bands playing drums, saxophones and banjos. Mayoral candidate and city Supervisor John Avalos opened the march with a speech that attacked big banks.

"Have you ever felt like you've been had?" he asked the crowd. "That's why this building right here is a symbol of the incredible greed and wealth that has accumulated into fewer and fewer hands."

"And how do they stay wealthy?" he added. "They took our tax dollars. They got bailed out." Avalos then urged crowd members to take their money out of national banks and invest it in smaller, community banks that care about local concerns.

The demonstrators then marched down Montgomery Street to Charles Schwab, surrounding the building and baffling employees inside. Protestors beat drums, sang songs and chanted, "Charles Schwab, give us our money back" and "Who bailed the banks out? We bailed the banks out."

The swarm finished out the day by marching to a Chase Bank branch on Market Street, where tensions began to peak. Six demonstrators -- including one who said she was losing her home to the bank -- walked into the branch and staged a sit-in in the lobby. After refusing to leave the branch, the six were arrested and then eventually released. Outside, protesters screamed, "Shame on Chase," waving signs in the air.

Occupy Wall Street officially began in a park in downtown Manhattan on Sept. 17, and the protesters there have yet to show any signs of leaving. Participants have voiced concerns over everything from environmental issues to Troy Davis' execution, but the main themes have centered on economic concerns.

"Several hand-lettered placards express outrage that banks and bankers weren't punished more severely in the wake of the financial crisis," The Huffington Post's Alexander Eichler reported Wednesday.

San Francisco's chapter had been operating less publicly until Thursday's event, but according to its official website, activists have been holding general assembly meetings each evening in Justin Herman Plaza every day since New York's protests began. They've planned several events through October, including poetry workshops, movie nights and guest speakers.
Similar groups have also popped up across the rest of the country.

The Occupy Wall Streeters have yet to present a formal list of demands or conditions that must be met, and New York City police have already arrested at least 80 individuals there. One officer faced backlash over the weekend after video surfaced of him using pepper spray to quell a group of young women.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/30/occupy-wall-street-san-francisco_n_988180.html?ir=New York

[Merry]

NYC Transit Union Joins Occupy Wall Street

by Matt Sledge

New York City labor unions are preparing to back the unwieldy grassroots band occupying a park in Lower Manhattan, in a move that could mark a significant shift in the tenor of the anti-corporate Occupy Wall Street protests and send thousands more people into the streets.

The Transit Workers Union Local 100's executive committee, which oversees the organization of subway and bus workers, voted unanimously Wednesday night to support the protesters. The union claims 38,000 members. A union-backed organizing coalition, which orchestrated a large May 12 march on Wall Street before the protests, is planning a rally on Oct. 5 in explicit support.

And SEIU 32BJ, which represents doormen, security guards and maintenance workers, is using its Oct. 12 rally to express solidarity with the Zuccotti Park protesters.

"The call went out over a month ago, before actually the occupancy of Wall Street took place," said 32BJ spokesman Kwame Patterson. Now, he added, "we're all coming under one cause, even though we have our different initiatives."

The protests found their genesis not in any of the established New York social action groups but with a call put out by a Canadian magazine. While other major unions beyond the TWU have yet to officially endorse Occupy Wall Street, more backing could come as early as this week. Both the New York Metro Area Postal Union and SEIU 1199 are considering such moves.

Jackie DiSalvo, an Occupy Wall Street organizer, says a series of public actions aimed at expressing support for labor -- from disrupting a Sotheby's auction on Sept. 22 to attending a postal workers' rally on Tuesday -- have convinced unions that the two groups' struggles are one.

"Labor is up against the wall and they're begging us to help them," said DiSalvo, a retired professor at Baruch College in her late 60s who has emerged as a driving force in the effort to link up labor and the protests. DiSalvo is herself a member of the Professional Staff Congress, which represents teachers at the City University of New York.

Recent anti-labor actions like Scott Walker's in Wisconsin "really shocked the unions and moved them into militant action," DiSalvo said, and the inflammatory video of a NYPD deputy inspector pepper-spraying several protesters on Saturday also generated union sympathy.

"There's a lot of good feeling. They've made a lot of friends," said Chuck Zlatkin of the postal union.

When a band of about 100 protesters showed up at a postal workers' rally featuring Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday, complete with purple hair and big drums, "they went a long way towards touching people and making connections," Zlatkin observed.

If unions move to support the protests in a major way, that could mean thousands more people marching in Lower Manhattan. Thus far the protesters have not managed to come near the 10,000 or so who attended the unrelated May 12 march on Wall Street. The Strong Economy for All Coalition, which receives support from the United Federation of Teachers, the Working Families Party, plus SEIU 32BJ and 1199, previously helped put together that demonstration. Now they will be rallying for the grassroots group.

"Their fight is our fight," director Michael Kink said. "They've chosen the right targets. We also want to see a society where folks other than the top 1 percent have a chance to say how things go."

Asked if the union support could dilute the message of the Occupy Wall Street protesters -- which has itself been dismissed as incoherent -- organizer DiSalvo said the rag tag group's stance would remain unchanged.

"Occupy Wall Street will not negotiate watering down its own message," she said, union support or not.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_987156.html

[Merry]

Legitimate concerns, but not sufficient justification to halt the protest IMO.



Bloomberg Criticizes Occupy Wall Street Protest, Suggests Their Days May Be Numbered

By Michael Howard Saul, Wall Street Journal

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised the specter of shutting down a two-week long demonstration on Wall Street, telling protesters who are speaking out against greed and corruption that the banks deserve support.

Asked directly on his weekly radio show Friday whether he will allow the protesters to stay indefinitely, Bloomberg replied, “We’ll see.”

“People have the right to protest, but we also have to make sure that people who don’t want to protest can go down the streets unmolested,” said Bloomberg, a 69-year-old billionaire who earned his personal fortune selling financial information to the business community.

“We have to make sure that while you have a right to say what you want to say, people who want to say something very different have a right to say that as well. That’s what’s great about this country,” Bloomberg added. “The right to protest is part of our culture. It’s also true that there are other societal concerns.”

The Bloomberg administration’s handling of the protest has come under intense criticism. In recent days, the New York Police Department opened an internal investigation into allegations that a supervising officer inappropriately pepper-sprayed a group of people participating this past weekend in the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstration.

In his remarks Friday, Bloomberg suggested that the protesters are terribly misguided in terms of their policy perspective.

“The protesters are protesting against people who make $40 or $50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet,” he said. “That’s the bottom line. Those are the people that work on Wall Street and in the finance sector.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_989424.html

[lofter1]

Bloomberg speaks out both sides of his mouth. The little mayor went on to say:

“We need the banks. If the banks don’t go out and make loans, we will not come out of our economic problems. We will not have jobs.”

The mayor acknowledged that the banks played a role in the economic downturn, but he insisted, “We always tend to blame the wrong people.”

Uh, sorry, but NO. The banks didn't just play a role. They were the lead actors and have to accept a good deal of the blame for where we now find ourselves. Also to blame are the supporting characters, the supposed financial wizards like Bloomberg and his buddies, who never stepped up to say, Whoa!" as we were marching towards meltdown.

Mike: Who is stopping the banks from making loans now with all that bail-out money they're sitting on? And who is forcing the banks to charge us all for the most minimal of transactions (check your mailbox for new notices with the latest surprise from those who hold your money)? And how much profit did those banks make in the past year?

So, STFU. Mike, I'm talking to you.

[lofter1]

“People have the right to protest, but we also have to make sure that people who don’t want to protest can go down the streets unmolested,” said Bloomberg, a 69-year-old billionaire ...

Again: STFU.

Bloomie's worried that folks on their way to work are going to be molested? By what? Words?

Mike: Whose guys with badges were going after folks with pepper spray last weekend?

So when you talk about folks being able to go around town "unmolested" you just might want to STFU.

[Merry]

^ Well said, Lofter.

What I meant by "legitimate concerns" was really the potential for the protest to adversely affect everyday people just going about their business, and also if celebrities (possibly Radiohead, as rumored?) get involved, the kind of crowd (in numbers) that this could attract.

Yeah, "unmolested" was an unfortunate choice of word, too.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Could #OccupyWallStreet be the start of a much-needed we're-not-gonna-take-this-anymore proletariat (and everyone else, really) movement? I hope the momentum doesn't wane.

I've watched it unfold in the neighborhood.

Saw it the first day while walking up Rector St to Trinity Pl. A small group had converged at 1 Wall St, and began chanting. Seemed like another common one-time rally. A few days later, there was a much larger crowd at Zuccotti Plaza. Sometimes I can hear them from my apartment, several blocks away.

BTW: From all I've seen, the protest is non-violent and non-threatening.

[mariab]

I hope momentum across the country grows, but stay organized, & keep it non-political. You're not going to get any sympathy blocking traffic. When you keep people from getting to work, home, family, etc., you've lost most of them. Also, keep the celebrities out of it. They're just a distraction & a draw for people who show up simply to see whoever the bigwig is.

[lofter1]

Brooklyn Bridge Occupied

Posted Oct. 1, 2011, 4:56 p.m. EST
by OccupyWallSt

https://occupywallst.org/

Police have kettled the march on the Brooklyn Bridge and have begun arresting protesters. At least 20 arrested so far.

Follow the action

UPDATE: 5:15PM - Brooklyn Bridge has been shut down by police

UPDATE: 5:55PM - At least 50 arrested.

UPDATE: 8:17PM - NYTimes reporting hundreds arrested - including a reporter - police appear to have deliberately misled protesters.

UPDATE: 8:40PM - Around 400 peaceful protesters arrested.

Please call:

1st Precinct: +1 (212) 334-0611
77th Precinct: +1 (718) 735-0611
NYPD Switchboard: +1 (646) 610-5000
NYPD Central Booking: +1 (212) 374-3921
NYPD Internal Affairs: +1 (212) 741-8401
Mayor Bloomberg: +1 (212) NEW-YORK or +1 (212) 374-3921

[lofter1]

500 arrested at Occupy Wall Street protest as
demonstrators and NYPD shut down Brooklyn Bridge

NY DAILY NEWS
BY JOHN DOYLE AND RICH SCHAPIRO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday, shutting down car lanes and setting up yet another tense showdown with the NYPD.

Roughly 500 people were arrested after standing in the roadway, blocking the Brooklyn-bound lanes. Traffic in the opposite direction was slowed -- but still running after the 4 p.m. standoff.

An army of cops swooped in after the demonstrators took over the bridge's pedestrian walkway and flooded onto the car lanes heading to Brooklyn. The showdown halted traffic on the bridge for nearly three hours.

While some of the protesters claimed cops set a trap for them, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne insisted the arrests came after the demonstrators were warned multiple times to stay off the roadway.

"Some complied and took the walkway without being arrested," Browne said. "Others proceeded on the Brooklyn-bound vehicular roadway. The latter were arrested."

The march started from Zuccotti Park, the homebase for the two-week old protest against corporate excess.

When demonstrators reached the base of the span, a bottleneck formed and many started marching up the pedestrian walkway.

Others walked straight onto the roadway, and several climbed down from the walkway moments later to join them.

"We were supposed to go up the pedestrian roadway," said Robert Cammiso, a 48-year-old student from Brooklyn.

"There was a huge funnel, a bottleneck, and we couldn't fit. People jumped from the walkway onto the roadway. We thought the roadway was open to us."

After allowing some of the protesters to cross, officers trapped some 400 on the bridge using orange nets and vehicles - and started slapping cuffs on them.

Police called in NYPD and MTA buses to haul away the handcuffed demonstrators.

Some of the protestors managed to elude arrest by climbing from the roadway to the pedestrian walkway.

"[The cops] were respectful," Cammiso said. "They were as good as they can be. They were doing their job."

Not everyone agreed with that assessment. Etan Ben-Ami, 54, said it seemed the NYPD laid a trap for the protesters.

"It seemed as if they deliberately moved back to allow people onto the roadway," said Ben-Ami, a psychotherapist from Brooklyn.

By 5 p.m., protesters clogged both the walkway and Brooklyn-bound car lanes. Just after 6 p.m., some of the protesters moved to the Manhattan Bridge.

At one point, about another 100 protesters marched from Zuccotti Park and gathered outside City Hall with 200 others who had scampered off the bridge. The mass of protesters faced down a wall of cops blocking the bridge, chanting, "Whose streets? Our streets" and "Let them go."

The arrests marked the second Saturday in a row protesters landed in cuffs.

Last week, cops arrested more than 80 people near Union Square. During that roundup, Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna doused a handful of women with pepper spray - spawning a video clip that helped embolden the movement.

NYPD Internal Affairs and the Civilian Complaint Review Board are probing the incident.

[lofter1]

[lofter1]

[Merry]

^ Yeah, well...don't we know it.


700 Protesters Arrested on Brooklyn Bridge, Wall Street Elite Still Free: Something’s Rotten in NYC

By DJ Pangburn

Today, NYPD reported 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. The reason? Blocked traffic. Wall Street bankers and investors, on the other hand, have brought the world to the brink of financial catastrophe and none but Bernie Madoff are in prison.

Today, Occupy Wall Street protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. Many protesters observed the order to stay on the sidewalk; those who disobeyed and walked into traffic lanes—700 protesters, according to the NYPD—ended up arrested and carted off in buses.

This is not an apology.

It is understood that blocking traffic is a major inconvenience for many people, and it is acknowledged that there is the possibility that emergency vehicles must be able to pass, and that pedestrians freely walking in lanes present a hazard to not only themselves but to drivers crossing the bridge; but none can deny that the NYPD is on these protesters like stink on shit.

Why doesn’t New York City take half of the resources currently being arrayed against Occupy Wall Street in the form of the NYPD and investigate, arrest, try and imprison the folks who have brought this nation, indeed, the world to the brink of economic collapse?

The city—with the NYPD as proxy—works with such Gestapo-like efficiency in shadowing every movement of the protest that it is quite apparent now that they could do the same with Wall Street bankers and investors, but refuse to do so.

Millions of people lost jobs because of Wall Street greed—was that not an inconvenience to those millions of people, and the hundreds of millions more which it effected adversely in our supremely interwove economy? Millions have lost their homes and entire retirement funds have been evaporated because of corporate greed—was that not an inconvenience?
Three years now and there is still no justice.

The real threat to society is not thousands of protesters crossing a bridge, but the men in business suits who walk amongst us.

And the City of New York and its police force could care less.

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/1473...rotten-in-nyc/

[Merry]

Reliving the 1960s isn't the way to go, but, god, I sure hope this doesn't die.



See article for video

Wall Street Occupiers, Protesting Till Whenever

By N. R. KLEINFIELD and CARA BUCKLEY



A man named Hero was here. So was Germ. There was the waitress from the dim sum restaurant in Evanston, Ill. And the liquor store worker. The Google consultant. The circus performer. The Brooklyn nanny.

The hodgepodge Lower Manhattan encampment known as Occupy Wall Street has no appointed leaders, no expiration date for its rabble-rousing stay and still-evolving goals and demands. Yet its two weeks of noisy occupation has lured a sturdily faithful and fervent constituency willing to express discontentment with what they feel is an inequitable financial system until, well, whenever.

They arrived by design and desire. Or by sheer serendipity.

Like Jillian Aydelott, 19, and Ben Mason, 20. They are a couple, both having taken an indefinite leave from school in Boston to travel across the country, very much on the cheap. Stopping in Providence, R.I., five days ago to sleep at a homeless shelter, they encountered a man who called himself Germ and said he was an activist. He was coming to the protest. They figured why not. They have yet to leave.

Ms. Aydelott’s feeling was: “Nothing is happening. People on Wall Street have all the power.”

The stalwarts seem to range from a relatively modest 100 to 300 people, though the ranks swelled to more than 2,000 on Friday as the protest began to attract mainstream attention from those disaffected with the weak economy and to enlist support from well-known liberals.

The actress Susan Sarandon stopped by, as did the Princeton professor Cornel West and former Gov. David A. Paterson of New York. A widely reported episode last Saturday, when four protesters were pepper-sprayed by a police commander, elevated the visibility of the demonstrators.

On Friday night, many marched to Police Headquarters to criticize what they described as the improper tactics that the police had used against their movement. (The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, has defended the actions by the police, though he has said they will be reviewed.)

Nicholas Coniaris, 35, came to the makeshift village in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street on Friday and will be gone soon. He is from San Diego, a counselor who works with homeless veterans, and was squeezing in protesting while awaiting a wedding he was attending on Saturday. A friend from Japan, a fellow wedding guest, was here as well.

Having brought a tuxedo for the wedding, Mr. Coniaris decided to get extra mileage out of it. He wore it while he stationed himself in the center of the park clutching a coffee cup that said “God Bless,” and a sign that said, in part, “Support the Rich.”

“Just a little something,” he said mockingly to passers-by. “Half a billion dollars. I’m not asking for a trillion.”

After a couple of hours, his cup contained $1.15.

It all began when a Canadian advocacy magazine, Adbusters, posted a call for action on its blog in July. A New York group naming itself the General Assembly, inspired by recent meetings in Madrid, began to hold organizing meetings in Tompkins Square and other public places, leading to a Sept. 17 march near Wall Street. Shooed away from Wall Street, the protesters wound up in Zuccotti Park, which is bounded by Broadway and Liberty Street and has become their base.

Most of the demonstrators are in their teens or 20s, but plenty are older. Many are students. Many are jobless. A few are well-worn anarchists. Others have put their normal lives on pause to try out protesting and see how it feels.

Not all of them can articulate exactly why they are here or what they want. Yet there is a conviction rippling through them that however the global economy works, it does not work for them.

“I’m angry because I don’t have millions of dollars to give to my representative, so my voice is invalidated,” said Amanda Clarke, 21, a student at the New School. “And the fact that I’m graduating with tens of thousands of dollars in loans and there’s no job market.”

Their politics zigzag wildly. An unemployed schoolteacher calls herself a fierce independent, while an employed teacher is a conservative. An anarchist photographer wants libertarianism to be reclaimed by the left.

“This is not about left versus right,” said the photographer, Christopher Walsh, 25, from Bushwick, Brooklyn. “It’s about hierarchy versus autonomy.”

A finance worker walked around with a dollar bill duct-taped over his mouth and carrying a pizza box, on which he had written, “I could lose my job 4 having a voice.” Nikita Nikitovich, 44, a New York Pilates teacher, was working as one of the protest’s media contacts. A 38-year-old bicycle messenger with a head shaved except for a long braid arrived early Friday by bus from New Orleans, and had been waiting for a protest to erupt since Hurricane Katrina. “That’s when we were shown the big picture,” she said.

For all the bedraggled look of the mattress-and-sleeping-bag-strewn camp, it has a structure and routine. A food station occupies the center of the park, where donated meals are disbursed, especially pizza and Popeyes chicken. Sympathizers from other states have been calling local shops and pizza parlors and, using their credit cards, ordering food to be delivered to the park.

There are information stations, a recycling center, a media center where a gasoline generator powers computers. At the east end sits the library, labeled cardboard boxes brimming with donated books: nonfiction, fiction, poetry, legal. There is a lost and found.

A medical station was outfitted with bins holding a broad array of remedies: cough drops, Maalox Maximum Strength, Clorox wipes, bee pollen granules. The main issues have been blisters, including some from handcuffs, and abrasions.

There are also a few therapists. Some out-of-work protesters are depressed. They need someone’s ear.

Elsewhere is a sanitation station, with designated sanitation workers who sweep the park. The park is without toilets, a problem that many of the protesters address by visiting a nearby McDonald’s.

The encampment even has a post-office box, established at a U.P.S. store, and has been receiving a steady flow of supportive letters and packages. Someone from Texas sent a bunch of red bandanas, now draped on the necks of demonstrators. Others have sent camera batteries, granola bars and toothbrushes.

Two General Assembly meetings are held each day to conduct organizational business and work on objectives. “We meet every day to decide what our demands are,” said Hero Vincent, 21, an artist and singer from Charlotte, N.C., who has been here from the beginning.

Not allowed to use amplified sound, the protesters have devised their own means of communication. Each speaker says a sentence, and then everyone else repeats it, so it ripples outward.

Decisions must be by consensus. Hand signals convey responses. For instance, holding your palms upward and wiggling your fingers means approval, while holding them downward means disapproval. Level hands mean uncertainty.

People are divided into committees, including town planning, child care, direct action and a de-escalation group charged with keeping things orderly. There have been a few arguments.
When will all this end?

One protester thought when the temperature fell below 50. Others were less sure.

Sid Gurung, 22, a student at the New School who enlisted because he said he was “extremely disappointed and angry that I have no future,” would agree to no timetable. “Our task is important,” he said. “We could be here for months. Our opponents are giants.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/ny...ever.html?_r=1