What Will Happen To OccupyWallStreet If It Loses Its Park?
Zuccotti Park. Photo: David Shankbone (CC)
The tarps are flapping and the tents are not bringing much warmth.
The harsh winds of winter are lashing the encampment at Zuccotti Park, or as many would prefer. “Liberty Plaza,” the symbol of a wannabe revolution against the status quote and powercrats of the American oligarchy.
The hard real-world contradictions of urban life have bumped up against the idyllic hopes of the occupiers as all the urban crises that our society has ignored and neglected surface in that half acre of hope.
There are man/woman handlers and gladhanders, doers and dopers, ragers and even rapists and so many poor with no where else to go. There are cops on the outside (and many on the inside) who plan for and hope for the worse.
This fight is not just the 99% against the 1% because, truth be told, this movement has so far only motivated a minority of…
Media Roots: Occupy Oakland — Police Tear Gas, Black Bloc, War in the Streets
Abby Martin of Media Roots was on the front lines of the war in the streets of Oakland during the aftermath of the Occupy Oakland general strike and shutdown of the port on November 2, 2011. Over 10,000 peaceful protesters successfully shut down the Port of Oakland, the fifth largest port in the country at 8 p.m. earlier that night. About two hours later, the anarchist “Black Bloc” came to downtown, smashing windows of banks and setting trash cans on fire. The Oakland PD in full riot gear lined up and marched toward the now out of control rally. They started firing smoke grenades and tear gas into the crowd of people, to which people starting throwing bottles and other objects back to the police. After the crowd scattered, the police lined up and starting to close in and arrest the remaining protesters at the Occupy Oakland camp:
Mike Bloomberg As Marie Antoinette
Matt Taibbi suggests that New York’s Mayor Bloomberg is on his way to becoming the unwitting face of the 1%, at Rolling Stone:
…I thought of all of this this morning, when I read about Bloomberg’s latest comments on Occupy Wall Street. I remembered how pleased Bloomberg looked with himself at the HuffPost ball last year when I read what he had to say about the anticorruption protesters now muddying his doorstep in Zuccotti Park:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this morning that if there is anyone to blame for the mortgage crisis that led the collapse of the financial industry, it’s not the “big banks,” but congress.
Speaking at a business breakfast in midtown featuring Bloomberg and two former New York City mayors, Bloomberg was asked what he thought of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.
“I hear your complaints,” Bloomberg said. “Some of them are totally unfounded. It was not the banks that created…
Large US Corporations Have Tax Rates As Low As -58%
And the media wonders why the 99% are angry? From MarketWatch:
The official federal corporate income tax rate in the U.S. is 35%, but plenty of the nation’s largest publicly traded companies are paying no taxes — even getting money back from the government in some cases — in years when they reap big profits, according to a new report.
Thirty of the 280 Fortune 500 companies studied paid zero in federal income taxes or enjoyed tax rebates in 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to the study by the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington-based nonprofit research and advocacy group, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group.
And 78 of the 280 companies paid nothing in federal income taxes or enjoyed a tax rebate in at least one of those years. Those 78 companies, including General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) and Pepco Holdings Inc. (NYSE:POM) , earned…
Police Attack Occupy Oakland
Is this the moment when Occupy turned from protest to revolt? The San Francisco ABC affiliate KGO-TV reports on a dramatic turn in California (for an alternative take check out the #OakFoSho live stream):
Thousands of ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protesters peacefully marched in the streets of Oakland on Wednesday picketing banks and disrupting operations at the nation’s fifth-busiest port.
Around 10:30 p.m. a group of a couple hundred protesters went into the Travelers Aid building to occupy it…
The First Large Global Conflict Where People Are Aligned by Consciousness and Not Nation State or Religion
Naomi Wolf. Photo: David Shankbone (CC)
Interesting take on Occupy by Naomi Wolf, at Alternet:
America’s politicians, it seems, have had their fill of democracy. Across the country, police, acting under orders from local officials, are breaking up protest encampments set up by supporters of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement – sometimes with shocking and utterly gratuitous violence.
In the worst incident so far, hundreds of police, dressed in riot gear, surrounded Occupy Oakland’s encampment and fired rubber bullets (which can be fatal), flash grenades and tear-gas canisters – with some officers taking aim directly at demonstrators. The Occupy Oakland Twitter feed read like a report from Cairo’s Tahrir Square: “they are surrounding us”; “hundreds and hundreds of police”; “there are armoured vehicles and Hummers”. There were 170 arrests.
My own recent arrest, while obeying the terms of a permit and standing peacefully on a street in lower Manhattan, brought the reality of…
Hey OWS, What’s Your Agenda?
Photo: Mrwho00tm (CC)
One of the most frequently repeated, recycled and dismissive questions about Occupy Wall Street is its supposed lack of an “agenda.”
The “what do you people want” question has featured in media interviews almost to the exclusion of all others.
It’s as if the movement won’t be taken seriously by some, unless and until, it enunciates a list of “demands” and defines itself in a way that can allow others, especially a cynical media, to label and pigeonhole it.
Many are just frothing at the mouth for some political positions they can expose as shallow or absurd. Teams of pundits are being primed to go on the attack once they have some bullet points to refute.
(Many police departments don’t need bullet points to go on the attack. They have been having a field day arresting occupiers in many cities, while collecting overtime and readying their own bullets as needed.)
Some on Wall…
10 OccupyWallStreet Conspiracy Theories
George Soros
You knew this kind of fluff story couldn’t be far off … Lyz Lenz of TruTV smears #OWS with a conspiracy theory brush:
Conspiracy theories have surrounded the Occupy Wall Street movement since the moment protesters hit the ground. From ties to George Soros to cries of censorship and anti-Semitism, the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to have done more to fuel rumors than it has to end corporate greed. But they have some conspiracy theories of their own…
1. Funded by George Soros
How did Occupy Wall Street form so quickly and so efficiently? Is liberal money man George Soros behind the protests? Soros says he merely sympathizes with protesters.2. Hidden Anti-Semites?
Occupy Wall Street is a movement ostensibly focused on ousting corporate greed, but there [sic] allegations of anti-Semitism more akin to racial warfare than class warfare. Supporters, however, say that any anti-Semitism is occurring on the fringe and that the OWS…
4 Reasons to OccupyWallStreet
This Occupy Wall Street themed video from DC Douglas was heartily endorsed by MoveOn.org, which emailed its members this endorsement:
Occupy Wall Street is Fox News’ worst nightmare, so they’re doing everything they can to downplay this movement and distort its message. It’s up to people like us to tell the real story. This amazingly powerful video—featuring Elizabeth Warren, no less—does exactly that. It’s a must-see for everyone in America who’s got any questions about what #OWS is really all about.
147 Companies ‘Own Everything’
Source: New Scientist
New Scientist reveals the capitalist network that runs the world:
As protests against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters’ worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.
The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a…
The Beauty Of OccupyWallStreet
Director Steven Greenstreet (Killer At Large) captures a side of the protests that goes unnoticed by most:
Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street from Steven Greenstreet on Vimeo.
A lot of fantastic media has been created about the “Occupy” movement. I was watching one video in particular and commented to a friend, “Wow, seeing all those super smart hot chicks at the protest makes me want to be there.” He replied, “Hmmm… Yeah, let’s go with that.”
We instantly went to Tumblr and made http://hotchicksofoccupywallstreet.tumblr.com. Our original ideas were admittedly sophomoric: Pics of hot chicks being all protesty, videos of hot chicks beating drums in slow-mo, etc. But when we arrived at Zuccotti Park in New York City, it evolved into something more.
There was a vibrant energy in the air, a warmth of community and family, and the voices we heard were so hopeful and passionate. Pretty faces were making signs, giving speeches, organizing crowds, handing out food, singing, dancing, debating, hugging and marching…
The Eviction of OccupyWallStreet from Zuccotti Park
Will Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD manage to evict the #OWS protesters tomorrow? Drew Grant’s report for the New York Observer suggests maybe not:
After being told that they would have to “temporarily” vacate Zuccotti Park for sanitation reasons by Mayor Bloomberg, Occupy Wall Street responded to what one member is calling “an eviction notice.”
According to one of OWS’ Media team, a young man named Luke, there is “no way” that the protesters can comply with all the outlines set in Brookfield’s letter to the city, since OWS has been expressly forbidden from emptying the parks trash receptacles themselves; that the “cleaning” would include the removal of all tarps and sleeping bags, which the residents have been using to spend the night in the parks.
Katrina vanden Heuvel & Danny Schechter Speak Out at Occupy Wall Street
Amy Goodman and Democracy Now give the voices of progressive protest an outlet. Note Danny holding up a placard for his disinformation documentary Plunder: The Crime of our Time, which really does seem more timely now than ever.
