#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[Allegro]

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Time for Action Is Now | Occupy CUNY

[Allegro]

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Portrait of Occupy | Wall Street
— Music by James Blake | The Wilhelm Scream

— Directed & Produced by Jon Erickson

Occupy London | Nationwide Strikes

[2012 Countdown]

Mic Check! -

Newt Gingrich gets mic checked by Occupy Wall Street supporters...and seemingly does not have a clue what's going on.


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So, a few things on yesterday's reOCCUPY action...

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For live action and real time, again, Tim Pool was on the scene doing his thing- If you weren't watching, you missed some great reporting and action.

http://www.ustream.tv/theother99

the blog and photos/clips-
http://yfrog.com/user/TheOther99/profile

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NYC Occupy protesters scale fence at vacant lot

(AP) NEW YORK - Dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested Saturday after they scaled a chain-link fence or crawled under it to get to an Episcopal church-owned lot they want to use for a new camp site.
Protesters used a wooden ladder to scale the fence or lifted it from below while others cheered them on. A man wearing a Santa suit stood on the ladder among others, as they ignored red "Private Property" signs.

As officers made arrests, protesters shouted obscenities and hollered: "Make them catch you!" The group was inside the lot for a short time before being led out by police in single file through a space in the fence. About 50 people were arrested, police said.

"We're just trying to say that this country has gone in the wrong direction, and we need spaces that we can control and we can decide our future in, and that's what this is about," said David Suker, who was among those who scaled the fence.

Before the arrests, several hundred gathered in Duarte Square, a half-acre wedge of a park at the edge of Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood and across the street from the vacant lot. They gathered partly to mark the three-month anniversary of the Occupy movement and partly to demand use of the lot, owned by Trinity Church.

After police cleared the protesters from the lot, about 200 people regrouped for a march on Seventh Avenue. Police began making arrests, tackling at least two people in the street and handcuffing them. When the protesters cleared the avenue, the crowd continued to march to Times Square under a heavy police presence.

The original Occupy Wall Street camp in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan was shut down last month. Trinity is a Zuccotti Park neighbor that helped demonstrators assemble, and provided them shelter in the three months since the movement began. The day after authorities moved in and cleaned out Zuccotti Park, about a dozen protesters went to the vacant lot, clipped the fence at the church-owned property and were arrested, along with some journalists.

Since then, some Occupy protesters have launched a bid to gain the church's consent for them to use the space. Trinity's Rev. James H. Cooper said giving the protesters access to the lot would not be a safe or smart move.

"There are no facilities at the Canal Street lot. Demanding access and vandalizing the property by a determined few OWS protesters won't alter the fact that there are no basic elements to sustain an encampment," he wrote in a statement. "The health, safety and security problems posed by an encampment here, compounded by winter weather, would dwarf those experienced at Zuccotti Park."

On Friday, the top bishop of the Episcopal Church asked protesters not to trespass on the property. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori warned it could result in "legal and police action."

Trinity Church dates back to the colonial era and was a refuge for relief workers after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. A sculpture out front was made out of a giant sycamore tree destroyed on 9/11.

"I feel it is very much in keeping with the tradition over the years of Trinity to work with poor people, to help poor people," said Stephen Chinlund, 77, a retired Episcopalian priest and one of several at the square Saturday.

Chinlund held a sign that read: Trinity, hero of 9/11, be a hero again!"

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-573 ... acant-lot/

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Great clip compilation. Must watch, imo.-


Uploaded by tinsawyer on Dec 17, 2011
Occupy Wall Street Protesters gather, march and scale a fence into a Trinity Church owned section of Duarte Square in Lower Manhattan in an attempt to occupy the area.
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50 arrested as Occupy Wall Street tries to seize church lot for new camp










http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... r-new-camp

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9:16 AM
More Than 50 Occupy Wall Street Protesters Arrested In Manhattan
By: NY1 News

More than 50 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested yesterday during a rally in Lower Manhattan and a march to Times Square.
About 200 marchers made their way up Seventh Avenue under a heavy police presence last night.

Several people were arrested, but the NYPD has not yet said how many.

The arrests came after dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters were taken into custody during a rally downtown.

Protesters gathered at Duarte Square on Canal Street to mark three months since the movement began.

Police say about 50 people were arrested after scaling a chain-link fence to enter a vacant lot owned by Trinity Church.

The movement has been without a full-time public home since the city's raid on Zuccotti Park last month.

"Jesus came into the world. There was not room for him in the inn. So once again, today there is no room for people who are struggling for the poor, as we say for the 99 percent,” said Father Paul Mayer, who was arrested during yesterday’s protest.

“I think that in order to be able to exercise our first amendment freedom of assembly, we have to actually do it. And if that means that we can't obtain the permits necessary to do so, then we need to just do it anyway,” said Jessie LeGreca, a protester.

Trinity Church has allowed protestors to use its meeting rooms and offices but has so far refused to let them take over the lot.

In a statement, the church said it would be unsafe for protesters to occupy the space.
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video news broadcast-
http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/ ... -manhattan

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Roberts makes a brief appearance in this video taken in the back of a paddy wagon on its way to central booking following the arrests. In the video, Bishop George Packard, who was also arrested during the lot occupation, explains the reasoning behind Trinity's decision to deny Occupy the use of its land.

"This is a church, not a corporation. They own one-third of the property south of Canal Street," said Packard.


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SUNDAY DEC 18, 2011 8:41 AM
[b]Fifty Protesters Arrested During Occupy Anniversary, Journalists Beaten, Detained[/b]
BY ALLISON KILKENNY
About 50 people were arrested yesterday after they scaled a fence to gain access to a lot owned by Trinity Church. The action followed celebration marking Occupy's three-month anniversary across the street at Duarte Square where hundreds of protesters gathered. Protesters have long petitioned the church for use of their land, which is one part of Trinity's plentiful real estate properties -- one of the largest such holdings in Manhattan.

During the arrests, many journalists reported being arrested, bullied, and in a couple cases, assaulted by police. Independent photojournalist Zach Roberts was arrested, and not only managed to tweet "being arrested," but also snapped a photo while he was being detained in a holding cell.

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http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/ ... aten_deta/

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Occupy protesters rally at Obama's Iowa headquarters
December 17th, 2011
05:46 PM ET
Posted by
CNN Producer Joshua Rubin

Des Moines, Iowa (CNN) - Occupy protesters in Des Moines were joined by members of Veterans for Peace outside of President Barack Obama's Iowa re-election campaign headquarters Saturday, calling on the president to end all foreign wars and cut the U.S. military budget in half.

Using the people-powered megaphone the Occupy movement calls a "mic check," some 35 protesters spoke with a unified voice.

"To fulfill the Occupy Wall Street movement's call to return our country's economic and political life back to the 99%, we will need a president who will make the dismantling of the U.S. military empire their number one foreign policy priority," they said.

Protesters had planned to commit an act of civil disobedience, by entering Obama's headquarters and staying put, but were thwarted because the campaign office was closed.

Rather than be discouraged, however, they said the closed office was a victory.

"We know this office is open on Saturdays ... they knew we were coming, and President Obama is afraid to deal with us," said Frank Cordaro, a protester.

A call to the main number at the Des Moines office was not answered on Saturday.

As the Iowa Caucus heats up, so too will the protests in and around Des Moines. The local Occupy movement says it expects hundreds of people from across the country to join its protests in what is being dubbed "Occupy the Caucuses."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/20 ... s-in-iowa/

[JackRiddler]

This is part of the protest that they're describing as "200" or "dozens"!



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[2012 Countdown]

Yeah, see, the CIA media is downplaying and trying everything to mock and undermine OWS, but it is a CIA/Soros OP. They are trying to destroy the movement they 'created'.

good video for crowds-


Uploaded by buzzvideo on Dec 17, 2011
Exhilerating. 77 year-old Episcopal Bishop George Packard inspires us all by being first over the fence around Duarte Square. OWS organizers built a pair of staircases that we disguised as signs during the march. Our celebration inside was short-lived but we made an impression.

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After the arrests inside the Trinity Church property, ows regrouped back at Duarte Park

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OWS Photo's photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/occupywall ... 531442511/

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later that evening...
#OWS hits midtown (42nd & Madison)

[Cedars of Overburden]

Thank you, Bishop Packard, not only for protesting, but for doing it while blessed obviously looking like a clergyman!

As for you, Presiding Bishop, Schori, there're a lot of reasons I don't go to church anymore. People like you are most of those reasons.

[elfismiles]

Earlier today a friend brought to my attention a novel by Gary Shteyngart that has some interesting Occupy parallels.

So just googled to see what's been said along those lines...

Super Sad True Love Story seemed to predict with eery accuracy some of the events in Occupy Wall Street - particularly the occupation of public parks by people concerned about income disparity. I would love to hear Mr. Shteyngart's take on the OWS movement and wether he thinks Adbusters may have read his book?

From dystopia to reality, via NYPD
Posted on November 18, 2011 by oddmanout215


Gary Shteyngart "Super Sad True Love Story" Part 4 of 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFtERtFhSd0

http://oddmanout215.wordpress.com/2011/ ... -via-nypd/

Anybody read this book?

[2012 Countdown]

8 Occupy protesters arrested at Iowa Democratic Party headquarters in Des Moines

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, December 19, 6:02 PM

DES MOINES, Iowa — Eight Occupy Iowa protesters have been arrested at the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters in Des Moines, where they protested measures being considered in Washington dealing with issues including defense spending, a planned oil pipeline and jobless benefits.

Twelve protesters entered the party headquarters Monday morning. A few hours later, eight were escorted away by police and placed into a van. Police say they will be cited with trespassing and released.

The arrests came two days after the protesters set up camp outside President Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters in Des Moines to demand he agree with them on the issues.

Protester Julie Brown says the goal wasn’t to get arrested but to bring attention to defense spending, plans for an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas and other matters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

[82_28]

Denver cops clear Occupy Denver; protesters set shelters aflame, then take to streets

At midnight today, they Tebowed.

Occupy Denver protesters took a knee at Broadway and West 13th Avenue as Denver police officers lined up at the Denver Public Library, corralling them after pressing them from their weeks-old encampment.

Officers arrived at 11:30 p.m. Monday to remove the shelters at the eastern edge of Civic Center. Police Chief Robert White had earlier warned the protestors their time was up to remove structures from the park on their own.

They'd be removed forcibly if need be.

When the Tebowing was over, "God Bless America" rang out before the crowd of about 40 protestors retreated south on Broadway, shouting pledges that the occupation was not over.

The clash had been intense and swift, with police shoving protestors and journalists alike with their batons, but it appeared only one protestor was taken into custody.

Afterwards, White said officers had hoped to ask the protestors a final time to remove their belongings, but when two prostestors began setting the shelters aflame, officers and firefighters had to move it.

A firetruck moved in to douse the flames as a battery of police closed ranks shouting, "Move back!" to allow firefighters access.

Police said two protestors were arrested on arson charges and two were arrested on charges of failing to obey a lawful order.

"We certainly respect their First Amendment rights and it wasn't our intention to infringe on those rights," White said in an impromptu press briefing. "But also value the rights of other citizens who live our community."

The shanties had lined the sidewalks along the east and west sides of Broadway near the park, making it difficult to pass.

A police spokesman was not immediately available early this morning to provide any information about possible reports of injuries sustained by protesters or police.

White had issued an ultimatum Monday afternoon to Occupy Denver protesters, saying
(The Denver Post)
that time was up and the city would forcibly dismantle their encampment near Civic Center at any moment.

The notice given at a meeting behind closed doors at police headquarters was the latest development in the battle between the Occupy Denver protesters and the city over the permanent demonstration on sidewalks that border Broadway between Colfax and 14th avenues.

Rumors of an impending clear-out swirled throughout the encampment late Monday night as some protesters milled about warming fires set inside trash cans while others quietly made off with their belongings across snow-dusted streets.

By 11:15 p.m., little more than dropping temperatures seemed to nip at the 30 or so people at the park's eastern edge. A helicopter roared by at about 11:20 p.m. Then at 11:25, several police cars blocked off Broadway. The removal was about to begin.

Protesters have built shelters, arranged tarps, set down sleeping bags and even tied a kayak to a tree, against violating a city ordinance that forbids "encumbrances" on public rights of way. They've tried to state their case in federal court, to no avail.

"A decision was made that that needs to occur. They were asked to do it. And they decided they weren't going to do it," White said earlier Monday. "Now it is on us to make that happen."

The protesters left the meeting disgusted, calling the meeting "incredibly unproductive" and asking if they could take the crackers, fruits and veggie trays that were provided back to their protest.

Said White: "Of course."

Patricia Hughes splits her time between Occupy Denver and being a nurse. She said the structures are shelters for people with nowhere else to go.

"You take away the structures, you are sentencing people to death," she said.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_19583654

[2012 Countdown]

Occupy The XBox: New Tom Clancy Video Game Targets Wall Street Fat Cats

Tom Clancy can certainly count himself among the 1 percent. But the newest edition of his long-running video game series, Rainbow Six, has operatives gunning down Wall Street fat cats in a action packed extension of Occupy Wall Street.

It’s bizarre to see a man who blamed September 11th on on left wing politician, a card-carrying member of the NRA, tapping into the #OWS zeitgeist with a revenge fantasy against American bankers.
“This is for the jobs you’ve streamlined, the debts you collected,” intones the game’s trailer, as a banker in suit and tie heads to his office in a New York skyscraper. “This is for the homes you foreclosed on, the bailouts you took. We are the true patriots.”

At this point in the video a team of terrorists kicks down the door and murders a Jamie Dimon-looking executive. “You may not answer to the governments, but you will answer to us.”

Players are actually supposed to be protecting the bankers from a group of radical OWS terrorists. But the trailer doesn’t make this clear, and the fans commenting on the video seem to empathize with the bad guys.

“I hope you get to play as the terrorists in this game,” writes one viewer on the game’s YouTube trailer. “At least, you know, massacring bankers.”

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http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/13/occu ... -fat-cats/

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@paraicobrien
Paraic O'Brien
#occupylsx are driving to their NEW 4th occupation through the city in a small tank! #ows pic.twitter.com/21DuScOJ

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Occupy London to put the one per cent on trial as it brings abandoned court back to life
Posted on December 20, 2011 by occupylsx
As Occupy London Stock Exchange occupation prepares to present its case at the High Court today, Occupy London supporters have liberated a disused court house – Old Street Magistrate’s Court – in London‘s East End alongside a group of military veterans, Occupy Veterans.

The opening of Occupy London’s fourth occupation, will see the movement conducting “trials of the one per cent” in the abandoned magistrate’s court building which has lain empty since 1996, despite its prime location and grade II listing.

More information about this abandoned magistrate’s court can be found at http://www.mpa.gov.uk/committees/mpa/2005/050224/10 /.

http://occupylsx.org/?p=2597

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Occupy London liberates abandoned East End magistrate’s court to put the one per cent on trial
Posted on December 20, 2011 by occupylsx

As the Occupy London Stock Exchange (OccupyLSX) occupation prepares to present its case at the High Court today, members of Occupy London alongside a group of military veterans – Occupy Veterans – have liberated a disused court house in London’s East End. The opening of Occupy London’s fourth occupation, will see the movement conducting “trials of the one per cent” in an abandoned magistrate’s court building which has lain empty since 1996, despite its prime location and grade II listing. <1>
The occupation of the Old Street Magistrate’s Court (335-337 Old Street, London Borough of Hackney), now renamed Occupy Justice, took place early on Tuesday morning. It was opened by Occupy London supporters and Occupy Veterans coming together led by the Occupy London’s ‘Tank of Ideas’, the movement’s armoured peace vehicle.

The new residents, who include members of Occupy Veterans – a group of former and active-duty servicemen and women drawn from the 99 per cent – have pledged to maintain a residence at the courthouse, to take good care of the building and to provide daytime use of the facilities for Occupy London to put the one per cent on trial. The residents have already spoken with the various stakeholders of the building and are looking to develop an open dialogue.

This fourth occupation joins the existing OccupyLSX camp by St Paul’s Cathedral, the Finsbury Square occupation and the Bank of Ideas, the abandoned multi million pound office complex of UBS on Sun Street, which Occupy London liberated in an act of ‘public reposession’ – now a thriving arts and community centre.

The one per cent on trial at Occupy Justice



Continue reading →

http://occupylsx.org/

[Hammer of Los]

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Thank you, Bishop Packard, not only for protesting, but for doing it while blessed obviously looking like a clergyman!

I couldn't agree more, Cedars of Overburden.

If push comes to shove, and I ever feel that I have no option but to take part in a public demonstration, I would do it dressed in a robe looking to all the world like some sort of monk.



If the good men of the cloth, the good men of the Churches would side with the people, they would make good allies.

ps Thanks for all the great links 2012countdown. You are a marvel! I'm reading your links now, good stuff.




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[2012 Countdown]

Thanks for the kind words Hammer, but I too am very appreciative of all the others who are contributing. Most of all though, to those out there trying to change the world. I love you all.


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I'd mentioned Pool's occucopter beforte. It is ready to go!
I will be putting this in the drone thread too-

Occupy Wall Street's 'occucopter' – who's watching whom?
Tim Pool's citizen drone that keeps tabs on the police may lift protesters' spirits, but it could lead to a surveillance nightmare
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 December 2011 07.46 EST

The police may soon be watching you in your garden picking your vegetables or your bottom. As police plans for increasing unmanned aerial surveillance take shape, there is a new twist. Private citizens can now buy their own surveillance drones to watch the police.


This week in New York, Occupy Wall Street protesters have a new toy to help them expose potentially dubious actions of the New York police department. In response to constant police surveillance, police violence and thousands of arrests, Occupy Wall Street protesters and legal observers have been turning their cameras back on the police. But police have sometimes made filming difficult through physical obstruction and "frozen zones". This occurred most notably during the eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, where police prevented even credentialed journalists from entering.


Now the protesters are fighting back with their own surveillance drone. Tim Pool, an Occupy Wall Street protester, has acquired a Parrot AR drone he amusingly calls the "occucopter". It is a lightweight four-rotor helicopter that you can buy cheaply on Amazon and control with your iPhone. It has an onboard camera so that you can view everything on your phone that it points at. Pool has modified the software to stream live video to the internet so that we can watch the action as it unfolds. You can see video clips of his first experiments here. He told us that the reason he is doing this "comes back to giving ordinary people the same tools that these multimillion-dollar news corporations have. It provides a clever loophole around certain restrictions such as when the police block press from taking shots of an incident."


Pool is attempting to police-proof the device: "We are trying to get a stable live feed so you can have 50 people controlling it in series. If the cops see you controlling it from a computer they can shut you down, but then control could automatically switch to someone else."


This is clever stuff and it doesn't stop there. He is also working on a 3G controller so that "you could even control the occucopter in New York from Sheffield in England". We asked him if he was concerned about police shooting it down. "No," he said firmly. "They can't just fire a weapon in the air because it could seriously hurt someone. They would have no excuse because the occucopter is strictly not illegal. Their only recourse would be to make it illegal, but it is only a toy and so they might as well make the press illegal – they have already arrested 30 journalists here."

full-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... CMP=twt_gu

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Wednesday Dec 21, 2011 9:02 am
Battlefield Occupy
By Allison Kilkenny

Over the course of the past three months, Occupy camps nationwide have been the scenes of sometimes brutal crackdowns by police on protesters, who have tried to exercise their First Amendment rights to gather and express themselves.

The raids have also permitted officers to experiment with their favorite toys of suppression. The use of pepper spray, rubber bullets, tasers, flash bang grenades, tanks (see: Occupy Tampa,) tear gas, and batons are familiar sights to most Occupiers by now.

NYPD used a Long-Range Acoustic Device, commonly known as a sound cannon, primarily as a "communication device" even though the LRAD can easily damage hearing. The LRAD was also used during a raid at Occupy LA.

For more than 90 days, some protesters desperately clung to the world's most uneven battlefield in which police officers, armed with millions of dollars worth of weaponry -- sometimes purchased with funding from the big banks themselves -- repeatedly raided their camps.

And contrary to what the new Batman trailer might claim, Occupiers aren't armed to the teeth with assault firearms. In other words, this is far from a fair fight. The best OWS can hope for is some entrepreneuring mind to come along and help them gain a strategical edge against police forces sporting the latest in cutting edge surveillance equipment.

Tim Pool, an OWS protester, has acquired a Parrot AR drone he calls the "occucopter."

It is a lightweight four-rotor helicopter that you can buy cheaply on Amazon and control with your iPhone. It has an onboard camera so that you can view everything on your phone that it points at. Pool has modified the software to stream live video to the internet so that we can watch the action as it unfolds. You can see video clips of his first experiments here. He told us that the reason he is doing this "comes back to giving ordinary people the same tools that these multimillion-dollar news corporations have. It provides a clever loophole around certain restrictions such as when the police block press from taking shots of an incident."

Pool is attempting to police-proof the device: "We are trying to get a stable live feed so you can have 50 people controlling it in series. If the cops see you controlling it from a computer they can shut you down, but then control could automatically switch to someone else."

Pool is now working on a 3G controller so that "you could even control the occucopter in New York from Sheffield in England." He believes, perhaps naively, that the NYPD won't destroy the drone because "they can't just fire a weapon in the air because it could seriously hurt someone."

The idea behind all of this is to -- at the risk of making a second comic book reference in the span of a single article -- watch the Watchmen. Police hold an advantage over protesters because they are able to monitor their every waking moment. Now, Occupy has a small, modest way to watch them back.

However, as the race to militarize police rushes forward, Occupiers will find it impossible to compete with forces that are being rapidly armed with the latest tools in crowd suppression.

For example, sound cannon sales are booming following their deployments at OWS and G-20 protests.

More U.S. police and emergency-response agencies are using the so-called Long-Range Acoustic Devices instead of megaphones or conventional loudspeakers for crowd control, according to news reports and leading manufacturer LRAD Corp. of San Diego.

Then there's the invention of new, terrifying-sounding weaponry, which if sold to police forces, will no doubt first be tested on protesters -- because this stuff is always tested on protesters first -- in the laboratory known as Occupy.

It's not the first crowd control tool to use sound waves, but Raytheon's patent for a new type of riot shield that produces low frequency sound waves to disrupt the respiratory tract and hinder breathing, sounds a little scary.

Crowd control tools like the LRAD Sound Cannon emit bursts of loud and annoying sounds that can induce headaches and nausea. But Raytheon's non-lethal pressure shield creates a pulsed pressure wave that resonates the upper respiratory tract of a human, hindering breathing and eventually incapacitating the target. The patent points out that the sound waves being generated are actually not that powerful, so while protestors might collapse from a lack of oxygen reaching their brains, their eardrums won't be damaged in the process. Phew!

These shields can be networked together to form one big, giant acoustical horn, which vastly improves their "range, power, and effectiveness."

We don't yet know the long-term health consequences of finding one's self on the wrong side of these shields, but Raytheon is, of course, stressing the non-lethalness of its new product - as the makers of LRADS, tasers, and pepper spray all stress the non-lethalness of their merchandise.

Although, to his credit, Kamran Loghman, the expert who developed pepper-spray, expressed shock at how police have used the spray against non-violent Occupy protesters.

Of course, when a "battlefield" is this uneven -- one side holding all the weapons, and the other side possessing only a meager attempt at surveillance (a single drone, Twitter, livestreams, etc.) -- Occupy obviously couldn't match the brute strength of police, which is why the major camps are gone now and the movement has gone "underground."

Occupy actions still exist, but they are now indoor occupations performed by splinter cells. Thus far, the plan appears to be continued resistance until the warmer months when OWS can regroup and surge forth again.

http://inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/ ... eld_occupy

[2012 Countdown]

Occupy Wall Street: The Lego "Civil Unrest" Set



Uploaded by slatester on Dec 20, 2011
After months of demonstrations by the Occupy Wall Street movement, Slate V imagines a special edition Lego set just in time for the holidays.


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Gingrich 'Mic Checked' at University of Iowa



Uploaded by joshpnw2 on Dec 21, 2011
Before beginning a campaign event in a packed lecture hall at the University of Iowa, Newt Gingrich was interrupted by Occupy Wall Street protesters.

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Bankers, Billionaires Try to Form Movement Against OWS

—By Asawin Suebsaeng| Wed Dec. 21, 2011 9:47 AM PST


Whaddaya know? It seems the rich now want to eat the folks who want to eat the rich. Wrap your head around this Bloomberg report:

Jamie Dimon, the highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. banks, turned a question at an investors' conference in New York this month into an occasion to defend wealth.

"Acting like everyone who's been successful is bad and because you're rich you're bad, I don't understand it," the JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO told an audience member who asked about hostility toward bankers. "Sometimes there's a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole."

Dimon, 55, whose 2010 compensation was $23 million, joined billionaires including hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Home Depot Inc. (HD) co-founder Bernard Marcus in using speeches, open letters and television appearances to defend themselves and the richest 1 percent of the population targeted by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.

If successful businesspeople don't go public to share their stories and talk about their troubles, "they deserve what they're going to get," said Marcus, 82, a founding member of Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit that develops talking points and op-ed pieces aimed at "shaping the national agenda…"

Several irate members of the Job Creators Alliance were interviewed for this piece and discussed how upset they are about Dodd-Frank, OWS agitators, and populist rhetoric coming from the left. "Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let's call it an attack on the very productive," John A. Allison IV, a director of BB&T Corp. (BBT) and a professor at Wake Forest University's business school, told Bloomberg. "This attack is destructive."

The fact that hedge fund managers and politically active gazillionaires are trying to organize a forceful push-back against Occupy Wall Street isn't all that surprising; what is somewhat surprising is how little Max Abelson, the author of the Bloomberg story, bothers to hide his disdain for his interview subjects. Virtually every dickish quote from a corporate counter-protester is undermined by the clause or sentence immediately following it. Read how the piece doubles as a crash course in unintentional lulz:

"If I hear a politician use the term 'paying your fair share' one more time, I'm going to vomit," said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.

Ken Langone, 76, [a] Home Depot co-founder and chairman of the NYU Langone Medical Center, said he isn't embarrassed by his success.

"I am a fat cat, I'm not ashamed," he said last week in a telephone interview from a dressing room in his Upper East Side home. "If you mean by fat cat that I've succeeded, yeah, then I'm a fat cat. I stand guilty of being a fat cat."

It gets worse.

full-
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/12/ban ... all-street

[2012 Countdown]

Uploaded by RTAmerica on Dec 21, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street movement has experienced severe crackdowns nationwide. Many of the occupiers suspect the CIA has been aiding local law enforcement to try to thwart the movement. The Partnership for Civil Justice filed a Freedom of Information Act request to try to see if the CIA was involved in the OWS crackdowns, but the PCJF was denied the information. Is the CIA covering up evidence? Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, joins us.

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Greg Palast: Our Photographer - and His Lens - Busted at Occupy
http://www.truth-out.org/our-photograph ... 1324416856

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Carl Schweser, Former Finance Department Chair, Joins Occupy Wall Street Movement
First Posted: 12/21/11 01:30 PM ET

Carl Schweser made his money teaching people how to be a part of Wall Street. Now he's spending his retirement fighting against it.

The 68-year-old former chair of the University of Iowa's finance department said that throughout his career he began to see evidence that financial institutions had stopped doing their job and that government regulators weren't doing enough to keep them in check. But it wasn't until the financial crisis of 2008 that he began to fully understand the magnitude of what was happening.

"I taught investments and fixed-income securities and I remembered in all the books on the first day of class it would say the function of the corporation is to maximize the wealth of the stockholder," Schweser said in an interview earlier this month. "But if you look at how everything is set up as a stock holder, you have no control. In effect the major stockholders and management are working for themselves."

Though he may not have much in common with most of the protesters who started gathering in his hometown of Iowa City shortly after the Occupy Wall Street protests began in Zuccotti Park, Schweser said their concerns resonated with him, prompting him to head down to the park in Iowa City to investigate. Schweser, who made millions as the founder of a test prep program that was ultimately bought by Kaplan, is one of many people who have joined the protesters or supported the 99 percent in some fashion.


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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/1 ... tml?ref=tw

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fyi, I understand Jan 17th will be big. occupy.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

Cities that broke up Occupy camps now face lawsuits over free speech, use of force

Most major Occupy encampments have been dispersed, but they live on in a flurry of lawsuits in which protesters are asserting their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly and challenging authorities’ mass arrests and use of force to break up tent cities.

Lawyers representing protesters have filed lawsuits — or are planning them — in state and federal courts from coast to coast, challenging eviction orders and what they call heavy-handed police tactics and the banning of demonstrators from public properties.

Some say the fundamental right of protest has been criminalized in places, with protesters facing arrest and charges while doing nothing more than exercising protected rights to demonstrate.

“When I think about the tents as an expression of the First Amendment here, I compare it to Tahrir Square in Egypt,” said Carol Sobel, co-chairwoman of the National Lawyers Guild’s Mass Defense Committee.

“Our government is outraged when military forces and those governments come down on the demonstrators. But they won’t extend the same rights in this country,” she said. “They praise that as a fight for democracy, the values we treasure. It comes here and these people are riffraff.”

A handful of protesters began camping out in September in a lower Manhattan plaza, demanding an end to corporate excess and income inequality, and were soon joined by scores of others who set up tents and remained around the clock. Similar camps sprang up in dozens of cities nationwide and around the world, but patience wore thin, and many camps — including the flagship at Zuccotti Park and in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore. — were forcibly cleared.

Public officials and police unions have generally defended moves to break up the camps, citing health and safety concerns. They also said that responding to problems at Occupy encampments was draining crime-fighting resources.

Protester lawsuits are now beginning to wend their way through the legal system, and attorneys say more are likely on the way.

The National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California sued the Oakland Police Department in federal court in November, saying police and other agencies violated demonstrators’ Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force — including “flash-bang” grenades — against demonstrators who posed no safety threat. The suit says officials also violated their First Amendment rights to assemble and demonstrate.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan on Wednesday announced an independent investigation into the police response.

In Austin, Texas, this week, a federal judge has been hearing the case of two Occupy protesters who were arrested and later barred from City Hall under a policy their attorneys call overly broad and say amounts to a ban on speech. The Texas Civil Rights Project says around 106 people have been banned since the protests began, in some cases for up to a year. The policy says a criminal trespass notice may be issued for “unreasonably disruptive” conduct.

Yvette Felarca is among those suing campus police and administration officials at the University of California, Berkeley, after officers forcefully dispersed a group of Occupy protesters and others rallying for public education last month.

Felarca, a middle school teacher and organizer with the civil rights organization By Any Means Necessary, which filed the suit, says she was standing, arms linked with other demonstrators’, before a line of police officers who moved in after some tents were set up on a lawn. She said she was chanting and yelling when a police officer hit her in the throat with his baton. She said she was also hit in her ribs, abdomen and back and watched others bear repeated blows.

“The brutality was absolutely designed to chill the speech of students in the movement and literally try to beat and terrorize our right to criticize, to think critically and to act on that criticism,” Felarca said.

The university has called it “disconcerting” that the suit contains “so many inaccuracies.”

Sobel, of the National Lawyers Guild, said a lawsuit is also planned in the case of the pepper-spraying by campus police of peaceful protesters at the University of California, Davis, video footage of which went viral.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the lawsuits an important check on police power. She noted that authorities haven’t been uniformly excessive around the country, but pointed in New York City to mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge — which are under litigation — as well as the pepper-spraying of several women and the dark-of-night breakup of Zuccotti Park.

She said that her group has been concerned for years about police tactics, but that the response to the Occupy movement shines a light on them in a way that “engages and offends a new sector of the public.”

She predicted there will be other lawsuits about excessive force, civil rights violations and mostly likely people’s rights to get back into Zuccotti, which she said police have blocked from public usage with their pens.

“I think what’s been happening with Occupy is so reminiscent of what happened during the Republican National Convention” in 2008, she said. “When people get together to engage in that most American of pastimes — protest — it almost always generates a defensive and repressive response from law enforcement. Occupy is no exception.”

Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn., said police overreacted to the Occupy movement in some cities, which probably earned protesters some new support. Still, he noted, protesters’ First Amendment rights are not without limitation.

“We’ve always had to balance our rights,” he said. “No one can really claim you have an unfettered unlimited First Amendment rights. The courts are there to say, wait a minute, that goes too far, or that’s OK. It is part of that give and take. Of course we all wish our rights were never intruded upon.”