#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[2012 Countdown]

Good flicker photo album-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ari/615723 ... otostream/

[JackRiddler]

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I have no idea what's happened in the last few hours, however here is my report...

By around 3 or 4 pm the manifestation had moved to the small park (a block's worth) bordered by Liberty and Trininty, at a corner of WTC, below the Black Tower of Finance. With everyone gathered there our numbers were up to about 1000 people. Here was an open mike (at relatively low volume, given the lack of a sound permit) with some RI-worthy speaking. There were two assemblies running, as well as food and at one point a non-denominational worship with these kids in monk outfits. The energy was better, I must say, than the earlier straight-demo feel at Bowling Green. This was a new feeling, a new mode for protests in this city. We can only hope it grows. I'm very glad this is happening, it is infinitely better than nothing. My bones are a touch worn these days, I could not stay past 6. Until then the cops were hands-off but well-deployed for a later move (all-parks curfew is 11 pm, I believe). You couldn't see the surveillance copter from where we stood, but it was loud and a pain!

I have no idea how it's going as we approach 11 pm. It wasn't enough of a mass to occupy Wall St. today, but these kids make me hopeful that this is a beginning. This idea should back off from immediate occupation and try to catch on, to get bigger every weekend, also visit different locations along the way, Union Square, Times Square, Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens, until we can really begin to speak of a Tahrir (it also took a long time in Egypt).

What else did I see? Roseanne Barr speaking (quite well, and with a few on the edge doing fan-orgasms). A big truck painted with "Wikileaks" and "Free Bradley Manning." Some great rants from the mike. A real Christian kid (you'll know what I mean if you've followed my posts) convinced the group could and would stay overnight (I don't know!). He had been part of Bloombergville, but this is different because it's aiming to shut down the banksters' business. A LaRouche chorus did a song a capella about the need to restore Glass-Steagal (excellent orchestration, gotta give them that, and lots of youth and energy, they always amaze me that way). A goodly number of Anonymous masks after all, the crowd became less WWP-dominated as the day went on. Fucking Luke Rudkowski striking poses. Committed Ron Paul campaigners. Kids who wanted to go on the mike and explain fractional reserve banking as sin, though you'd learn more from the Wikipedia entry, honestly. A "Socialist Libertarian" from the Aaron Burr Society who said, "Don't end the Fed, nationalize it!" Some relatively unconscious but highly energetic white boys, of the kind I love. A young black woman asking who here goes to college (many) and then asking where the college custodial personell are. Sarcastic signs from what I figure was the Reason Mag contingent ("Capitalism fired everyone except my parents, and they gave me money to stand around here.") Aron Kay the pie man, getting ancient. A few others I'd recognize from other events, one good friend. Many new and young faces. Many more people than I have described here. A whole bunch of surplus peanut butter and bagels, possibly dumpster-dived and I have no problem with that.

These being my impressions, thanks for reading... JR

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[elfismiles]

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I have no idea what's happened in the last few hours, however here is my report...

<snip>

These being my impressions, thanks for reading... JR

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And thanks for posting!

And thanks to all those who went and especially for those who are still there!

So, how was the brunch meetup? Wasn't this the first time most of your RigInters met face to face?

- SMiles

[AlicetheKurious]

Where was the organizing and the presence in the city itself? Who made an effort to get the message out to the unemployed, the poor, workers, antiwar groups, residents, all your populations that have a stake in this?

[Project Willow]

Great photos. Thanks JR for the report.

Last week I informed a group of artists (nearly all mainstream lefties) about the action and, they laughed.

I hope it grows, not the laughter, but the action today.

[jam.fuse]

[2012 Countdown]

Good morning...




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Another excellent photo album-



album link-
http://twitrpix.com/gtfn

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Protestors joined by social media rail against Wall St. greed - forcing NYPD to lock down streets

BY MATTHEW DELUCA AND JONATHAN LEMIRE
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Saturday, September 17th 2011, 8:06 PM

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/201 ... z1YJGF31le

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globalrevolution
This channel will feature live streams from global non violent revolution spreading across the globe, with the first broadcasts from Wall Street Occupation in NYC that will start on Saturday, September 17, 2011. The channel will also feature live stream from solidarity protests and events in Spain, Greece, France, Belgium, Iceland and other places around the gblobe

Live Video Reports and Content about the Global Revolution which started with the North African Spring, and is extending to every country around the World.

http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

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Results for #occupywallstreet
http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/% ... wallstreet

[JackRiddler]

Where was the organizing and the presence in the city itself? Who made an effort to get the message out to the unemployed, the poor, workers, antiwar groups, residents, all your populations that have a stake in this?

With a good feeling from the protest yesterday, I'm more confident that it will endure -- not "occupy Wall Street" on this round, but keep coming back and getting bigger -- and that word of it will spread from the initial group. At the very least, this initial group can create enormous visual presence around the city through stickers and posters, and keep coming back stronger every weekend.

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[Bruce Dazzling]

Where was the organizing and the presence in the city itself? Who made an effort to get the message out to the unemployed, the poor, workers, antiwar groups, residents, all your populations that have a stake in this?

With a good feeling from the protest yesterday, I'm more confident that it will endure -- not "occupy Wall Street" on this round, but keep coming back and getting bigger -- and that word of it will spread from the initial group. At the very least, this initial group can create enormous visual presence around the city through stickers and posters, and keep coming back stronger every weekend.

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I just stopped by for a few minutes and I'm sorry to report that there are only around 200 people remaining.

I echo Jack, though, in that I felt a lot of positive energy emanating from the group yesterday and today. Most of them seem to have their heads and their hearts in the right place, and on top of that, the majority are young enough to stick it out, and at the very least, raise visibility and awareness so that this might be built upon in the coming weeks and months.

Since I work right next to the general assembly area for the protest, I'll stop by in the morning, lunch, and early evenings to suss out the situation for as long as it goes on.

[Nordic]

do the protestors who are there have some kind of a public page where they can be encouraged by people like me who cannot be there?

[elfismiles]

We'll see if this pans out ... I've got more dope than hope.

Sep 18, 3:44 AM EDT

Obama to seek a new tax rate for wealthy
By JIM KUHNHENN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is expected to seek a new base tax rate for the wealthy to ensure that millionaires pay at least at the same percentage as middle income taxpayers.

A White House official said the proposal would be included in the president's proposal for long term deficit reduction that he will announce Monday. The official spoke anonymously because the plan has not been officially announced.

Obama is going to call it the "Buffett Rule" for Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained that rich people like him pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than middle-class taxpayers.

Buffett wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece last month that he and his rich friends "have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress."

The measure would be in addition to $447 billion in new tax revenue that Obama is seeking to pay for his short-term spending and tax cutting plan to jump start the economy.

House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday he would oppose tax increases to reduce the deficit. Boehner has urged Congress' deficit "supercommittee" to lay the groundwork for a broad overhaul of the U.S. tax code.

The panel has almost unlimited authority to recommend changes in federal spending and taxes and is working against a deadline of Nov. 23.

Boehner said the panel has "only one option, spending cuts and entitlement reforms," a reference to government benefit programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Any broad compromise that clears the bipartisan committee is almost certain to require Democratic agreement to savings from programs such as Social Security and Medicare, along with Republican acquiescence to additional revenues, although any such trade-offs are rarely discussed openly until the last possible moment in negotiations.

Obama's new tax proposal was first reported by the New York Times.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_TAXES

[JackRiddler]

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Just a visual presence around the city in the form of stickers and knowledge that it's there means that people will know where to go if there's a sudden event making thousands want to protest. It's likely to happen repeatedly with the official recession about to resume and so many new acts of class warfare already scheduled for us.

If a program on the kiss principle should have three points, I'd think:

Debt Relief for Real People
Tax Wall Street, Tax the Rich
End the Wars, Spend on People

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[AlicetheKurious]

These things take time to build, and the effect is cumulative. The key benefit of such a protest, I think, is that it can start to reverse the fragmentation that any oppressor needs to promote in order to maintain control. Just getting people out of their little enclaves and providing them with an opportunity to talk to each other face to face is a concrete step in the right direction. The more diverse the people, the better. But the worst thing that can happen is for the protesters to make it easy to label them as one narrow category of people and thus make their demands irrelevant to other categories.

It's inescapable: those who wish to spark a revolution must prove themselves capable of inspiring others to identify with them and to respect them. They must be a vanguard in the truest sense, able to articulate our deepest hopes and desires and at the same time spark a genuine belief in the rest of us that such hopes and desires can actually be achieved. We all instinctively need to be inspired, and oppressors try to neutralize this need with frankenstein religions or lofty-sounding ideologies tailor-made to promote our helplessness and their power over us. In reality, the oppressors promote fragmentation, energy drains, petty selfishness, cynicism and fear because they know that when citizens feel a sense of belonging and allow themselves to collectively embrace "old-fashioned" values such as honor, justice, courage on behalf of the truth and of their fellow humans, they are impossible to enslave. All tyrants use the same tools, and without them, they are helpless.

Bringing protesters out into the street is a good step, but that in itself means nothing unless it inspires real solidarity and admiration among those who are sitting at home, and propels them out of themselves. The vanguard must be easy for ordinary people to identify with, and at the same time be smarter, more creative, braver, and more powerful by far. Its members must demonstrate that together they are much greater than the sum of their parts, and capable of doing things that ordinary individuals can only dream of doing. They must be full of surprises. They must also be liked, and have a sharp sense of humor. In short, they must manifest genuine leadership qualities, while at the same time being almost impossible to identify as individuals, making them very difficult to co-opt, infiltrate or destroy, because they are represented by very specific objectives and values, not persons.

Young white college students carrying signs that proclaim that they are poor and oppressed does not inspire solidarity among the masses of non-white inner-city dwellers, for whom, regardless of the truth, these are simply spoiled members of the elite feeling sorry for themselves. I'm not saying it's fair, but it's more likely to inspire contempt than respect and a desire to join their struggle, let alone demonstrate how this can accomplish real change.

Thus, protesting on the streets by itself will accomplish nothing. There must also be spectacular feats that erode the illusion of invincibility that the oppressor has so carefully constructed, and the illusion of ordinary people's helplessness. These feats must be carefully designed to demonstrate the revolution's genuine identification with the oppressed and the victims of injustice, especially among those who are disenfranchised and who have abandoned hope -- it is these groups that have the greatest untapped potential for generating real change, if only they could be mobilized and empowered to break the walls of their cage. The feats must be above all altruistic and admirable and symbolize the ethics and morality which the vanguard espouses.

Anonymous provides one model for this kind of action, using anonymity and ubiquity combined with a concrete ability to inflict real damage against the other side. Surely there are many experts in other fields who can be catalyzed to act in a similar way, within a loosely based organization with certain clearly-defined values and objectives at its core. All individuals have something to contribute, and they must be inspired to contribute it, whether they are accountants or lawyers or doctors or sanitary workers or teachers or musicians or film-makers even gang members or unemployed. The key is to replace helplessness with a sense of purpose and empowerment. The "V" masks should be symbolic, representing the common aspirations of the "99%". Messages and news can be publicly issued, via the internet or otherwise, leaving it up to the masses to join in a collective action or not, according to each individual's conscience or level of awareness. With action, lessons can be learned and methods adjusted. With each success, momentum and confidence are built.

One of the most powerful tools in the hands of oppressors in what is by definition asymetric warfare is their own unity and solidarity and collective monopoly of power, their capacity to terrorize, to isolate, to single out and punish dissidents, who have no means to defend themselves. Each one serves as an example, and reinforces the message that we the people are helpless and will be abandoned should we refuse to toe the line, or even if we become designated expendable or "superfluous persons" or obstacles to elite goals. It is this message, above all, that must be countered, as effectively and dramatically as possible, without providing the oppressor with an identifiable enemy beyond "the people". Shock and awe, as it were, but without the blood and mangled limbs.

The question remains, of course: when push comes to shove and the lines are finally drawn, will the protestors on Wall Street today actually identify with the "99%", or will they rush frantically to cling to the "1%" and beg to be brought back into the fold? This is the question that the vanguard needs to answer before there can be anything resembling real change.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. - Thomas Jefferson

I wrote down these thoughts as they came to me, and wanted to communicate them. Forgive me if you find it self-indulgent, but I feel that we are rapidly nearing an impasse and am trying to think of a way out, even if only to understand.

[wintler2]

Thanks for communicating your thoughts AtK, they cast a beautiful light, clear and sharp.

[Bruce Dazzling]

I just stopped by the protest and there are about 200 people sticking it out.

Here are some quick and dirty cell phone pics:





Drawing the interest of some tourists:



And a taste of the police presence:



If you look all the way to the end of the above pic, you'll see one of these fancy new portable surveillance towers: