#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[Harvey]

Surely this presents an opportunity to market a line of "Class Warrior" clothing . . .

Classless warrior maybe?

[Project Willow]

Seatown pics:

[Elvis]

There were clashes between the more staid members and elements of the black block who decided the streets must be taken. Our minute contingent left before any conflict with police could ensue (and before we could be arrested).

It is my studied opinion that the Seattle group is half directed by provocateurs and/or young people with mal-adaptive authoritarian bents and unfortunately they are steering it to ruin.

Thanks for the report, Willow. Re: the above, let's review what the aim here is---and this debated of course---the aim ought to be to garner support from "Main Street" because the effort will go nowhere without them. In my view, that means vociferous demonstration but peaceful and even polite behavior. We're not trying to shut down Main Street, we want Main Street to shut down Wall Street.

If people in the neighborhood need to sleep at 1am, it's just impolite to bang loud drums all night long. (There was a point last week, after long hours of hard work plus participating across the street, I was totally exhausted and really needed sleep yet the drums and chats boomed away at 2am. I jokingly muttered to myself, "Oh FFS, get a job!")

The media, and police and other officials, will jump at any chance to discredit the protests, so let's not give them the opportunity. Remember Rule #1: "...Zero tolerance for any violence whatsoever, including verbal."

Don't get me wrong, there's a time and place for disruptive civil disobedience, but my feeling is, that for Seattle at least, this is not it.

I'm interested in any feedback on what I just said. Am I just too shy of conflict? Or is this the wise course?

I'm going to try to get my 76-year-old mother to come down to Westlake, and I think she might do it. She's mad about Geithner, Bernanke and the whole gang but she's not going to riot over it.

Meanwhile, my ride is set for tomorrow morning and I should be at 4th Avenue about 11:30am.
I'll probably want/need to help at the store across the street for a short while but I plan to have the rest of the day free. I should be able to use a phone and call you so we can meet up.

[82_28]

A second-hand report from Seattle:

Just talked by phone to my boss (a friend, first, really) who is working right across the street from Westlake.

Following a march with the union folks, he says the crowds are larger than ever.

Arrrgh! I'm stuck here 100 miles away until I get a ride in the morning. I assume Project Willow is there, hopefully along with some other RI'ers.

He says the mood is different than he's seen so far, a certain intensity. He says the crowd has moved into 4th Avenue, taking up most of the street. I could hear the drums and chanting over the phone. (He says that, surprisingly, business at the costume shop picked up after the protesters returned from the march and blocked the street.)

He says the police are being very cool, but that just one un-cool reckless act (by either 'side') could set off an ugly fracas.

I looked on Twitter for current reports but I still am a little bewildered by Twitter. Nothing breaking at occupyseattle.org. Maybe there's some live feed, I'll look, and hope my lame connection can stream it (is stream the right word?)

Anyway---I'm anxious to return to the scene and plan to be there tomorrow, Sunday.

Yo, Elvis, I rolled down there tonight on my way to radio duties. I looked and looked for you, willow, twyla etc. No dice. It was somewhat late, maybe 8ish. I hung out and took it in for about thirty minutes. You described yourself as somewhat "charles manson" lookingish. I did go up to a guy and ask him if he worked in a Halloween shop. Alas, twas not you.

Impressions:

I am impressed with the dedication, yet the dedication is what also somewhat scares me. I then realized this "fear" is exactly how its supposed to feel if any kind of toppling of empire is to ever happen ever. I channeled PKD, as it were, (not really) and noted that this is what it is. It can only go forward, backward, up, down or traverse time from this point on. I noted that it was THE TIME being put into this that was what was most impressive. Most importantly however, was the sanity.

I felt the sanity in a miasma of downtown insanity. On the bus to the station I noted that for us yokels, the real 99% is kinda sorta, a bunch of fucked up people, up and down the line. Addicts, desperate, aimless and quite frankly completely devoid of any kind of education or care that they ostensibly attended said education. Just desperation and addiction is what I saw and then on into the people who just ignore them the best they can.

What is there to do?

I know it's just one day out of the year, but I am going to be volunteering this thanksgiving. Already set up. Yet why one day? I can't volunteer or "occupy" shit my entire life in this system. We can't say "latez yo" to those about to give up. But the 99% are those who have given the fuck up and will never be any help to the movement. They're everywhere, completely googly-eyed. Do we just let them go? How can we help them?

This country is so fucked in so many ways.

You can help them, feed them, clothe them. Yet how in the fuck do you turn them back onto life? How do you turn them into philosophers and artists and those trained in the sciences and ethics? You literally can't!

There is nothing, full stop, that can be done because of rightist policies that have completely hollowed out every last bastion of decency in this country. As the "left wing" Democrats of this country try to hold onto what was once real, the party's power has somehow moved further to the right than its own adversaries. Yet, the decency, this is what I hold fast to. We need fucking decency.

This has to be a movement that is all inclusive. I just don't know if it's gonna work.

I got into an argument and had to ultimately back off from my tone I was using with a dude tonight. He said this shit needs a leader and a fucking platform. I said, it does not need any of the sort. No leaders, no platform, no clue, just us.

Fuck this shit.

If you give a shit AT ALL, then keep your eyes peeled and pay attention and support in your heart, for now. Everybody wants everything so motherfucking defined. Quit defining shit! The lack of definition is its strength. The all inclusiveness is its strength. All of the above are its weaknesses. There is something there, there is something here.

I was brought to semi tears watching the people, just like me, do something so seemingly futile tonight in my modern and perpetually networked happenstance life. Let's not make it futile. Let us do something, anything.

Always remember though, to defeat a portion of the empire is to become that same part. (that's the part that makes me think, right here, right now, this cannot be done, with or without objectives)

[Elvis]

Hi 82, I wasn't there today, but will be tomorrow, it'd be great to see you.

This has to be a movement that is all inclusive. I just don't know if it's gonna work.

I hear you. But now that I've 'stepped in it' I'll find it hard to let it go and give up.
As you say,

Let us do something, anything.

For me, this is the right "something" and I owe it to the NYC people and others who started it (hat tip to Adbusters). We can't expect results to be 100% and for next month to look like a sunny picnic in "Watchtower" magazine with lambs and lions hangin' out. Those hollow-eyed people on the streets may indeed be lost to us, but even if Lloyd Blankfein is tried and sent to prison for 100 years, it'll take a generation or more for a real flowering of humanity in the US.


The "leadership" question is a real quandary. The most effective source of power is organization (at least according to John Kenneth Galbraith in "The Anatomy of Power" about which I wrote in the thread viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23645&p=260081& which was ignored ). Bill Gates is the richest man in the world but he is by no means the most powerful. Wall Street and the big corporations have the money but they wield their power equally through tight organization, especially internal organization---discipline.

But do we want some protest group leader who can "fire" us from the group? Someone whose orders we're all expected to follow? Not me. At Westlake, I didn't seek out "the leaders" (if there were any) to ask permission, I just took to the curb with my sign and talked with the poeple around me. If someone is really doing something uncool, the body of protesters will discourage it.

To counter corporate power, at some point organization may have to play a greater role. Loose-knit committees and 'affinity groups' are fine, and there are group decision-making processes that work pretty well. All in all, I think the "power" of this effort will be in numbers---if we can get them.

I'm rambling, sorry, I can't sleep. But Thursday night we saw a woman speaking to the crowd and it really sounded like she was pitching for some kind of Leader role. Many people were going "hmmm." I don't want to hear someone's resumé, I want to hear their ideas and practical suggestions.

Hope to see you tomorrow! Just being there helps.

[Free]

At OWS NYC yesterday there was a huge 3pm General Assembly (wow I so prefer GA to "rally", which implies hierarchy) in Washington Square with a march back to Liberty Square.

Here's Al Jazeera English covering the return march:



saw this great sign in Liberty Park:



Went over to the OWS Art Show. People somehow got access to a huge warehouse/gallery space right on Wall St., corner Broad St.:

[Free]

A few pics from Wednesdays (Oct 5th) OWS protest with the Unions in NYC





























Back in Liberty Park:

[2012 Countdown]

Free- Thanks for the photos of the art show. I'd read about it and wanted to see a few photos. Thank you.
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#OccupyWallStreet: Yom Kippur Celebration in Support of Occupy Wall Street

Please re-post this everywhere you see Glenn Beck, Abe Foxman or any other Israeli propagandist idiot who tries to paint #occupywallstreet as anti-semitic.

Any Racist Comments on this video will be DELETED! We know you are working for the ADL and/or The Likud Party!!!!

This is the JFREJ: Jews for Racial and Economic Justice Yom Kippur Celebration in Support of #OccupyWallStreet... unfortunately the park was so full they had to have it in front of the Nazi supporting Brown Brothers Harriman building.. during prayers it was mentioned that they were NOT praying to the building.
http://www.jfrej.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wUyeFKB ... _embedded#!

===

Tom Morello at Occupy LA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3DBWZXcn-U

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The Night Umbrellas Became Illegal in Seattle
Police are aggressively clearing people out of the park. Cops are telling people they can’t stand underneath the awnings, can’t wrap themselves in a tarp, and can’t even sit down with an umbrella. “You can’t have an umbrella open unless you’re standing and holding it,” a cop reportedly just told a few people who were sitting down next to their umbrellas. Paul Contant, intrepid reporter, just called to confirm that person’s account. And he added, “The cops are lined up under the awnings—I tried to get under an awning to type and and they told me I cannot be under the awning at all.” Police are also telling people they can’t lay under a tarp.

Occupy Seattle’s Facebook page explains how umbrellas legally become “structures”:
--
http://blog.seattlepi.com/stepforward/2 ... n-seattle/

===

EDITORIAL
Protesters Against Wall Street
Published: October 8, 2011
NYTimes.com
----

Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.

When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are referring to the concentration of income in today’s deeply unequal society. Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s.

That share declined slightly as financial markets tanked in 2008, and updated data is not yet available, but inequality has almost certainly resurged. In the last few years, for instance, corporate profits (which flow largely to the wealthy) have reached their highest level as a share of the economy since 1950, while worker pay as a share of the economy is at its lowest point since the mid-1950s.

Income gains at the top would not be as worrisome as they are if the middle class and the poor were also gaining. But working-age households saw their real income decline in the first decade of this century. The recession and its aftermath have only accelerated the decline.

Research shows that such extreme inequality correlates to a host of ills, including lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health and less public investment. It also skewspolitical power, because policy almost invariably reflects the views of upper-income Americans versus those of lower-income Americans.

No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters — including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.

---
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opini ... .html?_r=1

[Plutonia]

It is my studied opinion that the Seattle group is half directed by provocateurs and/or young people with mal-adaptive authoritarian bents ... which is highly ironic and very sad, in light of our WTO heritage.

Or it may be because of it.

You know that this is huge enough that you wee group of Seattle RIer could solicit help from ... well just about anyone. If it's been taken from you, take it back.

Here's a growing directory for Occupy contacts to start with:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... n_US#gid=0

Call in the troops!

[Plutonia]

Zizeck at OWS right now! http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution

[Elvis]

The Night Umbrellas Became Illegal in Seattle
Police are aggressively clearing people out of the park. Cops are telling people they can’t stand underneath the awnings, can’t wrap themselves in a tarp, and can’t even sit down with an umbrella. “You can’t have an umbrella open unless you’re standing and holding it,” a cop reportedly just told a few people who were sitting down next to their umbrellas. Paul Contant, intrepid reporter, just called to confirm that person’s account. And he added, “The cops are lined up under the awnings—I tried to get under an awning to type and and they told me I cannot be under the awning at all.” Police are also telling people they can’t lay under a tarp.

Auugh!! What utter, utter bullshit!! And I was just thinking I'd take a couple of extra umbrellas to give away.

Soon they'll be saying you can't wear a wide-brimmed hat unless you're standing up.

And you can lay under a blanket, but not a tarp?

A guy last week asked me for tobacco, so I'm going to take a big bag of bulk tobacco and some baggies and packs of cigarette papers. Smoke 'em if you got 'em!

[brainpanhandler]

A guy last week asked me for tobacco, so I'm going to take a big bag of bulk tobacco and some baggies and packs of cigarette papers. Smoke 'em if you got 'em!

[Free]

Thanks to you, 2012, and to Plutonia and everyone else who has been so good about updating this thread.

[Plutonia]

Zizeck called Soros a chocolate laxative! Lol!

He also said that it's a fight for the Commons.

Like RI is.

Power to the people!

[Plutonia]

The OWS communications center: