#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[2012 Countdown]

This is yet another tune inspired by OWS. Great lyrics and nice tune!

Joseph Arthur - We Stand As One (#occupywallstreet)



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WRH_Mike_Rivero Michael Rivero
Occupy Albany -Braving the first snow storm. http://tinyurl.com/4xtkqlr #OWS #OccupyAMERICA #OccupyWallStreet #revolution #OccupyEVERYWHERE
27 minutes ago

Fantastic photo collection at link. Hard core!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/timraabnor ... 3077/show/

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Satire To-Go: Occupy Wall Street To Be Mobile Game

One of the advantages of app-based gaming is the lower barrier to entry relative to traditional console games. As the living-room game boxes became ever more technically capable, they called for design sophistication and production values that have constrained creativity at many major publishers.

When game development budgets rival feature films, it is not surprising to see the industry veer toward the sure-thing franchises and sequels common to Hollywood. Mobile game development is a bargain in comparison to other video game platforms. As a result, there is a flowering of creativity, and arguably a greater range of artistic expression.

Spur of the Moment Games announced this week it is developing a mobile game designed partly to support the Occupy Wall Street movement with both funds and satire. “Clear the Park” will be an iOS and Android game that allows you to play a high-profile and apparently seething corporate executive who wants to clear the nearby park of protesters because they are ruining his view.

Your company stock increases as you come up with successful tactics for scaring or luring them from their occupation. You might toss watercoolers out the window at them or try negotiation. If you lose, then the protesters get to set up a Ken & Gerri’s Ice Cream Shop out of your former office building.

Some of the proceeds of the game will be donated to the Occupy movement in the form of gift cards that protesters can use to buy necessities while they protest.

Playing on the “99%” slogan adopted by many Wall Street occupiers, the game’s tagline is “Being 1% is 100% Awesome.” “It is all in good fun, but with an underlying sarcasm,” say co-creators Brad Thorne and Jerry Broughton. Thorne says there is an opportunity for games to widen their scope. Mobile has introduced more affordable means of production and distribution than ever before.

“It is an art form if you want to express yourself in a game, and not do what everyone else is doing. You can now push out a more consistent product faster,” Thorne says. “Henry Ford would be proud.”

The longtime Web developers have never deployed a game before but they say it is on track for a November release. “We have some PlayStation expatriates helping,” he says.

In fact, Thorne and Broughton have much more ambitious plans for blending gaming and hot issues. They are developing a project called NewsPlay that ties breaking news headlines in with topically relevant casual game play. Thorne envisions a “Daily Show” style of delivery. but in a mobile gaming format where real-world news is included in an entertaining and often satirical package of casual games. He sees a market for this approach in the post-newspaper era where many young people get more of their news from Jon Stewart than from the networks. “We are carrying mobile phones, but just making them mimic 200 year-old newspapers and just reading headlines. Yet we make interactive books for children on mobile.“

He envisions news + gaming as a kind of mobilized, interactive political cartoon, a way of communicating news that is both funny and insightful. And perhaps it opens up a hybrid model for digital news that seems to have eluded many media companies thus far. After all, as Thorne points out, “people won’t pay for news content, but they will pay for games.”

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/a ... -game.html

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Another Public Radio Freelancer Gets the Ax Over Occupy Wall Street

The people who make shows for NPR stations, dinged by the perception that they're a bunch of kneejerk liberals, are proving themselves to be very, very touchy about how their employees participate with Occupy Wall Street. Today, Gawker has posted the first-hand account of Caitlin E. Curran, a Brooklyn-based former freelancer for The Takeaway, which is co-produced by NPR-member station WNYC and Public Radio International, who was fired from her public radio gig as a part-time web producer after her boss discovered she (briefly) participated in an Occupy protest.

Update: We initially used "NPR" in the headline for this story which is incorrect because the show The Takeaway is more identified with NPR competitor PRI even though it airs alongside NPR programming. We've corrected the error, but there's also this point to make: the public radio economy contains many independent actors alongside NPR. There is the national organization, local broadcasters, independent producers and distributors all involved in programming on what listeners would consider "NPR stations." So, while NPR is not a centralized organization that controls all of public radio, the "NPR is liberal" critics are prone to paint with a broad brush. If anything, Curran's story illustrate how far the fear of looking too liberal has permeated the entire public radio ecosystem.

Curran was canned after her boss found the now-famous photo of her (right) holding a sign with paraphrased text from The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf, from his post on the Occupy movement. She chronicles what happened after that in her post:

My boyfriend, Will, and I decided to take Friedersdorf's words and use them, perhaps more literally than he intended. We printed them out, taped them to poster board, and headed to the Occupy Wall Street march in Times Square, on October 15. The plan was for Will to hold the sign, and for me to observe what happened and post reports to my personal Twitter account ... But, inevitably, Will developed sign-holding fatigue, and I took over momentarily.

That's when a photographer snapped the Occupy picture reblogged 'round the world. So she decided that all of this notoriety would make for great radio, so he pitched a segment idea on her experience on The Takeaway. But a day later, she got the boot from The Takeaway, which said she "violated every ethic of journalism," according to Curran. All this of course echoes the firing of Lisa Simeone after she was found to be working as a spokesperson for Occupy D.C. Curran, like Simeone, offered a defense of her actions on Gawker:

FULL-
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national ... eet/44278/

[2012 Countdown]

Uploaded by collapsenet on Oct 28, 2011

Mike Ruppert addresses those police officers who have begun a campaign of violent and brutal attacks at some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters around the country, and around the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUKeZLeG ... ture=share

[Nordic]

Look at a cop, even a riot cop. They are most vulnerable in the leg region.

Just saying.

[Bruce Dazzling]

I hadn't been feeling well for a while, but I managed to get over to OWS for a little while today, and got some new photos that I'll be posting later.

I was shocked to see that it's grown into quite the TENT community, even though tents are strictly verboten.

And I just had the displeasure of watching this:



I know he's an easy target, but holy fucking shit, man, Bill O'Reilly's existence says so much about humanity's capacity for willful stupidity. Oh, and Dick Morris is the very model of despicable.

[Plutonia]

Holy crap!

Here's an epic contribution to the "That Looks Like a Hornets Nest; I Think I'll Put My Penis In It" file:


The Right Launches A Smear Campaign Against Occupy Oakland’s Scott Olsen
http://www.politicususa.com/en/right-smear-scott-olsen

BTW, Scott Olsen's brain injury has damaged his speech center, leaving him unable to speak, though they are saying that his prognosis for full recovery is good.

How symbolic is that?

[elfismiles]

Video Shows Police Deliberately Aiming At Occupy Oakland Protesters (Video)
http://www.politicususa.com/en/police-a ... py-oakland

Sgt. Shamar Thomas Is Back And He Brought The Marines With Him To #OWS (Video)
http://www.politicususa.com/en/thomas-marines-ows

[ninakat]

Peter Schiff: The 1 percent ‘gave’ workers weekends, child labor laws
By Stephen C. Webster
Friday, October 28, 2011

In perhaps a preview of a debate to come, Princeton professor Cornel West faced off with financial strategist and radio host Peter Schiff on CNN Thursday afternoon, butting heads over some of the key differences between what could be described as the tea party’s ideology versus the main thrust of “Occupy Wall Street.”

Schiff, who recently went down to Zuccotti Park in New York City to speak with protesters on camera, maintained that the economic problems faced by the U.S. are not driven by unmitigated greed on Wall Street, but the interference of government in its affairs.

West pointed out that through the lobbying industry, much of Washington has been either outright bought off, or forced to cope with the culture of greed in order to stay in power, essentially giving the top 1 percent of Americans a much louder voice in government, thereby helping to facilitate deregulation and create more space for corporate corruption.

And while both seemed to agree that “too big to fail” and the bank bailouts were negative development, their opinions diverged again when it came to the Federal Reserve. Schiff, who’s mostly libertarian, pointed to the nation’s central bank as having a key role in allowing market bubbles to inflate and burst. West countered that the Fed and its members are really just the capstone of Wall Street’s greed, allowing the oligarchs to operate in an essentially unregulated environment.

Then they squared off on unions, but Schiff did not seem to recognize that unionization is itself a free market force. Instead he pointed at the unions as causing problems for the free market, and insisted that the 1 percent “gave” the people child labor laws, weekends and other liberties that workers in the U.S. hold dear. West wasn’t having it, and seemed to squirm at the line of attack, repeatedly pointing to the decades of struggle unions went through before winning those key rights from labor bosses.

Neither men saw eye to eye, clearly, but they still managed a friendly conclusion.

“I wish we had more time, because I want to debate my brother Peter on this directly,” West said.

Their host, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, seemed receptive to the idea and suggested that the network would welcome both guests back soon.

This video was broadcast by CNN on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011.

[wordspeak2]

Yeah, I think Peter Schiff probably lost most people there. I think there are very, very few people who will buy that historical revisionism. Am I wrong?
As an aside- there have been tons of repeat posts recently on this thread, probably because people are understandably over-excited, but could we all please read maybe the last ten pages of the thread before posting something?

Here's one that definitely haven't been posted, a piece by Mike Davis, imo one of the best left critics out there. It analyzes the Ocupy movement and prescribes some future direction:

http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/1172586 ... defined,0_

NO MORE BUBBLE GUM
MIKE DAVIS

Who could have envisioned Occupy Wall Street and its sudden wildflower-like profusion in cities large and small?

John Carpenter could have, and did. Almost a quarter of a century ago (1988), the master of date-night terror (Halloween, The Thing), wrote and directed They Live, depicting the Age of Reagan as a catastrophic alien invasion. In one of the film’s brilliant early scenes, a huge third-world shantytown is reflected across the Hollywood Freeway in the sinister mirror-glass of Bunker Hill’s corporate skyscrapers.

They Live remains Carpenter’s subversive tour de force. Few who’ve seen it could forget his portrayal of billionaire bankers and evil mediacrats and their zombie-distant rule over a pulverized American working class living in tents on a rubble-strewn hillside and begging for jobs. From this negative equality of homelessness and despair, and thanks to the magic dark glasses found by the enigmatic Nada (played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper), the proletariat finally achieves interracial unity, sees through the subliminal deceptions of capitalism, and gets angry.

Very angry.

Yes, I know, I’m reading ahead. The Occupy the World movement is still looking for its magic glasses (program, demands, strategy, and so on) and its anger remains on Gandhian low heat. But, as Carpenter foresaw, force enough Americans out of their homes and/or careers (or at least torment tens of millions with the possibility) and something new and huge will begin to slouch towards Goldman Sachs. And unlike the “Tea Party,” so far it has no puppet strings.

In 1965, when I was just eighteen and on the national staff of Students for a Democratic Society, I planned a sit-in at the Chase Manhattan Bank, for its key role in financing South Africa after the massacre of peaceful demonstrators, for being “a partner in Apartheid.” It was the first protest on Wall Street in a generation and 41 people were hauled away by the NYPD.

One of the most important facts about the current uprising is simply that it has occupied the street and created an existential identification with the homeless. (Though, frankly, my generation, trained in the civil rights movement, would have thought first of sitting inside the buildings and waiting for the police to drag and club us out the door; today, the cops prefer pepper spray and “pain compliance techniques.”) I think taking over the skyscrapers is a wonderful idea, but for a later stage in the struggle. The genius of Occupy Wall Street, for now, is that it has temporarily liberated some of the most expensive real estate in the world and turned a privatized square into a magnetic public space and catalyst for protest.

Our sit-in 46 years ago was a guerrilla raid; this is Wall Street under siege by the Lilliputians. It’s also the triumph of the supposedly archaic principle of face-to-face, dialogic organizing. Social media is important, sure, but not omnipotent. Activist self-organization — the crystallization of political will from free discussion — still thrives best in actual urban fora. Put another way, most of our internet conversations are preaching to the choir; even the mega-sites like MoveOn.org are tuned to the channel of the already converted, or at least their probable demographic.

The occupations likewise are lightning rods, first and above all, for the scorned, alienated ranks of progressive Democrats, but they also appear to be breaking down generational barriers, providing the common ground, for instance, for imperiled, middle-aged school teachers to compare notes with young, pauperized college grads.

More radically, the encampments have become symbolic sites for healing the divisions within the New Deal coalition in place since the Nixon years. As Jon Wiener observed on his consistently smart blog at www.TheNation.com: “hard hats and hippies — together at last.”

Indeed. Who could not be moved when AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, who had brought his coalminers to Wall Street in 1989 during their bitter but ultimately successful strike against Pittston Coal Company, called upon his broad-shouldered women and men to “stand guard” over Zucotta Park in the face of an imminent attack by the NYPD?

It’s true that old radicals like me are quick to declare each new baby the messiah, but this Occupy Wall Street child has the rainbow sign. I believe that we’re seeing the rebirth of the quality that so markedly defined the migrants and strikers of the Great Depression, of my parents’ generation: a broad, spontaneous compassion and solidarity based on a dangerously egalitarian ethic. It says, Stop and give a hitch-hiking family a ride. Never cross a picket line, even when you can’t pay the rent. Share your last cigarette with a stranger. Steal milk when your kids have none and then give half to the little kids next door — what my own mother did repeatedly in 1936. Listen carefully to the profoundly quiet people who have lost everything but their dignity. Cultivate the generosity of the “we.”

What I mean to say, I suppose, is that I’m most impressed by folks who have rallied to defend the occupations despite significant differences in age, in social class and race. But equally, I adore the gutsy kids who are ready to face the coming winter on freezing streets, just like their homeless sisters and brothers.

Back to strategy, though: what’s the next link in the chain (in Lenin’s sense) that needs to be grasped? How imperative is it for the wildflowers to hold a convention, adopt programmatic demands, and thereby put themselves up for bid on the auction block of the 2012 elections? Obama and the Democrats will desperately need their energy and authenticity. But the occupationistas are unlikely to put themselves or their extraordinary self-organizing process up for sale.

Personally I lean toward the anarchist position and its obvious imperatives.

First, expose the pain of the 99 percent; put Wall Street on trial. Bring Harrisburg, Loredo, Riverside, Camden, Flint, Gallup, and Holly Springs to downtown New York. Confront the predators with their victims — a national tribunal on economic mass murder.

Second, continue to democratize and productively occupy public space (i.e. reclaim the Commons). The veteran Bronx activist-historian Mark Naison has proposed a bold plan for converting the derelict and abandoned spaces of New York into survival resources (gardens, campsites, playgrounds) for the unsheltered and unemployed. The Occupy protestors across the country now know what it’s like to be homeless and banned from sleeping in parks or under a tent. All the more reason to break the locks and scale the fences that separate unused space from urgent human needs.

Third, keep our eyes on the real prize. The great issue is not raising taxes on the rich or achieving a better regulation of banks. It’s economic democracy: the right of ordinary people to make macro-decisions about social investment, interest rates, capital flows, job creation, and global warming. If the debate isn’t about economic power, it’s irrelevant.

Fourth, the movement must survive the winter in order to fight the power in the next spring. It’s cold on the street in January. Bloomberg and every other mayor and local ruler is counting on a hard winter to deplete the protests. It is thus all-important to reinforce the occupations over the long Christmas break. Put on your overcoats.

Finally, we must calm down — the itinerary of the current protest is totally unpredictable. But if one erects a lightning rod, we shouldn’t be surprised if lightning eventually strikes.

Bankers, recently interviewed in the New York Times, claim to find the Occupy protests little more than a nuisance arising from an unsophisticated understanding of the financial sector. They should be more careful. Indeed, they should probably quake before the image of the tumbrel.

Since 1987, African Americans have lost more than half of their net worth; Latinos, an incredible two-thirds. Five-and-a-half million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the United Sates since 2000, more than 42,000 factories closed, and an entire generation of college graduates now face the highest rate of downward mobility in American history.

Wreck the American dream and the common people will put on you some serious hurt. Or as Nada explains to his unwary assailants in Carpenter’s great film: “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass…. and I’m all out of bubblegum.”


Mike Davis is a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books and the author of Planet of Slums, City of Quartz, In Praise of Barbarians, and more than a dozen other books. He teaches at UC Riverside. His biography of Harrison Gray Otis is appearing serially in these pages.

[Bruce Dazzling]

As I said earlier, OWS is turning into a tent city, with actual TENTS, even though they're supposedly strictly verboten.

I'm not sure if Bloomberg, et al. are having a heart because it's getting cold, or if they're afraid the publicity that a showdown will bring (most likely the latter). Either way, there are LOTS of tents in Zuccotti park these days.

[Jeff]

Thanks again Bruce, always look forward to your photos.

And this:



I just love so much this unexpected, cooperative, effective activism!

[Plutonia]

[ninakat]

From Michael Ruppert:

[justdrew]

thugs playing with their toys, what have they done? Big changes gotta come...

of course I have to source this to a British newspaper. no "mainstream" news source is reporting this as this time. meanwhile San Francisco Chronicle post a story google says is only 2 hours old... "Full recovery expected for injured protester Scott Olsen"

it is thought his speech may recover, but then again, things may get worse too. Totally psiwar-designed reporting from the 1% owned media, of course, as ever and always.

Scott Olsen 'cannot talk' after injury at Occupy Oakland protest
Iraq war veteran is believed to have sustained damage to speech centre of his brain in injury at Occupy protest on Tuesday
Adam Gabbatt | guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 October 2011 14.01 EDT

Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran who was seriously injured by a police projectile during a protest in Oakland, has regained consciousness but "cannot talk".

Olsen, 24, is communicating with friends and family at his bedside by writing notes, but his injury is believed to have damaged the speech centre of his brain, according to Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq.

Olsen is believed to have been injured by a police projectile. He was hit in the forehead in downtown Oakland on Tuesday evening, after marching with fellow demonstrators to protest the closure of an Occupy Oakland camp in the city.

"He cannot talk right now, and that is because the fracture is right on the speech center of his brain," said Shannon. "However, they are expecting he will get that back."

Shannon added that Olsen's "spelling is not near what it used to be".

"The doctors expect that he will have a full recovery," said Shannon, who is due to visit Olsen on Friday afternoon. "However, it is going to be a long road ahead for him."

Olsen was "really happy" to see his family, Shannon added.

A spokesman for Highland General Hospital confirmed Olsen could not talk, but said he "understands everything" doctors and family are saying. His family flew to be at his bedside on Thursday. The spokesman said Olsen remained under observation to determine if he needs surgery. His condition is "fair".

Video footage posted to YouTube shows Olsen lying motionless in front of a police line after apparently having been hit. A group of up to 10 protesters gather around him, but a police officer can be seen throwing a device close to the group which then explodes with a bright flash and loud bang, scattering the protesters. The video then cuts to footage of protesters carrying Olsen away as he bleeds from the head.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who was in Washington DC when the clashes occurred, has sought to distance herself from the police action.

"I only asked the chief to do one thing: to do it when it was the safest for both the police and the demonstrators," she said.

[Jeff]

[Project Willow]

Thanks.

[On edit: belongs in the hot dissidents thread.]