#OCCUPYWALLSTREET campaign - September 17

[jam.fuse]

Comments from twenty somethingish Berlin intelligentsia vis-a-vis OWS:

"This is normal. This is good."

"It's about time."

[Elvis]

double-post deleted

[Elvis]

By Zaid Jilani on Dec 1, 2011 at 10:15 am
...
Luntz told attendees that he’s “scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death.” The pollster warned that the movement is “having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

Excellent.

And significant, I'd say. It means that OWS is getting under people's skin.



I'm recovered from a lingering cold, and have more free time now, but wondering what to do, and frustrated; in my small city there's an approved "occupation" with tents in park outside the downtown area. But there's no curb presence with signs etc, no follow-up marches, just a camp-out in an area barely noticeable from the street. I honestly don't see any point to it, protest-wise. A good thing is that some otherwise homeless people among the occupiers have an approved place for a tent to sleep in.

The Occupy Seattle™ clique, worried over another mostly pointless "occupation" site, just depresses me. Many thanks to Willow for her updates here on that scene. And that stunt they pulled at that meeting with the panel, the way it alienated people, made me cringe.

More of the creativity that Jeff talked about, e.g. the projection on the building, is needed, not plain rude, selfish and stupid behavior. I'm moderately creative, maybe I'll think of a gimmick, a symbol, that might capture people's imagination (the most effective way?). Plus I think people just need to get back on the street in numbers, on the curb with their (continuously refined?) message.

It would be a shame to lose the excellent momentum manifested in Luntz's fear. IMO the long-term "occupations," as they mostly now exist, have lost their effectiveness and sometimes too much effort is spent on "holding ground." Remember the original 'plan' called for 20,000 people on Wall Street, occupying in the most literal sense: filling the space with their "mad-as-hell" yet peaceful bodies. I still see this as a goal, but better with 200,000 people, or 2,000,000. To get that, or any other meaningful response from the as-yet-unconvinced masses, the movement needs to keep up its momentum.

I know I'm rambling, and this is silly but the old song "Dancing in the Street" has been bubbling up in my head for awhile as a sort of OWS theme song. It paints the picture of my "vision" (told you this was silly): happy people dancing in the street---celebrating a brand new beat:



Callin' out around the world
Are you ready for a brand new beat?
Summer's here and the time is right
For dancin' in the streets
They're dancin' in Chicago
Down in New Orleans
Up in New York City

All we need is music, sweet music
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swingin', swayin'
and records playin'
And dancin' in the streets

Oh, it doesn't matter what you wear
Just as long as you are there
So come on, every guy grab a girl
Everywhere, around the world

There'll be dancin'
They're dancin' in the street

This is an invitation across the nation
A chance for the folks to meet
There'll be laughin' and singin'
and music swingin'
And dancin' in the streets

Philadelphia, PA (Philadelphia, PA)
Baltimore and DC now (Baltimore and DC now)
Yeah, don't forget the Motor City
(Can't forget the Motor City)

All we need is music, sweet music
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swingin', swayin'
and records playin'
And dancin' in the street, yeah

Oh, it doesn't matter what you wear
Just as long as you are there
So come on, every guy grab a girl
Everywhere, around the world

They're dancin'
They're dancin' in the street
Way down in L.A., ev'ry state
They're dancin' in the street

Let's form a big strong line
Get in time
We're dancin' in the street
Across the ocean, blue
Me and you

Edit: grrr typos

[Elvis]

my first flyer

Really good, Aurataur! The wrench is good. A wrench can also fix and build things.
I need to keep track of what'll be happening regionally so I can try to show up.

[2012 Countdown]

-
Thanks for the websites Plutonia, and Aurataur (nice!)...spread.

Elvis, this one you might enjoy-

11/30/2011
The End of the Occupy Camps Is the Start of the Next Phase:
Last night, in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, the police moved in by the hundreds to clear out the Occupy encampments. In L.A., Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa used the tiredest excuse of them all: think about the children. In a city with at least 13,500 homeless kids (and that's just the ones that show up at schools), L.A. probably could have spent the money it used for the 1400 cops and 200 arrests at the City Hall camp on, say, housing some of the kids who don't want to be on the streets.

You can bet that we'll be hearing about more crackdowns as the winter progresses, until almost all the camps are gone. And to that, the Rude Pundit says, "Finally."

Don't get him wrong. He fully supports the occupiers and their colonization of urban spaces, the footholds of American renewal. He even understands why defending the camps has become so important. For some, whether fresh-faced, middle-class college student or unemployed middle-aged homeless person, the camps are a taste of what power and democracy are like. They are a small victory in a concrete swamp of constant indignity and degradation. Smelly, ugly, and full of sloppy dissent, the Rude Pundit thought they were beautiful. It's why he wanted and still wants people to donate stuff to the remaining encampments. If they're gonna stay, then he wants these hippie harbingers of the future fight to be safe and warm.

But the camps need to be seen for what they are and what they've accomplished: they had to come into being in order to show that there are large numbers of people willing to put their bodies on the line for a cause. They needed to remind us that the public square is not virtual and that civic engagement in the real world is necessary and vital for the reclamation of the country. That has been done. But right now the media is focusing too much on the camps as symbols and their eviction as a loss, with some even portraying the evictions as a victory over an ill-prepared, misguided, easily-mocked group of anarchists and leeches. Don't let the fuckers have the victory. Don't let them take back the narrative.

Of course the occupations have to be destroyed by the police. That was the point, wasn't it? Draw out the authorities. Get them to respond to your actions. Transform yourself into beings with your own agency, no longer objects to be acted upon. And how does that not bait the ones with the batons and the pepper spray and the ones who order them to attack?

The Rude Pundit doesn't mourn the end of the encampments in the same way he didn't mourn moving from teenage years to adulthood. Now we've seen that action is possible, that community is possible, that mass public support is possible. It's time to move to targeted direct action, and, no, that doesn't mean supporting candidates for election. That's bullshit co-opting and dilution of the movement. Leave that to Occupy Wall Street's sympathizers. It means direct confrontation, like the new effort to stop foreclosures from occurring. (The Rude Pundit will be out there next Tuesday.)

And it means that Adbusters had it right when it declared, in the heated environment after New York was shut down, "We will turn this winter into a training ground for precision disruptions – flashmobs, stink bombs, edgy theatrics – against the megacorps and the unrepentant 1%, a festival of resistance in the snow with, or without, an encampment that'll lay the tactical foundation for our Spring Offensive."

While we need to take care of the outdoor occupiers, we cannot cling to slivers of land when we have a nation to take back.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

===

Occupy’s next frontier: Foreclosed homes
A campaign to defend families from evictions and protest foreclosure fraud launches next week
BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/30/occupys ... singleton/

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Protesters greet CEO of Wells Fargo at NCSU

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/12/01/ ... z1fJZz5f00

BY JOSH SHAFFER - jshaffer@newsobserver.com
Tags: N.C. State University | Wells Fargo Bank | CEO John Stumpf | protests

RALEIGH -- Protesters at N.C. State University shouted down the head of Wells Fargo Bank on Wednesday, accusing CEO John Stumpf of backing foreclosures, high-interest loans and predatory lending they say are killing the national economy.

Stumpf, who leads the country's fourth-largest bank, spoke as part of an executive lecture series at NCSU's Poole College of Management. About 30 minutes into his speech, NCSU junior Danielle Carr rose from the crowd and yelled "John Stumpf!" - a cry echoed by about 20 others scattered around the crowded auditorium.

"We won't take your home," the protesters told him, "but we will take a minute of your time. Your leadership has led to the death of the American dream. Wells Fargo is guilty of widespread predatory lending and holds over 5.7 billion in student debt."

Police reported no arrests among the protesters, a combination of Occupy Raleigh, Occupy Durham, Occupy N.C. State and other groups. Security guards and campus police led roughly a dozen of them out of Nelson Auditorium, which held about 400 people.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/12/01/ ... z1fJaAEawi

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Saw this on the way back from Occupy Lexington Ky

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occupyonline:
In Portland, Oregon:
A ‘Bat Signal’ was projected on a building in the area of 4th Avenue and Columbia Street Monday night that included statements such as “We are the 99%,” “Free Speech.” and “Prosecute Wall Street.”

The signal also reportedly appeared Friday on the Justice Center building on Southwest 3rd Avenue.

An Occupy Portland protest is scheduled Tuesday, Nov. 29th at noon outside the Justice Center called “We Know Our Rights”.
On Saturday, December 3rd, Occupy Portland will march from the Salmon Springs Fountain to Occupy another park.

http://occupywallstreet.tumblr.com/post ... egon-a-bat

===


Occupy Wall Street Protests President Obama's Fundraising Event In New York City
First Posted: 12/ 1/11 10:29 AM ET

Occupy Wall Street may no longer have a home in Zuccotti Park -- but that doesn't mean they're done protesting around New York.

A few hundred demonstrators marched on midtown Wednesday night where they met police barricades at 53rd street and Seventh Avenue, not far from the Sheridan Hotel where President Obama was holding a pricey campaign fundraiser.

Obama's night in the city included three money-raising stops-- a small gathering at a private home, then a $35,800 a plate dinner at Gotham Bar and Grill, and finished with a holiday reception at the Sheridan.

According to The New York Times:

Demonstrators held signs that leveled some of the Occupy protest's most pointed criticism to date of the president. "Obama is a corporate puppet," one said. "War crimes must be stopped, no matter who does them," read another, beside head shots of President George W. Bush and President Obama.
"It's not so much about left and right as up and down in this country," organizer Mark Bray told WNYC. "Ultimately, regardless of which party we're talking about, whether it be the Republicans or the Democrats, there's a serious issue of conflict of interest when we have politicians who derive a large percentage of their campaign contributions from financial institutions and corporations who they're supposed to be regulating."

At one point, a couple protesters tried to break through the police barricade but were quickly pushed back.

During a New Hampshire speech last week, which was interrupted by Occupy protesters, Obama noted that his goals are in line with the movement's.

full-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/01/occupy-wall-street-protes_n_1123092.html

===



10:06 p.m. | Updated More than 100 Occupy Wall Street protesters marched to a Midtown hotel on Wednesday night to protest a fund-raising event for President Obama.

Escorted by police vehicles as they helped snarl traffic across the Times Square area, beginning at Bryant Park, the group settled in front of barricades on the southwest corner of 53rd Street and Seventh Avenue, in view of the Sheraton hotel at which Mr. Obama was expected to appear by 9 p.m.

Demonstrators held signs that leveled some of the Occupy protest’s most pointed criticism to date of the president. “Obama is a corporate puppet,” one said. “War crimes must be stopped, no matter who does them,” read another, beside head shots of President George W. Bush and President Obama.

One man, wearing a mask of the president’s face and holding a cigar, carried a sign that read, “I sold out!”

Read more: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/occupy-protesters-mobilize-for-obamas-visit/

===

Occupy & the Democrats
Posted on December 2, 2011
What’s Worse? An Enemy or a Fake Friend?

The Occupy Movement couldn’t have come along at a worse time, from the viewpoint of the Democrats. Election season is just getting started and Occupy has thrown a giant wrench into the political machinery. Some laborleaders too are sensing “politics as usual” shifting under their feet;the “get out the vote” for the Democrats may elicit blank stares from therank and file.

Occupy has the potential to create earthquakes within the labor movement and labor’s relationship to the Democrats, if it approaches the subject intelligently. This seismic shift could permanently change politics in the United States, much for the better.

full-
http://dissentingdemocrat.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/occupy-the-democrats/

----
OccupyLA-

City officials try to save Occupy L.A. mural
December 1, 2011 | 1:05 pm




City officials are in the process of figuring out a future for a large mural in the center of City Hall park, which served as a gathering spot for protesters during the 58-day Occupy L.A. demonstration.

Olga Garay-English, the executive director of the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, said she received a call from the mayor's office Wednesday afternoon about the mural.

"The mayor's office recognizes that this has historical significance so we're working together to make sure that we come up with a good and appropriate solution," she said.

PHOTOS: Occupy L.A.

The plywood was originally meant to protect a historic white marble fountain, built in 1933 and restored in 2006. The fountain is dedicated to Frank Putnam Flint, a United States senator who helped initiate construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

One side of the plywood now features a large purple octopus, with a crown of the Federal Reserve building, its tentacles clutching a circular ball with a home inside of it.

Garay-English said the mural appears to be a group effort, and is "in the spirit of what's been happening out there."

FULL COVERAGE: Occupy protests

"Maybe storing it isn't the only option," she said. "It would be interesting to work with an organization here to display it."

Others in the art community felt that the mural should be preserved as well.

Carol Wells, the executive director for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics based in Los Angeles, said the mural will be a "tangible reminder of this movement."
"For that reason alone, I think it must be preserved," she said.

Judy Baca, the founder of the Social and Public Art Resource Center, a community arts center in Venice, said it could be difficult to find a home for the mural because of its size, but floated around possible options such as a school, art gallery or even, she joked, the side of a bank building.

"It's a piece of artwork, exactly for the moment we're living," she said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/city-officials-try-to-save-occupy-la-mural.html

[Nordic]

Ted Rall:

http://news.yahoo.com/7-7-7-230018045.html

7-7-7

By Ted Rall | Ted Rall


Jobless? Face It: Obama's Not That Into You

Forget Herman Cain's 9-9-9. The battle cry for every American ought to be 7-7-7.

7-7-7: for the $7.7 trillion the Bush and Obama Administrations secretly funneled to the banksters.

Remember the $700 billion bailout that prompted rage from right to left? Which inspired millions to join the Tea Party and the Occupy movements? Turns out that that was a mere drop in the bucket, less than a tenth of what the Federal Reserve Bank doled out to the big banks.

Bloomberg Markets Magazine reports a shocking story that emerged from tens of thousands of documents released under the Freedom of Information Act: by March 2009, the Fed shelled out $7.77 trillion "to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year."

The U.S. national debt is currently a record $14 trillion.

We knew that the Fed and the White House were pawns of Wall Street. What's new is the scale of the conspiracy.

Even the most jaded financial reporters were stunned at the extent of collusion: "The Fed didn't tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn't mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed's below-market rates."

Citigroup earned an extra $1.8 billion by reinvesting the Fed's below-market loans. Bank of America made $1.5 billion.

Bear in mind, that's only through March 2009.

"Many Americans are struggling to understand why banks deserve such preferential treatment while millions of homeowners are being denied assistance and are at increasing risk of foreclosure," wrote Representative Elijah Cummings, a ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform who is demanding an investigation.

Indeed we are.

This stinks. It's terrible economics. And it's unbelievably cruel.

First the economics. The bank bailouts were supposed to loosen credit in order to encourage lending, investment, job creation and ultimately consumer spending. It didn't work. Banks and corporations alike are hoarding cash. President Obama, who promised 4 million net new jobs by earlier this year, has been reduced to claiming that unemployment would have been even higher without the bailouts.

Ask any business executive why nobody is hiring and they'll blame the lack of consumer demand. If the ultimate goal is to put more money into people's pockets, why not just, you know, put more money into people's pockets?

Bank executives used federal taxdollars to pay themselves tens of billions in bonuses and renovate their corporate headquarters. We the people got 0-0-0. What if we'd gotten 7-7-7 instead?

Every man, woman in child in the United States would have received $24,000.

A family of four would have gotten $96,000.

And that's without an income test.

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that 100 million American citizens--one of out of three--subsists below or just above the official poverty line. Demographers, statisticians and economists were stunned. "These numbers are higher than we anticipated," Trudi J. Renwick, the bureau's chief poverty statistician, told The New York Times. "There are more people struggling than the official numbers show."

For four decades progressive economists have warned that the middle-class was being eroded, that the United States would become a Third World country if income inequality continued to expand. They can stop. We're there.

These poor and "near poor" Americans comprise the vast majority of the uninsured, un- and underemployed, and foreclosure victims. If Bush-Obama's 7-7-7 Plan had gone to each one of these 100 million misérables instead of Citigroup and Bank of America, the IRS would have mailed out 100 million checks for $77,700 each.

This would have paid off a lot of credit cards. Kept millions in their homes, protecting neighborhood property values. Allowed millions to see a doctor.

Paid for food.

A lot of the money would have been "wasted" on new cars, Xboxes--maybe even a renovation or two. All of which would have created a buttload of consumer demand.

If you're a "99er"--one of millions who have run out of unemployment benefits--Obama's plan for you is 0-0-0.

If you're one of the roughly 20 million homeowners who have lost or are about to lose your house to foreclosure--most likely to a bank using fraudulent loan documents--you get 0-0-0.

If you're a teacher asking for a raise, or a parent caring for a sick child or parent, or just an ordinary worker hobbling to work on an old car that needs to be replaced, all you'll get is 0-0-0.

There isn't any money to help you.

We don't have the budget.

We're broke.

You can't get the bank to call you back about refinancing, much less the attention of your Congressman.

But not if you're a banker.

Bankers get their calls returned. They get anything they want.

There's always a budget for them.

They get 7-7-7.

(Ted Rall is the author of "The Anti-American Manifesto." His website is tedrall.com.)

[82_28]

I find it odd that we have seen, media wise, hide nor hair of Obama in about a month now. Seriously, no announcements, no signings of bullshit documents, press conferences, nothing. No reports of what the fuck he did over Thanksgiving and no mentions of the tried and true pardoning of the White House turkey. Nothing. Today there was the "reportage" of Biden checking out what's going on with Iraq by flying there and shit and walking off a plane.

Perhaps they are retooling his image when in fact, the scales have dropped in and of the media cycles and having him doing anything may provoke for now or in the future the total fact that all of this is bullshit and no matter how hard the media may passively deny it, there is no way Obama can do anything public at this point -- save something HUGE, a city wiped off the map etc. . .

What this says to me is that they could be rebuilding the *idea* of the presidency, upgrading it to scale to what is going on now. And that is, police state coming like we've never seen before. They know most people who "keep up with shit" know that there ain't no difference in the parties, only in how they're marketed. There is no honest populism in this country, only illusions and mirage. They're holding it close to the vest. You can tell by the fact that Mitt Romney, republican, has now become someone lefties will vote for, because he's less crazy. Where the fuck are the left wing populists? I would do it, but my anxieties are more into survival mode right now, because I literally can't tell what's what.

If OWS has a "next step" or "phase", then so do those who we are protesting, namely the system itself. The system has all manner of methods at its disposal and free of charge. They are who control everything. If this shit is for real, then it is all out war in a technofascist age and time. Should "they" have senses of shame and empathy they will look at what is going on and say "fuck, they just might be right". But they're not saying that. They are solidifying their class, their protection and throwing money into crime that threatens those with little means. They are normalizing that which is evil. A kindly left wing figurehead for the elite such as Obama is quickly becoming passe.

Adios amigos.

[American Dream]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/no ... -interview

Arundhati Roy: 'The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution'

The prize-winning author of The God of Small Things talks about why she is drawn to the Occupy movement and the need to reclaim language and meaning

Arun Gupta
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 November 2011


Arundhati Roy: 'The expropriators should have their wealth expropriated.'

Sitting in a car parked at a gas station on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, my colleague Michelle holds an audio recorder to my cellphone. At the other end of the line is Arundhati Roy, author of the Booker Prize-winning The God of Small Things, who is some 2,000 miles away, driving to Boston.

"This is uniquely American," I remark to Roy about interviewing her while both in cars but thousands of miles apart. Having driven some 7,000 miles and visited 23 cities (and counting) in reporting on the Occupy movement, it's become apparent that the US is essentially an oil-based economy in which we shuttle goods we no longer make around a continental land mass, creating poverty-level dead-end jobs in the service sector.

This is the secret behind the Occupy Wall Street movement that Roy visited before the police crackdowns started. Sure, ending pervasive corporate control of the political system is on the lips of almost every occupier we meet. But this is nothing new. What's different is most Americans now live in poverty, on the edge, or fear a descent into the abyss. It's why a majority (at least of those who have an opinion) still support Occupy Wall Street even after weeks of disinformation and repression.

In this exclusive interview for the Guardian, Roy offers her thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, the role of the imagination, reclaiming language, and what is next for a movement that has reshaped America's political discourse and seized the world's attention.

AG: Why did you want to visit Occupy Wall Street and what are your impressions of it?

AR: How could I not want to visit? Given what I've been doing for so many years, it seems to me, intellectually and theoretically, quite predictable this was going to happen here at some point. But still I cannot deny myself the surprise and delight that it has happened. And I wanted to, obviously, see for myself the extent and size and texture and nature of it. So the first time I went there, because all those tents were up, it seemed more like a squat than a protest to me, but it began to reveal itself in a while. Some people were holding the ground and it was the hub for other people to organise, to think through things. As I said when I spoke at the People's University, it seems to me to be introducing a new political language into the United States, a language that would be considered blasphemous only a while ago.

AG: Do you think that the Occupy movement should be defined by occupying one particular space or by occupying spaces?

AR: I don't think the whole protest is only about occupying physical territory, but about reigniting a new political imagination. I don't think the state will allow people to occupy a particular space unless it feels that allowing that will end up in a kind of complacency, and the effectiveness and urgency of the protest will be lost. The fact that in New York and other places where people are being beaten and evicted suggests nervousness and confusion in the ruling establishment. I think the movement will, or at least should, become a protean movement of ideas, as well as action, where the element of surprise remains with the protesters. We need to preserve the element of an intellectual ambush and a physical manifestation that takes the government and the police by surprise. It has to keep re-imagining itself, because holding territory may not be something the movement will be allowed to do in a state as powerful and violent as the United States.

AG: At the same, occupying public spaces did capture the public imagination. Why do you think that is?

AR: I think you had a whole subcutaneous discontent that these movements suddenly began to epitomise. The Occupy movement found places where people who were feeling that anger could come and share it – and that is, as we all know, extremely important in any political movement. The Occupy sites became a way you could gauge the levels of anger and discontent.

AG: You mentioned that they are under attack. Dozens of occupations have been shut down, evicted, at least temporarily, in the last week. What do you see as the next phase for this movement?

AR: I don't know whether I'm qualified to answer that, because I'm not somebody who spends a lot of time here in the United States, but I suspect that it will keep reassembling in different ways and the anger created by the repression will, in fact, expand the movement. But eventually, the greater danger to the movement is that it may dovetail into the presidential election campaign that's coming up. I've seen that happen before in the antiwar movement here, and I see it happening all the time in India. Eventually, all the energy goes into trying to campaign for the "better guy", in this case Barack Obama, who's actually expanding wars all over the world. Election campaigns seem to siphon away political anger and even basic political intelligence into this great vaudeville, after which we all end up in exactly the same place.

AG: Your essays, such as "The Greater Common Good" and "Walking with the Comrades", concern corporations, the military and state violently occupying other people's lands in India. How do those occupations and resistances relate to the Occupy Wall Street movement?

AR: I hope that that the people in the Occupy movement are politically aware enough to know that their being excluded from the obscene amassing of wealth of US corporations is part of the same system of the exclusion and war that is being waged by these corporations in places like India, Africa and the Middle East. Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is by manufacturing weapons and exporting war to other countries. So, whether this movement is a movement for justice for the excluded in the United States, or whether it is a movement against an international system of global finance that is manufacturing levels of hunger and poverty on an unimaginable scale, remains to be seen.

AG: You've written about the need for a different imagination than that of capitalism. Can you talk about that?

AR: We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once you've actually seen, let's say, what's happening in India and the United States – that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says "democracy" is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population. Thousands are losing their jobs and homes, while corporations are being bailed out with billions of dollars.

In India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There's something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties. Money need not be our only reward. Corporations that are turning over these huge profits can own everything: the media, the universities, the mines, the weapons industry, insurance hospitals, drug companies, non-governmental organisations. They can buy judges, journalists, politicians, publishing houses, television stations, bookshops and even activists. This kind of monopoly, this cross-ownership of businesses, has to stop.

The whole privatisation of health and education, of natural resources and essential infrastructure – all of this is so twisted and so antithetical to anything that would place the interests of human beings or the environment at the center of what ought to be a government concern – should stop. The amassing of unfettered wealth of individuals and corporations should stop. The inheritance of rich people's wealth by their children should stop. The expropriators should have their wealth expropriated and redistributed.

AG: What would the different imagination look like?

AR: The home minister of India has said that he wants 70% of the Indian population in the cities, which means moving something like 500 million people off their land. That cannot be done without India turning into a military state. But in the forests of central India and in many, many rural areas, a huge battle is being waged. Millions of people are being driven off their lands by mining companies, by dams, by infrastructure companies, and a huge battle is being waged. These are not people who have been co-opted into consumer culture, into the western notions of civilisation and progress. They are fighting for their lands and their livelihoods, refusing to be looted so that someone somewhere far away may "progress" at their cost.

India has millions of internally displaced people. And now, they are putting their bodies on the line and fighting back. They are being killed and imprisoned in their thousands. Theirs is a battle of the imagination, a battle for the redefinition of the meaning of civilisation, of the meaning of happiness, of the meaning of fulfilment. And this battle demands that the world see that, at some stage, as the water tables are dropping and the minerals that remain in the mountains are being taken out, we are going to confront a crisis from which we cannot return. The people who created the crisis in the first place will not be the ones that come up with a solution.

That is why we must pay close attention to those with another imagination: an imagination outside of capitalism, as well as communism. We will soon have to admit that those people, like the millions of indigenous people fighting to prevent the takeover of their lands and the destruction of their environment – the people who still know the secrets of sustainable living – are not relics of the past, but the guides to our future.

AG: In the United States, as I'm sure you're aware, political discourse is obsessed with the middle class, but the Occupy movement has made the poor and homeless visible for the first time in decades in the public discourse. Could you comment on that?

AR: It's so much a reversal of what you see in India. In India, the poverty is so vast that the state cannot control it. It can beat people, but it can't prevent the poor from flooding the roads, the cities, the parks and railway station platforms. Whereas, here, the poor have been invisibilised, because obviously this model of success that has been held out to the world must not show the poor, it must not show the condition of black people. It can only the successful ones, basketball players, musicians, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell. But I think the time will come when the movement will have to somehow formulate something more than just anger.

AG: As a writer, what do you make of the term "occupation", which has now somehow been reclaimed as a positive term when it's always been one of the most heinous terms in political language?

AR: As a writer, I've often said that, among the other things that we need to reclaim, other than the obscene wealth of billionaires, is language. Language has been deployed to mean the exact opposite of what it really means when they talk about democracy or freedom. So I think that turning the word "occupation" on its head would be a good thing, though I would say that it needs a little more work. We ought to say, "Occupy Wall Street, not Iraq," "Occupy Wall Street, not Afghanistan," "Occupy Wall Street, not Palestine." The two need to be put together. Otherwise people might not read the signs.

AG: As a novelist, you write a lot in terms of motivations and how characters interpret reality. Around the country, many occupiers we've talked to seem unable to reconcile their desires about Obama with what Obama really represents. When I talk to them about Obama's record, they say, "Oh, his hands are tied; the Republicans are to blame, it's not his fault." Why do you think people react like this, even at the occupations?

AR: Even in India, we have the same problem. We have a right wing that is so vicious and so openly wicked, which is the Baratiya Janata party (BJP), and then we have the Congress party, which does almost worse things, but does it by night. And people feel that the only choices they have are to vote for this or for that. And my point is that, whoever you vote for, it doesn't have to consume all the oxygen in the political debate. It's just an artificial theatre, which in a way is designed to subsume the anger and to make you feel that this is all that you're supposed to think about and talk about, when, in fact, you're trapped between two kinds of washing powder that are owned by the same company.

Democracy no longer means what it was meant to. It has been taken back into the workshop. Each of its institutions has been hollowed out, and it has been returned to us as a vehicle for the free market, of the corporations. For the corporations, by the corporations. Even if we do vote, we should just spend less time and intellectual energy on our choices and keep our eye on the ball.

AG: So it's also a failure of the imagination?

AR: It's walking into a pretty elaborate trap. But it happens everywhere, and it will continue to happen. Even I know that if I go back to India, and tomorrow the BJP comes to power, personally I'll be in a lot more trouble than with the Congress [party] in power. But systemically, in terms of what is being done, there's no difference, because they collaborate completely, all the time. So I'm not going to waste even three minutes of my time, if I have to speak, asking people to vote for this one or for that one.

AG: One question that a lot of people have asked me: when is your next novel coming out?

AR: I have no answer to that question … I really don't know. Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things. And here we are with our crash helmets on, with concertina wire all around us.

AG: So this inspires you, as a novelist, the movement?

AR: Well, it comforts me, let's just say. I feel in so many ways rewarded for having done what I did, along with hundreds of other people, even the times when it seemed futile.


• Michelle Fawcett contributed to this article. She and Arun Gupta are covering the Occupy movement nationwide for Salon, Alternet and other outlets. Their work is available at http://www.occupyusatoday.com

[Plutonia]

I just launched http://www.occupytheports.com to help raise awareness for the upcoming December 12 action to shut down the ports of the west coast. I will be adding a lot more content over the next couple of days. Please take a look, give me your feedback, and if you like it help spread the word!

Here's my first flyer:

That's great Aurataur!

Do you have a dedicated twitter account? If not, I recommend.

Follow/retweet tweeps so people can find you:
@1v99 @davidgraeber @Timcast @OccupyMARINES @GeneralStrikeUSA @stimulator @vanmediaco-op @OccupyGlobalGA @kgosztola @OccupyTheHood @OccupytheHouse @HarshaWalia @takethesquare @zunguzungu @OccupyVancouver @flyingmonkeyair @kaepora @StopTheMach2011 @Occupy_USA @occupytheport

Also, it's expanding inland:

Occupy Denver stands in solidary with our brothers and sisters who will be blocking the economic apparatus of the 1% by shutting down the ports of the world on Dec 12. Occupy Denver is calling for all land locked occupations to do the same with a coordinated shutdown of Walmart distribution centers throughout the United States on December 12th. The 1% through this greedy cooperation have destroyed communities throughout the world, disregarded workers natural rights, eliminated production jobs in the United States, lowered the standard of living for all, and disrupted the lives of the workers who create their wealth. At the same time coordinated nationwide police attacks have turned our cities into battlegrounds in an effort to disrupt our Occupy movement and neglect the very serious issues we are raising.

...

http://westcoastportshutdown.org/

[Luther Blissett]

For a more intimate view of Frank Luntz, view the 2004 Frontline doc "The Persuaders;" I recently produced a screening of this film for the local design community and most agree that this guy is one of the most curious and confounding figures featured in the film:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... ntinuous=1

[Elvis]

The End of the Occupy Camps Is the Start of the Next Phase

2012 Countdown, thanks for posting that and the other thoughtful and encouraging examples.


Now here's a curious thing. The new face of oppression doesn't seem to comprehend his own victimization:

Pepper-Spray Cop's Money Troubles
John Pike could no longer afford his mortgage, after the housing market crashed

By Matt Smith on November 23, 2011 - 6:45 p.m. PST

John A. Pike III, identified as the police officer who pepper-sprayed a line of sitting Occupy movement protesters Friday on the University of California, Davis campus may have more in common with the discontented 99 percent than previously suspected.

Pike, who was placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation into the Nov. 18 incident, last year emerged from a bankruptcy where creditors took possession of his pickup truck, his wedding ring, his barbecue grill, several handguns, and even $265 worth of clothing.

Pike earns more than $110,000 a year as a UC Davis police lieutenant. But federal court records and county mortgage records reveal that Pike and his wife, Erica, borrowed heavily before the 2008 financial crisis, and were left insolvent when the value of their Roseville home declined.

Attempts to reach Pike and his attorney for comment were unsuccessful.

Over the weekend, Pike went from being a down-on-his-luck university police officer to becoming a global rallying symbol for Occupy movement protesters.

[...]

A UC Davis spokesman said Wednesday that the officers would remain on leave pending the conclusion of the investigations.

Federal bankruptcy records and Placer County mortgage records show that Pike and his wife took out a second mortgage on their Roseville house in 2006. At the time of their Dec. 28, 2009, bankruptcy filing, Pike owed $450,000 on the property. This week the house was being offered in a short sale for $274,000, said Darren Brewer, an agent with Security Pacific Real Estate.

According to bankruptcy records, Pike has lost more than his home, despite income he described in bankruptcy filings as $127,000 per year.

Creditors took his furniture, his wine refrigerator, his camping equipment, his $3,000 wedding ring, and three handguns valued at $490, bankruptcy records show.

http://www.baycitizen.org/occupy-movement/story/pepper-spraying-cop-was-bankrupt/

[Jeff]

On the last performance night of Philip Glass's opera "Satyagraha", Occupy Wall Street protesters came to protest the anti-democratic policies of Lincoln Center. Lincoln Center and the NYPD responded with a heavy presence and barricades confining protesters to the sidewalk. These barricades quickly became an absurdity as protesters and patrons alike swarmed the barricades from either side to hear supportive speakouts on the People's Mic by Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.

Lou Reed, Philip Glass Speak At Occupy Wall Street General Assembly

...

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross was on the scene and explains that the protest "was directed not at the opera itself but at a certain disparity between its lofty moral message and the machinery of corporate arts funding." (Bloomberg LLP is a major donor to Lincoln Center.) The NYPD had barricaded off the plaza at Lincoln Center in anticipation of the demonstration, and during the demonstration Ross Tweeted, "At one point I watched Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson help a guy crawl over the barricade. Police didn't seem to know quite how to respond."

Anderson reportedly told protesters, "This movement is for us all." Composer Philip Glass, whose opera Satyagraha just concluded a run at the Metropolitan Opera, also spoke at the General Assembly, reading a passage from the Satyagraha: "When righteousness/ Withers away/ And evil / Rules the Land /We come into being /Age after age/ And take visible shape /And move / A man among men/ For the protection/ Of good /Thrusting back evil /And setting virtue/ On her seat again." Here's video; the Glass appearance happens about 2:40 in:

...

http://gothamist.com/2011/12/02/lou_ree ... hp#photo-1

[Nordic]

That story about Pike's bankruptcy needs to go viral as all the other stuff about him. That's just so poetically perfect.

Although I have to say I just can't feel sorry for anyone making over 100k a year who still has their job. They're the lucky ones at this point, bankrupt or not.

[Aurataur]

The upcoming 12/12 Port action has huge potential. A mere glimpse of what's to come:

Picketing Halts Work at Four LA-LB Terminals
Bill Mongelluzzo, Associate Editor | Dec 2, 2011 7:41PM GMT
The Journal of Commerce Online - News Story

ILWU clerical workers walk off jobs after 18 months of contract negotiations

International Longshore and Warehouse Union office clerical workers in Los Angeles-Long Beach broke off contract talks and set up picket lines at four container terminals after 18 months of negotiations.

ILWU dock workers walked off of their jobs at those four terminals shortly before noon on Friday, effectively shutting those sites down through the end the day.

Jim McKenna, president of the Pacific Maritime Association, which negotiates and administers waterfront contracts with ILWU longshoremen, marine clerks and foremen (but not the OCU office workers) said he was initiating labor relations committee talks that would most likely be followed immediately on Friday by PMA calling in the local arbitrator.

PMA charges that since the OCU is affiliated with the ILWU but operates independently from the larger dock workers union, the OCU picketers are not considered to have established a legitimate picket line under the waterfront contract.

Negotiations between the Office Clerical Unit of ILWU Local 63 and 14 individual employers have been underway since April 2010. The contract expired in June 2010 and the 580-member OCU union has been working without a contract since then.

Stephen Berry, the attorney representing all of the employers, said Thursday the negotiations broke down. International ILWU President Bob McEllrath, who had been participating in the negotiations, said “we” reserve the right to exercise “economic action,” Berry said.

Although the OCU is a unit of ILWU Local 63, the marine clerks union that works at the terminals, the OCU has its own contract and its own officers who handle negotiations. McEllrath and other international officers became involved in the negotiations in the fall of 2010, Berry said.

Last year the OCU workers established picket lines at several marine terminals and dock workers refused to cross the lines. PMA at that time called in the area arbitrator. He ruled that the OCU action did not constitute a legitimate picket line under the dock workers’ contract and he ordered the longshoremen to return to their jobs. Until Friday, there had been no attempted work stoppages.

Terminal operators and shipping lines that employ OCU members are seeking cost-cutting measure they say will make them more competitive. For example, the OCU normally insists that when a job opens for even few days because of illness or vacations, that it be filled from the hiring hall. Employers want to fill vacancies “as needed,” Berry said.

Also, the OCU will not allow members who may not have enough work on a particular day to shift to positions that are short of workers.

Berry said employers thought they were going to achieve a major breakthrough this summer when they offered to merge the OCU into the larger ILWU Local 63, giving the office workers full membership in the marine clerks union for the first time. The ILWU and the PMA approved the proposal, but the OCU turned it down, Berry said.

OCU President John Fageaux did not return phone calls.

OCU workers’ average earnings approach $100,000 a year. ILWU marine clerks’ wages average more than $150,000 a year including overtime and skill differential payments. The OCU members wanted to earn wages at the marine clerks’ level, but they did not want to replace their benefits with those in the marine clerks’ contract, Berry said. For example, OCU members get 12 weeks of paid vacation a year, he said.

McKenna said the Yusen Terminal and three terminals operated by Ports America were involved in Friday’s labor action. Work was proceeding normally at the other 10 terminals in Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor, he said.

[StarmanSkye]

YeoW, but the revelation that Davis Police Officer Pike was himself a victim of the financial fraud & banking industry's blatant racketeering that the Occupy Movement protestors were demonstrating against is one helluva bit of twisted irony.

Was Pike totally oblivious to the irony of him being such a hardass hired-thug for the same class of upper-crust elites that comprise the corporate technocracy whose policies of unrequited greed and criminal collusion exploiting the rigged-game privelege that the FED, Congress, the SEC and Justice Dept. gave Wall Street, the resulting policies directly making HIM just one of many million victims of the middle class squeeze? Or was he vaguely conscious of what was going on, perhaps transferring the anger and frustration he felt onto the protestors as a more accessable, even permissable 'target' he could vent a little (or lot) of rage against, practicing that perennially favorite bullying gambit of hurting someone weaker or helpless to help make-up some of the unfairness of not being able to strike-back at who they're REALLY angry at. With perhaps the unintended payback of having his zeal and devotion rewarded, with a dept. commendation or offer of a paygrade promotion? Maybe it wasn't reasonable but sometimes motivations aren't feasable or even sensible.


The Police State which Officer Pike was a loud and proud member of has been quite adept at diverting their troops from grasping the supportive role they play in legitimizing and defending the corrupt system of privelege and exceptionalism by which the Wall Street elites manufactured & then exploited a massive housing-bubble bust which caused the US and larger global economic meltdown -- a catastrophic real-world Domino-Effect that, unlike the chain-reaction the US Pentagon War Machine once used as an alarm re: the spread of Communism in SE Asia to galvinize mass public support for launching the LAST major region-wide war for political & economic hegemony -- before this one based on the specious pretext of a contrived War on Terrrror.

What will it take for Officer Pike's coming-of-age political Maturity and enlightened Citizenship -- for him to find his place in a just, decent and forward-thinking society the legacy of which is as an appreciative, valiant & proud inheritor of the courageous vision which is the spark of liberty, rights and citizen self-rule duty.


Meanwhile, the struggle for political maturity and self-awareness continues along numerous fronts, One of Which re: