Ant-OWS rally fizzles; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/sep/20/occupy-wall-street-koch-rally
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/...iolent-Mass-Protest-Movement-Has-Accomplished The Occupy movement was never able to mobilize hundreds of thousands. Even on it's best days so far in Oakland and New York, a few tens of thousands were brought out to protest the one percent, austerity and repression. The odd thing about this is that tuition in Quebec is far lower than in the United States, the rich are taxed at higher rates, and the social net in Quebec is much more protective, with single-payer health care for all and other social services more readily available. In the US, everyone who has any awareness at this point (and perhaps that is the problem) understands how banksters and their cronies destroyed the economy, and how the wealthiest continue to increase their share of America's wealth, leaving a few crumbs for the near wealthy and nothing for the rest. It's obviously going to take more than the stark reality of vast and increasing income inequality and the spectre of austerity for Americans to do something about their government for and paid for by the one percent. But what? Very few Democratic politicians -- Elizabeth Warren being an exception -- are willing to stand up and speak sensibly against an austerity imposed by these wealthiest on the rest of us. The President's dream seems to be a 'grand compromise' where large cuts in the safety net are traded for miniscule tax hikes on the rich -- it's a good thing Republicans have been too stupid to know a good deal when they see it. What's the (practical) answer? Damned if I know.
From Facebook: Adbusters Alright occupiers, trick or treat, Let’s all go to Washington, DC, and have a Halloween night party! Let’s celebrate the wonderful Coke/Pepsi presidential election now in progress … and the honest, feisty way our elected reps in Congress have conducted our nation’s business … pay tribute to the bold visions they’ve put forward. At dusk on October 31, let’s gather on Capitol Hill, trick or treat Congress and party like we’ve never partied before. Bring mask! CJ HQ PS And if you cannot make it to DC then party in front of your city hall. #OCCUPYWALLSTREET #OCCUPYMAINSTREET #HALLOWEENPARTY www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/tactical-briefing-39.html
$1 m hippie squirt https://www.aclunc.org/news/press_r...niversity_over_pepper-spraying_incident.shtml
Monkeys Explain Why Anonymous and Occupy Exist http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/monkey-anonymous/
MARK BLINCH/REUTERS The 40-day occupation of Toronto's St. James Park helped create a community, says Brian Batty, a familiar face at the encampment. http://www.thestar.com/news/insight...el-we-achieved-much-says-former-media-officer
Bank of England official: Occupy movement was right about global recession | The Raw Story By Phillip Inman, The Guardian The Occupy Movement has found an unlikely ally in a senior Bank of England official, Andrew Haldane, who has praised protesters for their role in triggering an overhaul of the financial services sector. Haldane, who oversees the City for the central bank, said Occupy acted as a lever on policymakers despite criticism that its aims were too vague. He said the protest movement was right to focus on inequality as the chief reason for the 2008 crash, following studies that showed the accumulation of huge wealth funded by debt was directly responsible for the domino-like collapse of the banking sector in 2008. Speaking at a debate held by the Occupy Movement in central London, Haldane said regulations limiting credit use would undermine attempts by individuals to accumulate huge property and financial wealth at the expense of other members of society. Allowing banks to lend on a massive scale also drained funding from other industries, adding to the negative impact that unregulated banks had on the economy, he said. More at www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/30/bank-of-england-official-occupy-movement-was-right-about-global-recession/
This is partly related to the Occupy movement so I'm adding it here rather than starting a new thread about it. Trailer - Mad As Hell: Rise Of The Young Turks Published on Nov 4, 2012 by TheYoungTurks Directed by Andrew Napier, "Mad as Hell: Rise of The Young Turks" follows Cenk Uygur's transformation from an unknown conservative talk show host on Public Access TV to a progressive internet sensation with his show "The Young Turks," which has amassed over 800 million views on YouTube. On a self-imposed mission to speak the truth, Cenk attempts to fix the fundamentally-broken system of politics and media in America, thus attracting a loyal audience and building the largest online news show in the world. Once Cenk ventures from the internet into national television and secures the 6 pm slot on MSNBC, his uncensored brand of journalism is compromised and Cenk becomes the nexus in the battle between new and old media. Go to http://www.indiegogo.com/madashell to pre-order the film and contribute. The film is being sent out to film festivals, but it's not 100% complete and we need your help to finish it!
Occupy Sandy aids storm victims Published on Nov 5, 2012 by RTAmerica For the past few months the Occupy Wall Street movement has been fairly quiet. But due to Superstorm Sandy, OWS has proven to be alive and well. The demonstrators have banned together to provide aid to the people of New York and New Jersey who were affected by Sandy. Sara Jaffe, associate editor for AlterNet, joins us with more.
YAY Obama! https://www.google.com/search?q=how...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a Congress is just a formality. Not like really matters. Because I love people "ruling" Don't worry. We got 4 more years of failed policies going on. Way to go America.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...24afe8-fb49-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html on the other hand http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...00cb63e-04fc-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_blog.html but then what does the tick-tock say?
Barack Obama owes Occupy protesters a debt of gratitude http://www.thestar.com/opinion/edit...occupy-protesters-a-debt-of-gratitude-salutin
Please keep in mind that this thread is posted in the OWS Info and Update sub forum - anything else should take place in the Discussion thread. Derail moved here
OWS sues LA for human rights violations Occupy LA movement activists are suing the city of Los Angeles for their civil rights violations. In November 2011 some protesters were detained while staging an eight-week-long encampment at City Hall teamed up with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Police responded by performing a sweep that affected nearly 300 demonstrators. The group has now filed an A class lawsuit accusing the law enforcement officials of violating human rights and mistreating the protesters in penitentiary. One of the named plaintiffs in the case, Michael Prysner joins us for more.
Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy | guardian.co.uk By Naomi Wolf New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves. The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens. The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire – by whom? Where? – now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61). As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a "terrorist threat": "FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country." Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it "police-statism": "This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America." The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a "Bank Fraud Working Group" met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its "domestic terrorism" unit. The Anchorage, Alaska "terrorism task force" was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan "joint terrorism task force" was issuing a "counterterrorism preparedness alert" about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the "Bank Security Group" – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to "National Bad Bank Sit-in Day" (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state's Occupy members' details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its "joint terrorism task force" aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages. Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, who has sought similar documents for more than a year, reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration of Occupy Wall Street existed at all. But the release may be strategic: if you are an Occupy activist and see how your information is being sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, not to mention the "longterm plans" of some redacted group to shoot you, this document is quite the deterrent. There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society – people's income streams and financial records – is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent. Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed – because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one's personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a "terrorist organization" and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing. Why the huge push for counterterrorism "fusion centers", the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about "the terrorists". It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens – it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you. Source, and open comments: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
FBI classified information about OWS assassination plot — RT Only one month into the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations last year, plans were formulated to identify key figures in the movement and execute them with a coordinated assault using sniper rifles, new documents reveal. The revelation — discussed in a heavily redacted FBI memo unearthed late last month through a Freedom of Information Act request — reveals that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was aware of plans for a violent assault on the peaceful protest movement but stayed silent on rumors of an assassination attempt only until now. Information on the alleged plot to kill off protesters appears on page 61 of the trove of documents obtained recently by a FOIA request filed by the Partnership For Civil Justice Fund. On the page in question, marked “SECRET,” the FBI acknowledges: In the rest of the material obtained by the Partnership For Civil Justice Fund, the FBI declines to mention any follow-up attempts to investigate the rumored assassination plot. Page 61, where the plot is discussed, was redacted heavily before it was handed over to the PFCJF. More at http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-assassination-ows-sniper-227/ Discussion goes here: https://whyweprotest.net/community/threads/occupywallstreet-discussion.93695/page-77
New York Post & Rupert Murdoch: Stop Lying About Occupy Wall Street On Monday, December 31st, the New York Post reported that weapons and high explosive powder were found in the home of a Greenwich Village couple. Featured in the article was an evidence-free assertion that one of the accused is an “Occupy Wall Street activist”. Add your name now to hold the NY Post accountable and protect Occupy from false allegations! Petition: http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50112/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9160 Discussion: https://whyweprotest.net/community/threads/occupywallstreet-discussion.93695/page-77
Wow...if the Occupy assholes hadn't been such supercilious gits, they could have had the whole nation behind them. This is what happens when you alienate the people you need on your side. Nothing happens, noise is made, people think they "got something done." Also, drum circles.
I like how they didn't even consider for half a second that maybe the report was true. How do they know the couple weren't Occupiers? They can't possibly know every Occupier any more than I can know every Anon.
yeah I know, I havent even met you in real life but Im pretty sure youre a child molester or at the very least a complete monster who should be locked up indefinately. Case closed.
Just as I am pretty sure you're a domestic terrorist that will have to disappear into a dark hole one day.
It's sad when you really try to put so much effort in something that had no chance to succeed right from the beginning.
Now Village Bomber Aaron Greene Was a Nazi All Along By Nick Pinto Thu., Jan. 10 2013 at 1:54 PM Remember the West Village bomb-maker who went to Harvard and was dyed-in-the-wool Occupy Wall Street? Remember how he didn't go to Harvard? Remember how he had no connection to Occupy and didn't have any political affiliations or motivations at all? Remember how yes he did too? No? Don't remember any of that? All previous iterations of this story safely stowed down the memory hole? Good. Because here's the new official version: Aaron Greene, arrested last week in his apartment for possession of firearms and the explosive powder HMTD, is a Nazi-lover. Who went to Harvard. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/01/now_village_bom.php
http://wagingnonviolence.org/featur...ion-how-free-software-organized-occupy-sandy/ "How do we out-compete the government using open-source tools? I can tell you that with Occupy Sandy we already did it. We had a better system up within a month — for managing work orders, inventory, requests, workflows. What if we had had that during the occupation? How much easier would life have been for managing the Zuccotti Park experience if there had been people trained in such a system? We’d have had vehicles, warehouses and kitchens all coordinated in a way that was sustainable and easy to plug into. If we can do that, it’ll become competition between us and other systems. Then we’re on the path to the type of changes that people in the open-source world realize is coming."
NYPD lied under oath to prosecute Occupy activist — RT USA March 2, 2013 An Occupy Wall Street activist was acquitted of assaulting a police officer and other charges on Thursday after jurors were presented with video evidence that directly contradicted the NYPD’s story. Michael Premo was found innocent of all charges this week in regards to a case that stems from a December 17, 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Lower Manhattan. For over a year, prosecutors working on behalf of the New York Police Department have insisted that Premo, a known artist and activist, tackled an NYPD officer during a protest and in doing so inflicted enough damage to break a bone. During court proceedings this week, Premo’s attorney presented a video that showed officers charging into the defendant unprovoked. The Village Voice reports that jurors deliberated for several hours on Thursday and then elected to find Premo not guilty on all counts, which included a felony charge of assaulting an officer of the law. Since his arrest, supporters of Premo have insisted on his innocence. “They're trying to make something out of nothing and they're trying to charge him with something that didn't actually occur,” colleague Rachel Falcone told Free Speech Radio News this week. After being arrested, the Manhattan District Attorney's office presented Premo with a deal that would have let him off the hook by pleading guilty to lesser charges. Maintaining his innocence, however, he was determined to fight the case in court. Premo was “facing serious charges and potential substantial jail sentence, even though he never should have been arrested at all,” his supporters claimed in a post published on The Laundromat Project website. Nick Pinto of the Village Voice says he was nearby during the December 2011 rally and recalls watching Premo’s arrest from a distance. In his report from court this week, Pinto explains how the details provided by the NYPD in this trial have been fabricated to such a degree that the allegations presented by the cops turned out to be literally the opposite of what occurred. “Premo charged the police like a linebacker, taking out a lieutenant and resisting arrest so forcefully that he fractured an officer's bone. That's the story prosecutors told in Premo's trial, and it's the general story his arresting officer testified to under oath as well,” Pinto writes. He adds that attorneys for the defendant underwent a lengthy search to try and find video that verified their own account yjpihj, and found one in the hands of Democracy Now. “Far from showing Premo tackling a police officer,” writes Pinto, that video “shows cops tackling him as he attempted to get back on his feet.” The footage obtained from Democracy Now also showed that an NYPD officer was filming the arrest as well, but prosecutors told Premo’s attorney that no such footage existed. "There is no justice in the American justice system, but you can sometimes find it in a jury,” Premo tweeted after he was acquitted this week. In an interview given to NBC in 2012, Premo identified himself as a spokesperson for the Occupy Wall Street movement. He has also led an initiative in the New York area that have provided relief to those that endured last year’s Superstorm Sandy and has also advocated for fair housing. "The biggest thing for me coming out of this," he told the Voice, "is not being discouraged by the attempts of New York City to quell dissent and prevent us from expressing our constitutional rights." Source and comments: http://rt.com/usa/nypd-occupy-michael-premo-703/ Michael Premo on Twitter: http://twitter.com/michaelpremo
does anyone expect the cops who perjured themselves are going to be held accountable for their crimes? This two tier system of justice isn;t what I signed up for.
Occupy Wall Street Protester Wins $25K From City After Suing Over Arrest A dancer-turned-Occupy Wall Street-protester received a $25,000 settlement from the city after accusing beefy cops of bloodying her shin with batons during a 2011 march. Sade Adona, 27, will receive the payout, believed to be the first to an OWS protestor alleging police misconduct. She sued the city last fall, claiming three 200-pound, 6-foot-tall officers roughed her up and wrongfully arrested her after she yelled at them to leave a fellow protester alone. Adona was part of an Oct. 26, 2011, nighttime march that started at Zuccotti Park and was supposed to end at City Hall, her lawsuit says. As the demonstrators reached Reade Street and West Broadway, cops fenced them in with orange netting, according to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court. More at www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20130515/financial-district/occupy-wall-street-protester-wins-25k-from-city-after-suing-over-arrest
Why Are Homeowners Being Jailed for Demanding Wall Street Prosecutions? Bankers go free while cops tase peaceful protesters and the Department of Justice targets journalists By John Knefel A two-day-long housing protest outside the Department of Justice this week has resulted in nearly 30 arrests and several instances of law enforcement unnecessarily using tasers on activists, according to eye-witnesses. The action – which was organized by a coalition of housing advocacy groups, including the Home Defenders League and Occupy Our Homes – called for Attorney General Eric Holder to begin prosecutions against the bankers who created the foreclosure crisis. "Everyone here is fed up with Holder acknowledging big banks did really bad stuff but [saying] they're too big to jail," says Greg Basta, deputy director of New York Communities for Change, who helped organize the event. Holder has previously suggested that prosecuting large banks would be difficult because it could destabilize the economy. The attorney general recently tried to walk those comments back – but the conspicuous lack of criminal prosecutions of bankers tells another story, one that Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has written about extensively. Continued at www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-are-homeowners-being-jailed-for-demanding-wall-street-prosecutions-20130522
