Ineffective New York Protestors create chaos

[troung]

Trustafarians at it again..

Wednesday, 28 September 2011 21:44
Ineffective New York Protestors create chaos
By Scott Horn, Third-year political science student
[email protected]
Ineffective New York Protestors create chaos

(5 votes)
Assembled mobs fail to implement change

For nearly two weeks now, protestors have occupied the area around Wall Street in New York City to decry the selfish and destructive behavior of America's financial institutions. At least, that's what they're doing in theory. In reality, they're throwing a party, drinking and drugging and occasionally waving around a sign with a vague reference to peace or equality or justice.

There's nothing wrong with protesting. There's a long and honorable history of protests in this country, going all the way back to the Boston Massacre. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights specifically protects the right to assemble, because the Founding Fathers realized that change sometimes requires the masses to gather with one voice. The problem is that protests only work when they're respected by those with the power to effect change. For every March on Washington, there's a Woodstock; for every Kent State, there's a "Battle for Seattle."

Protests need to have a point, they need to have a clear message and they need to respect the law when it is just. The protestors in Manhattan have failed to do that; by fighting the working-class men and women of the NYPD instead of cooperating with them, they've disrupted the lives of the middle-class workers in the Wall Street area.

Thousands of blue-collar employees of these financial institutions — the janitors, secretaries and mail clerks — are forced to go blocks out of their way to and from work to use the mass transit system because the protestors have clogged vital streets in Manhattan.

Meanwhile, those who actually have the power to change policy have helicopters and private drivers that take them straight to the office, so their lives are hardly affected at all. Banking officials — the "1 percent" being demonstrated against — are standing on their balconies drinking champagne and laughing at the masses below while media outlets seek out the most stoned idiot in the crowd for barely coherent sound bites.

Videos show police officers using pepper spray and netting to control the demonstrators, and cries are made about violations of civil rights, but what they fail to mention is that the police are trying to control — not stop — illegal activity. The police would be justified in breaking up the gatherings, which have been held without obtaining permits. Instead, the police have tried to control the mob as best it could. In response, the organizers have posted the names, addresses and phone numbers of officers, so that they and their families could be threatened and harassed.

In the '50s and '60s, idealistic college-age men and women risked their lives for just causes and real change. The stoners of the '70s, the anarchists of the '80s and '90s and the internet idiots of the 2000s have sullied that tradition by turning protests into parties and riots. It's little wonder that injustice reigns supreme nowadays.

[troung]

Big City
Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim
Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

TO THE STREET Many downtown workers encountered demonstrators last week at Zuccotti Park, some with a group called Occupy Wall Street.
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
Published: September 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/ny...-aim.html?_r=3

By late morning on Wednesday, Occupy Wall Street, a noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people, had a default ambassador in a half-naked woman who called herself Zuni Tikka. A blonde with a marked likeness to Joni Mitchell and a seemingly even stronger wish to burrow through the space-time continuum and hunker down in 1968, Ms. Tikka had taken off all but her cotton underwear and was dancing on the north side of Zuccotti Park, facing Liberty Street, just west of Broadway. Tourists stopped to take pictures; cops smiled, and the insidiously favorable tax treatment of private equity and hedge-fund managers was looking as though it would endure.


“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” Ms. Tikka, 37, told me.

“This,” presumably was the opportunity to air societal grievances as carnival. Occupy Wall Street, a diffuse and leaderless convocation of activists against greed, corporate influence, gross social inequality and other nasty byproducts of wayward capitalism not easily extinguishable by street theater, had hoped to see many thousands join its protest and encampment, which began Sept. 17. According to the group, 2,000 marched on the first day; news outlets estimated that the number was closer to several hundred.

By Wednesday morning, 100 or so stalwarts were making the daily, peaceful trek through the financial district, where their movements were circumscribed by barricades and a heavy police presence. (By Saturday, scores of arrests were made.) By Thursday, the number still sleeping in Zuccotti Park, the central base of operations, appeared to be dwindling further.

Members retained hope for an infusion of energy over the weekend, but as it approached, the issue was not that the Bastille hadn’t been stormed, but that its facade had suffered hardly a chip. It is a curious fact of life in New York that even as the disparities between rich and poor grow deeper, the kind of large-scale civil agitation that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg recently suggested might happen here hasn’t taken shape. The city has two million more residents than Wisconsin, but there, continuing protests of the state budget bill this year turned out approximately 100,000 people at their peak. When a similar mobilization was attempted in June to challenge the city’s budget cuts, 100 people arrived for a sleep-in near City Hall.

Last week brought a disheartening coupling of statistics further delineating the city’s economic divide: The Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, which included more than 50 New Yorkers whose combined net worth totaled $211 billion, arrived at the same moment as census data showing that the percentage of the city’s population living in poverty had risen to 20.1 percent. And yet the revolution did not appear to be brewing.

Most of those entrenched in Zuccotti Park had indeed traveled from somewhere else; they had come from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Missouri, Texas and so on with drums, horns, tambourines and, in the instance of one young man, a knee-length burlap vest, fur hat, ski goggles and tiny plastic baby dolls applied to the tips of his fingers.

One of the few New Yorkers I met, a senior at Bronx High School of Science, was stopping by in fits and spurts, against the wishes of his psychiatrist mother, who feared the possibility of tear gas and had chastised her son for giving his allowance to the cause.

That cause, though, in specific terms, was virtually impossible to decipher. The group was clamoring for nothing in particular to happen right away — not the implementation of the Buffett rule or the increased regulation of the financial industry. Some didn’t think government action was the answer because the rich, they believed, would just find new ways to subvert the system.

“I’m not for interference,” Anna Katheryn Sluka, of western Michigan, told me. “I hope this all gets people who have a lot to think: ‘I’m not going to go to Barcelona for three weeks. I’m going to sponsor a small town in need.’ ”

Some said they were fighting the legal doctrine of corporate personhood; others, not fully understanding what that meant, believed it meant corporations paid no taxes whatsoever. Others came to voice concerns about the death penalty, the drug war, the environment.

“I want to get rid of the combustion engine,” John McKibben, an activist from Vermont, declared as his primary ambition.

“I want to create spectacles,” Becky Wartell, a recent graduate of the College of the Atlantic in Maine, said.

Having discerned the intellectual vacuum, Chris Spiech, an unemployed 26-year-old from New Jersey, arrived on Thursday with the hope of indoctrinating his peers in the lessons of Austrian economics, Milton Friedman and Ron Paul. “I want to abolish the Federal Reserve,” he said.

The group’s lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgably is unsettling in the face of the challenges so many of its generation face — finding work, repaying student loans, figuring out ways to finish college when money has run out. But what were the chances that its members were going to receive the attention they so richly deserve carrying signs like “Even if the World Were to End Tomorrow I’d Still Plant a Tree Today”?

One day, a trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Adam Sarzen, a decade or so older than many of the protesters, came to Zuccotti Park seemingly just to shake his head. “Look at these kids, sitting here with their Apple computers,” he said. “Apple, one of the biggest monopolies in the world. It trades at $400 a share. Do they even know that?”

E-mail: [email protected]

[troung]

A dofus who is too good to work at a job he is qualified for doesn't rep me. These people don't rep 99% of the population....

Occupy Wall Street Update: Michael Moore Doesn't Represent Whole Movement

Occupy Wall Street Update: Michael Moore Doesn't Represent Whole Movement - International Business Times

By John Talty | September 28, 2011 5:49 PM EDT

Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon might be garnering all of the headlines about the Occupy Wall Street protests, but not everyone down at Zuccotti Park is comfortable with that.

One young man, who wished to be identified as only a New Englander in the agriculture industry, stated that it wasn't exactly a good thing that filmmaker Moore was recently on CNN to discuss the Wall Street protests.

The latest US business and financial news as well as issues and events Sample

"I'm not necessary comfortable with Michael Moore becoming the face of the Occupy Wall Street in the media," the young man told the IBTimes. "I think Dr. Cornel West visiting us is a much bigger deal than Michael Moore."

Bill Dobbs, an unofficial press spokesman for the movement, disagreed a bit with the young New Englander and thought that Moore and Sarandon coming to view the movement was a positive. Dobbs said that Sarandon hung around for about an hour on Tuesday talking to different protesters and was genuinely interested in learning more about the movement.

Moore, who gained international acclaim for his film "Bowling for Columbine," visited the protest headquarters at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan over the weekend. He later appeared with Piers Morgan on CNN to discuss the protests and the larger issues being discussed.

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Moore and Sarandon aren't the only celebrities to stop by the protests, though. Comedian Roseanne Barr spoke at the first day of the protest and rapper Lupe Fiasco was seen at a weekend protest.

The arrival of celebrities has caused some to question the need of wealthy persons in a movement against Wall Street and greed, but one man at the protests today pointed out that the main argument is battling for the bottom 99 percent and even most celebrities don't make enough money to be in the top 1 percent.

The bottom 99 percent versus top 1 percent issue was addressed within Zuccotti Park at a small table at one entrance of the park. The table, set up with opposing placards on each side, pitted a man representing the bottom 99 percent against a man representing the top 1 percent.

The man representing the top 1 percent, identified as Harris Gindi, goaded on Occupy Wall Street protesters to get a job and stop draining on the economy. Gindi identified himself as unemployed, but a quick search shows him as chief executive officer and owner of New York-based RHX Discount Stores Inc.

Gindi offered one young man several $20 dollar bills out of his pocket and at one point even offered a $6,000 check to the man. One of his main arguments was that there are jobs everywhere, including at a local Burger King, and that anyone who was actively searching for a job could get one.

But later in an interview with IBTimes, Gindi admitted that only two percent out of the close to nine percent of unemployed Americans could actually get a job.

"Out of the nine percent, about two percent could get jobs," Gindi told the IBTimes. When questioned on what the remaining seven percent should do, Gindi said "it's a problem, I'm not saying it's not a problem" and said that many would "have to wait for the economy to get better later on."

Jesse LaGreca, a blogger for Daily Kos, engaged Gindi in the conversation and appeared insulted when Gindi repeatedly told him he would take him to Burger King to get a job.

"Burger King can't pay my f--ng bills," LaGreca said. "Then I'll move up to fries and that's when the big bucks start rolling in."

LaGreca called Gindi's offers "insulting" and that he'd be a "horrible boss."

"You're rubbing it in my face," LaGreca said. "Do you realize how insulting that is? It's so insulting."

[gunnut]

There was a protest outside my office building yesterday. A bunch of union workers were protesting against a hotel near by. They marched and blocked the intersection (not a big one) for about 2 minutes, causing delays. A co-worker called the cops on them and they were promptly dispersed.

Dude! The unemployment is more than 12% in CA and these guys want more money by refusing to go to work? I'm sure there are a lot of other people who would gladly do what they do.

[Doktor]

...The unemployment is more than 12% in CA...

[BB61Vet]

Right after Operation Desert Storm was over, we were in New York for Stormin' Norman's parade. CO thought it'd be proper if we all wore our crackerjack whites on liberty - so here I go, with 3 other amigos, through the streets of Manhattan in search of (what else?) cold beer and warm females. As we strode down the Avenue amidst lots and lots of suit types, a grungy looking guy on a bicycle comes riding up to me, spits, crashes his bike into the curb, and yells 'Facist!' at me at the top of his lungs. Evidently our clumsy protester failed to notice said curb and we all chuckled at his fall, and further to his dismay, he failed to notice the big, burly suit who'd been following behind us who immediately jumped down the curb, grabbed said kid and punched him in the nose. Burly suit guy said "Don't you know it was for your right to live in a country where you could be able to say what you did that they were fighting?" I smiled, looked at burly suit guy, and said "Really, it was for your right to punch idiots like this in the nose, but I get your drift..." We couldn't pay for another beer that night.

So much for protesters eh?

[highsea]

A bunch of union workers were protesting against a hotel near by.

The longshoremen here are still at it. Blocking the trains and streets, at least two instances of tampering with the railroad tracks which are federal offenses.

Something like 213 arrests so far.

[troung]

There was a protest outside my office building yesterday. A bunch of union workers were protesting against a hotel near by. They marched and blocked the intersection (not a big one) for about 2 minutes, causing delays. A co-worker called the cops on them and they were promptly dispersed.

At least that protest is connected to their goal - the WS protest doesn't have a path towards their "goal".

[Doktor]

Hey what happened with the freedom to move/roam?

I mean you can protest all you like as far as I can go to wherever I wanted.

[omon]

these protests ae b.s. bunch of idiots walking all over wall street area, and using a buckets as drums, they are escoted by cops, lots of cops. the famous bull is blocked off, never seen it closed off before, i asked a cop why, he said so these idiots wouldn't vandalize it, since it is wall street symbol, entire wall street area is also blocked so the only way to walk is 1 narow sidewalk, early in the moring thousands of ppl go to work, thru these 6feet wide sidewalks, gets very packed, before that entire streets were opened.
there is absolutely noting these idiots will accomplish, besides inconviniance everyone that works there.
i'll try to take some pics tomorow, if i have time.

[troung]

Occupy Wall Street protesters are behaving like a bunch of spoiled brats

Occupy Wall Street protesters are behaving like a bunch of spoiled brats

And for sleet and torrential rains - anything that might convince the precious insufferables who have taken over Wall Street that they have had enough of exercising their First Amendment rights to the inconvenience of tens of thousands of people who actually have to work for a living.

This bunch ought to get down on their knees in thanks that America's capitalist Founding Fathers saw fit to protect the privileges of the dumb and obnoxious along with everyone else.

They should also salute the NYPD and all its officers for paying diligent attention to ensuring that peace and harmony reign in their daze of rage. But no.

Instead, in a disgraceful attempt at intimidation, partisans of Occupy Wall Street, as the micromovement calls itself, posted on the Internet the name, address and telephone number of a ranking cop who dosed a couple of upstarts with pepper spray - along with the same information about the officer's family members.

If the NYPD has made any tactical error in this episode, it was in being too tolerant.

Rather than require protesters to secure a permit to demonstrate - as the NYPD asked of the 10,000 people who massed peacefully outside the United Nations - the department arranged for campout accommodations in Zuccotti Park, which happens to be privately owned, although open to the public.

Police also closed major intersections to traffic, forcing pedestrians to take the long way around. Further, the cops cordoned off the statue of the Wall Street bull, depriving tourists of upclose-and-personal inspections.

On Saturday, these guests of the municipality decided to march north to Union Square. Again, they did so without a permit. Had they asked for one, the NYPD would have secured a parade route that upheld both the right to protest and the public's ability to move.

As it was, the NYPD went with the flow, allowing the parade so long as the walkers did not interfere with sidewalk or street passage. Soon enough, a couple hundred marchers took too much of the real estate and became unruly.

People dodged in and out of traffic, sometimes surrounding cars to halt them. Officers began to break the throng into smaller groups, occasionally using plastic nets. Chaos ensued as the crowd now wailed about being victims of oppression.

Amid arrests, that senior officer was photographed applying pepper spray in a video that is being held up as evidence of a human rights violation worthy of trial in the International Criminal Court. It is conceivable that he could have kept his spray holstered - then again, he was surrounded by chaos. He made a judgment call. The rest is second-guessing.

The right to free speech comes with responsibilities. It does not encompass a right to do just what you want wherever you want, as these juveniles may one day learn.

Read more: Occupy Wall Street protesters are behaving like a bunch of spoiled brats

================
The Occupy Wall Street Protestors Are Starting To Get Foul
Julia La Roche | Sep. 26, 2011, 3:02 PM | 4,397 | 100



We're now entering the second week of the non-violent protestors from "Occupy Wall Street" taking over the Financial District.

The basic premise of the demonstrations seems to be a protest against the banks and the government. We're still not sure what their exact message is or if they even have a solution to the problem.

Over the weekend, things got ugly with more than 80 protestors arrested and a group of women protestors shrieking after being maced in the face by police.

We decided to take a stroll through their encampment at Zuccotti Park this weekend and here's some things we noticed:

Poor hygiene: While wandering through the camp site, I asked several people how long they've been there and if they've taken a shower. Some people said they would go to friends' apartments to clean up. However a bunch of the protestors confessed to me that they have not showered since the start of the movement. In my opinion, the smell is extremely pungent. And the camp site is littered with trash, cardboard and garbage bags piled up.

Nudity: At least two women had their naked breasts exposed. Apparently, it is legal. (I asked a police officer nearby.) But there's no question it's inconsiderate. The site is surrounded by popular tourist destinations in the Financial District and there are tons of families with young children that frequent those locations.

Drugs: Another thing that caught me by surprise was the use of marijuana. I walked right by a protestor smoking weed in broad daylight. The police must have been just 20 feet away too. If you're at a protest site surrounded by hundreds of police officers and trying to get out your important message out, then it's probably not the best idea to light one up!

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.
Follow Julia La Roche on Twitter.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-...#ixzz1ZPa0xKJa

[troung]

In the interest of fairness... Troung is fair and balanced :insane:

========
An Emergency Program for Anti-Wall Street Protestors: Don’t Let Soros Hijack the Movement
Posted: 2011/09/29
An Emergency Program for Anti-Wall Street Protestors: Don’t Let Soros Hijack the Movement

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
September 29, 2011

Political mass strike dynamics have been at work in the United States since the Wisconsin and Ohio mobilizations of February and March. Now, there are demonstrations in lower Manhattan and Boston specifically directed against the Wall Street banks. Another protest demonstration is scheduled for Washington, DC, starting on October 6. Good: a political challenge to Wall Street is indeed long overdue.

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are skeptical in regard to Obama. There is no sizable constituency for Ron Paul, and the crackpot Austrian school of economics is hardly represented. Above all, there is a desire to break the power of Wall Street. This much is promising, but still not enough to win.

The demonstrations appear initially as leaderless groups, engaged in an organic process of discussion from which specific demands are supposed to emerge. But so far, these demonstrations have put forth no specific demands, reforms, or concrete measures whatsoever to fight Wall Street. This is a fatal political weakness. A movement that attempts to go forward with vague slogans like “Freedom” or “Abolish capitalism” is likely to become easy prey for foundation-funded operatives on the left wing of the Democratic Party.

If a movement pretends to have no leaders, then it is the corporate media, themselves controlled by Wall Street, who will choose the leaders. A few days ago, a Wall Street protester named Kelly Heresy was anointed as principal honcho by Keith Olbermann, who used to work for the hedge fund called General Electric, and who now works for Al Gore. This is no way to select leaders.

The demonstrations may appear spontaneous, but it is easy to see gatekeepers and countergangs operating in their midst, often with a frank counterinsurgency agenda. Occupy Wall Street in particular shows the heavy influence of union bureaucrats from the Service Employees International Union, as well as Acorn – both parts of the Obama machine. The goal of these operatives is to keep the focus of the protests vague and diffuse, so that no demands emerge that might be embarrassing to the Wall Street puppet Obama and his reelection campaign. Their ultimate goal is to absorb the protests as the left wing of the Obama 2012 effort. That means supporting an administration which not only refuses to fight Wall Street, but which is packed with Wall Street executives in its highest positions.

Dubious Hollywood figures like Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore are attempting to gain publicity for themselves by showing up at the demonstrations. Michael Moore, who is not very popular with the demonstrators, was instrumental in leading the antiwar and impeachment movements of the past decade back into the Democratic Party to support Obama. Journalist Matt Taibbi, another newly minted expert on the movement, is remembered for his hatchet jobs in favor of the Bush administration theory of terrorism.

The organizers of the Wall Street action say they want to imitate recent protests in other countries. Their favorite is the Tahrir Square agitation in Egypt in February. But if you go to Cairo today, veterans of those demonstrations will tell you that these efforts accomplished relatively little, and mainly had the effect of ousting an oppressive civilian government in favor of an even more oppressive military government of weak CIA puppets which is still operating under martial law, even as benighted religious fanatics gather strength. In Greece, it is true that the trade unions have mounted a dozen general strikes, but all of these have failed to oust Prime Minister Papandreou, the main enforcer of austerity cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund, and so the brutal austerity continues. The same thing applies to Spain, where the indignados became so self-absorbed in their discussion and consensus process that they never put forward a program to save Spanish society from the bankers. In Iceland too, the anti-bank movement was never able to go beyond mere protest to advance a series of concrete measures that would allow them to contend for power, take power, and hold onto it for the public good.

The lesson of all of these situations is that, in a severe world economic depression of the kind we have today, mere protest is not enough. Desperate populations are looking for political leadership with solutions capable of solving the life or death issues facing nations today. A movement which is incapable of specifying what it intends to fight for is an immature movement which no intelligent person will take seriously.

The secret of a mass strike upsurge is that crisis conditions will propel many apolitical people into activism. This makes them vulnerable to manipulation by demagogues, including those of the extreme right. The mass strike upsurge by itself solves nothing. The question is whether any coherent group of people can intervene into the mass upsurge and push aside bankrupt and failed leaders with the kind of radical reform program that can actually get the society out of the crisis. The masses cannot discover this program on their own – they are too busy with the struggle for daily existence. College students therefore have a special responsibility to provide ideas for the benefit of the entire society. If an adequate program becomes dominant, the nation can survive. Otherwise, nothing guarantees that civilization itself will not collapse – look at the Tea Party if you don’t believe this. Soros, Koch, and the other finance capitalists have a good working understanding of how these things work, which is why they are sending in their operatives to make sure that this movement will have only the vaguest demands, or no demands at all, to fight for. Let that happen, and Wall Street will rule the day once again.

Despite what Michael Moore may think, the political power of Wall Street is considerable, and an effective attack on the bankers will demand the unified efforts of key sectors of the population. This unity must be expressed in the program itself. Students must broaden the sociological scope of the movement to include all walks of life.

In order to fight Wall Street, it is necessary for the American people to understand the basic idea of shifting the cost of the world economic depression off of the backs of working people and the poor where it is now, and onto Wall Street banks and super-rich speculators. Depressions are very expensive. Who should pay for the current depression? The bankers demand that the American people must pay. We want the bankers to pay, and we must specify how. A movement that wants to defend working people against the class warfare of the bankers has the responsibility of putting forward a program to defend middle-class and other working people. In order to win, the anti-Wall Street protests must agitate for a series of demands including the following:

1. Student Loan Amnesty. The common experience of many of the protesters is that of being crushed by an outrageous burden of high interest student loans. Today it is common for graduating seniors to carry $50,000, $75,000, or even $100,000 of debt. Add the costs of an advanced degree in teaching, law, or medicine, and the debt burden becomes astronomical. The exorbitant cost of a college education reflects the increasing immiseration of the United States over the past 40 years, as the overall standard of living has declined by two thirds or more in terms of real wages and other considerations. These debts are owed to the same zombie bankers who cashed in on the Bush bailout of 2008, and the even larger loans issued by Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve over recent years. This is a system of brutal primitive accumulation against the life chances everyone who knows that they need a college degree to be employable in the 21st century. Total students loan indebtedness is now approaching $1 trillion. This grinding debt is destroying the futures, the lives, and the hopes of college students and recent graduates.
When a debtor country like Greece is unable to pay its debts, it is normal to hear talk of a haircut for the bondholders and bankers. It is time for the Wall Street zombie banks to take a haircut on student loan debt. Most of this debt cannot be paid off, but an entire generation can be ruined by a futile attempt to pay it back.

A leading demand must therefore be a total cancellation of all outstanding student loan debt, meaning a total and immediate forgiveness of all payments of principal and interest coming from this category of borrowing. Carter granted Vietnam draft resisters an amnesty. If Obama wants to keep his job, he must deliver a student loan amnesty to save not just a single generation, but the entire future of the United States and beyond. Otherwise, dump Obama in 2012! The zombie bankers have been pampered enough. It is time for them to take a bath, so that a generation might live. This is also the best stimulus program possible.

2. Stop Foreclosures. Since students alone will never be enough to make a revolution, it is necessary to put forward additional measures to defend other parts of the population from the depredations of Wall Street. In the area of home foreclosures, the bankers have trampled on the law to seize millions of homes, some of which never had a mortgage, and many of which were current in their payments. The banks have used corrupt robo-signers, robo-cops, and robo-judges to carry out these fraudclosure thefts. The answer is to make foreclosure a federal crime, so that anyone who throws an American family out on the street will end up in Leavenworth. Again, the zombie bankers can eat the losses, which are unavoidable in any case. This is not an impossible demand: under the New Deal, the Frazier-Lemke Act stopped all foreclosures on homes, provided only that the owners could get a minimal payment plan approved by any judge in any court. With the help of popular pressure and public opinion, foreclosures virtually came to a halt. This is what we need to be demanding today.

3. Defend and fully fund the social safety net. Wall Street and Washington elites agree that the American people ought to be subjected to genocidal austerity – cuts so draconian that they will kill people. The goal is obviously to fund bigger and better bailouts of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase when they go bankrupt the next time around. Real unemployment in the United States is now about 25%, meaning that 30 million people cannot find work, and many have been looking for years. Therefore, we need to extend jobless benefits to all unemployed, including those who have been out of a job for 99 weeks and more. 46 million Americans are now surviving thanks to Food Stamps, but the reactionary Republicans are demanding savage cuts, and Obama is more than likely to cave. We also need to defend programs that specifically help children and young. These include S-CHIP, which gives health care to poor children; Head Start, which provides breakfast and preschool for poor kids; and WIC, which provides high-protein meals for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and infants. Older people have special problems, including that Wall Street speculators have destroyed the value of their 401(k) and IRA retirement plans. This means that Social Security pensions should be increased, and not cut, as the Republicans and Obama both want. Obama has already cut $500 billion out of Medicare, but he wants to cut it even more, and the Tea Party is eager to help him. The best healthcare would be to open Medicare to all Americans, while making the investments needed to maintain quality. Medicaid gives healthcare to poor people of any age, and these payments must be maintained.

4. Pay for healthcare and social services with a 1% Wall Street Sales Tax. When they hear demands like these, Fox news commentators will demand to know how these programs can be paid for. The answer is simple: the Tobin tax or Wall Street sales tax. Today the total financial turnover of the banksters in terms of buying, selling, and other trading comes to well over three quadrillion dollars yearly – that’s more than 3,000 trillion dollars. The rest of us pay sales tax on most purchases, often including the groceries, but Wall Street zombie bankers and hedge fund hyenas pay absolutely zero on that colossal sum. The most unfair aspect of the entire US tax system is that Wall Street pays virtually no taxes. It is time for the bankers to cough up 1% of every stock, bond, and derivatives transaction, be it program trading, high frequency trading, or computerized flash trading at the rate of one million transactions per second. The total revenue could be split between the federal government and the states, and would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps even trillions – depending on how determined the speculators are to keep up their dirty deals. There is nothing impossible about this demand: the federal government had a financial transaction tax from the time of World War I in 1967. And even today, the largely right wing governments of the European Union are about to enact their own Tobin tax. Why can’t it be done here as well?

These are immediate agitational demands that can be readily understood by any person. They can form the leading edge of a struggle to break the political power of Wall Street. In addition, a full recovery from depression and the attainment of full employment for the first time since 1945 will require the nationalization of the Federal Reserve, and the issuing of successive tranches of $1 trillion of 0%, very long-term Federal credit for the building of infrastructure, with a goal of creating 30 million new productive jobs with adequate capital investment per job.

Another essential point is that Wall Street is the biggest nest of warmongers anywhere in the world. Anyone seeking to gain influence over the anti-Wall Street movement should be willing to condemn and denounce Obama’s wanton aggression against Libya, as well as to call for an immediate pullout of US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. Anyone who refuses to do this should be regarded with grave suspicion.

The alternative to such concrete demands is, whether we like it or not, to remain in the orbit of Obama’s Democratic Party. Earlier this year, students, workers, and others occupied the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin in response to attacks on working people coming from the fascist governor, Walker. The resistance against Walker was betrayed first of all by the Democratic Party, which announced that it would not fight for wages and benefits, but only for trade union rights in the abstract. That is a good program for trade union bureaucrats, but not so good for working people, who bore the brunt of Walker’s austerity. A president who was on the side of the people would have gone immediately to Madison, Wisconsin to hold a town hall on the occupied grounds of the state capitol, an event that would have looked much different than the canned, pre-screened teleprompter town halls Obama likes to address. A real president would have taken Attorney General Holder and Labor Secretary Solis along to investigate the denial of civil rights and labor violations by Walker. Obama did none of these things. Rather, he damned the movement with a few words of faint praise, and cut it loose. The lesson is that the Democratic Party is more than willing to sell out mass struggles anytime it can. And it is only by having your own program of anti-Wall Street demands that you can become independent of the rotten two-party system.

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Crazy man.... crazy....

[Bigfella]

these protests ae b.s. bunch of idiots walking all over wall street area, and using a buckets as drums, they are escoted by cops, lots of cops. the famous bull is blocked off, never seen it closed off before, i asked a cop why, he said so these idiots wouldn't vandalize it, since it is wall street symbol, entire wall street area is also blocked so the only way to walk is 1 narow sidewalk, early in the moring thousands of ppl go to work, thru these 6feet wide sidewalks, gets very packed, before that entire streets were opened.
there is absolutely noting these idiots will accomplish, besides inconviniance everyone that works there.
i'll try to take some pics tomorow, if i have time.

I saw these guys when I was on my way to the 9/11 memorial (I'll post pics soon). To be hinest, I was so unimpressed I didn't even bother with photos (and I am snapping EVERYTHING here). i'm sure some of them have some valid points to make, but I wasn't prepared to wade through the vapid & repetitious to find such folk. Seen better protests over lesser issues.

[highsea]

This is pretty funny:

Video: Liberal trust-fund baby complains about America’s unjust capitalist system | Video | TheBlaze.com

[troung]

That guy is a douche... Douchebag Fall.... coined a term...
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This Revolution Is Televised: A little something for assholes who are complaining that there's a lack of Occupy Wall Street coverage
Published Sep 27 2011, 10:07 AM by Chris Faraone
19

So I found out this morning on Twitter that there's to be an Occupy Boston powwow modeled after the Occupy Wall Street actions that have been going so well in New York. I was surprised not because the spirit spread to Mass, but because I didn't get a press release. Call me arrogant if you want, but the fact is that I probably cover more protests than any other reporter in Boston, and found it to be a bit strange.

Or maybe it's not so strange. Perhaps it's an intentional oversight so that those who occupy Boston can mimic their Big Apple counterparts and complain obsessively that there's no coverage. Which brings me to the real point of this post, which is to call bullshit on the parrot clowns who have been claiming for a week now that the media's ignoring the New York action. You know the type - they don't actually follow the news, but they know everything about it.

As displayed below, there was and is no lack of coverage - I'd even go as far as to say that I've never seen a protest action of this sort get more attention. From the start of the occupation to the time that shit got rowdy, reporters have been there documenting. I'm no fan of the mainstream press, but the fact – and I don't use that word loosely – is that they were on their job. As fun as it is to complain about us, the corporate media (and even outlets that are owned by these nefarious institutions) is not the problem here. Wall Street is.

I hope that Occupy Boston goes well. Much like the Occupy Wall Street kids, I wish nothing but the worst for all scumbags who pillaged our economy. But I'm getting really sick of political novices and hipster dipshits thinking that the world needs to suddenly pay attention because they bought a tent and made a sign. If you want a quick hand job, post something clever on Facebook. Most activists would chop a finger off to get half this much major coverage. Now stop being babies and carry on - you sound like Glenn Beck bitching that nobody covered his redneck parade in DC last year.

A VERY condensed list of Occupy Wall Street coverage (please note that many of these outlets have reported on the action several times, and that these links are just from BEFORE cops lost their ****ing minds down there, triggering the real media storm):

Read more: This Revolution Is Televised: A little something for assholes who are complaining that there's a lack of Occupy Wall Street coverage - Phlog

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Why Protest Movements Succeed: Occupy Wall Street Vs. The Tea Party
By: Noah Rothman
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Why didn't this catch on??
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Now in its closing phase, a recent attempt by several hundred if not thousands (accounts vary) of left-leaning protesters to “occupy wall street” has, by any objective assessment, failed to achieve its goals. Some of the comments in Ology’s coverage of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement have questioned how this could be the case. They cite the Tea Party movement and its successes and wonder why that movement was successful when this movement failed. Let us compare these two recent case studies in protest movements dedicated to social change—one a wild success and the other… well, not.

Why OWS is a Crappy Protest

The Arrests Are Ongoing

First, for those in support of the articulated goals of the OWS movement, let’s define why the Tea Party movement is, in fact, successful. First, having come together around a rant by CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli in February, 2009, it went from fringe protest to powerful electoral force in very short order. Two months after Santelli’s rant, “Tax Day” protests sprung up around the country, followed shortly by the summer of “Angry Town Halls.”

Conservative protesters latched onto the President’s signature initiative, health care reform, and became the media foil to a story that was receiving a lot of coverage. They used that momentum to propel a number of self-described Tea Party representatives into Congress. Today, there is a caucus in Congress devoted to the Tea Party and its goals and every presidential candidate seeking the nomination has to genuflect towards that movement. This can be objectively described as a successful protest movement.

Why were they successful? First, the Tea Party embraced easy and limited demands. Second, the Tea Party had the ability to shape a media narrative by being the foil to that narrative. Finally, the Tea Party was compatible with, rather than opposed to, a pre-existing political establishment.

Easy and Limited Demands: Jonathan Moorman artfully opined on this in an earlier Ology post. OWS demands are myriad. Furthermore, there is no consensus as to what those demands are. They often sprawl into virtually every facet of progressivism; as such, they have received the admiration of the progressive movement and have done commensurate damage to that movement by appearing impotent. The Tea Party, by contrast, has a singular demand that is both easy to articulate and comprehend—smaller central government. This dovetails with reasons two and three: the Tea Party could become a foil to the larger sto ry of government mission creep in 2009-2010, and they could provide a megaphone for an already existing party platform (albeit an unfiltered one).

Be the Foil to a Media Narrative: The Tea Party was able to position itself as the opposition to Washington at a time when Democrats, and progressivism, was in command in the capitol. The media found novelty in what was at the time a limited opposition movement with little hope of having their goals met. Following two cycles in which Republicans in Congress were purged at historic rates, many believed this was the beginning of an era of progressivism and that the Tea Party was simply the last gasp of a dying ideology. The media attention they received would have a snowball effect. How has the OWS not met this goal? Well, contrary to what many of them believe, there are few articulating their goals around this center-right nation. Furthermore, the media narrative, presently focused on Republican electoral politics, is being eschewed rather than embraced by the protesters.

Furthermore, the OWS protesters believe they are main stream when they are not. Believe me, the guy in the Tricorne hat draped with tea bags is just as nutty looking as the topless hippie in multicolor bellbottoms with “I Am Troy Davis” scrawled across her chest. What OWS fails to understand is that most of the nation identifies with the former more than the latter and it is incumbent on OWS to project an image that is palatable to the country.

Embrace A Preexisting Political Establishment: The Tea Party could have gone third party, as the Reform movement in the early 1990s coalesced around Ross Perot. They collectively chose not to and it was a cleaver decision. It allowed the Tea Party to harness the preexisting political network that was the Republican Party. Donors, advertisers, lobbyists, members of Congress and their staff were all at the Tea Party’s disposal. OWS not only does not embrace the Democratic Party, they openly flirt with a primary challenge to the most progressive president in three generations (a move that would, if even remotely successful, almost certainly doom Obama to a single term). The OWS, like the Tea Party, has ideological litmus tests that are exceedingly difficult to meet. However, the Tea Party settles while OWS pines for that which does not and has never existed (OWS has no use for a caucus of like minded representatives in Congress, for example). This adds to the impression that is rapidly taking shape that their movement is not a serious one.

OWS and the Tea Party share many similarities, and with better leadership and unspoken collective understanding that these three rules must be adhered to, there is the chance that OWS can capture the affection of disaffected progressives and move the Democratic Party toward the left. Whether this is a great electoral strategy in 2012 is a whole different question, but if that is their goal, they could do it. On their present trajectory, however, they are doomed to be what they presently are; a side show, amusing for now, but forgotten in a week.

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