So this “Occupy Wall Street” thing is happening
I once work along side of a woman who thought that if she rubbed cedar blocks under her arms, she wouldn’t have body odor. She thought wrong. Ever since then I guess I’ve had a visceral distaste for drum circle dancing, ironic sign holding, Ralph Nader voting hippies. This news via boing boing seems like a good thing though.
Occupy Wall Street gets support from MoveOn, trade unions, community groups
By Cory Doctorow at 10:23 am Friday, Sep 30
A coalition of activists, community groups and trade unions (whom Crain’s New York Business hilariously refer as “agitators,” as though they were the Red Menace a post-WWII installment of Little Orphan Annie) are set to join the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The new group includes MoveOn, some SEIU chapters, Workers United, the United Federation of Teachers, and a Transport Workers Union local. They’re also being backed by the Working Families Party.
While some of the methods of the Wall Street protestors are reasonably debatable, I give them high marks for targeting the symbol and a center of the principal source power in the USA: big corporations and corporate elites.
The fact is, those hippies are the kind of people who have the time to do this. We don’t.
So I thank the hippies for getting the ball rolling, as Dana says, in the right place at the right time.
I agree with all that. I’m just being candid about why I haven’t paid any attention to this up until now.
Those fanny paddling frat boys who are being protested on Wall Street, are the same charlatans who will be making the money off of “green energy” and carbon credit scams.
If we had a hippy government like most of Western Europe, we’d have health care for all, solar energy & jobs, oh, yeah, and not be fighting a bunch of wars.
Oh, yeah, and fresh yogurt.
Eat the rich.
Ah, the lowly HIPPIE.
The tie-died sandal shodden lowly HIPPIE,
Though you’re first out from the trenches,
You’ll never once get mentioned
by the lowly jerks you find protesting here.
Hey Jason330,
Remember when Celia Cohen described the Howard Dean supporters, including you, as a bunch of hippies? That was the beginning of your relationship with Ms. Cohen. Hah!
This seems to be growing into something which is a good thing. I just wish there was a coherent message.
Right, Delaware Liberal ignored this story completely and now that its gone mainstream decide to write something? “Hippies” you use that word like the right wingers do to discredit these people. It was the “hippies” who began the protests against the Vietnam war, I guess the “hippies” were wrong then too huh! Most of you are too young to know what actually happened in the 60’s and 70’s otherwise you would’nt be using these demonizing words against a movement that has grown nationally. It only takes a few good people to start something and these highly educated, unemployed young folk who can’t find a job to pay their thousands and thousands in student loans, should do what you do..sit behind your computer and write stuff few people read. I wonder if there was an Occupy Delaware movement how many of you would get off your butts and attend? There are teabaggers, left wing, right wing all kinds of issues, their general assemblys every day are creating the list of grievances. Michael Moore hit on a few last night, I congratulate them and applaud them for their courage.
“This seems to be growing into something which is a good thing. I just wish there was a coherent message.”
If everybody felt that way we’d still be in Vietnam.
There is a coherent message, but you have to be under 30 to hear it.
1) Ralph Nader voting hippies can kiss my ass. I’m not backing off from that stance. That said, if you are pissed off about the way this country is being run and you don’t watch Fox News – you are a friend of mine.
2) the thing that drove me crazy about Cohen’s story was that she misrepresented the Dean HQ opening because one guy wore a tie died T-shirt.
3) Vietnam. Right. That was like 40 years ago. Stop being “Protesty” the cartoon character and allowing stupid lazy reports like Cohen to write you off as dreamy, nostalgia & hemp addled wastrels.
I also applaud their efforts. This should have happened 3 years ago.
@jason –> I didn’t vote for Nader. I don’t watch Fox News. I don’t like it when I see you chewing on your own. But, I still want to like YOU. Don’t buy the infiltrator dis-information about what you call hippies. That’s a culture that defies labels, anyway. It means exactly nothing.
@anon & @independent voter —> I posted this on my little blog this morning…
Can people understand it, yet? 99% of us have now started to come out in public to say no. This movement has already been tagged as dirty hippies by the fearful 1%.
I see this morning that they are writing about an OCCUPY BOSTON action being taken in the Financial District there. And the portability (not just in NYC at Wall Street) is something that is important to note. http://www.tuftsdaily.com/occupy-boston-gathers-crowd-pushes-for-grassroots-social-change-1.2642350
To paraphrase, from the article, the “OCCUPY” movement has no leaders, no rules, where every person has a voice. They want to ensure that no one co-opts the movement with one agenda.
I hope this will help avoid the poison pills delivered by infiltrators who want to kill this before it really gets started.
Here’s my sign (borrowed from @pjdoe) We live in a country were PROFIT is PRIVATIZED & LOSS is SOCIALIZED
Time to start talking about OCCUPYDELAWARE!
I second that, flutecake. As the world’s favorite corporate headquarters, Delaware is ripe for such protest. Maybe Bank of America would be a good first target.
‘They’ went after ACORN for organizing – horrors – against Wall Street. And the Delaware DEMs couldn’t wait to untouch those untouchables who empowered the powerless (even though the voters ACORN outreachers were registering would mainly vote for DEMs…. both Kauffman and Carper voted to unfund ACORN on the basis of wingnut-edited video stings).
Dirty hippies and Nadarites?? ANYhoo. I have heard the complaints that Occupy Wall Street’s message isn’t focused.
But the message for the OCT. 6th DC event is clear and broadly supported. Check it out. [If peace-mongering and environmental justice smells too offensively of patchouli for Jason’s taste, let’s hope that isn’t the mentality of all of the DL crowd.]
“Join the October 2011 Coalition–individuals and groups demanding real peace with social,economic,and environmental justice and an end to all U.S. wars.”
Go to: http://www.october2011.org/
Have you seen this disturbing video? NYPD corrals women protesters and maces them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA
For what? They were yelling for the cops to stop roughing up another protester. Since when do you get penned up and maced for yelling? There were people knocked around and arrested for writing on the streets with chalk.
Civil disobedience is still disobedience I guess, especially when you protest on Wall Street.
And one more video, watch the Wall Street elite drinking champagne on the balcony while protesters are in the streets…disgusting…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEjGx6TZdAc
This is the kind of stuff that people need to know about!
Apparently, jason, you paid enough attention several days ago when my comment and link to these protests in an open thread simply stating “this is what fighting for the middle class looks like” was deleted from the thread.
Or maybe it was just cassandra_m back from vacation.
anon, check out how entertaining some police are finding that video:
http://www.outsidethemachine.com/?p=1816
It’s nascent in DE, but here is the facebook page for the one in DE: https://www.facebook.com/groups/279529348732140/?ref=ts
“Delaware is ripe for such protest”
Delaware doesn’t have enough hippies.
The pepper spray videos are disturbing. Even though the incidents are not the main point of the protest, they create instant sympathy for the protesters, and bring coverage to the protests, which were not being covered.
NYPD was using the technique called “kettling,” which corrals peaceful protesters into an increasingly confined area until they crack and some of them fight their way out of the pen, where they will receive their beat-down. Then the media gets their “violent protest” story, and police get the green light to clear the streets.
But apparently this group wasn’t following the script (they were remaining peaceful), so commanders called in high-ranking Anthony Bologna, their go-to guy for creating havoc, to start hosing people down with Mace. Tony Baloney still has unresolved complaints against him from the 2004 Bush protests, so this is apparently straight from the NYPD playbook for protests.
Personally I would have dived over the barricade and tried to break the fucker’s Mace arm, or worse. But that would have been the wrong thing to do. So I give great credit to all the young males there who did not respond to the provocation.
The unique thing about this incident was the presence of multiple civilian cameras. Not only that, the cameras for the first time are high-definition enough to capture fine details like the stream of mace spraying onto the woman’s face and – most importantly – a detailed image of the shooter’s badge with his name prominently displayed. It is like a Zapruder film that also includes a close-up of the shooter.
From now on, police must assume they will be filmed.
The President orders and executes assassinations of American citizens. Innocent people are executed by the states. And the police torture peaceful citizens with electroshocks and chemicals with impunity, and make jokes about it afterward.
Oh, and “Researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois have developed a hack that, for about $26 and an 8th-grade science education, can remotely manipulate the electronic voting machines used by millions of voters all across the U.S.”
Tell me again why America isn’t a police state.
This is really remarkable at this moment:
http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution
Live on the Brooklyn Bridge, hundreds of protesters are lined up waiting patiently to be arrested. They are peaceful, and chanting “Let Us Go!” and documenting the name of each person being arrested. All being filmed and livestreamed by the protesters.
This isn’t your father’s hippie protest.
If I were a conservative, I would dislike hippies for being hippies. Since I’m a liberal, I dislike hippies for being less effective as they could be if they would stay on message and stop trying to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
I dunno, Jason. I heard a pretty good chant going for “Jobs And Education.” That was pretty clear. What’s not to like?
When you label people, you play into the bad guys’ hands. Please see this as a non-violent populist uprising. This movement has no leaders, no rules, where every person has a voice. They want to ensure that no one co-opts the movement with one agenda.
I hope this will help avoid the poison pills delivered by infiltrators who want to kill this before it really gets started.
Don’t throw our own under the bus.
If you bank with a big corporate bank, close your account and move your money to a credit union. Cut up your credit cards and get one with Working Assets (there may be others, just I don’t have any right now). It’s your money, don’t feed the evil machine with it.
This day will bring it into the national media tomorrow. And then we will get to have the public conversation on what it is all about.
Tomorrow more video will emerge that didn’t make it into a live stream. I gotta say, the police are handling the arrests very gingerly, after Tony Baloney was ID’d by the crowd. Bravo for citizen cameras!
NYC is festooned with police cameras too, so one lawsuit could put all their footage into the public record (it should already be public record!).
DG was very good to point out the FB page of Occupy Delaware @1:47 (link there), please go visit them.
There’s others forming all over the USA. As we are corporate homes of most of the banksters, we should be active!
Those Delaware City girls will be glad you stopped by on FB. I can’t see them this week due to deadlines but I can help after the 12th.
A1 can’t stay on topic for the duration of a thread, forget about a protest.
Everybody else, I think hippies are precious. Just like Williamsburg historical interpreters who never break charachter.
Just kidding. Jeez. Someone post a link to the Delaware FB page. I’ve got to get my protest threads out of mothballs.
I think this protest is a hell of a lot more effective than sitting in a room listening to your Senator tell you how we have to cut social insurance.
Actually, these people look pretty much like a cross-section of twenty-something New Yorkers. They probably think we are the ineffective ones.
@jason ===> https://www.facebook.com/groups/279529348732140/?ref=ts
Occupy Delaware on Facebook.
But I really hope once the movement gets more active, that someone makes another web page. I really don’t want to do activism on Facebook.
Why aren’t there more DL workers paying attention to this? You could help. This would be an ideal place for information rather than Facebook. I happen to know you guys are not power mad twenty-something billionaires.
I’ll take the train up tomorrow if I can find a wing-man/woman to keep me out of trouble or bail me out of jail.
Any takers?
I just saw a clip on Chris Hayes’ morning show of the protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was chillingly wonderful: a little scary and put a lump in my throat to hear restive American youth chanting about marching peacefully, facing off against NYC police and getting netted and arrested by the hundreds.
from a Canadian Press AP story – a grad student with college debt: …”I don’t think we’re asking for much, just to wake up every morning not worrying whether we can pay the rent, or whether our next meal will be rice and beans again,” [Erin] Larkins wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “No one is expecting immediate change. I think everyone is just hopeful that people will wake up a bit and realize that the more we speak up, the more the people that do have the authority to make changes in this world listen.”
(link on DE Way)
Because of their utilitarian origins, the first three, four and five digits of a zip code are still the most honest delineators of community boundaries. Any reapportioners who refuse to notice this should be prosecuted up to the Supreme Court and imprisoned.
Thanks Dana and Flutecake for the mention. We ARE trying (although it’s not all girls, lol) to get something going here in the corporate capitol, but it’s slow going…appreciate any and all support you can lend, even if it’s just spreading the link for folks to check us out.
Meetings are being held today so you guys are very late in answering the call. Jason you have a problem with the word “hippies” but I don’t think you have a clue as to what that generation was all about nor do you realize it was us “hippies” who ended the Vietnam war. Millions of us across this country, organized, mobilized and we didnt have the internet to help. So please continue using the right wing derogatory remark “hippies” as a slanderous way to demonize those young and old folks in NYC. For your information one of our great unions here in Delaware sent buses to NY last week…but you all wouldnt know that cuz your werent involved, nor paying attention. 30 cities now have Occupies and it continues to grow. Occupy Delaware is going to happen.
You have no idea how delighted I am to be wrong about my first reaction to this. As for not liking hippies on a personal level, I guess that was a pretty sweeping generalization. I’m sure some of you are tolerable.
Before starting the Occupy Delaware FB, I had been following OWS for a week and wondering why nothing was happening here…so I finally got tired of waiting. If you are so inclined, we are holding the first General Assembly on Wednesday to try to determine a path forward.
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=274462819242374
That’s the spirit. (Why don’t these links working for me?) Never mind, I’ll find some way to “like” the FB page and start promoting the General Assembly on Wednesday.
It’s great to see widespread protests on the left, finally.
Its NOT just the left. Arent you paying attention. There are tea partiers there, old, young, left and right. Why do you think lamestream media representing corporate america is censoring this story. There are “end the fed” and other signs straight out of Ron Paul’s mouth. This right left crap has to stop if we are to bring any change to this country. Even the teabaggers are waking up to whose responsible for this financial mess. We should embrace them not give the left all the credit, because its not true.
It’s a left agenda, which is not to say there are not some ideologically confused folks from the right participating. The “left right crap” does not have to stop. We need to get our ideological bearings back. The so-called centrist stuff has to stop.
I personally think the rallying cry should be “Tax the rich.” But that’s just me.
The problem is there was a huge space of time after Obama was elected, the “left” did nothing. We didnt hold his feet to the fire on his campaign promises, we continued to believe in hope and change. The teaparty took advantage of that inaction and got many unemployed, working poor and middle class to join their right wing cadre of morons, and began brainwashing them that it was Obama and the government who did them wrong, not corporate america. Many are beginning to see the light and have joined up with center, moderates, independents, liberals and progressives. That connection of the right and left is what has frightened corporate america and their corporate media mouth pieces. I say we drop the right left crap and bring on more of them to our side, with fact not myth, with truth not fiction. The right left crap is nothing but an old divide and conquer technique. It’s the politricks we should’nt feed into.
Thanks for the the mammarys. As I recall, Haggis power was what put the “open government” movement over the top.
And we are still grateful to ya Jason330. Never woulda made the front page of the WNJ without you.
The left stands for the people. That needs to be made clear. There is no good reason for ordinary people to identify with the right, but they do because the Dems have no left agenda — a point made in the book What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Jason your comments are proof postive you are not really a progressive or a liberal! Your comment on Mumia is outrageous. Obviously you dont have the facts on that issue. Perhaps you should talk to Terri Carter a Delaware woman who was the stenographer at Mumia’s trial. Another Troy Davis coming up. You views on “hippies” is another outrage. If the anti war movement in the 60’s and 70’s hadnt been organized by “hippies” we would still be fighting that war. The term “hippie” and they way the dressed was a message to the consumer class. Obviously you know so little you demonize them just like the right wing did then, and like the right are attempting to demonize them today. OccupyWallStreet has nothing to do with the “hippie” movement. Our movement was not just anti war, it was about a new system of government and it ended when students were slaughtered at Kent State.
ps. If you actually heard Mumia on PrisonRadio you would understand how brilliant he is, and why he was railroaded.
There is nothing worse than a humorless hippie.
Your comment on my comment is proof positive that you are a hemp addled popinjay.
I have no opinion on Mumia’s guilt or innocence. I’m simply saying that progressive protests have devolved into a drab roll call of everyone’s personal grievances, wrapped in nostalgia for the 60’s.
The proof? The more I say it, the more someone shows up here to promote their personal grievances and to wallow in nostalgia for the 60’s.
BTW – If I hear the “hey, hey, Ho Ho (something) has go to go!” chant one more time, I’m going to puke.
I have an opinion on Mumia’s guilt, and it’s the same one everyone who looks at the facts comes to: Either he did it or his brother did. If he won’t pin it on his brother, then it was him.
Yes, he got railroaded. Yes, he got an unfair trial. Yes, the authorities muzzled him, illegally in my opinion, once he was imprisoned.
And yes, he killed Dan Faulkner.
Jason – I totally agree with you. The anti-Iraq war protests turned into an amalgam of anti-anything in the Middle East (Israel, oil, etc.). It diluted the message and thus these protest marches were ineffective.
I remember the marches for gay rights in the 90’s – lo and behold, the Socialist Workers Party folks showed up claiming to support the cause when all they were doing was selling their rag of a newspaper and getting people’s names to add to a mailing list.
So can someone explain what Mumia has to do with the robber barons who currently occupy Wall Street?
Nobody at the Wall Street protests is talking about Mumia. It’s just Jason.
MJ: Ask Jason he brought it up. Bashing the Iraq War protestors now. What have any of you done besides tap tap on your keyboard and bash everyone trying to do something. Maybe you should read the 7 core demands they have already come up with. Bashing gay rights marchers because some “socialists showed up”? What the hell does that have to do with pushing for gay rights? You libs are just bashing everyone who has actually tried to turn around the facism that america has become. Your sounding more like rick jenson!
Maybe no one is talking about Mumia but problems with the prisons (and the death penalty) are not totally separate from the Wall St. protests — if you understand the corporate sector as profiting, not only from unfair and predatory banking practices, but also from the military-industrial and prison-industrial complexes. The Koch brothers and the ALEC gang are deliberately disenfranchising people, particularly minorities. “Illegals” will be rounded up and put in for-profit prisons, and African Americans will continue to be incarcerated at a very high rate. This country spends huge amounts of money on prison and police and very little on social welfare and education. The multiple grievances presented by the Left are part of a whole system. We need to look at the big picture.
And that is where ideology plays an important role, in showing the big picture and providing a set of principles upon which to act. Otherwise, we can get confused and bogged down in thinking that things are not connected that are. I highly recommend Steve Bronner’s book Ideas in Action on this point.