Around 2 a.m. this morning the NYPD began clearing the Occupy Wall Street Ziccotti Park site. Although some film coverage exists, it is scanty. News media was blocked access to the site as were protesters attempting to enter the area. Below are three links I was able to find.
ABC news: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_osX6JWdvU
Russia Today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpq-moDIkl8
AlJazeeraEnglish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2pVafxS8ZU
Protesters were informed they could return after the site had been cleaned. The tents and equipment were loaded onto trucks and removed.
At roughly the same time an Occupy Albany site was cleared in the state capital. Over the past week or so, encampments throughout the country have been cleared in roughly the same manner. The procedure of initiating the evictions during the small hours of the night appears to work well from the police standpoint.
I guess this ends Occupy Wall Street. With winter coming on and officialdom cracking down, surely now the protesters will give up and go home and everything will return to "normal."
Or not.
Here's what I think...
Showing posts with label Occupy Wall Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Occupy Wall Street. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Occupy Wall Street Should... .
Hanging out on Reddit and scanning online news services, I have been struck by a familiar refrain. Lots and lots of bloggers, media outlets and pundits are offering lots and lots of advice to Occupy Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street should support Election Reform... . Occupy Wall Street should appoint a leader. Occupy Wall Street should support this agenda... . that agenda.... my agenda... . this pundit's agenda... . that celebrity's agenda... . should define its agenda... .
Republicans try to cast the movement as a "Democratic Party" phenomenon. Democrats appear to think the movement is theirs for the taking. Afterall, where else can they go? Does THAT sound familiar to anyone?
President Obama gives vague, unclarified nods in the movement's direction, without taking a position. Does THAT also sound familiar?
Every organization from the ACLU to organized labor to Moveon.org to the Americans for Prosperity (co-opters of the Tea Party movement) either wants a piece of this action or wants to marginalize it.
To date the movement has resisted these attempts. I hope it continues to do so. I believe the movement's power lies in the fact it is unaffiliated with any of the woefully compromised institutions that have brought us to this unlovely place. Why? Because in the meantime it is highlighting the very real problems our society faces and the very real perpetrators of disfunction that landed us here.
The problems we face cover a wide spectrum of global economic, environmental, technological, humanitarian challenges. None of them can be solved by sound bytes or politically correct truisms. Only a hard, slogging, cooperative effort has a hope. Kudos to Occupy Wall Street for avoiding the easy answers to date.
Occupy Wall Street should support Election Reform... . Occupy Wall Street should appoint a leader. Occupy Wall Street should support this agenda... . that agenda.... my agenda... . this pundit's agenda... . that celebrity's agenda... . should define its agenda... .
Republicans try to cast the movement as a "Democratic Party" phenomenon. Democrats appear to think the movement is theirs for the taking. Afterall, where else can they go? Does THAT sound familiar to anyone?
President Obama gives vague, unclarified nods in the movement's direction, without taking a position. Does THAT also sound familiar?
Every organization from the ACLU to organized labor to Moveon.org to the Americans for Prosperity (co-opters of the Tea Party movement) either wants a piece of this action or wants to marginalize it.
To date the movement has resisted these attempts. I hope it continues to do so. I believe the movement's power lies in the fact it is unaffiliated with any of the woefully compromised institutions that have brought us to this unlovely place. Why? Because in the meantime it is highlighting the very real problems our society faces and the very real perpetrators of disfunction that landed us here.
The problems we face cover a wide spectrum of global economic, environmental, technological, humanitarian challenges. None of them can be solved by sound bytes or politically correct truisms. Only a hard, slogging, cooperative effort has a hope. Kudos to Occupy Wall Street for avoiding the easy answers to date.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The People are Not Happy
It did not start on Wall Street, or in Madison, Wisconsin, in Libya, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Syria, Chile or London. It did not start with the Tea Party protests. It did not even start with the massive crowds Barack Obama attracted in the United States and around the world when he campaigned for the U. S. presidency on a platform of "change you can believe in."
For years the G-8 summits have been picketed and protested by large, committed groups of opponents to the Plutocracy that decides the economic fate of the globe.
When the U. S. declared war on Iraq, millions of protesters demonstrated in cities across the globe, including the U. S. itself. Of course the mainstream media downplayed or ignored them, so perhaps they did not really happen at all? I guess THEY were not part of the "coalition of the willing."
What is significant is that the unrest is increasing; the momentum is growing; the demonstrations are now stretching from India to Greece, from Chile to London, from New York City to Portland, Oregon.
Throughout history the rich and powerful have oppressed the poor and weak. And throughout history, when the pendulum swung too far in favor of the rich and powerful and the "small people" were ground down to the point where they had nothing left to lose, societies lost their glue and revolutions occurred.
Intelligent billionaires like Warren Buffet see the danger and attempt to avert it. But the mindless nature of most corporate empires precludes such perception. Our society has reached the tipping point. I do not believe we have yet crossed the point of no return. But the gathering storm no longer can be denied.
Barach Obama was elected because he offered the "hope" of "change." That change has eluded us. The man who received the Nobel Peace Prize and went on to wage ever greater wars, is not, perhaps, the vessel of change we thought we elected. His administration has coddled the financial industry that mindlessly dropped us into economic disaster, insisted government must pick up the tab, and then, by successfully resisting all attempts of that same government to reform it, ended up more powerful than the governments (read Great Britain, Germany and France (i.e. the European Union) and the United States) that rescued it from disintegration in the vain hope that action would also rescue their economies (read FAIL to that!).
Make no mistake. The Old Regime will not "go quietly into that good night." It will adopt the measures of Syria and Libya. It will use the same subterfuge the Egyptian military did to foil the true advocates of change by sacrificing its figurehead. Non violent demonstrators will be corralled, beaten, maced and tear gassed. Predator drones, already used on innocent bystanders in foreign countries, will be deployed on native soil. Homeland Security will track down dangerously adept leaders and their naive supporters alike.
The best case scenario would be a pragmatic awakening in Washington. A coming together to solve our terribly urgent problems. Our leaders might already be too deeply in thrall to their corporate overlords to attempt this.
The creation of a viable third party might avert the inevitable meltdown of our democracy. But far too many roadblocks already are in place to make this outcome at all likely.
Tough times a coming.
For years the G-8 summits have been picketed and protested by large, committed groups of opponents to the Plutocracy that decides the economic fate of the globe.
When the U. S. declared war on Iraq, millions of protesters demonstrated in cities across the globe, including the U. S. itself. Of course the mainstream media downplayed or ignored them, so perhaps they did not really happen at all? I guess THEY were not part of the "coalition of the willing."
What is significant is that the unrest is increasing; the momentum is growing; the demonstrations are now stretching from India to Greece, from Chile to London, from New York City to Portland, Oregon.
Throughout history the rich and powerful have oppressed the poor and weak. And throughout history, when the pendulum swung too far in favor of the rich and powerful and the "small people" were ground down to the point where they had nothing left to lose, societies lost their glue and revolutions occurred.
Intelligent billionaires like Warren Buffet see the danger and attempt to avert it. But the mindless nature of most corporate empires precludes such perception. Our society has reached the tipping point. I do not believe we have yet crossed the point of no return. But the gathering storm no longer can be denied.
Barach Obama was elected because he offered the "hope" of "change." That change has eluded us. The man who received the Nobel Peace Prize and went on to wage ever greater wars, is not, perhaps, the vessel of change we thought we elected. His administration has coddled the financial industry that mindlessly dropped us into economic disaster, insisted government must pick up the tab, and then, by successfully resisting all attempts of that same government to reform it, ended up more powerful than the governments (read Great Britain, Germany and France (i.e. the European Union) and the United States) that rescued it from disintegration in the vain hope that action would also rescue their economies (read FAIL to that!).
Make no mistake. The Old Regime will not "go quietly into that good night." It will adopt the measures of Syria and Libya. It will use the same subterfuge the Egyptian military did to foil the true advocates of change by sacrificing its figurehead. Non violent demonstrators will be corralled, beaten, maced and tear gassed. Predator drones, already used on innocent bystanders in foreign countries, will be deployed on native soil. Homeland Security will track down dangerously adept leaders and their naive supporters alike.
The best case scenario would be a pragmatic awakening in Washington. A coming together to solve our terribly urgent problems. Our leaders might already be too deeply in thrall to their corporate overlords to attempt this.
The creation of a viable third party might avert the inevitable meltdown of our democracy. But far too many roadblocks already are in place to make this outcome at all likely.
Tough times a coming.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
700 Demonstrators Arrested in New York City
Occupy Wall Street is entering its third week. Its numbers continue to increase. Yesterday over 700 demonstrators were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. Despite mainstream media's best efforts, this story is getting hard to ignore.
Spin off demonstrations have cropped up in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Albuquerque. What the hell is this about, you ask?
It's about bailing out the banks with public money while social programs get slashed. It's about a financial industry that learned after 2008 it really could get away with anything, take any risk and the U. S. Government would step in (with public money) when it started to crash and burn. Financial institutions get the goldmine, the 99 percent get the shaft.
It's about young people graduating from college with mountains of debt who cannot find jobs.
It's about people who have just about had enough of the inequity, the unfairness, the injustice of a system that has lost its way.
Ah well, tomorrow the media plan minute-to-minute coverage of the Amanda Knox case in Italy and the trial of Michael Jackson's lawyer and the dampers once again will be in place.
If it's not on the nightly news, it's not happening, right?
Then again, 700 arrests in one afternoon on the Brooklyn Bridge is kind of hard to ignore.
Spin off demonstrations have cropped up in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Albuquerque. What the hell is this about, you ask?
It's about bailing out the banks with public money while social programs get slashed. It's about a financial industry that learned after 2008 it really could get away with anything, take any risk and the U. S. Government would step in (with public money) when it started to crash and burn. Financial institutions get the goldmine, the 99 percent get the shaft.
It's about young people graduating from college with mountains of debt who cannot find jobs.
It's about people who have just about had enough of the inequity, the unfairness, the injustice of a system that has lost its way.
Ah well, tomorrow the media plan minute-to-minute coverage of the Amanda Knox case in Italy and the trial of Michael Jackson's lawyer and the dampers once again will be in place.
If it's not on the nightly news, it's not happening, right?
Then again, 700 arrests in one afternoon on the Brooklyn Bridge is kind of hard to ignore.
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