I just got the alert via e-mail. They are doing open mike now and calling for people in NYC to come to Zuccotti Park in large numbers.
I’m not clear on the immediate conflict. The current open mike discussion has a black disabled person objecting to police stop and frisk, which is apparently being done in the park. Will go to Twitter and update.
Update 1:25 AM: A fresh Tweet from the Mayor’s office (after midnight!). The reason is an alleged park cleaning. Right. In the middle of the night. Charming:
Update 1:30 AM: Per reader Debra C:
Storage of personal materials is fire hazard is what the police are saying.
They need to get some kind of injunction stopping the police and the fire dept from this random, but constant concoctions of faux reasons to roust them out.
They need a permanent injunction. The reason this is being done at night is to keep press coverage at a minimum and to not have access to the court
I hear discussion on the live stream of how people have been separated from their goods. They are now being told they are only allowed to have a “handful” of goods each. Some people are upset, one is complaining that she has medications for someone who needs medication for seizures in her tent. She can’t get to them and this is putting her companion at risk.
Update 1:45 AM: The live stream has been cut off. The police were apparently herding people in the park and also blocking access to the park from media and outsiders. One livestream camera was shut off and the view switched to a second before it was turned off. Before that, a woman was complaining about being touched by the police and someone yelled that the police had destroyed his computer. I would not be surprised if they arrest people and confiscate cell phones. I hope enough have the presence of mind to pull out their video cards before that happens.
Update 1:54 AM: Livestream back for the moment. A truck nearby has a sound weapon on it.
Update 2:05 AM: Media now apparently getting access, WBAI is broadcasting live. People in the park reporting that their property is being destroyed.
Update 2:20 AM: Continuous footage of police throwing stuff in a trash heap. The protestors are not wrong. The destruction is deliberate, a point is clearly being made.
Update 2:35 AM (hat tip Lisa Epstein): More evidence of efforts to create a press blackout. Per Scott Kidder, CBS News chopper forced down by NYPD (!). He also reports NYPD is being very strict re media needing official press passes, which seem to be as rare as unicorns. NY Times reporter arrested:
Update 3:00 AM: Official media reports coming in. I had forgotten OWS planned a demonstration on Wall Street on Thursday. The timing is probably related. The Financial Times recounts the official line that the park is was being cleaned (really? at 1:00 AM with NO notice?) for health and safety reasons? And “cleaned” clearly means “cleared”. The word on Twitter is that (as was threatened the last time the park was to be cleaned by the city) that tents and sleeping bags will not be allowed in. I’m assuming legal nastygrams will be issued tomorrow AM in opposition to that. However, occupation is 9/10ths of the law, and with the protestors routed out, the best case scenario is probably several days before they could reestablish themselves.
Update 3:15 AM: More police state action: local residents not allowed out of their buildings, the trains are apparently all closed (I heard all of the trains to my ‘hood on the feed plus others), beatings, MSM being kept out, and book burnings! At least 2 copies of ECONNED in the OWS library, so ECONNED is probably now part of the ash heap.
Update 3:20 AM: Oh, the NY Times gives the full bore official line: the park is being cleaned “and restored.” The Times confirms the connection to the planned Wall Street demonstration on Thursday:
The police move came as organizers put out word on their Web site that they planned to “shut down Wall Street” with a demonstration on Thursday to commemorate the completion of two months of the beginning of the encampment, which has spurred similar demonstrations across the country….
About 2 a.m., police officers began using a vehicle equipped with a powerful speaker to issue their orders. City sanitation workers tossed protesters’ belongings into metal bins, while some protesters dug in at the center of the park by using heavy bicycle chains to bind themselves to park trees and to each other. Some donned gas masks and goggles.
About 200 supporters of the protesters arrived early Tuesday after hearing that the park was being cleared. They were prevented from getting within a block of the park by a police barricade. There were a number of arrests after some scuffles between the two sides, but no details were immediately available. After being forced up Broadway by the police, some of the supporters decided to march several blocks to Foley Square.
The action came as other cities’ police forces have begun evacuating similar protest camps.
Readers in comments and via e-mail noted that there seems to be national coordination on the crackdowns. This message came from reader Deontos:
Twitter chatter in #occupy is that local police are now on FEDERAL payroll in a number of municipalities and god knows WHO they are taking orders from. It sure has the appearance of coordinated action nationwide.
I do NOT have confirmation of the Twitter chat, so any reader intelligence is welcome.
Update 3:40 AM: Mike check: people in the kitchen were teargassed, wrestled to the ground and are being arrested individually. The others are being kept far enough away behind barricades to prevent images being captured. The live feed reports that people are being dragged out by their arms and legs. The police have learned to prevent video capture of their actions so as to forestall backlash. Bye bye free press.
Live stream:
If you are in NYC and cannot come down, call 311 to object, or from anywhere in the US, the first police precinct at 212 334 0611.
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This is going to backfire on Bloomberg, and backfire BIG.
Apparently four blocks north are all blocked off by police, and media are not being allowed in. http://twitter.com/?photo_id=1#!/blogdiva/status/136332658346176513
Looks like the mayor is trying to occupy the occupiers.
Aren’t we getting tired of this whole thing? Geez, just go home. OWS isn’t even making a coherent argument. Yves is just projecting her 60s-era romanticism.
It’s just a bunch of disgruntled idiots.
Yes, because lord knows, when people do absolutely nothing the best outcome for society is reached.
good riddance. the OWS scared no one. what arrogance to think so.
Such an angry, and sadly substantive-argument-free sphere you try to create around you. But it’s heartening to see that you don’t care one iota about police brutality and abuse of power/selective rule-enforcement; it’s a good indication that we don’t really need to take your opinions very seriously.
Would it suit you better if they were gruntled ( – or would that be ‘un-disgruntled’ ? ) idiots instead?
Actually, I don’t think they’re any kind of idiots.
I think their actions are an indication that their politicians and leaders have failed – failed in their duty to keep their constituents properly gruntled!
They have the 1% scared in a mere 2 months. It took 5 years and riots in the 1960s to do that. This is far more effective in a shorter period of time in terms of galvanizing interest and power. Look at how many politicians feel compelled to give them lip service.
You simply have demonstrated you don’t get it. Read Taibbi:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-the-ows-protests-20111110#ixzz1dNdkxIPb
Or Slate:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/10/how_ows_confuses_and_ignores_fox_news_and_the_pundit_class_.html
Patrick, these people are nice. These are people who are right exactly on point in their protest.
They are Peaceful. If I have to come down there, if people like me have to come down there to make our protest…well, we aren’t going to be so nice. Bankers are going to be in DANGER. Mayor is going to be in DANGER.
No one want that, right? Right. So, BACK OFF. NOW.
‘They have the 1% scared in a mere 2 months.’
Hey Paddy, news flash, that’s why you’ve been sent here.
That’s right Patrick. People should do nothing… just like your parents taught you. They should be so proud of you.
They are “just a bunch of disgruntled idiots”?
Wow. I gather that makes you a gruntled idiot – certainly the noun is correct in your case.
I don’t think they are idiots, but need a message for sure. If they would occupy congress and force the law to change, making political money illegal, I would support it. Otherwise forget it!
Message? What message? We don’t need no steenkin’ message!
OWS is an Effect, not a Cause. We’re here because you pushed us too far. That’s the message.
Oh, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights. That stuff too.
ebear
First of all patrick, let me be the first to welcome you to the wrong side of history. Secondly I’d like to thank you for saving me the time I might have spent reading anything you say here in the future.
It’s just a bunch of disgruntled idiots. patrick
He who despises his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding keeps silent. Proverbs 11:12
Awwww Patrick a stooge for the banks, corporations and the status quo think OWS hasn’t accomplished anything and they should just go home. Why? Are they interfering with the view from your bubble?
Seems to be a coordinated, national action: St.Louis, Denver, Oakland, Portland etc. I’m not surprised. I just
hope the movement is capable of adjusting and reconstituting itself as needed in order to continue to organize and carry out protest and civil disobedience. This is an inevitable roadblock and most likely one of many challenges that will require innovative thinking. However, the energy, passion, creativity and flexibility of youth is indispensable for this task. Unfortunately, I’m 3,000 miles away, but my fighting spirit is with Occupy. 11:00 PM PST
If there’s national coordination on this, then I suppose that puts to lie Mr. Obama’s professions of support for the movement. I also wonder how these attacks were planned, coordinated, and ordered. DHS has been actively attempting to bring local PDs under its banner through ICE and “counter-terror vigilance” since its founding; mightn’t this crack-down have been organized under its auspices? A nation-wide campaign to suppress political dissidents and trample the BoR certainly sounds like something the “Department of Homeland Security” would do to me.
On the issue of inter-city coordination: RT/BBC:
Yesterday’s chant from Oakland:
“We are Occupy, we are never gonna die. Every time you kick us out, we are gonna multiply.”
This cowardly police action under cover of night is a sign of fear and desperation.
Americans! Your tax dollars at work!
Wow, what part of “civil disobedience” did you not understand? The laws are made by the 1%, for the 1%. If you think all laws are somehow sacred, you’ve been watching too many lawyer shows.
Is it necessary to break their laws to make our point? How can we go about making those points without disrupting the system? I think it gives us more credibility. Just a thought.
What laws are you talking about? The 1% laws, or the 99% laws?
Please be fucking clear!
How is occupying a park breaking the law? Brookfield owns the land, but gave the rights to the city for the park to be open 24 hours a day to the public in return for zoning variances. There is nothing illegal about what OWS has done.
No one is breaking any laws. Yet.
Working within the system has failed. We’ve wasted too much time playing that game.
I don’t think so. The more we play by the rules while pointing our their crimes, the stronger their compulsion will become to break the laws to shut us up; and the more they act like the aristocratic thugs they think themselves to be, the more people will flock to our side. This whole incident simply proves the truth of that.
Sooner or later the police, who have long existed to protect the wealthy, not the law, in this country, were going to be ordered by the moneymen and their pocket-politicians to break up these protests. The Serious People of our modern Gilded Age were only going to allow themselves to be called to account by the peasants, plebs, green-grocers and middle-managers for so long; such Men of Distinction simply won’t abide the impertinent suggestion that their crimes ought to be punished, or that their unbalanced looting of society has been an unqualified social evil. Persistent, civil, moral suasion in the face of brutish, criminal privilege is a sure path to victory if we can but be determined enough to see it through. The longer we persist, the more brutish they will show themselves to truly be, and the closer we get to victory.
Anagrams are fun…
Just a thought, is it necessary for them [the bankers] to break our laws? How can we [those of us without a voice-the public at large] go about making the point the system is disrupted [broken]. I think it gives more credibility when citizens stand up and say voting no longer works in this country.
Voila.
Stop watching FOX. They aren’t doing anything illegal.
Well, You have been warned by Gonzalo Lira a long time: the USA have become a ‘fascist’ ‘police-state’: ‘fascist’ because only coporate interests (represented in/by the government) are of importance, and ‘police state’, because you can’t get redress from the judiciary system.
And now it’s plain for all to see.
Ahem, you act like this is news, or he is first to say this? Where were you after 9/11? It started then, big time. The US has LONG been ranked one of the very worst surveillance societies in the world. The iPad 2 allows for the NSA to listen in and watch anything in the room when the device is on, and it geolocates too. Where have you been?
If the Revolution can start anywhere that’s NY City, go New Yorkers!
They tried the same in Tahrir, they tried the same in Puerta del Sol… they failed. They just failed in Portland, where a line of tents was re-erected before the police line.
As I write this, the guy at the Live Stream says “they are arresting everyone”. The Stream from Zuccotti Park went black a few minutes ago and this seems an emergency emission from outside the camp. Hmmm…
Sad news. One of the heroes of our great nation is being persecuted for doing God’s work.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/youre-fired-foreclosure-mill-lawyer-extraordinaire-steven-j-baum-dropped-freddie-mac
The Ayatollahs are damn proud of our mayors. It doesn’t help that the US has the most violent police of all democracies in the developed world. We look more like China and Iran than the vision the founding fathers had.
The cleanliness demand, common to most storm troupers and their Napoleonic mayors, conjures mid 20th century European images. Some portable johns and a word with the occupiers would have solved the problem easily.
Let us be clear, there is nothing neat and clean about a society enslaved by banks and stock traders. Mayors should know that law and order is not limited to occupied city parks. There must be a free congress, a president who works for the people, a justice system that finds for the oppressed and not the oppressor.
What we see is the disintegration of a society dominated by the 1% who couldn’t care less about anything but their golden toilets. Our society is dirty, unemployment is dirty, violent police is dirty, a billionaire mayor who thinks that the 1% a power of nature is dirty.
Official line from MSNBC:
“Occupy camps from Oakland, Calif., to Portland, Ore., have grappled with drug overdoses, sexual assaults and thefts, reported Bloomberg News, of which the mayor is founder and majority owner.
In New York City, demonstrators were planning to march in front of the New York Stock Exchange in the morning, get on subway trains across all five boroughs in the afternoon, then rally near City Hall in the evening. Afterward, they were expected to march to area bridges.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday that demonstrators won’t disrupt Wall Street, and that the Stock Exchange will open on time and people will be able to get to work.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45299622/ns/us_news-life/
CNN just ran a live report from a block and half from Zuccotti Park. The reporter has been there for two and a half hours and said she’s been talking regularly to people inside the park. Some kind of chemical weapon, but not tear gas, has been used. So far, she reports knowing of no violence. She doesn’t know why media isn’t allowed access but is still being told by mayor’s office that the protestors are being evicted so the park can be cleaned, and that it’s only temporary.
I always clean my neighborhood at 1:00 am too.
Well, Manhattan, being such a spotless hygeinic city, has to do all this cleaning in shifts, don’t you know.
Is it the moment of the truth arriving? Will the general public chose to be apathetic and OWS will slowly die, or will they backlash? Is it going to be Prauge Spring or 1989?
From my perspective the “moment of truth” that you are talking about won’t be singular in nature but multiple and not evenly distributed in time nor location.
The other discontinuity coming is that your moment of truth is based on your understanding of that truth and gawd knows we are not all on that same page and some are even in other books, if you get my drift.
And finally, my read of the American populace is that it continues to be totally addicted to the media and its framing of the actors in our current kabuki of life.
Do you imagine the answers to your questions have any relationship to what you decide to do?
Given I’m not in the US, yes, they do.
We need a humanitarian intervention from NATO to save the peaceful, pro-democracy protesters all over USA from the oppressive police state. NATO – Oh wait…. maybe non-US countries can do that.
Exactly!!!!! you get it!
Wait! what about the drones. Can’t forget to use drone airstrikes as needed….
Don’t worry, they’re working on gentler, rubber drones.
They make, then break, then remake their laws, ignoring the universal law, compassion, empathy, and integrity. All I’m trying to say is that we are better than that. Lets continue with demonstrations that make a positive difference.
That settles it. I was on the fence about attending on Thursday, but now I’m gonna be there come hell or high water.
That’s the spirit. Good luck to you, YF.
Thank you, Y. Frank. You are a true patriot. Know that the my support, and I think I can say, of everyone here, will be behind you.
Here’s a live stream:
http://www.ustream.tv/theother99
I am not surprised by this action after watching 300 extra police brought in to help execute a “peaceful” takedown of Occupy Portland/OR.
The takedown in Portland on Sunday afternoon and those around the country shows well coordinated and managed efforts. The police state is firmly in place and they have not even started playing with their crowd suppression/control toys yet.
What are opposition efforts going to do when they can’t get their intertube media tools to work because of coming suppression? The minute ” social media” is a serious threat it will magically need to be shut down for cleaning like the parks of late.
I guess we need to start laughing harder and louder, huh?
For shame. The occupiers will surely regroup and emerge stronger. This movement has already captured too much of the American public’s imagination.
Did anyone else see NYT’s hype of Adbuster’s call to “Declare victory and scale back” hours before the police moved in? First of all, that timing is peculiar. Second of all, despite initially promoting the protest (among others)Adbusters is not the leader. Maybe it’s just my bias and my dislike of Abbusters…. the magazine always struck me as the equivalent of snuff porn.
So how can we legally, non-violently drive Wall Street and Washington and their global cronies absolutely insane? The most irritating thing imaginable we can all do anytime, anyday, anywhere. There has GOT to be a way…..
I feel ya.
It seems that threatening to march on NYSE seems to be doing the trick.
It’s called a General Strike. It has a long and storied history outside these shores. So far.
Agreed! A General Strike makes good use of the movement’s labor ties, and hits the speculators in the pocketbooks. It also forces a wedge between police unions and the overpowering Executive branch of government.
Sit down strikes, yes. This is what Noam Chomsky advised when he addressed Occupy Boston a couple weeks back.
When workers at their desks or stations all just sit down, just stop laboring it is the very last step before openly taking over the factory or organization. Nothing scares the 1% or the government they own and operate more than a sit down strike.
Stop “paying”. Just like moving your bank accounts, if we all stopped paying our mortgages, credit card bills, loans, etc. we could starve the Beast. Al that “income” is what makes their world go ’round.
Or a Mass-Bankruptcy General Strike. Let’s all declare bankruptcy together.
I’m dreaming, I know.
Where is the ACLU?
Apparently the NY judge who issued a restraining order early this am allowing Occupiers to return to the park was an ACLU lawyer for 25 years.
Coincidentally the teleprompter’s out of the country. At least he’ll be able to feign outrage when he returns.
Is there anything, people outside US, can do?
Is there an occupation in your area? If so, go support it in any way you can. Your local occupation probably has a blog listing material needs; see what you can do to help meet them. Etc.
Martial Law in NYC? A 10 pm curfew?
Nah, 10am curfew, with exceptions for people traveling to and from work, and for people who have a ‘job creator’ pass.
The oligarghy thinks it can box up humanity with lack of facilities (in the larger, virtual sense). Leave it no pot to piss in and then characterize it as dirty and snuff it out. This is treatment that the poor have always known and the middle class are just learning as their living standards and opportunities in life are slowly diminished, their concerns trampled and disregarded. It is just a little battle in the larger psych war.
Not to be discouraged, protest can be deferred and delayed but not suppressed.
The larger problem is that the people deserve more than they’re getting in terms of policy consideration. There is nothing dirty about it. THIS PERSISTS.
No chance this will kill it. It’s gotten to that stage where any serious action by the authorities will only strengthen the occupiers resolve. This went way past the point of no return about a month ago.
yves, thank you for your reporting on this event. it is a blessing to find accurate journalism so immediately here at a time such as this.
with tears in my eyes but with something now like faith that these young people, and we their supporters who are finding the ways to sustain justice, sanity, and mutual care in our society in the face of this harsh opposition, will prevail. as the quakers say, way will open.
thank you and others here for reaffirming that this oppression is the sign of success and what OWS has done in such a short time has been extraordinarily effective. it is good to be able to find here at nc, on a morning like this, the affirmations and brave voices of the nc community. there will be more mornings like this, i see, i’ll have to learn to sustain that spirit. thanks to all here.
to yankee frank and anyone else here who is going into the street in nyc, i thank you for representing me and for your courageous act.
i will be sure to participate in my local occupy event this weekend.
we will not be silenced.
Sadly I believe Zucotti Park was becoming a paradoy of Woodstock.
This will probably be for the best. I find I’m the only person on my bus and subway route (86th cross town and #6 train to mid-town) who wears an Occupy Wall Street button on my jacket.
This suggests to me, in addition to channeling the noouspheric echos on a daily basis, that the “movement” lacks broad social support that can manifest in a concrete way.
Having said that, I love OWS and love the Gnostic Spirit and incredible passion of its participants and supporters (except the God-foresaken drumming). I loved the Soul Kitchen. Hope it can re-establish itself in every mind and every heart where it can feed everyone loaves and fishes like a banquet of the finest foods and wines.
But it can’t be about a bunch of tatooed hippie dippies in tents in a park, it has to be about a raising of consciousness and it’s up to every one of us in our own ways to try and help. I think about it every day and I’m not sure how or what to do. My day job gives me a little chance to toss my stone in that ocean, but it’s not enough.
I can see 99% universities, where students can learn without going $700000000 dollars in debt. Or 99% health clinics. Or 99% money even, because money is the quantification of communal spirit and creative potential. Or 99% commerce groups, where the disciples of the Holy Gnosis can recognize and commercially support each other and not fund the banksters and the kleptocrats. It’s not about a park or a square, it’s about each person’s mind space and soul space and what happens in there, every minute of the day. And there’s always a demon trying to nose it’s way in, looking like a god as much as it can.
You might want to try to get the 99% telecom/ISP going first. It might be difficult to achieve the others without it. Eventually.
“But it can’t be about a bunch of tatooed hippie dippies in tents in a park”
Why not? They’re Americans too.
Like they used to say back in the USSR: Today, me. Tomorrow, you.
In theory, in the USA, we have freedom of speech and freedom to peaceably assemble.
In practice, not so much.
There is a growing awareness within the government that they no longer have the consent of the governed.
Thus the spectacle of jackboot police removing peaceful demonstrators.
There is something inherently, deeply disturbing about photos and videos of raids on OWS encampments–the visual impact of police moving in at 2:30 or 3:30 in the morning, like human black helicopters, tearing everything up, hauling people off to jail. The excuses (sanitation, for example) embody the classic “order vs. law” reasoning of the police state. Given the popularity of OWS’s positions, whatever their next move, oppression by the executive branch is sure to become one more target, bringing OWS and the most radical branches of the Right together. What will follow? The danger is chaos. The promise is revolution.
It’s time for Occupy Wall St. 2.0. Do it this way and Bloomberg–and all the other mayors–lose any shred of pretense for police state action.
http://abigailcfield.com/?p=494
Abigail’s onto a good idea. If I lived in NYC, I’d be the first to volunteer. Alternatively, they have $500,000. With 12 hour shifts, four people could share a 1 BR apt in alternate 12 hour shifts (two at a time). She doesn’t mention how the curfew problem would be addressed though, but perhaps that could be compromise if tents were agreed not to be brought in.
Are you the Abigail Field who did the investigation reported in Forbes, I believe, showing how much fraud was in foreclosure filings? If so, thank you, you are a true patriot.
A 10 PM curfew is going to have an interesting impact on oh I dunno… Times Square maybe?
We live in a perpetual carnival. The only rule of the carnival is that carnies can’t spook the rubes. No one is allowed to come between the carnival organizers and their looting of the rubes. So the protesters will go, but the rubes will be allowed to keep dropping cash in Times Square.
Haven’t seen this kind of total police lockdown/cordon around lower Manhattan since the days following 9-11. Subways kept out of the area, residents ordered to stay inside, IDs required to access the area. 9AM EST and police choppers still hovering over my area.
!!?? For a peaceful protest??
Oh well, time for the “opening bell.” Bloomie just used a skillion bucks’ worth of all us taxpayers money to make sure it rang on time.
BTW, this is THE go-to website for updates on all this. Isn’t it interesting how you’re leaving all my usual prog web-haunts in the dust on this!!
At least all that overtime pay will help out some police people’s working class families pay a few bills.
If Term Limits Miscreant Bloomberg is so concerned about cleanliness, why did I have to step over horse manure while crossing Broad Street this morning?
This is a great image: http://beyondthechoir.org/upload/images/cant-evict-an-idea.jpg
“You Cannot Evict an Idea Whose Time Has Come. We Are Everywhere. We are the 99%.”
“So how can we legally, non-violently drive Wall Street and Washington and their global cronies absolutely insane? The most irritating thing imaginable we can all do anytime, anyday, anywhere. There has GOT to be a way….”
I think another commenter on this blog said it in response to a different post yesterday:
STOP. BUYING. ANYTHING.
You know those canned goods in your pantry? Time to eat ’em up. Car out of gas? Walk or bike to work or stay home. Bored? Borrow a book or a DVD from the library.
Or at the very least, shop only at locally owned stores. AND FOR SURE, DON’T SHOP ON BLACK FRIDAY.
That’ll drive ’em crazy.
That’s been my conclusion, too. Hit them in the wallet, the only vulnerable part of their anatomies.
The entire country needs to just Occupy Your Home on Black Friday. That ought to send a warning shot across their bows.
10 AM EST–police choppers still buzzing all over LMH. Are they afraid of a general uprising???
Hmmm!
The problem is, I’m weary, and sometimes even frightened, of confrontations, and after the childhood I had, full of screams in the house between this and that individual, I am weary, and sometimes even frightened of drama. Before everyone rushes to sneer at me, just bear in mind I’m like a lot of people.
You need more than just nonviolence to sell me on something being peaceful. Besides, the effort alone to come and go each day, like the mothers who walked in the square in Argentina, during that period, is not lost on observers. It refreshes the point each day, whereas an encampment starts becoming stale.
@ simpleton,
i too fear large crowds and even people shouting, especially men. it was a big challenge for me to visit zuccotti park and face both. we are not alone, and traumatization has real effects.
there is much that people like us can do right at home, just invite neighbors over to read and learn together about what has gone wrong in our society, how and why, and discuss how we can put it to rights. a civil discussion in a home context need never become scary.
it takes courage to publicly confess, as you have done here, to the kind of hesitance you feel–more courage than it takes for some people to walk around shouting and waving a sign in a public square, or even to get arrested. don’t underestimate your capacity to speak truth to power. even the most fearful among us can find a way to do so. we may then find that a large chunk of our fearfulness has disappeared!
Now I see what Osama bin Laden was getting at.
They’ve gotten a court order to let them back, tents and all!
http://news.yahoo.com/court-order-allows-occupy-wall-st-protesters-back-135130959.html
Bloomberg News has been covering the OWS issue this morning, including live coverage. So far it seems reasonably neutral in it’s coverage (meaning the reporters are not taking a side against OWS), considering it’s MSM.
Police actions against protesters across the country remind me of what the socio-pathic speculator Jay Gould once said “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.”
Thereby wiping out the necessary consumer base. How clever of him.
If you are not in NYC or a city or town where there is an Occupy group to join, there are somethings that you can do
in your daily activities that will aid and abet OWS and
what it stands for….
Go to your bank and withdraw enough cash to live on for a week or whatever and spend only cash in the small merchants
that you support. Do not use debit cards anymore as you or
the merchant are handing .25 or .40 to Wall Street every time you buy something with them.
Call your credit card company and ask them to waive any
fees if you are still paying them. If they will not, cancel the card. Use credit cards only in corporate setting where they and not some small merchant will have to pay the four to six cents on the dollar in processing charges.
Look for a credit union that offers free checking and take the time to cancel your To Big To Jail bank accounts.
Your auto payment and auto deposit conveniences can be moved. Just do it.
If you do have an occupy Wall Street in your town and cannot participate, scrounge around your garage and gather up all the spray paint cans, long sticks and other art materials you can spare as well as warm clothing from
closets that you might have donated to the Salvation Army.
Box them up and drop them at the OWS near you.
NYC is refusing to let protestors back in park, in contempt of court order. They have cited “suspicious package” in park that needs to be investigated and wire on ground that may represent safety hazard. The law only applies to the 99%.
There is a hearing at 11:30 on the injunction petition filed on the eviction. (Current order is temporary pending this hearing.)
http://news.yahoo.com/court-order-allows-occupy-wall-st-protesters-back-135130959.html
Sorry, wrong link posted above:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/updates-on-the-clearing-of-zuccotti-park/?hp
It’s our fault. We failed them. We never supported them massively. We sent them on the frontline and let them cope by themselves.
They were our voice. Now we lost our only voice. We can be crushed in silence like we deserve to be.
We are our worst enemy. Our apathy is our worst enemy.
Shut up and protect them already, what you can personally do is show your support by not letting people argue anything bad about OWS. We need to shout over the loudmouths that typically love shouting over us. Those mother fucking bastards.
You’re joking, right?
Left your stiffened resolve home today, did you?
So like I was saying, epidemic of mortgage fraud, blackmail rule coincident with federal coordination.
Couldn’t be clearer.
Standup guys Not.
I can’t help thinking about what the chances are of the #OWS generation “making good” on the $20+ trillion (by then, at least)in Federal debt that we will be leaving them…
Zero: no public debt has ever been paid.
Good point. The entire national debt is unnecessary. The money borrowed could just as easily have been created from thin-air. In fact, the money was created from thin-air else the lenders would not have had any money to lend in the first place.
The national debt is a abomination. It is the gift of a risk-free return of principal plus interest to some at the expense of others.
They needed to ground the CBS news helicoptor for sanitation reasons.
No, to guarantee the helicopter’s safety when the police moved in. Some of those police might have been wearing jet-packs, like the ones Faux News reported the LAPD bought for all its officers about a year ago.
The NYT also ran a piece about the treatment of journalists who were not allowed in to “ensure their safety”. Yep, journalists go into Iraq and Afghanistan but it is unsafe to enter Zucotti Park. As it turned out, some encountered more than they bargained for.
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/reporters-say-police-denied-access-to-protest-site/
Rawstory has a decent summary up.. Bloomberg:
In other words: “we won’t open it until we are allowed to kick people out whenever we want for ‘misusing public space’.”
JFK said “those who make peaceful revolution impossible
make violent ones inevitable”, police violence on peaceful
protests will eventually lead those who want change to
seek it in other avenues which will far worse than this.
The powerful in America and on wall street should be
shaking in their boots, but their arrogance blinds them
hubris will destroy them as it always has in the past.
look out its going to be a rough ride….
Cops now occupying Liberty park. Bystanders asking what their demands are.
are the police handing out free pepper spray and batons?
bowaaaaahaaaaa.
I’m still hoping the hippies get the park back. Can’t wait to hit the Soul Kitchen for another meal and Gnostic Fellowship. It’ll be like breaking bread with the Man Himself after he rose from the tomb and appeared among them. :)
I wrote a while ago that the stages of reaction of the powers that be to dissent are as follows:
1. Ignore
2. Trivialize
3. Co-opt
4. Demonize
5. Outlaw
What we have seen over the last few days has been a coordinated attack on the OWS movement culminating in the Zucotti park raid. The mainstream media duly took up its propaganda role. The reports I was seeing yesterday with regard to raids in other cities talked about how “authorities” were losing “patience” with the protests. Think about that for a moment and all the implied narratives it contains. Freedom to assemble is not a Constitutionally guaranteed right but founded solely on the strained good humor of paternalistic authorities, and, as we see, that toleration can be withdrawn at any time.
I also heard bogus concerns about the spread of disease, flu and even TB. Let me tell you something about that. These protests were occurring in urban centers. Flu is as likely to spread in the office buildings adjacent as it would in the park itself. And authorities may not have heard about this but there are these things called vaccinations that you can get each year that can markedly decrease the likelihood of getting flu. As for TB, it is notoriously hard to catch. You need the combination of depleted immune systems and sustained close contact for it to spread, you know the kind of conditions that you might find at any homeless shelter anywhere.
Hygiene and public safety issues were never about the OWS sites being unhealthy for the public but rather how unhealthy they were proving to be to the power of the elites.
Those mother fuckers, I AM PISSED that Bloomberg and NYPD decided to go through with this, but it’s too bad their little scheme failed. Those fucking banks are going down Bloomberg, and nothing you do is going to protect them. Fuck you, you stupid bank protecting mother fucker.
Aww, go easy on the poor bastard, he’s merely expressing how comfy the federal puppeteers’ fist feels rammed in his …
lmao
A few observations:
0. Occupations may now have more power as myth, legend, metaphor than as actually-existing physical entities, an undesirable consequence for authorities, leadership, ruling class.
1. Close coordination of evictions suggests orders from a higher authority. White House? Military?
2. Authorities (local or higher-up) are willing to risk many unintended consequences to suppress public dissent, suggesting urgency whose cause is not readily apparent.
3. Disease and dirt tropes are characteristic of extreme authoritarians when confronted by ‘disobedience’; compare Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda in the 1930s and Dixiecrat anti-Black propaganda in the ‘50s and ‘60s. ‘Moderate’ and ‘liberal’ leaders and media have fed this trope in the present case, indicating radicalization to the Right.
4. Eurozone may be folding up financially, which will intensify American depression, leading to domestic political crisis.
Why no significant OWS in DC? After all , this is the head of the snake.
There is an Occupy D.C..
However the head of the snake (or is it one of the many heads of the hydra) is at Wall Street without doubt: corporations, notably financial ones, rule the system, the “democratic” states are just puppets.
Just called 311 – should I have left all my personal info for additional effect? I gave my name and borough, but when was asked for home address, I declined. Seemed like I shouldn’t give that up to people I already don’t trust…
Sing along!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq3BYw4xjxE&feature=player_embedded
The OWS goal, one of them is to shut down the corruption pipeline between the wall street pig men and congress.
Who could be against a noble endeavor such as this. It should unite all party’s to be part of a turning point in history.
Washington post (h/t George Washington):
NYT reports:
This is very similar to the Soviet brutal suppression of the Czech Spring. 22 years later the Soviet empire was history. However, I doubt it will take that long for the American empire to drown in its own cesspool of fraud, violence, and disgrace.
If any NYC cops are reading this, I have a few words for you: the system you serve is on its way out. If you have any honor left (not that ever was much honor among American policemen), but if any of you still have any honor, then submit your resignation NOW, publicly denounce your masters, and find a more honorable way to earn a living. But if not, if you are personally just too dishonored, too disgraces, too morally bankrupt, too ignorant, too cowardly, too corrupt, as I am sure most of you are, then just go right ahead and continue giving your billionaire mayor the daily blowjob you have been giving so far. But don’t mind me if I spit on you for that.
Have a nice day, you ignorant police degenerates!
Wonderful tale, reckoned we’re able to combine a few unrelated data, however well worth taking a look, whoa did 1 find out about Mid East has got much more problerms too.