Occupy Wall Street

[UPS!]

Well as many god damn cops as the Gov't employs im suprised its not more.

 

The amount of fucking police the protest have borught out must have cost millions.

Donuts dont sell themselves

[theprotester]

It's just interesting that that figure is almost exactly 99% of the entire US economy.

[shai]

Signs went with someone else but the march was fun. I'll post some pics when I get home.

[Soup]

 

Hahahhaha

[Soup]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/11/20/142562402/video-after-pepper-spraying-a-powerfully-silent-protest-at-uc-davis

 

The second video is terrifying.

[ANGELDUST]

occupyoontz

[shai]

Anyone who is looking for more insight into actions like OWS should read "The Subversion Of Politics" by George Katsiaficas. He does a good job of breaking down the history and motivation behind autonomous movements in Europe.

 

What I'm happy to see (and what I've been advocating) is more action along the lines of what the Provos did in the Netherlands in the 60s...planting gardens in front of City Hall might not seem like that big of a deal to most of you, but it could be the start of something interesting if people are willing to take it to the next level. For example, I'd like to build a cinderblock wall around the police station...let them figure that one out.

[ANGELDUST]

the writers need to have a teach-in on how to pimp your sign.

[Mercer]

http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/

 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-pepper-spraying-cop-meme

[50million]

[50million]

 

 

the cat from occupy oakland camp. LULz

[shai]

the writers need to have a teach-in on how to pimp your sign.

 

I've made a bunch of signs with a rotating cast of friends of mine....we were doing them by hand at first, now we're getting into stenciling and screening designs we like which will probably lead to us making posters.

 

If that happens I might be willing to send a few out, but it's not very high on my list of priorities right now.

[theprotester]

I hope you've thoroughly studied communist propaganda posters!?

 

:)

[cunt sauce]

[cunt sauce]

Fuck Yes. Positive analysis of Anarchism in the MSM.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/15/occupy-anarchism-gift-democracy?newsfeed=true

 

As the history of past movements all make clear, nothing terrifies those running America more than the danger of true democracy breaking out. As we see in Chicago, Portland, Oakland, and right now in New York City, the immediate response to even a modest spark of democratically organised civil disobedience is a panicked combination of concessions and brutality. Our rulers, anyway, seem to labor under a lingering fear that if any significant number of Americans do find out what anarchism really is, they may well decide that rulers of any sort are unnecessary.

 

Almost every time I'm interviewed by a mainstream journalist about OWS, I get some variation of the same lecture:

 

"How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what's with all this anarchist nonsense – the consensus, the sparkly fingers … ? You're never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!"

 

It is hard to imagine worse advice. After all, since 2007, just about every previous attempt to kick off a nationwide movement against Wall Street took exactly the course such people would have recommended – and failed miserably. It is only when a small group of anarchists in New York decided to adopt the opposite approach – refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the existing political authorities by making demands of them; refusing to accept the legitimacy of the existing legal order by occupying a public space without asking for permission, refusing to elect leaders that could then be bribed or co-opted; declaring, however non-violently, that the entire system was corrupt and they rejected it; being willing to stand firm against the state's inevitable violent response – that hundreds of thousands of Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa began rallying in support, and a majority declared their sympathies.

 

This is not the first time a movement based on fundamentally anarchist principles – direct action, direct democracy, a rejection of existing political institutions and attempt to create alternative ones – has cropped up in the US. The civil rights movement (at least, its more radical branches), the anti-nuclear movement, the global justice movement … all took similar directions. Never, however, has one grown so startlingly quickly.

 

To understand why, we have to understand that there's always been an enormous gap between what those ruling America mean by "democracy", and what that word means to almost anyone else. According to the official version, of course, "democracy" is a system created by the founding fathers, based on checks and balances between president, Congress and judiciary. In fact, nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or Constitution does it say anything about the US being a "democracy". Most defined democracy as collective self-governance by popular assemblies, and as such, they were dead set against it, arguing it would be prejudicial against the interests of minorities (the particular minority that was had in mind here being the rich). They only came to redefine their own republic – modeled not on Athens, but on Rome – as a "democracy" because ordinary Americans seemed to like the word so much.

 

But what did, and what do, ordinary Americans mean by the word? A system where they get to weigh in on which politicians will run the government? This is what we're always told, but it seems implausible. After all, most Americans loathe politicians, and tend to be skeptical about the very idea of government. If they universally hold it out as a political ideal, it can only be because the American people still sees it, however vaguely, as self-governance – as what the founding fathers tended to denounce as either "democracy" or, as they sometimes also put it, "anarchy".

 

If nothing else, this would help explain the enthusiasm with which Americans have embraced a movement based on directly democratic principles, despite the uniformly contemptuous dismissal of America's media and political class. Most Americans are, politically, deeply conflicted. They tend to combine a deep reverence for freedom with a carefully inculcated, but nonetheless real identification with the army and police. Few are actual anarchists; few even know what "anarchism" means. It is not clear how many would ultimately wish to discard the state and capitalism entirely.

 

But one thing overwhelming numbers of Americans do feel is that something is terribly wrong with their country, that its key institutions are controlled by an arrogant elite, that radical change of some kind is long since overdue. They're right. It's hard to imagine a political system so systematically corrupt – one where bribery, on every level, has been made completely legal. The outrage is appropriate. The problem was, up until 17 September, the only side of the spectrum willing to propose radical solutions of any sort was the right. But Occupy Wall Street has changed that: democracy has broken out.

[NorteRed]

Occupy Vancouver

[theprotester]

[shai]

I hope you've thoroughly studied communist propaganda posters!?

 

:)

 

No, I've just been doing my own thing.

[NorteRed]

dont spray me bro dont spray me broo!!!! :(

[NorteRed]

Shepard Fairey’s New Occupy Hope Poster

[whitepower]

 

 

someone should fuck with this pic. write something clever on the note.

[theprotester]

I hope you've thoroughly studied communist propaganda posters!?

 

:)

 

Shepard Fairey’s New Occupy Hope Poster[/size][/b][/url]

 

Hahaha

[shai]

I saw it, it's not bad. He's good at what he does, I don't really understand why writers hate on him. (I'm sure someone will go in depth into this, but IMO his heart seems to be in the right place most of the time.)

 

So far, my sketches of the poster I want to make look okay. Definitely more cartoonish than what I think most people expect protest posters to look like. I'm working out a deal to get a run of them printed for free, so if that happens I might send out a few.

[Fist 666]

i'll carry one of your posters shai.

 

i'm gonna check out vancouver today.

[shai]

If it happens....I'm pretty busy and the printing deal is not at all solid yet. But I'll be happy to send one to you if you pay for postage and they get made.

[Fist 666]

i'm confused is that spam or not?

[Scor]

Occupy is dying. They strayed away from their roots and became this terrible protest group that doesn't understand protesting.

 

Occupy was first started by Anonymous, to have the government crack down on the crooked dealings of Wall Street.

 

Now all the candy ass newfags are taking it further and further, asking for bailouts and protesting about student loans and the job loss. That's not the point of Occupy. And honestly, go get a fucking job you candy ass'. You knew damn well when you got student loans you had to pay em back. Not our fault.

 

Occupy is retarded. A joke. /b/ doesn't care for it, and OWS denies Anonymous. Way to go you liberal fucks

[Mercer]

^^^Fox news and 4chan I see, you must be super well informed br0.

"Anon started OWS" :lol:

 

The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy

The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. Occupy has touched the third rail of our political class's venality

 

US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

 

But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being – falsely – informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

 

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

 

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

 

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

 

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks – under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop – awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

 

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

 

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

 

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

 

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

 

When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

 

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

 

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

 

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

 

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally – and immensely – from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

 

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

 

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

 

 

Source Naomi Wolf, The Guardian

[Scor]

Lol? I was a supporter of OWS at its roots. I was in the IRC's and all over the blogs and their forums planning this out.

 

OWS was planned over 2 months ago. People are saying these 2 people in Vancouver started it up but trust me. This was an Anonymous act. After hitting #opPP they needed something bigger.

 

None of the media has this right. Especially when they interview the more 'outspoken' activists. They aren't getting the truth and the roots and never will. If you want the REAL history and source of OWS you will never get it. Why? Because it was a trend on Twitter and only spoken of in IRC's... which aren't logged, unless you're a candy ass.

 

EDIT - the reason the police are cracking down in the most part is that these protesters are not exercising their rights correctly. Especially that pepper spray incident that is now a Meme hit... those kids were on private property.

[shai]

Mercer, he's right on a couple points except the "OWS is dying" thing....that I'm not sold on.

 

It was inevitable that things were going to slow down for the winter, and it was inevitable that a decentralized movement with no clear leader or demands/goals can seem diffuse at times, but this is far from over. At least not in Oakland, anyway.

 

I was highly skeptical of the Anon connection on several levels and still am. I don't have an opinion about when it started, I did read the Adbusters article from June (?) and I heard some rumors around early August that something big was going to happen from people who are in the know (NOT Anon) but I didn't anticipate what followed.

 

I'm actually kind of grateful things have slowed down enough to where it's possible to have a normal life again. But I'm always on deck when there's something to get involved with.