eye-on-washington

Occupy Wall Street--Chicago

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:49:00 +0000

Occupy Chicago Grows, Looks for a Permanent Home

Tuesday 18 October 2011

by: Yana Kunichoff, Truthout | Report

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase all have their own slice of downtown Chicago, but the grassroots occupation movement Occupy Chicago has yet to find a permanent home.

Since Occupy Chicago's attempt to take start an encampment at a swathe of prominent Grant Park on Saturday ended with a mass civil disobedience in which 200 activists were arrested, the movement has been offered a meeting with Emanuel.

But organizers say that Emanuel's tactic does not aim to accommodate the protests but to diffuse them before Chicago becomes the central point of anticorporate anger when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the G8 hold their summit in the city next year and Obama begins his re-election campaign out of Chicago.

"The Chicago Police Department and the city of Chicago itself are playing a different game than we are seeing around the rest of the country," said Matthew Camp, an organizer with Occupy Chicago. "They are not trying to physically repress the movement, but instead, they are denying it the chance to exist as an occupation."

Positions at Monday's general assembly on whether to accept Emanuel's offer were divided between demanding that Emanuel come to the protest site, sending representatives to his office and asking him to hold a general assembly in City Hall.

A motion was passed to issue a formal statement to Emanuel. His office did not respond to requests for comment on the current status of the offer.

Twenty-six days since Occupy Chicago started, the movement maintains a picket 24 hours a day, seven days a week in front of the city's financial district, but activists say that starting an encampment is key to building solidarity among different groups and in keeping their resistance visible.

Camp, who calls himself "overeducated and underemployed," said that if the protest were able to move to Grant Park, "thousands of people would be exposed to the occupation a day, and I think once it moves to a public space we will see a much broader level of participation."

Chris Alvarez, 23, a military veteran who was medically discharged and had his benefits cut, spoke to Truthout as he secured a tent in Chicago's Grant Park among the more than 2,000-strong crowd on Saturday night.

"The strategy is pretty much to set up headquarters," said Alvarez. "People are ready to take a stand."

Cassie Bee said she was hoping that Saturday's encampment would come together because, "I was hoping I could have a place to sleep tonight."

Bee, 22, a trans woman, said that her parents had kicked her out and, since graduating with a degree in geography and earth sciences in July, she had been unable to find a job.

"I would like to see more diversity in this," said Bee, who recognized that, with her degree, things will be better for her in a couple of years, "but for a lot of people that won't be the case."

Occupy Chicago plans to attempt to set up an encampment again on Friday, but this time, they have new allies - Service Employees International Union (SEIU) will be bussing in its members, according to Camp, and the director of Jobs With Justice made a statement at Monday's general assembly offering the support of its members to help Occupy Chicago find a permanent home.

"We need to not only do this for one month, but we need to continue this fight," said Matthew Scott, media director for theChicago Anti-Eviction Campaign. "You can really feel the frustrations and hopes of people here. We're of the people and for the people."

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Wall Street Firms Spy on Protestors In Tax-Funded Center

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:42:00 +0000

(The Elite Giant Financial Predatory Squid is alive and well and spying on the protesters at the public's expense.)

Meet the “Lower Manhattan Security Initiative” 10-18-11 by Pam Martens from Counterpunch.org (subscribe to this great website!)

A CounterPunch Exclusive

Wall Street’s audacity to corrupt knows no bounds and the cooptation of government by the 1 per cent knows no limits. How else to explain $150 million of taxpayer money going to equip a government facility in lower Manhattan where Wall Street firms, serially charged with corruption, get to sit alongside the New York Police Department and spy on law abiding citizens.

According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech facility on lower Broadway dates back six years. In correspondence from 2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a Goldman Sachs’ Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD “is committed to the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for Lower Manhattan…One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.”

At the time, Goldman Sachs was in the process of extracting concessions from New York City just short of the Mayor’s first born in exchange for constructing its new headquarters building at 200 West Street, adjacent to the World Financial Center and in the general area of where the new World Trade Center complex would be built. According to the 2005 documents, Goldman’s deal included $1.65 billion in Liberty Bonds, up to $160 million in sales tax abatements for construction materials and tenant furnishings, and the deal-breaker requirement that a security plan that gave it a seat at the NYPD’s Coordination Center would be in place by no later than December 31, 2009.

The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock. Under the imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States, 2,000 private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately 1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the streets in lower Manhattan to the center. Once at the center, they can be integrated for analysis. At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD, MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside high-wage personnel from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.

In addition to video analytics which can, for example, track a person based on the color of their hat or jacket, insiders say the NYPD either has or is working on face recognition software which could track individuals based on facial features. The center is also equipped with live feeds from license plate readers.

According to one person who has toured the center, there are three rows of computer workstations, with approximately two-thirds operated by non-NYPD personnel. The Chief-Leader, the weekly civil service newspaper, identified some of the outside entities that share the space: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, the Federal Reserve, the New York Stock Exchange. Others say most of the major Wall Street firms have an on-site representative. Two calls and an email to Paul Browne, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information, seeking the names of the other Wall Street firms at the center were not returned. An email seeking the same information to City Council Member, Peter Vallone, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, was not returned.

In a press release dated October 4, 2009 announcing the expansion of the surveillance territory, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly had this to say:

“The Midtown Manhattan Security Initiative will add additional cameras and license plate readers installed at key locations between 30th and 60th Streets from river to river. It will also identify additional private organizations who will work alongside NYPD personnel in the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, where corporate and other security representatives from Lower Manhattan have been co-located with police since June 2009. The Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center is the central hub for both initiatives, where all the collected data are analyzed.” [Italic emphasis added.]

The project has been funded by New York City taxpayers as well as all U.S. taxpayers through grants from the Federal Department of Homeland Security. On March 26, 2009, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) wrote a letter to Commissioner Kelly, noting that even though the system involves “massive expenditures of public money, there have been no public hearings about any aspect of the system…we reject the Department’s assertion of ‘plenary power’ over all matters touching on public safety…the Department is of course subject to the laws and Constitution of the United States and of the State of New York as well as to regulation by the New York City Council.”

The NYCLU also noted in its letter that it rejected the privacy guidelines for the surveillance operation that the NYPD had posted on its web site for public comment, since there had been no public hearings to formulate these guidelines. It noted further that “the guidelines do not limit police surveillance and databases to suspicious activity…there is no independent oversight or monitoring of compliance with the guidelines.”

According to Commissioner Kelly in public remarks, the privacy guidelines were written by Jessica Tisch, the Director of Counterterrorism Policy and Planning for the NYPD who has played a significant role in developing the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. In 2006, Tisch was 25 years old and still working on her law degree and MBA at Harvard, according to a wedding announcement in the New York Times. Tisch is a friend to the Mayor’s daughter, Emma; her mother, Meryl, is a family friend to the Mayor.

Tisch is the granddaughter and one of the heirs to the now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch who built the Loews Corporation. Her father, James Tisch, is now the CEO of the Loews Corporation and was elected by Wall Street banks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York until 2013 representing the public’s interest. (Clearly, the 1 per cent think they know what’s best for the 99 per cent.)

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is the entity which doled out the bulk of the $16 trillion in bailout loans to the U.S. and foreign financial community. Members of Tisch’s family work for Wall Street firms or hedge funds which have prime broker relationships with them. A division of Loews Corporation has a banking relationship with Citigroup.

The Tisch family stands to directly benefit from the surveillance program. In June of this year, Continental Casualty Company, the primary unit of the giant CNA Financial which is owned by Loew’s Corp., signed a 19-year lease for 81,296 square feet at 125 Broad Street – an area under surveillance by the downtown surveillance center.

Loews Corporation also owns the Loew’s Regency Hotel on Park Avenue in midtown, an area which is also now under round-the-clock surveillance on the taxpayer’s dime.

Wall Street is infamous for perverting everything it touches: from the Nasdaq stock market, to stock research issued to the public, to auction rate securities, mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, credit default swaps with AIG, and mortgage securitizations. Had a public hearing been held on this massive surveillance sweep of Manhattan by potential felons, hopefully someone might have pondered what was to prevent Wall Street from tracking its employee whistleblowers heading off to the FBI offices or meeting with a reporter.

One puzzle has at least been solved. Wall Street’s criminals have not been indicted or sent to jail because they have effectively become the police.

Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade of her career advocating against Wall Street’s private justice system, which keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms. She has been writing on public interest issues for CounterPunch since retiring in 2006. She has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com

See Related Article:

Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/10/financial-giants-put-new-york-city-cops-on-their-payroll/

The Protesters Speak for 99% of all Americans

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:32:00 +0000

For all of you silent citizens walking and traveling to work and then back home to your families as Wall Street stole YOUR savings, stole your wages, stole your jobs and shipped them overseas, while jacking up commodity prices in order for those elite financial gamblers to glean nice transaction fees for clients seeking small gains and profits, your children and grandchildren have decided to do something about it all!!!

WAKE UP AND JOIN THEM!!!

The people of Occupy Wall Street--Everywhere are mostly made up of YOUR children and grandchildren. They have decided to take to the streets, on YOUR behalf; and, speak on YOUR behalf loudly so the corrupt politicians, who are getting their palms greased by the likes of the Koch brothers, the Walton Walmarteers, GE, Boeing, Halliburton, Exxon, Scaife, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, big Pharma, etc. to point it all out and try and put a stop to it, once and for all.

The voices making up Occupy Wall Street--Everywhere are angry that the corrupt slime sitting on the Supreme Court allowing corporations the same rights as people (Citizens United vs. working Americans) have joined hands with the corporate elite so they can buy our elections and politicians more easily than ever. They have bought off the likes of Clarence Thomas over steak dinners. That was all it took for him to go slime.

Now, we have Eric Cantor and his fellow slimy slithers spewing such stuff "as the nation is being torn apart by protesters." Such actions being "un-American", while his own warm fussy Tea Party, bought and paid for by Dick Armey, Kochs, Scaife and other corrupt corporate conspirators were just fine to protest because those people were not going after Wall Streeters and the corporate elite (the very institutions that destroyed the economy--on purpose) but went after government representatives, such as weak and moderate Republicans and of course, those socialistic Democrats.

For anyone to believe that Obama is a socialist they need to get an education and read something relevant for the first time in their lives.

This is the election cycle's Black Swan (Nassim Taleb's economic theory). It will be a game changer. Now, the question is what will happen if there is a debacle in the financial markets while the protesters gather more and more momentum? A major turmoil will likely be created.

Obama continues to walk blindly into that good night. He needs to wake up from his deep Rip Van Winkle sleep and actually do the job he was elected to do, and follow his campaign promise of Change We Can Believe In. But, he is afraid. He is afraid to act because the corporate elite own him. They pull his strings. They bought him, and he went willing. He brought on the slime to his cabinet. He kept the slime on at the Fed. He appointed the chair of GE--Jeff Immelt to run his campaign fundraising, although Obama won't say that in public.

This is why YOUR children and grandchildren have risen up in the streets. YOU told them that getting a college education was important, and now, they cannot find relevant jobs to meet their resume skill sets.

They realize that many of the jobs are not coming back because nothing has changed to convince them otherwise. They have been fed a bunch of lies. And, this is because YOU -- daddy and mommy and grandpap allowed our politicians to sell off American jobs to the cheapest and lowest bidders in China and elsewhere. YOU accepted free trade agreements that eroded the American worker's job. And, you did nothing about it. You went along. You voted for corporate sell outs to represent you in Washington. You allowed them to blame union workers, give tax cuts for the richest among us, allow for huge tax loopholes for the Wall Street gamblers, blame benefits and reasonable wages as a reason for the economic collapse. You sat by as more and more working people went into poverty, lost their homes and savings over outrageous medical expenses, and witnessed health insurers weasel out of paying benefits that were promised due to one reason or another. The Wall Street elite invested in places without environmental laws, without reasonable wages, without reasonable working conditions, without child labor laws, without benefits which has kept the price of those cheap goods cheap. This is part of the Republican and Obama scam. This is part of the neoliberal philosophy brought to the White House by the Clintonestas who now occupy it, or have recently left it for brighter income pastures.

These political fails want to lower our environmental laws to keep pace with these nations that don't care about their environment. They want a pipeline laid from Canada to Texas because Canada does not want to build its own refinery for their mucky tar sand oils. They want to drill for Marcellus Shale natural gas next to schools, farmland and drinking water supplies. They want to cut off mountain tops in West Virginia to get the coal as the toxic runoff poisons farmland and drinking water. They want to lower air pollution standards.

This is why we have a movement called Occupy Wall Street. You cannot fool educated young people. Maybe the Tea Party can fool uneducated followers that want to 'Keep Government Outta My Medicare' but that is not the case with well spoken and more informed young people.

The movement is moving forward. The American Autumn Revolution has begun.

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Matt Taibbi Suggests Occupy Wall Street Make Demands Soon

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:11:00 +0000

As a blogger and supporter of this movement, I have only one other demand to be made, and that is that the government repeals the Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to have the same rights as citizens. This Citizens United decision should be made illegal, and that all contributions and support to candidates be 100% fully transparent in its origins. People have rights, corporations possess the privilege to be a corporation. This is not a right.

My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street

Protesters

Hit bankers where it hurts 10-14-11

I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.

But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war. I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.

Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.

That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year.

No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:

1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.

5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.

To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but right now – will be there in an instant.

This story is from the October 27, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.

Why Occupy Wall Street Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right

Taibblog

by: Matt Taibbi

Demonstrators associated with the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement face off with police in the streets of the financial district of New York.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

I was surprised, amused and annoyed all at once when I found out yesterday that some moron-provocateur linked to notorious right-wing cybergoon Andrew Breitbart had infiltrated a series of private e-mail lists – including one that I have been participating in – and was using them to run an exposé on the supposed behind-the-scenes marionetting of the OWS movement by the liberal media.
According to various web reports, what happened was that a private "cyber-security researcher" named Thomas Ryan somehow accessed a series of email threads between various individuals and dumped them all on BigGovernment.com, Breitbart's site. Gawker is also reporting that Ryan forwarded some of these emails to the FBI and the NYPD.
I have no idea whether those email exchanges are the same as the ones I was involved with. But what is clear is that some private email exchanges between myself and a number of other people – mostly financial journalists and activists who know each other from having covered the crisis from the same angle in the last three years, people like Barry Ritholz, Dylan Ratigan, former regulator William Black, Glenn Greenwald and myself – ended up being made public.
There is nothing terribly interesting in any of these exchanges. Most all of the things written were things all of us ended up saying publicly in our various media forums. In my case, what I wrote was almost an exact copy of my Rolling Stone article last week, suggesting a list of demands for the movement. I said I thought having demands was a good idea and listed a few things I thought demonstrators could focus on. Others disagreed, and there was a friendly back-and-forth.
So I was amazed to wake up this morning and find that various right-wing sites had used these exchanges to build a story about a conspiracy of left-wing journalists. "Busted. Emails Show Liberal Media & Far Left Cranks Conspired With #OWS Protesters to Craft Message," wrote one.
Breitbart's site, BigGovernment.com, went further, saying that the Occupy Washington D.C. movement is "working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement."
The list, the site wrote, include:

...well known names such as MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, Rolling Stone’s Matt Tiabbi [sic] who both are actively participating; involvement from other listers such as Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald plus well-known radicals like Noam Chomsky, remains unclear.

Aside from the appalling fact of these assholes stealing private emails and bragging about it in public, the whole story is completely absurd. None of the people on the list, as far as I know, are actually organizers of OWS -- I know I'm not one, anyway.
In fact, I was surprised by the entire characterization of this list as being some kind of official wing of OWS. I thought it was just a bunch of emails from friends of mine, talking about what advice we would give protesters, if any of them asked, which in my case anyway they definitely did not.
This whole episode to me underscores an unpleasant development for OWS. There is going to be a fusillade of attempts from many different corners to force these demonstrations into the liberal-conservative blue-red narrative.
This will be an effort to transform OWS from a populist and wholly non-partisan protest against bailouts, theft, insider trading, self-dealing, regulatory capture and the market-perverting effect of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks into something a little more familiar and less threatening, i.e. a captive "liberal" uprising that the right will use to whip up support and the Democrats will try to turn into electoral energy for 2012.
Tactically, what we'll see here will be a) people firmly on the traditional Democratic side claiming to speak for OWS, and b) people on the right-Republican side attempting to portray OWS as a puppet of well-known liberals and other Democratic interests.
On the Democratic side, we've already seen a lot of this behavior, particularly in the last week or so. Glenn Greenwald wrote about this a lot last week, talking about how Obama has already made it clear that he is "on the same side as the Wall Street protesters" and that the Democratic Party, through the DCCC (its House fundraising arm), has jumped into the fray by circulating a petition seeking 100,000 party supporters to affirm that “I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.”(I wonder how firmly the DCCC was standing with OWS sentiment back when it was pushing for the bailouts and the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act).
We've similarly heard about MoveOn.org jumping into the demonstrations and attempting, seemingly, to assume leadership roles in the movement.
All of this is the flip side of the coin that has people like Breitbart trying to frame OWS as a socialist uprising and a liberal media conspiracy. The aim here is to redraw the protests along familiar battle lines.
The Rush Limbaughs of the world are very comfortable with a narrative that has Noam Chomsky, MoveOn and Barack Obama on one side, and the Tea Party and Republican leaders on the other. The rest of the traditional media won't mind that narrative either, if it can get enough "facts" to back it up. They know how to do that story and most of our political media is based upon that Crossfire paradigm of left-vs-right commentary shows and NFL Today-style team-vs-team campaign reporting.
What nobody is comfortable with is a movement in which virtually the entire spectrum of middle class and poor Americans is on the same page, railing against incestuous political and financial corruption on Wall Street and in Washington. The reality is that Occupy Wall Street and the millions of middle Americans who make up the Tea Party are natural allies and should be on the same page about most of the key issues, and that's a story our media won't want to or know how to handle.
Take, for instance, the matter of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks, which people like me and Barry Ritholz have focused on as something that could be a key issue for OWS. These gigantic institutions have put millions of ordinary people out of their homes thanks to a massive fraud scheme for which they were not punished, owing to their enormous influence with government and their capture of the regulators.
This is an issue for the traditional "left" because it's a classic instance of overweening corporate power -- but it's an issue for the traditional "right" because these same institutions are also the biggest welfare bums of all time, de facto wards of the state who sucked trillions of dollars of public treasure from the pockets of patriotic taxpayers from coast to coast.
Both traditional constituencies want these companies off the public teat and back swimming on their own in the cruel seas of the free market, where they will inevitably be drowned in their corruption and greed, if they don't reform immediately. This is a major implicit complaint of the OWS protests and it should absolutely strike a nerve with Tea Partiers, many of whom were talking about some of the same things when they burst onto the scene a few years ago.
The banks know this. They know they have no "natural" constituency among voters, which is why they spend such fantastic amounts of energy courting the mainstream press and such huge sums lobbying politicians on both sides of the aisle.
The only way the Goldmans and Citis and Bank of Americas can survive is if they can suck up popular political support indirectly, either by latching onto such vague right-populist concepts as "limited government" and "free-market capitalism" (ironic, because none of them would survive ten minutes without the federal government's bailouts and other protections) or, alternatively, by presenting themselves as society's bulwark against communism, lefty extremism, Noam Chomsky, etc.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying one thing: beware of provocateurs on both sides of the aisle. This movement is going to attract many Breitbarts, of both the left and right variety. They're going to try to identify fake leaders, draw phony battle lines, and then herd everybody back into the same left-right cage matches of old. Whenever that happens, we just have to remember not to fall for the trap. When someone says this or that person speaks for OWS, don't believe it. This thing is bigger than one or two or a few people, and it isn't part of the same old story.

James Howard Kunstler Says "Going Apeshit"

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:59:00 +0000

James writes about the very possible Black Swan hiding inside Wall Street that might actually create an unforeseen debacle that could bring down the walls on which the elite Humpty Dumpty has been sitting on for over 30 years. The raucous audience camped out around Wall Street could take down the Obama administration as Barack calmly tries to justify that not all the bad boys on Wall Street are bad men.

These times they are a changin', and they are NOT what Barack expected.

GOING APESHIT By James Howard Kunstler

on October 17, 2011 8:40 AM

It was amusing to see President Obama try to align himself with the OWS movement. The genial Millard Fillmore update asked them not to "demonize those who work on Wall Street." Of course, demonization proceeds from the failure of this president and his appointed agents in authority to subject those who work on Wall Street to the laws that mere mortals are supposed to follow in money matters. Hence, those who work on Wall Street appear to be something other than mortals. And since their work (on Wall Street) has had a malign influence on the common weal, some might leap to the conclusion that they are malevolent non-mortals, i.e. demons.

In this early stage of the convulsion rocking the western world, especially here in the USA, a peaceful ambience rules. That is because a game is being played. We played the game in 1968. It goes like this. You get people to turn out in the streets. The idea is to promote the right of public assembly as much as to make any particular point. (In fact, banners advocating all sorts of gripes appear.) Eventually, you get a lot of people in the streets. Feelings of happy anarchy sweep the crowd, a feeling that something special is underway, that the usual rules of everyday conduct have been suspended, in a good way. The crowd basks in the sunny glow of its own mass, happy solidarity. Everybody is behaving splendidly - more to feel good about.

After a while that gets boring, especially for young males with a lot of testosterone surging from loin to brain. They want to do more than bask in the radiance of their own righteous wonderfulness. They want to engage their large muscles, even if in the service of an idea, for instance the idea that they have been swindled. It is at first a vague idea, but large. But pretty soon it coheres emergently: swindled out of our future! Yes, it is so. Thousands of demon-like beings upstairs in the curtain-wall towers around Zuccotti Park, people wearing neckties and cultured pearls in warm offices with cappuccino machines down the hall, are at this very moment setting loose trading algorithms that will swindle us out of our future! You can see them up there at their evil, glowing screens!

That's when the yoga acrobatics and the hat crocheting are put aside and the street people - their ranks swollen into a horde-like meta-organism - start to express things beyond the right of public assembly. Something unseen goes through them, perhaps like the pheromone that transforms a field full of grasshoppers into a ravening swarm of locusts. Being people, they cannot take wing. But they can press forward and up against things, and they can surely break the glass in those sleek curtain-wall buildings (so much for "transparency") beyond which the bankers sit cringing in their expensive clothing.

Surely we are heading toward a moment like that. The bank employees upstairs must be getting a little nervous, anyway, just glancing out the windows at the moiling mob below. This is apart from the tensions internally roiling the banks themselves, not to mention the entire networked system of global banking, with all its fissures and cracks, as the merry-go-round of debt flies apart under the centrifugal force of insolvency. Come to think of it, these events could not have correlated more perfectly. Just as a horrific accident in finance is about to happen, a ready-made revolutionary mob is conveniently parked outside the pilot-houses of the world's great money vessels, so as to receive the crews directly into their open arms after the smash up.

President Obama could have changed the outcome if he had actually believed in change. He could have told his attorney general to enforce the securities law. He could have replaced the zombies at the SEC and told the new ones to apply all existing regulations. Before last year's election, he could have used his legislative majorities to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and reinstate the Glass-Steagall act. He could have initiated the process of deconstructing the giant banks back into their separate functions - so that banking once again worked as a utility rather than a launching pad for colossal frauds and swindles. Not only did he fail to do any of these things, he didn't even talk about it, or try.

Obama has a lot of nerve claiming to support the Occupy Wall Street movement. He should be one of the objects of its ire. I'm not even sure Obama will get to finish out his term of office. 2012 looks like a complete horror show in the making. The way world money matters are lining up this fall, some kind of debacle seems unavoidable, much worse than the 2008 fiasco. The normal political channels are clogged and sclerotic. Our institutions are failing us. The cast of "candidate" characters across the political spectrum convinces nobody that they can manage this republic.

The weather may determine the mood of the OWS crowd. If they don't go apeshit in the next two weeks, my guess is that the nation will hunker down into a dire, melancholy holiday season followed by a desperate winter leading to a raucous spring of political transformation - not necessarily of the best kind.

For the moment, we seem to be waiting for the proverbial first broken window.

Open the link and read the comments.

United States Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, NY

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:15:00 +0000

The Fascist TBTF Bankstas Refuse To Allow Customers To Withdraw THEIR Money

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:48:00 +0000

From the great site called Washingtonsblog.com

Big Banks Try to Stop Customers From Moving Their Money

I’ve long supported the campaign to “Move Your Money” from the giant, insolvent banks who take billions in bailouts and use the money to speculate and to corrupt the system to smaller banks. See thisand this.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters have announced that November 5th is “Bank Transfer Day”, a targeted day to “Move Your Money”.

The big banks are trying to preempt the efforts of their customers to move their money to smaller banks.

This week, protesters were arrested when they tried to close their Citibank accounts:

And a Bank of American branch in Santa Cruz refused to let protesters close their accounts, saying they could not be protesters and customers at the same time:

In August, Bank of America used police (and reportedly swat teams) to stop St. Louis Bank of America customers from closing their accounts:

Military Support For the Occupy Wall Street Movement

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:37:00 +0000

These two military men spoke so beautifully about how they feel about the protest movement,
why they are there protesting, and why those, such as Sean Hannity, are wrong to believe that
the protesters and the movement are un-American. They clear state what a bunch of crap and
hypocrites the Hannity-types truly are.

Here is the video:

Marine Sergeant Shamar Thomas Stands Up to NYPD to Protect Wall Street Protesters

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:30:00 +0000

Here’s the video:

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Eric Cantor On Occupy Wall Street: I'm Upset Democrats Are 'Joining In The Effort To Blame Others'

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:23:00 +0000

In this piece, Cantor insults the Democratic party once again by referring to them as the "Democrat" [party]. He cannot help himself, since he continues to want to provide cover for the thieves on Wall Street who line Cantor's pockets, along with many others, with large sums of cash for their campaigns and expenses.

He ranted on about how his beloved Tea Party supporters were directing their anger at Washington, instead of the real criminals--Wall Street, which dictate the terms of legislation, commerce, trade, taxes, and political policy.

He whined how the Occupy Wall Street movement is directing its anger at the actual criminals who control Wall Street, the economic policies of Washington, and politicians. NOT FAIR decries Eric Cantor!!!

Cantor believes that Democrats should blame themselves, too. Yes, many Democrats are to blame for being co-opted into participating in the corrupting motives of the Republican Party, who take their marching order from the likes of the Koch brothers, Dick Armey's army, the Scaife publishing family, the Walton Walmart dynasty, and the energy sector.

From Huffington Post by Amanda Terkel 10-16-11

WASHINGTON -- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) backed away from calling the Occupy Wall Street protesters "mobs" on Sunday, but he doubled-down on going after the political leaders who have condoned the movement.

At the conservative Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., last week, Cantor said he was "increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country."

"And believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans. But you sent us here to fight for you and all Americans," he added.

On Sunday, "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace asked Cantor about those comments: "Congressman, do you stand by that comment about mobs? And what do you think about the effort by the Obama White House and Democrats trying to harness the energy and movement here as part of their re-election effort?"

Cantor immediately moved away from his comment about the "mobs," saying, "More important than my use of the word is that there is a growing frustration out there across the country and it is warranted. Too many people are out of work."

He then jumped to criticizing political leaders who have embraced the movement, saying it was wrong to blame Wall Street for the country's economic problems.

"Where I am most concerned is we have elected leaders in this town who are frankly joining in the effort to blame others rather than focus on the policies that have brought about the current situation," he said. "I mean, when you hear of the Democrat elected leaders joining in, blaming parts of our economy and society, versus 'let's take some of the credit or blame here in Washington.' These are policies they put in place, and a lot can be done here in this town to turn the economy around and promote income mobility, and not go in and excoriate some who have been successful. We want success for everybody."

Cantor and the Tea Parties have repeatedly blamed Democrats for the country's problems, presumably exempting them as "parts of our economy and society." Cantor, an enthusiastic supporter of the Tea Parties, told an audience at the 2009 Values Voter Summit that the growing movement was "fighting on the fighting lines of what we know is a battle for our democracy."

"People are beginning to wake up and see a country they don’t really recognize," said Cantor.

When asked about this distinction by reportersthis past week, Cantor responded that the Tea Parties were different because their ire was directed at Washington, at "the government and its policies."

"The Tea Party were individuals that were attempting to address their grievances, seeking redress of their grievances, from the government they elected," he said. "It's different, from what I see, of the protesters on Wall Street and elsewhere, that are pitting themselves against others outside of government in America. That's the difference."

"And do you not see the government as representing the people?" asked Politico's David Rogers.

"Sure," said Cantor, "it's of the people. But we're in elected positions and trying to solve problems. I don't believe that our role is to inflame a division between different parts and sectors of --"

When Rogers tried to follow up and said, "I'm not asking about that," the press briefing abruptly ended.

Cantor is one of several Republicans who have been slightly changing their tune on Occupy Wall Street in recent days, as noted by ThinkProgress.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that President Obama and his team have "decided to turn public anger at Wall Street into a central tenet of their reelection strategy."

“We intend to make it one of the central elements of the campaign next year,” said Obama senior adviser David Plouffe. “One of the main elements of the contrast will be that the president passed Wall Street reform, and our opponent and the other party want to repeal it.”

On ABC News' "This Week," Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod said he predicted the issue would hurt Republicans in the 2012 elections.

"Obviously I don't think any American is impressed when they see Governor Romney and all the Republican candidates say the first thing they'd do is roll back Wall Street reforms, and go back to where we were before the crisis, and let Wall Street write its own rules," Axelrod said. "I think that will be an issue in this campaign."

This story was updated with Axelrod's comments on ABC.

The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:02:00 +0000

From Huffington Post 10/16/11 by Robert Reich

Professor Reich makes excellent points for why the Occupy Wall Street-everywhere groups are upset and protesting the Regressive policies forced upon working people over the decades.

Here is the piece:

A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward.

We are going to battle once again.

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we're all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today's Republican right aren't really conservatives. Their goal isn't to conserve what we have. It's to take us backwards.

They'd like to return to the 1920s -- before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s -- the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the "rot" is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

In truth, if they had their way we'd be back in the late nineteenth century -- before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons -- railroad, financial, and oil titans -- ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.

Listen carefully to today's Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don't help the poor or unemployed or anyone who's fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation's wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America's wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker's wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers' wage.

This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.

Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they're conservative jurists. But they're judicial activists bent on overturning 75 years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states' rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people.

Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action.

Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.

In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform.

Perhaps this is what's beginning to happen again across America.

Occupy Wall Street Comes To Canada

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:17:00 +0000

Occupy Wall Street coming home to Canada

By Robert Hiltz, Postmedia News October 15, 2011

OTTAWA — A protest movement that started with a few thousand people camping out in the cold concrete jungle of downtown Manhattan, before spreading across other U.S. cities, is making its way north to where it was conceived.

In its July issue, the Vancouver-based anti-capitalist magazine Adbusters called for 20,000 people to head to New York City to mirror the Egyptian occupation of Tahrir Square. Since Sept. 17, thousands have made their home in Zuccotti Square — just blocks from Wall Street — where the Occupy movement physically began.

What started online in Vancouver, with the rallying hashtag cry of #OCCUPYWALLSTREET — will materialize Saturday in rallies and camp-outs in at least six cities across Canada — Ottawa, Victoria, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and of course, Vancouver.

It's clear the movement is gaining steam. What isn't clear is what, exactly, the protesters want.

They call themselves the "99 per cent", because, they say, they are the majority that is supporting the one per cent at the top of the food chain through bank bailouts and tax breaks.

Adrienne Roberts, a post-doctoral fellow in the political science department at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., has studied the recovery, or lack thereof, of the global economy since the 2008 recession. Roberts said the only real surprise about the Occupy protests is that it took so long for them to begin.

"I think it's been three years of a whole lot of people being upset at the government, at the large corporations, at kind of the one per cent, and there hasn't been any unified action, so far. So if anything is surprising it's that it's taken three years," she said.

Roberts said while Canada's economy is in better shape than the U.S. economy, many of the Canadian protesters still have concerns similar to those of many Americans.

"We have the same dominant ideology in Canada, in terms of really prioritizing the interests of large corporations, of the big banks, of the wealthy over the interests of the majority of the population," she said. "That's what I think this movement is really a response to.

Roberts said it's also a return volley on a number of issues, including: the rights of corporations; aboriginal rights; the economy; a perceived attack on organized labour; issues of sex equality; and the environment.

The protesters have struck a chord in every level of society, including the top tier. In an interview with the CBC's Peter Mansbridge, Governor of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney said he sympathizes with their viewpoint.

"I understand the frustration of many people, particularly in the United States. You've had increase in inequality because of — and this started before the financial crisis — but because of globalization, because of technology," he said.

Carney said he sees the protests as part of a constructive process. "This is democratic expression of views. It is a physical, vocal manifestation of . . . cold figures."

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty also said he sees the protesters' point of view.

There's growing worry about a lack of opportunities for the younger generation — particularly in the United States — and it's up to governments to ensure youth are able to capitalize on their education and find good jobs, he said.

"I can understand some legitimate frustration arising out of that," Flaherty said Thursday.

Carney said it will still take time for the economy to fully recover.

"It will take a while before we return to . . . life before the crisis," Carney said. "It's going to be a very different Canadian economy in that world."

He said in the near future new measures will brought forward to help end the risk of banks being 'too big to fail'. While he said the measures wouldn't eliminate the problem, they would limit the damage failing banks could cause and prevent bailouts.

Protester Timothy Moorley said he is set to camp outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, which was chosen, according to the group's Facebook page, because it is located between several downtown banks.

A longshoreman by trade, Moorley is embroiled in a negligence lawsuit with a large pharmaceutical company. He is also one of the many organizers for Occupy Vancouver and said that his role is to bring his own story to the protests.

"On the face of what this protest sort of stands for, in terms of social equality, social justice. We need to stop protecting the corporate personhood," he said.

Moorley said each of the protesters he's met so far has his or her own set of issues — and the fact that they haven't pulled together one coherent demand is the nature of the movement.

Roberts agrees. "It would be incredibly difficult to turn around and say, 'Here's our one demand we have. Here's our one problem with the system.' It would be impossible to do. It's not about articulating one problem. It's about, I think, trying to get people to come up with a different understanding of where we can go in the future.

"Forget Obama, this is really starting to bring around the idea that hope is possible, that change is possible. That there might actually be another type of future out there."

Louis Gagnon, a finance professor at Queen's, said that while the movement in the U.S. has gone on for nearly a month, he doesn't expect the same thing to happen in Canada.

"We don't have millions of homeowners on the street now having lost their homes as a result of foreclosures," Gagnon said. "On that basis, if my analysis is correct, I don't expect this movement . . . will have the same traction in Canada as it is having in the United States."

He doesn't think, however, the protest should be ignored.

"I think we have to take this movement seriously. I think that we have to pay attention. People are having a hard time, the future looks bleak," Gagnon said. "We need to reform our systems. Especially in the U.S., there is a need for banking reforms, there is a need for tax reforms.

"If people get less peaceful in the United States, I suspect it's going to get messy (there) quickly. When people don't have work, and they don't have any hope and they don't have a roof over their head, they're much more likely to do extreme things, things that are out of character," Gagnon said.

Kalle Lasn, the founder of Adbusters, said he expects the Saturday's protests to take on a Canadian tone.

"There is a less rabid and aggressive culture here in Canada so I assume that will be on display," Lasn told the Montreal Gazette. "Not only that, but to some degree, young people in Canada haven't suffered quite as much as young people in the U.S. and Spain."

Unemployment at the beginning of the summer for Canadian youth aged 20 to 24 was at approximately 15 per cent, more than double the national average. In Spain, by comparison, 45 per cent of youth aged 16 to 24 are without jobs.

While protesters gather, police and the banks the protesters are targeting are bracing themselves.

Const. Wendy Drummond, spokeswoman for the Toronto police force, said planners weren't sure what to expect.

"We don't know what's going to happen in the future. We don't have the information that is going to lead us there. So at this point, we will deal with a situation as it arises," she said.

According to Drummond, police have several contingency plans in place for any eventuality, but she could not comment on whether riot police would be on hand when protesters file into downtown Toronto.

"The plan that we do have in place, any contingency plans, the two main points that is our focus is facilitating a peaceful and safe environment for everyone involved — protesters and police," Drummond said.

Vancouver police and Mayor Gregor Robertson have warned protesters on the West Coast to keep things peaceful.

On Friday, Robertson said the city's experience with the Stanley Cup riots and the anti-Olympic protests have shown that "large gatherings can sometimes attract small groups of people determined to use these avenues for their own violent ends."

Robertson added that "violence, whether against people or property, will not be tolerated and will only detract from those who wish to legitimately express their opinions."

With files from Jason Fekete, Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun

rhiltz@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/robert_hiltz

Occupy Toronto protesters settle in at St. James Park

Josh TapperStaff Reporter 10-15-11

Roughly 2,000 protesters filled St. James Park in downtown Toronto Saturday, heralding the arrival of the Occupy Wall Street movement to Canadian cities.

Similar protests, all based on ideologically nebulous goals, were also held in Vancouver and Montreal on Saturday. The protests were initially called for by the Vancouver-based activist group Adbusters.

“Today they’ve shown that people do care,” Occupy Toronto committee member Taylor Chelsea said of the protesters and activists who gathered to support disparate causes such as First Nations rights, Palestinian liberation and the legalization of marijuana.

“We’re starting to see people realize we are active and we are actively coming to need each other, learn from each other, get informed on the opinions and what’s going on.”

Indeed, the placard slogans — carried by a smorgasbord of teenagers, adults, university students, seniors and even a dog — said it all.

“Stomp out the seed of corporate greed.”

“Respect existence or expect resistance.”

“Stop ignoring youth. We are your tomorrow.”

“End war, feed the poor.”

“Let society decide. Occupy together.”

READ A RECAP OF THE STAR’S LIVE BLOG OF THE OCCUPATION

At 10 a.m., early-rising protesters gathered at the TD Bank Plaza, near King and Bay Sts., where Occupy Toronto committee members rallied the crowd and opened the microphone to protesters eager to air their grievances.

One man said he witnesses too many people eating out of the garbage.

“It’s time to take back the money,” he shouted.

Police, wearing neon-yellow jackets, blocked off Bay St. between King and Wellington Sts., but otherwise sat idly by, observing the vehicle and foot traffic next to their bicycles.

“It's going to be civilized,” said Const. Johnny Moutar. “Everyone has a right to protest. I don't have a problem with it.”

“No one's breaking windows,” said Sgt. Steve Lorriman, comparing Occupy Toronto to the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto.

An hour later, the crowd had swelled and the protesters began a short, peaceful march north on Bay, then east on Adelaide, before settling in St. James Park, next to the Cathedral Church of St. James. Along the way they chanted slogans like “We got sold out, the banks got bailed out” and “We are the 99 per cent.”

According to Chelsea, the committee decided on St. James Park because it believed the open space would help protesters meet and interact.

“It was too crowded to even move around and get to know each other,” Chelsea said of TD Bank Plaza. “Our Toronto parks are so important, so people have space to come and engage.”

Inside the park, speakers’ corners, drum circles, a library and medical tent all quickly took root. Organizers set up a row of port-a-potties as food vendors cooked up veggie dogs.

In large groups and smaller circles, protesters railed against what they see as a David-vs-Goliath battle, or the little guy versus “the man.”

One young woman, a single mother of two, spoke of how she held down two jobs and still couldn’t make ends meet. She said she has maxed out a credit card with a 28 per cent interest rate. Meantime, she also studies part-time and is paying exorbitant tuition fees, she said.

Joe Bright, a 36-year-old online marketer, brought his 7-year-old daughter, Billie, to experience the “global phenomenon” that has spread from New York to Hong Kong to Oahu to Madeira.

In Rome on Saturday, violence broke out between riot police and protesters, leaving at least 70 people injured.

But in Toronto, the attitude was much more laissez-faire. When asked about marijuana usage in the park, one constable said police were sticking to the perimeter and not entering the crowd.

By late afternoon, nearly two dozen tents were pitched in the northeast corner of the park, proving that at least some were there for the long haul. A food station, initially stocked with baskets of red peppers, apples, oranges and granola bars, served a hot vegetarian meal at 7 p.m.

Still, with Occupy Toronto’s goals and plans for the coming days still to be defined, some protesters were planning to head home later in the evening.

Jonathan Lovell, a 26-year-old unemployed auto worker from London, Ont., said it wasn’t practical for him to camp out in Toronto. He said he was leaving at 6 p.m.

“It’s half-assed activism,” he said. “It is what it is.”

With files from Jayme Poisson and Theresa Boyle

Occupy Wall Street in Chicago

Occupy Chicago searches for an answer

At LaSalle and Jackson, 100 to 200 protesters wave signs, debate goals and fight despair with anger

Demonstrators rally Friday in front of the Board of Trade. (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune)

October 10, 2011|By Barbara Brotman, Tribune reporter

Cathy Foster was carrying a Nine West handbag and a protest sign.

"Take a look at the New Masters of the Universe," it read, and she was standing among them — the protesters who had coalesced as Occupy Chicago to oppose the financial interests they blame for the nation's economic crisis.

Stationed at Jackson Boulevard and LaSalle Streets in the city's financial epicenter, Occupy Chicago is one of more than a dozen groups that have sprung up nationwide in the three weeks since Occupy Wall Street began its protests in New York.

"Honk to indict a banker," one sign read.

Judging by the blaring horns, many motorists wanted to.

Between the Modest Mouse T-shirts and inventive hair, it looked somewhat like the Pitchfork Music Festival had set down in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. But approving horn honks came from all manner of conventional types.

Beefy truck drivers honked. CTA bus operators honked. When a double-decker sightseeing bus passed, the tourists on board pumped their fists in solidarity with the kids in pink hair and nose rings.

Occupy Chicago had been here since Sept. 23 but hadn't attracted the kind of large crowds seen in New York. In recent days, protesters said, 100 to 200 people arrived at the corner during the day, with far fewer taking shifts overnight.

"Occupation" means something different here than in New York, where Occupy Wall Street has been allowed to take over a private park. The Chicago protesters are not permitted to sleep on the sidewalk but said they are grateful police let them sleep in nearby cars.

They are not allowed to put permanent structures on public sidewalks, so they have put the occupation on wheels.

On a recent afternoon, takeout cartons of tuna salad and bags of pumpkin seeds rested atop shopping carts lined up in front of a planter outside the Federal Reserve. Nearby, a grizzled man sat on the sidewalk, hand-silkscreening fabric squares with the words "People Over Profit."

Xu Shi, 43, a risk management analyst who lives in Naperville, wandered by, looking at signs. He works at a bank, but he agreed with much of what the group said.

"Ordinary employees are getting hurt, including in banks," he said. "My colleagues and I, we're facing the same threat of losing our jobs. Our bank announced plans to reduce the workforce early next year."

Foster, managing editor of a trade magazine for the pet industry, was making her first visit. She cranked up her soft voice above the din of drummers banging on plastic buckets to explain why she had made her sign on her lunch hour and walked over.

"I am sick of the way Wall Street and financial interests have influenced our government," she said. "They are 1 percent of the country. Why is the influence of the 1 percent so much stronger than the other 99 percent?

"If you don't have a job in this country," Foster said, nodding at the financial office towers on LaSalle Street, "look up."

She knows some people are dismissing the Occupy protests. She doesn't think they should.

"People laughed at the tea party at first," she said. "I'm a 55-year-old woman. I'm not a radical by any stretch of the imagination. I'm one of the most quiet people you'd ever want to know."

She laughed. "Those days are over."

Up and down the curb, no one was quiet.

"Our generation is lost," said Ariel Volpert, 25, a graduate student at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. "We were told, 'Go to school, go to school.' Now it's dawning on us: What are we going to do then?"

When she graduates, she will have $80,000 in debt and will have aged out of her parents' health insurance coverage. Even working part time and living on ramen noodles, she had to move back with her parents in Des Plaines in June. And with so many college graduates unemployed or working at menial jobs, she despairs over finding a job.

"I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and wonder, How am I going to pay that (debt) off?" she said. "Was I stupid to go to college?

"I'm not a hippie; I'm not here saying, 'Anarchy.' I'm saying that a lot of people, that 99 percent of us in the middle class, are getting screwed."

Olga Turner, 62, owner of a day care center on the South Side, banged a tambourine she had fished out of a toy chest.

"Just to see the devastation that has come over the African-American community, it's horrifying," she said. "Black people have lost everything we have worked for since slavery."

A car stopped for a red light. The driver hit the horn and held it — through the entire light, as the protesters' cheers crescendoed. When the light turned green and he drove off, he was still holding down the horn.

What do the protesters want?

The question is posed regularly on the Occupy Chicago website, occupychi.org.

"I'm really confused by both the movements in Chicago and in NYC," someone wrote on a discussion board. "What are the end goals of these organizations? What's it going to take to make everyone go home?"

Occupy Chicago to vote on list of 12 demands

10-10-11

The local spin-off of the Occupy Wall Street protests released 12 proposed demands during the weekend, some of the first specifics to emerge from collection of groups that have sprung up in recent weeks across the U.S.

Occupy Chicago, an independent group inspired by the New York protests, appear to be the first in the movement to adopt official demands: Repeal the Bush tax cuts and prosecute "Wall Street criminals." At an open meeting Saturday in downtown Chicago, nine-tenths of the nearly 300 present voted to adopt those demands.

This week, the group plans to vote on other proposed demands, which include giving theSEC more regulatory power, forgiving student debt, reforming campaign-finance law and enacting the so-called Buffett Rule, a White House proposal to prevent millionaires from paying lower tax rates than middle-class Americans.

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Occupy Times Square: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Swarm Midtown

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 17:57:00 +0000

From Huffington Post 10-15-11

NEW YORK, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Thousands of anti-Wall Street protesters rallied in New York's Times Square on Saturday, buoyed by a global day of demonstrations in support of their monthlong campaign against corporate greed.

Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests on Saturday started in Asia and rippled through Europe back to the United States and Canada. Protesters fed up with economic inequality took to the streets in cities from Washington, Boston and Chicago to Los Angeles, Miami and Toronto.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS AND LATEST UPDATES)

After weeks of intense media coverage, the size of the U.S. protests on Saturday have been smaller than G20 meetings or political conventions yielded in recent years. Such events often draw tens of thousands of demonstrators.

In New York, where the movement began when protesters set up camp in a Lower Manhattan park on Sept. 17, organizers said the protest grew to at least 5,000 people as they marched to Times Square from their makeshift outdoor headquarters.

"These protests are already making a difference," said Jordan Smith, 25, a former substance abuse counselor from San Francisco, who joined the New York protest. "The dialogue is now happening all over the world."

The protesters chanted, "We got sold out, banks got bailed out" and "All day, all week, occupy Wall Street." They arrived in Times Square at a time when the area is already crowded with tourists and Broadway theatergoers.

"This is disgusting" said Anatoly Lapushner, who was shopping with his family at Toys R Us in Times Square. "Why aren't they marching on Washington and the politicians? Instead they go after the economic lifeblood of the city."

PARTY MOOD IN NEW YORK

American protesters are angry that U.S. banks are enjoying booming profits after getting bailouts in 2008, while many people are struggling in a difficult economy with more than 9 percent unemployment and little help from Washington.

Some were disappointed the New York crowd was not larger.

"People don't want to get involved. They'd rather watch on TV," said Troy Simmons, 47, who joined demonstrators as he left work. "The protesters could have done better today ... people from the whole region should be here and it didn't happen."

The Times Square mood was akin to New Year's Eve, when the famed "ball drop" occurs. In a festive mood, protesters were joined by throngs of tourists snapping pictures, together counting back from 10 and shouting, "Happy New Year."

Police said three people were arrested in Times Square after pushing down police barriers and five men were arrested earlier for wearing masks. Police also arrested 24 people at a Citibank branch in Manhattan, mostly for trespassing.

Citibank was not immediately available for comment.

At about 8 p.m., police arrested 42 people for blocking the sidewalk. Protesters complained they had no place to go with a wall of police in riot gear in front of them and thousands of demonstrators behind them leaving Times Square.

Five thousand people marched through the streets of Los Angeles and gathered peacefully outside City Hall.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been gathering steam over the past month, culminating with Saturday's action. The protests worldwide were mostly peaceful apart from Rome, where the demonstration sparked riots.

But it was unclear if the movement, which has been driven using social media, would sustain momentum beyond Saturday. Critics have accused the group of not having clear goals.

In Toronto, a couple of thousand people gathered peacefully and started to set up a camp in one of the city's parks. Protesters in Washington marched through the streets.

"I am going to start my life as an adult in debt and that's not fair," student Nathaniel Brown told Reuters Television. "Millions of teenagers across the country are going to start their futures in debt, while all of these corporations are getting money fed all the time and none of us can get any."

Video via HuffPost's Tyler Kingkade:

Occupy Wall Street Protest Brings Crowd to Times Square

By Esmé E. Deprez - Oct 16, 2011

Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York City yesterday culminated with a Times Square rally that drew thousands opposed to economic inequality, echoed by protests from London to Tokyo.

Participants in the month-old movement marched past a JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) branch early in the day to urge clients to close accounts. At least 6,000 gathered later in Times Square, the organizers estimated.

About 70 people were arrested as part of the day’s demonstrations, including 42 in the Midtown area who failed to disperse when warned, police said. Two police officers were hospitalized because of injuries, the department said.

Hong Kong, Sydney, Toronto and other cities also saw protests, which turned violent in Rome, in what organizers called a “global day of action against Wall Street greed.” Backers say they represent “the 99 percent,” a nod to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz’s study showing the top 1 percent of Americans control 40 percent of U.S. wealth.

“The world will rise up as one and say, ‘We have had enough,’” Patrick Bruner, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, said in an e-mail. A news release from the organization said there were demonstrations in 1,500 cities worldwide, including 100 in the U.S.

March From Zuccotti

New York participants walked from an encampment in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza near Wall Street. They passed out fliers urging clients to transfer accounts to “a financial institution that supports the 99 percent.”

The fliers provided a list of alternatives, including the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union and Amalgamated Bank, described as the nation’s only union-owned bank.

“I’m interested in sending a message to support banks that actually support the community as opposed to those like Chase that took government money and fired workers anyway,” said Penny Lewis, 40, a City University of New York labor professor. She said she planned to close her Chase account on Monday.

Howard Opinsky, a spokesman for JPMorgan, said the bank has paid back the government funds and has been hiring employees. JPMorgan, the second-largest U.S. bank, received and repaid $25 billion from the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

“JPMorgan Chase utilized TARP funds at the request of the government and was the first bank to pay the funds back plus an additional $1.7 billion more than was lent,” Opinsky said in an e-mailed comment.

He said JPMorgan Chase hired more than 13,000 people in the third quarter and more than 2,000 veterans this year.

Citibank Branch

A group left a demonstration at Washington Square Park and entered a downtown branch of Citibank at nearby LaGuardia Place, Deputy New York City Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne said in an e-mail.

They refused the bank manager’s request to leave and 24 were arrested for trespassing, he said. One was charged additionally with resisting; the others were compliant, he said.

More than 700 have been arrested in New York since the movement began Sept. 17, mostly for disorderly conduct. Police said they arrested 15 on Friday for infractions such as sitting in the street and overturning trash bins.

A wider confrontation was avoided after Zuccotti Park’s owner, Brookfield Office Properties Inc., postponed a cleanup that would have removed and banned protesters’ sleeping bags, tents and other gear that provided overnight accommodations.

Protesters and local politicians had gathered 300,000 signatures, flooded the city’s 311 information line and drew more than 3,000 people to the park to oppose the cleanup, Bruner said.

Donations Received

Pete Dutro, a member of the group’s finance committee, said it had received at least $150,000 in donations.

Justin Strekal, a Cleveland native and member of the protesters’ shipping, inventory and storage committee, said about 200 packages are being received daily. He said names and return addresses are being recorded so thank-you notes can be sent.

Letters of solidarity are also being archived to post online, he said. One that was included in a box holding 10 packets of ramen noodles said the sender couldn’t afford more because they were unemployed for two years and their house was in foreclosure, Strekal said.

David Gorman, who lives on Wall Street and works nearby as president of capital markets at Kern Suslow Securities Inc., said the area’s activity is a nuisance.

Banging Drums

“They’re banging drums and screaming and it’s a quarter to eight in the morning and this is literally in my back yard,” he said. “People live here. If someone was protesting in front of my house in the suburbs, I don’t think they’d let that happen.”

The Occupy Wall Street protest has spread to U.S. cities including Boston, Philadelphia andSan Francisco. While New York’s participants have been allowed to stay at their encampment, other cities haven’t been as tolerant.

Near the Colorado Capitol building in Denver, police in riot gear took down protesters’ campsite and arrested two dozen people, the Associated Press reported. In San Diego, police used pepper spray to split up a human chain formed around a tent, the news agency said. In Trenton,New Jersey, police removed tents and other gear from an area near a war memorial on Friday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Esmé E. Deprez in New York at edeprez@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net

David Axelrod On Occupy Wall Street: GOP Doesn't Understand Protests, America's Anger

from Huffington Post 10-16-11

WASHINGTON (AP/The Huffington Post) -- A senior political adviser to President Barack Obama is charging that the Republicans seeking the presidency don't understand the American public's pent-up anger over corporate excesses.

David Axelrod tells ABC's "This Week" that the American people "want a financial system that works on the level. They want to get a fair shake."

He appeared Sunday, a day after scores of demonstrators protesting corporate business practices were arrested in New York's Times Squarein a confrontation with police.

Axelrod faulted Republicans who have been pushing in Congress to soften or repeal the landmark legislation Obama pushed through last year, tightening regulation of business practices.

Axelrod said he doesn't believe "any American is impressed" when hearing GOP presidential candidates who want to "roll back Wall St. reform."

Nearly all of the major Republican presidential contenders have weighed in on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some, such as Herman Cain and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), say protesters should be directing their anger at the Obama administration rather than big banks and corporations.

Appearing Sunday morning on "Fox News Sunday," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said it was wrong to blame Wall Street for America's economic problems, and criticized political leaders who have embraced the movement.

The Whole World is Watching, Mayor Bloomberg!

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 02:09:00 +0000

Police Brutality Documented:

The Occupy Wall Street movement is being co-opted by Move-On.org and other organizations trying to take command of the message, while the "Movement" members/participates say, "NO THANK YOU!!!"

Here from Washingtonsblog.com is the story.

Move On Tries to Take Over Occupy Wall Street Protests
Posted on October 14, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog
Move On Tries to Co-Opt the Protests
David DeGraw – one of the primary Wall Street protest organizers – just sent me the following email:

Top MoveOn leaders / executives are all over national television speaking for the movement. fully appreciate the help and support of MoveOn, but the MSM is clearly using them as the spokespeople for OWS. This is an blatant attempt to fracture the 99% into a Democratic Party organization. The leadership of MoveON are Democratic Party operatives. they are divide and conquer pawns. For years they ignored Wall Street protests to keep complete focus on the Republicans, in favor of Goldman’s Obama and Wall Street’s Democratic leadership.

If anyone at Move On or Daily Kos would like to have a public debate about these comments, we invite it.

Please help us stop this divide and conquer attempt.

DeGraw – who is wholly non-partisan [like the writers at Washington's Blog] – tells me that about half of the protesters are liberals, but the other half are libertarians (and see this.)

This mirrors what one of the original organizers of the “Occupy Trenton” protest told me: MoveOn attempted to set the agenda and pretend it was their event.

As I noted last week:

Everyone’s trying to cash in on the courage and conviction of the Wall Street protesters.

People are trying to associate Occupy Wall Street with their pet projects, in the same way that advertisers try to associate the goodwill of the Super Bowl, NBA playoffs, World Series or Olympics with their product.

But I hear from OWS organizers that the protesters come from totally diverse political affiliations. Many protesters support Ron Paul, many like Obama, others are for other parties or candidates or don’t vote at all.

The protesters themselves are having none of it, tweeting today:

We don’t want to be the democratic tea party or liberal tea party. We want to be our own movement separate of any political affiliation.

Update: Another tweet from the protesters:

We don’t represent liberal interests nor are we the liberal tea party. We represent the interest of the 99%

And as I pointed out Tuesday:

The two main challenges [facing the protesters are]: (1) An attempt by both the Democratic and Republican parties to co-opt it (see this, this and this); and (2) agents provocateur (see this, this and this) [and here].

Posted in Politics / World News | 7 Comments

Here is more from the great website Washingtonsblog.com

Economists: End Or Drastically Downsize the Fed

Read and view the entire piece here.

Excerpts:

[Congressman Dennis Kucinich's bill to nationalize the Fed, and his call on protesters to demand nationalization of the Fed] drastic, but it is the only way to check the fact that commercial banks create debt money recklessly, and now “casino capitalism” gambles that are bound to fail.

If we could implement the 100% reserve proposal and administer it correctly, I’m all for it. The government would NOT create credit for gambling, or ensure it.

Austrian-school economists such as Murray Rothbard want to abolish the Fed:

I [ the author of Washingtonsblog] noted Tuesday:

The New York Sun reported that a … Nobel economist may have implied that the Fed should be abolished:
Thomas Sargent, the New York University professor who was announced Monday as a winner of the Nobel in economics … cites Walter Bagehot, who “said that what he called a ‘natural’ competitive banking systemwithout a ‘central’ bank would be better….

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz strongly dislikes the Fed:

Joseph Stiglitz – former head economist at the World Bank and a nobel-prize winner – said yesterday that the very structure of the Federal Reserve system is so fraught with conflicts that it is “corrupt” and undermines democracy.

In fact, many high-level economists have blasted the Fed for bungling virtually everything it does.

For example, Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman wants the big banks to be broken up because their very size warps the political system:

My view is that I’d love to see those financial giants broken up, if only for political reasons: it’s bad to have banks so big they can often write laws.

Occupy Pittsburgh March and Rallies Draw Thousands to Hill, Downtown

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 01:47:00 +0000

(Occupy Wall Street--Pittsburgh, PA. The Autumn-Revolution-Is-Now-Everywhere in the nation. The dissatisfaction of average Americans over the theft of a nation by the corporate elite, along with the loss of jobs being sold off to countries with the cheapest labor done through the Federal Reserve's nearly free cash handouts, and a government not willing to rebuild the country from the bottom up, instead of through the failed policies of a top down Reagan-Bush-Obama style approach has grabbed the country by storm!!! This is NOT a "Keep Government Outta My Medicare" protest movement, but a movement brought to you by very intelligent people not being funded through the corporate oligarchs.)

Demonstrators say this is just the beginning.

By Larissa Dudkiewicz From Patch.com

Mary Persuit marched today through the streets of Downtown Pittsburgh, saying she was excited to take part in a demonstration and movement she believes is just beginning.

“I think this is awesome,” said Persuit, of Sewickley, as marchers gathered in Market Square for a larger rally. “This is the beginning of something great.”

Young and old, college students and retirees, union and non-union workers met this morning at Freedom Corner in the Hill District for a short rally. The crowd then took to the streets, stretching for about four blocks in a march Downtown.

To the accompaniment of bongo drums and bull horns, marchers carried signs and chanted such messages as, “The banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” and “This is what democracy looks like!”

Later in the day, marchers moved from Market Square to the Mellon Green park adjacent to the BNY Mellon Tower at Grant Street and Sixth Avenue. In a statement, organizers of Occupy Pittsburgh said Pittsburgh Police notified them at 5:30 p.m. that the bank would not attempt to oust them from the green as long as their gathering is peaceful and they maintain the property.

Organizers said the march aimed to demonstrate solidarity with the global movement that is drawing attention to corporate, economic and social issues.

Nathaniel Glosser, a spokesman and organizer for the Pittsburgh event, told Patch about 4,000 people participated in the local Occupy march, based on estimates from police.

Glosser said he was pleased with that turnout.

"It's fantastic. It exceeded my expectations," he said. "I thought we'd max at 3,000."

Marchers arrived about a half-hour earlier than expected in Market Square and spontaneously began speaking with bullhorns up until 3 p.m.

Evelyn Bento of Braddock, who is in her 80s, was one of many who gathered in the square. Bento said she isn’t a sit-at-home kind of person and wanted to join other members of Braddock’s Save Our Community Hospital in the march. The former UPMC Braddock hospital, owned by the UPMC health system, closed in 2010 and was razed despite efforts to save it by supporters in and around the Mon Valley community.

“I can’t come out for anything more important than this,” Bento said, clutching a sign aimed at banks. “Groups supported us, so I’m supporting Occupy Pittsburgh. That’s why I’m here,” she said.

Grace Cameron, 21, a sociology student at the University of Pittsburgh, said she’s been following demonstrations with the Occupy Wall Street movement and wanted to see the demonstration for herself rather than merely follow news reports of the events.

Cameron said her perception is that the movement does not have one cohesive message so much as several messages being voiced within one movement. The Pittsburgh demonstration in particular attracted everyone from unions and environmental workers to stay at home moms pushing strollers.

Glosser said all of the groups represented in the marches are opposed to corporate greed. He noted that today's march drew people representing many organizations and political affinities, including Republicans and Libertarians.

Everyone, he said, "except those whose only political affinity is large sums of money."

Cameron said she believed that was the message.

"People are just out together. It's a peace movement,” she said.

One of those messages came from supporters of MarcellusProtest.org, who carried a banner during the march.

Briget Shields, a member of the group, said she came out because she feels like the government isn’t working for the people.

“I feel like the government is letting us down, especially in Pennsylvania right now,” said Shields, wife of Pittsburgh City Council member Doug Shields.

She said it doesn’t make matters better that many of the candidates running for office want to deregulate the gas drilling industry. She criticized Pennsylvania for being a state that, unlike others, doesn’t charge natural gas drilling companies a severance tax.

“Probably because the government was bought and paid for by the natural gas industry,” Shields said.

Pittsburgh radio talk show host Lynn Cullen, 63, of the East End, held a sign that read “Just the beginning.” She said it’s time citizens take back their country.

“Our government doesn’t represent the people. Corporations are not people,” she said.

Cullen said she’s been waiting for years to see citizens, especially young people, “rise up, stand up and speak out” the same as those from her generation did.

“And I think it’s starting to happen,” she said.

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Occupy Wall Street-Spartanburg, SC

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 20:04:00 +0000

Spartanburg protests an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street movement 10-14-11

From the aikenstandard

SPARTANBURG -- About 30 people are rallying in downtown Spartanburg as an offshoot to the four weeks of protests of banks and financial institutions in New York City.

The Occupy Spartanburg protest started Thursday morning and is expected to last until Friday morning.

The protesters gathered in Morgan Square, marching through occasional rain with signs that read "Greed is not a moral value" and "Get Wall St. out of government."

It's the first protest of its kind in South Carolina, but people in Columbia, Greenville and Florence are trying to organize similar protests.

The Occupy Wall Street protests in New York have been going on for four weeks, with the movement slowly spreading across the country.http://www.aikenstandard.com/State/m1086-BC-SC-OccupySpartanburg-10-13-0401

The Revolution of Thought!! By Lee Camp

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 19:58:00 +0000

"Occupy Wall Street Is A Thought Revolution - And

It Won't Be Minimized"

Fox News Network--A Stalinistic Operation

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:35:00 +0000

Employees Expose FOX NEWS' Distortions

This is why there is a movement called Occupy Wall Street, and now,
Occupy Everywhere!

When truth is torn about and then rewoven into lies but said to be truth,
that is when we have lost democracy and have moved into fascism.

Occupy Pittsburgh--October 15-Saturday

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:52:00 +0000

Welcome to OccupyPittsburgh.org

The Movement Begins

OccupyPittsburgh Day of Action

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Beginning Rally: 11 am Freedom Corner

(arrive as early as 10 am)

March from Freedom Corner to Market Square: 11:45 am

(Marchers can join route at the City-County Building shortly after Noon)

Movement Kickoff Rally 1:30 - 3 PM Market Square

Occupation of Pittsburgh begins 4 pm

Mellon Green, Grant St. & Sixth Ave.

End the wars, tax the rich, we are the 99%-video

carlandjerry@gmail.com (Carl and Jerry) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:01:00 +0000

End the War, Tax the Rich, We're the 99% - 10/11 Cut from Shane Bissett on Vimeo.

Demme Video on Occupy Wall Street