Thursday, November 17, 2011

November 17, 2011: Mass Day of Action Marks Two Month Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street!



http://occupywallst.org/

All,

Like I said before: They think (rather they futilely hope) that they have "deterred" or "crippled" the movement. They have done no such thing! For further details on just how truly strong, organized, and determined the Occupy movement's massive public response to this state violence and disruption is please check out the very important details below. "One monkey don't stop no show" is I believe the traditional vernacular used in such a situation as this. It should thus be further noted that not even a million monkeys could possibly halt or shut us down... PASS THE WORD...

WE ARE THE 99%!!

Kofi


OccupyWallStreet The revolution continues worldwide!
News LiveStream #HowToOccupy Forum Chat User Map NYCGA About Donate Thursday November 17th Day of Action

Shut Down Wall Street! Occupy the Subways! Take the Square!

#OWS calls for nonviolent solidarity on November 17th
Posted 3 hours ago on Nov. 16, 2011, 7:14 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

occupynyc on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

full details here

81 Comments



Mass Day of Action on 2-Month Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street
Posted 7 hours ago on Nov. 16, 2011, 3:27 p.m. EST by

OccupyWallSt






Tomorrow, Thursday November 17th, marks two months since the start of Occupy Wall Street as well as International Students Day. To commemorate this two month anniversary, Occupy Wall Street will take to the streets in celebration and in solidarity with people around the world participating in a massive global day of action in hundreds of cities.

In the wake of Bloomberg’s predawn raid of Occupy Wall Street on Tuesday morning, thousands of people throughout the five boroughs and the greater region will join together to take nonviolent action tomorrow. We will gather to resist austerity, rebuild the economy, and reclaim our democracy. We will no longer tolerate a system that only serves the very rich and powerful. Right now Wall Street owns Washington. We are the 99% and we are here to reclaim our democracy.

Schedule for New York #N17 Actions below. Read More...

80 Comments


From Those Inside Of Central Booking
Posted 5 hours ago on Nov. 16, 2011, 5:24 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

While we've been imprisoned here we've held Assemblies and Mic Checked corrections officers to attend to urgent medical conditions, some of which were the result of police brutality during the raids. There is no food except for bread, no cleanliness, no hygene, no waters, no showers. There are non-occupiers who are suffering here as well.

We do not know what we have been charged with.

We want freedom!

This message was consensed upon by a group of occupiers imprisoned by Billionare Michael Bloomberg and his private army, and relayed to members of the Legal Working Group of #ows.

180 Comments

#N17 Global Day Of Action!
Posted 6 hours ago on Nov. 16, 2011, 4:40 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Sixty days into the struggle #OccupyWallStreet was violently evicted by the NYPD, who leveled our homes at Liberty Square to the ground. Our movement, however, is stronger than it has ever been. In these sixty days we have brought about a massive awakening, perhaps the largest one in the country since the Civil Rights Movement fifty years ago, and certainly the first global one in modern history. People around the world, from Spain to Australia, from Chile to the U.S. have opened their eyes together to the decadence and injustice of the common system that exploits us. This is what we mean when we say with the deepest significance: you cannot stop an idea whose time has come. Read More...

132 Comments

Mass Day of Action on 2-Month Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street
Posted 7 hours ago on Nov. 16, 2011, 3:27 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt






Tomorrow, Thursday November 17th, marks two months since the start of Occupy Wall Street as well as International Students Day. To commemorate this two month anniversary, Occupy Wall Street will take to the streets in celebration and in solidarity with people around the world participating in a massive global day of action in hundreds of cities.

In the wake of Bloomberg’s predawn raid of Occupy Wall Street on Tuesday morning, thousands of people throughout the five boroughs and the greater region will join together to take nonviolent action tomorrow. We will gather to resist austerity, rebuild the economy, and reclaim our democracy. We will no longer tolerate a system that only serves the very rich and powerful. Right now Wall Street owns Washington. We are the 99% and we are here to reclaim our democracy.

Schedule for New York #N17 Actions below. Read More...

80 Comments

#OWS holds Action Council and Spokes Council Tonight!
Posted 7 hours ago on Nov. 16, 2011, 3:19 p.m. EST by carbonogram

There are two councils happening tonight: Read More...

6 Comments

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg's New York
Posted 7 hours ago on Nov. 16, 2011, 3 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt





32 Comments

100 March on NYPD 1st Precinct to Demand Dignity;
Women in Custody Being Harassed, Police Protocols In Question
Posted 21 hours ago on Nov. 16, 2011, 12:54 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Message from Protestors to NYPD: If you SEE something, a fellow officer violating protocol, SAY something

Over 100 people, mostly women, marched from Liberty Square to NYPD’s 1st Precinct HQ at 11pm Tuesday night to demand that all women in custody be treated with respect and dignity by the police. The march was organized after our sisters in custody made various complaints of male officers patrolling the women’s cells, unannounced. We were told that male members of the NYPD were specifically making unannounced patrols by the women’s cells, and by the shared women’s toilet (in plain view of all women and officers)--which is a common tactic used to humiliate those in custody.

In the spirit of the Occupy movement, the crowd of 100 gathered in a show of solidarity to demand that the NYPD issue a formal statement that this will be addressed and that there be no more instances of this humiliating tactic being used. There were no arrests at tonight’s solidarity march.

Some chants from the crowd: “All day, all night, occupy women’s rights!” and “Courtesy, professionalism and respect” and “If you see something, say something!”

All those in solidarity are encouraged to call the complaint line and demand Police Commissioner Ray Kelly put an end to this violent behavior. NYPD Internal Affairs: 212.487.7350 or directly NYPD 1st Precinct: 212.334.0611

Linnea Palmer, Occupy Wall Street Press Team, is available for any follow up questions on this particular action. Press@occupywallst.org

176 Comments

This Is What Democracy Looks Like: Huge General Assembly in Progress at Liberty Square
Posted 1 day ago on Nov. 15, 2011, 8:40 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement Persevere

The feeling here at Liberty Square tonight is the feeling of a movement that is rising, building, and making headway.

Following the 1am eviction of Liberty Square early this morning and a long day of legal wrangling, the park was reoccupied late this afternoon. This evening, just after 7pm, the first General Assembly at the reoccupied park began. Using our 'people's mic', we declared together:

"They showed us their power. And we're showing them ours."

We are here because we believe a better world is possible. We are willing to endure mistreatment, if by doing so we can help re-enfranchise the 99% and reclaim our democracy from the stranglehold of Wall Street and the top one percent.

We will push back against billionaire Michael Bloomberg and any politician who wantonly tramples on proud American freedoms: freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the freedom of Americans to peaceably assemble and petition for change.

We will overcome the obstacles placed before us. We will not be deterred. We will persevere. Our message is resonating across America, and our cause is shared by millions around the world. We are the 99%, and we want to live in a world that is for all of us — not just for those who have amassed great wealth and power.

You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.

384 Comments

NYPD Occupying Liberty Square; Demands Unclear
Posted Nov. 15, 2011, 6:51 p.m. EST (1 day ago) by OccupyWallSt



URGENT: EVERYONE TO LIBERTY SQUARE! NOW! WE ARE RE-OCCUPYING!
Posted Nov. 15, 2011, 5:59 p.m. EST (1 day ago) by OccupyWallSt



Judge REJECTS Temporary Restraining Order to Allow Liberty Square Reoccupation
Posted 1 day ago on Nov. 15, 2011, 4:56 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

from the ruling:

The movants have not demonstrated that they have a First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park, along with their tents, structures, generators, and other installations to the exclusion of the owner's reasonable rights and duties to maintain Zuccotti Park, or to the rights to public access of others who might wish to use the space safely. Neither have the applicants shown a right to a temporary restraining order that would restrict the City's enforcement of law so as to promote public health and safety.

Therefore, petitioners application for a temporary restraining order is denied.

click here for full text of ruling

288 Comments

Help Occupy Wall Street, Liberty Square, From New York and Afar
Posted 1 day ago on Nov. 15, 2011, 4:02 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt







Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park), home of Occupy Wall Street for the past two months and birthplace of the 99% movement that has spread across the country, was evicted by a large police force in full riot gear. NOW is the time to help. If you feel as deeply about the Occupy movement as we do, show your support by taking real steps today! We are counting on people all over the country to come out and support us to keep this movement going!

Come to GENERAL ASSEMBLY tonight at 7pm in Liberty Square (Zuccotti Park):

They can kick us out, but they can’t stop us from reassembling. Let’s show them that truth by showing up at Liberty Square with the biggest General Assembly yet! Come to GA tonight at 7pm!

Help the Occupiers Get their stuff back:

Supposedly, all the stuff that was taken by the police from the square will be available for people to pick up at noon EST today. WE NEED PEOPLE TO GO TO MIDTOWN MANHATTAN AND HELP THE OCCUPIERS GET THEIR STUFF BACK TODAY! If you can help gather the stuff, especially if you have a van or can rent a U-Haul for the effort, please call or text 617-406-8299

Support the Occupiers by giving them a place to stay:

Live in New York City? Want to support the Liberty Square arrestees? We are looking for safe spaces where folk who have been arrested can go after they are released to rest, tend their wounds, take a shower, have a meal, etc. If you can offer your house, call Hannah at 802.359.3628. Tell us how many people you can have over, for how long, where you live, and a return number. Thanks!

Medical Needs Supplies:

The medics lost all of their supplies last night along with everyone else. We urgently need all basic medical supplies. Things such as gauze, bandages, bandaids, vitamin C, heat packs, cold packs, gloves, asprin, AND ANY OTHER THINGS THAT YOU CAN THINK MAY BE NECESSARY FOR MEDICAL NEEDS!

Medics ALSO need new tent, headlamps, cots, battery-powered lanterns

Please bring supplies to S.I.S (OWS Shipping and Storage) at 52 Broadway, NYC.

Mailing Address:

118A Fulton St.
PO Box 205
New York, NY 10038

Call assistant Attorney General with the Civil Rights Division:

http://interoccupy.org/CivilRightscomplaint.pdf is a complaint submitted on behalf of the Occupy Movement to the Department of Justice in response to the increasing antagonism of police against peaceful protesters. It was formally submitted to the Department of Justice on 11/10/2011. It is addressed to a Mister Thomas Perez, the assistant Attorney General with the Civil Rights Division. Mr. Perez’s office number is (202) 514-4609. Let us call, tie up his lines, and demand that every citizen has a right to peaceably assemble without the threat of police violence.

Link To Potential Actions

Contact movementbuildingny@gmail.com for potential additions to this list.

63 Comments

OWS Awaits Ruling to Reoccupy
Posted Nov. 15, 2011, 3:49 p.m. EST (1 day ago) by OccupyWallSt



A Call to Occupy
Posted Nov. 15, 2011, 8:23 a.m. EST (1 day ago) by OccupyWallSt



9AM Post-Raid Rally and General Assembly
Posted Nov. 15, 2011, 6:57 a.m. EST (1 day ago) by OccupyWallSt



You can't evict an idea whose time has come.
Posted Nov. 15, 2011, 1:36 a.m. EST (1 day ago) by OccupyWallSt



NYPD IS RAIDING OCCUPY WALL STREET
Posted Nov. 15, 2011, 1:20 a.m. EST (1 day ago) by OccupyWallSt



Poster for N17 Mass Direct Action: Print and Post Freely!
Posted Nov. 14, 2011, 10:53 a.m. EST (2 days ago) by OccupyWallSt



Thousands Rally to Resist Occupy Portland Evictions
Posted Nov. 13, 2011, 2:04 p.m. EST (3 days ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Denver Under Attack: Occupiers Take Streets Facing Tear Gas and Rubber Bullets
Posted Nov. 12, 2011, 7:41 p.m. EST (4 days ago) by OccupyWallSt



Direct Action Training
Posted 5 days ago on Nov. 11, 2011, 4:17 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Action Preparation & Training for November 17th, November 30th and Beyond. Direct Action Trainings: build affinity team, train to do actions and civil disobediences, meet new allies and friends and have some fun with us.







Monday Nov. 14 and Tuesday Nov. 15 1:30-3:30 and 4:30-6:30. Meet at the Red Cube

Wednesday Nov. 16 5:30-7:30 UFT 52 Broadway 6th Floor

www.occupydaysofaction.com

107 Comments

11.11.11 Veterans Day Concert and Rally for the 99%. Foley Square 1pm.
Posted Nov. 10, 2011, 2:16 p.m. EST (6 days ago) by OccupyWallSt



A victory for the 99% in Ohio
Posted Nov. 9, 2011, 2:56 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Wall Street and Teamsters to Occupy Sotheby’s Tonight
Posted Nov. 9, 2011, 2:41 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Federal Reserve Global Phonecast
Posted Nov. 9, 2011, 2:19 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Join the "Occupy Your Block" Sidewalk Chalk Campaign
Posted Nov. 8, 2011, 10:22 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Urgent Help: Occupy Edmonton In Need Of Winter Equipment
Posted Nov. 8, 2011, 6:28 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Everyone has the Right to Occupy Space, Safely
Posted Nov. 8, 2011, 4:07 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Planting Change: Guerrilla Gardening and the Occupy Movement
Posted Nov. 8, 2011, 1:35 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Tonight: A Dialogue with Occupy El Bario & OWS
Posted Nov. 7, 2011, 9:02 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy The Highway: The 99% March to Washington
Posted Nov. 7, 2011, 5:30 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Spokes Council Meeting Tonight
Posted Nov. 7, 2011, 5:14 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Dallas Calls for General Strike: Nov. 30th
Posted Nov. 7, 2011, 2:07 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



OWS Teams Up with the Street Vendor Project
Posted Nov. 7, 2011, 9:23 a.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



"End to End for 99%" — 11-mile Neighborhood March of the 99%
Posted Nov. 7, 2011, 9:17 a.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Too Small to Fail: Occupy Mosier
Posted Nov. 6, 2011, 5:27 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Guest Post from an Arrestee of the 99%
Posted 1 week ago on Nov. 6, 2011, 1:29 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Nature itself is the beautiful expression of order and balance arising out of chaos. Time and time again, nature has demonstrated its ability to naturally grow this order and peace out of the random noise that makes its very basis. The myth of true order comes from human attempts to impose it where it does not naturally occur. While there may be order, its cause is incorrectly perceived.

By definition, imposed order is unstable. It must be forcibly maintained in order to continue to exist. People are as a whole intelligent enough to devise such structures but not intelligent enough to override our most fundamental sense of natural order. As a whole, our species' attempt to engineer its own order has been slowly successful. We created kingdoms, handing ourselves to a monarch. This is an extreme deviation from natural order, because there are in that case only a handful of people globally who matter. It leaves the commoner entirely outside the global order. Out of our natural human desire to move towards natural order, we devised a new structure of governments commonly known as republics. These were closer to something which we could naturally live at ease with. The commoner, despite not having a direct say in the larger global order was in some way involved, or at least believed this to be so. More recently, through the rapid development of communications technologies which allow any one commoner's voice to find itself suddenly amplified and repeated around the world in moments we have grown into an entirely new method of global order. As trivial as much of the social networking conversation is, through social networking borders have fallen, lines have blurred, and a kind of collective consciousness representing its participants equally has arisen from it. However, we find ourselves in a unique situation. The people have moved on from the easily corruptible pseudo-free societies of the past, yet the forces enforcing those societies have attempted to simply ignore this transition. Through force, violence, and illegitimate law which passed without the consent of the commoner, they have attempted to extinguish the phoenix, the collective society which has arisen from the ashes of the republics.

Government by definition creates order, whether natural or imposed. A government exists within the borders of some defined region, and exists to represent the people of that region. Therefore, by definition the only possible government is that which exists by the consent of those who represent the people. A government which is operating without that consent is no longer a valid government. It is a criminal enterprise which exists to serve only itself. It in this case has moved from an entity which serves and fears the people to an entity which is served by and is feared by the people. For the people to accept such a criminal takeover of their land is a violation of their core drives, it is a violation of the natural progression from imposed global order towards natural order on a global scale. In the case where a criminal takeover has occurred, it is not only the natural right, but the obligation of that region's people to raise themselves in great numbers against that criminal enterprise which seeks to exploit them. Fundamental human dignity demands it unambiguously. It is unfortunate, but an unavoidable conclusion that yesterday's republics have on a grand scale violated their purpose and made the transition from representatives of the people towards criminal slave enterprise which holds the people in bondage, extracting value and joy from them, forever unhappy with their current holdings. The organs and systems which we the people devised not long ago to serve and represent us have been hijacked by a select few individuals, making the commoner irrelevant despite numerous legal guarantees and protections against this. The methods used in these criminal takeovers vary and are too numerous to list in the context of this document, but they are well documented by many members of the newly arisen collective consciousness.

There are many and varied voices which have erupted from captivity which suggest methods by which we the people can reclaim our rightful place as our own rulers and each other's subject at once. In order to reclaim our human dignity and make progress towards natural order, a collective state where the people live in harmony with one another in naturally organized chaos, it is useful to examine the birth of the republics which today have become something grotesque and unrecognizable. Attempt after attempt was made to force monarchs to dictate the will of their subjects, but these attempts were made in ignorance of the fact that the very nature and structure of the kingdoms was not compatible with what the people desired. Facing a global order which could not advance any farther and had reached the end of its useful lifespan, individuals began to realize the increasingly undeniable fact that an entirely new order had to be devised to replace the old kingdoms. We have reached a similar point today. Society's process of collective consciousness and consensus has advanced beyond the point that the republics can follow. In response to this, a select few have hijacked the republics in order to bring them backwards while the people march forwards. As difficult as it is to accept, the time has indeed come to tearfully say goodbye to the republics. They are artifacts of a beautiful age, yet in their age have become irrelevant to the progress of society, and in fact have become a snarling, grotesque weight which fights progress at every turn.

The form of the global order's replacement is not mine to decide. It is not yours, it is not your neighbor's. The global order's form is for the globe to decide collectively. For this reason, my identity will not be disclosed. I will present no idea for the future's form other than the fact that society has advanced beyond the point where the republics can exist in their current form. Go forth, and reclaim your dignity. If you fear the republics, imagine this. You are no longer represented in the republics. Therefore, their laws, their edicts, their decrees have no legitimate authority over you. They are just as illegitimate as if I attempted to dictate the terms of your life from behind my keyboard. They have become little more than bullies with guns, and if there is anything the Arab Spring has taught us, it is that guns are utterly useless against an idea.

Solidarity,
(this space intentionally left blank)
(Ed.: We'd also like to remind people who read this, especially if you're working with your local occupation, that you can submit content at content@occupywallst.org)

401 Comments

Sunday: Global Uprisings--Egypt, Tunisia, Iran & Activists @ OWS
Posted Nov. 6, 2011, 12:35 a.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



The 99% visit Governor Walker
Posted Nov. 4, 2011, 10:16 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Transforming Harm & Building Safety: Confronting Sexual Violence At Occupy Wall Street & Beyond
Posted Nov. 4, 2011, 7:22 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Wall Street: Improving Quality of Life for the 99%
Posted Nov. 4, 2011, 2:53 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Don't Be Big Banks' Puppet; No Immunity Deal for Crooks
Posted Nov. 4, 2011, 11:28 a.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Wall Street to Mayor Bloomberg: Get Your Facts Straight; Stop the Fear Mongering
Posted Nov. 4, 2011, 12:42 a.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Eviction Defense!
Posted Nov. 3, 2011, 7:25 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Stephen Colbert's Plot to Co-opt Occupy Wall Street Foiled by Ketchup and Justin
Posted Nov. 3, 2011, 12:55 p.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Liberty Square Adopts a Spokes Council
Posted Nov. 3, 2011, 10:21 a.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



The People vs. Goldman Sachs - Trial and March!
Posted Nov. 3, 2011, 12:08 a.m. EST (1 week ago) by OccupyWallSt



Rule of Law vs. the Forces of Order
Posted Nov. 2, 2011, 7:52 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



General Strike Shuts Down Oakland. Watch Live!
Posted Nov. 2, 2011, 1:22 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Call To Action - Join The Month Of Global Uprising
Posted Nov. 1, 2011, 7:28 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



A New World
Posted Nov. 1, 2011, 5:30 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Military Veterans Join the 99% on Wall Street
Posted Nov. 1, 2011, 2:27 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Oakland Calls For City-Wide General Strike, Nov 2
Posted Oct. 30, 2011, 9 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Urgent: Winter Donation Needs
Posted Oct. 29, 2011, 10:54 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Enacting the Impossible (On Consensus Decision Making)
Posted 2 weeks ago on Oct. 29, 2011, 9:55 p.m. EST by David-Graeber






TO THE VILLAGE: With a large college and high school student contingent, occupiers from all over the city have repeatedly marched to Washington Square where at least two general assemblies have convened. PHOTO: Stephen O’Byrne

On August 2, 2011 at the very first meeting of what was to become Occupy Wall Street, about a dozen people sat in a circle in Bowling Green. The self-appointed “process committee” for a social movement we merely hoped would someday exist, contemplated a momentous decision. Our dream was to create a New York General Assembly: the model for democratic assemblies we hoped to see spring up across America. But how would those assemblies actually operate?

The anarchists in the circle made what seemed, at the time, an insanely ambitious proposal. Why not let them operate exactly like this committee: by consensus.

It was, in the least, a wild gamble, because as far as any of us knew, no one had ever managed to pull off something like this before. Consensus process had been successfully used in spokes-councils  —  groups of activists organized into separate affinity groups, each represented by a single “spoke” — but never in mass assemblies like the one anticipated in New York City. Even the General Assemblies in Greece and Spain had not attempted it. But consensus was the approach that most accorded with our principles. So we took the leap.

Three months later, hundreds of assemblies, big and small, now operate by consensus across America. Decisions are made democratically, without voting, by general assent. According to conventional wisdom this shouldn’t be possible, but it is happening  —  in much the same way that other inexplicable phenomena like love, revolution, or life itself (from the perspective of, say, particle physics) happen.

The direct democratic process adopted by Occupy Wall Street has deep roots in American radical history. It was widely employed in the civil rights movement and by the Students for a Democratic Society. But its current form has developed from within movements like feminism and even spiritual traditions (both Quaker and Native American) as much as from within anarchism itself. The reason direct, consensus-based democracy has been so firmly embraced by and identified with anarchism is because it embodies what is perhaps anarchism’s most fundamental principle: that in the same way human beings treated like children will tend to act like children, the way to encourage human beings to act like mature and responsible adults is to treat them as if they already are.

Consensus is not a unanimous voting system; a “block” is not a No vote, but a veto. Think of it as the intervention of a High Court that declares a proposal to be in violation of fundamental ethical principles — except in this case the judge’s robes belong to anyone with the courage to throw them on. That participants know they can instantly stop a deliberation dead in its tracks if they feel it a matter of principle, not only means they rarely do it. It also means that a compromise on minor points becomes easier; the process toward creative synthesis is really the essence of the thing. In the end, it matters less how a final decision is reached—by a call for blocks or a majority show hands—provided everyone was able to play a part in helping to shape and reshape it.

We may never be able to prove, through logic, that direct democracy, freedom and a society based on principles of human solidarity are possible. We can only demonstrate it through action. In parks and squares across America, people have begun to witness it as they have started to participate. Americans grow up being taught that freedom and democracy are our ultimate values, and that our love of freedom and democracy is what defines us as a people—even as, in subtle but constant ways, we’re taught that genuine freedom and democracy can never truly exist.

The moment we realize the fallacy of this teaching, we begin to ask: how many other “impossible” things might we pull off? And it is there, it is here, that we begin enacting the impossible.



This article was written by David Graeber for the Occupied Wall Street Journal.

351 Comments

#ows and #occupythehood March In Solidarity With Those Foreclosed On By Criminal Banks
Posted Oct. 28, 2011, 5:39 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Wall St. And Allies Rally & March United for Civil Rights
Posted Oct. 27, 2011, 8:46 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



#ows Takes The Streets In Solidarity With #occupyoakland
Posted Oct. 27, 2011, 2:53 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy The DOE
Posted Oct. 27, 2011, 12:53 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Tonight: Vigils Across America for Scott Olsen, Marine Veteran Critically Injured by Police Projectile at #OccupyOakland
Posted Oct. 27, 2011, 12:13 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Deliver Your Message To The 1%
Posted Oct. 27, 2011, 12:08 p.m. EST (2 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



We are all Scott Olsen: Occupy Oakland #OWS
Posted Oct. 26, 2011, 8:53 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



#ows Response To Government Violence At #occupyoakland | Solidarity March At 9PM From Liberty Square
Posted Oct. 26, 2011, 3:47 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Solidarity with Oakland | Exposing Police Lies
Posted Oct. 26, 2011, 3:14 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Wall Street Takes On Health Insurance Industry
Posted Oct. 26, 2011, 1:28 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



The 1% have Addresses. The 99% have Messages.
Posted 3 weeks ago on Oct. 25, 2011, 6:43 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt




Solidarity Statement From Cairo
Posted Oct. 25, 2011, 2:39 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Protect Occupy Baltimore
Posted Oct. 25, 2011, 2:10 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupied Wall Street Journal's New Site
Posted Oct. 25, 2011, 4:13 a.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Drumming and the Occupation
Posted Oct. 24, 2011, 6:57 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



"Where Do We Go From Here?"
Posted Oct. 23, 2011, 9:32 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Chicago Being Dispersed / Arrested By Police Presently
Posted Oct. 23, 2011, 2:31 a.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



STOP & FRISK HAS GOT TO GO! Solidarity with #occupyharlem.
Posted Oct. 22, 2011, 6:35 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Columbus Circle
Posted Oct. 21, 2011, 5:18 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Demands Working Group
Posted Oct. 21, 2011, 3:01 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



As We Gather Together
Posted Oct. 21, 2011, 12:55 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Wall Street Survey
Posted 3 weeks ago on Oct. 21, 2011, 9:48 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Please take some time to fill out our survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VSN6VW9

65 Comments

Stop The Spectra Pipeline | Meet-Up at Liberty Square at 5 P.M. For Die-In at P.S. 41
Posted Oct. 20, 2011, 2:15 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Parents for Occupy Wall Street Family Sleepover
Posted Oct. 20, 2011, 12:13 p.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



America Supports #OWS
Posted 3 weeks ago on Oct. 20, 2011, 11:06 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Supplies and Support Pour into Occupy Wall Street from Every Corner of the US

Occupiers Launch Tumblr Website Today: Gallery of Personal Notes of Support from Farmers, Veterans, Grandparents and "Knitters for Occupy Wall St"

http://occupywallstreetcarepackages.tumblr.com/

Liberty Square, NY — Today we want to spotlight the tens of thousands of people from across the United States and around the world who are supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement by contributing blankets, clothing, food, money, and other needed supplies. The support has truly been overwhelming.

Over one month ago, hundreds, and then thousands, gathered in Liberty Square to protest unprecedented consolidation of wealth and power, plummeting household income, skyrocketing school debt, and a broken political system. In the weeks since, hundreds of thousands have rallied and occupied in cities and towns around the world. And people from every corner of the United States have sent donations of tarps, home baked pies, hand-knit mittens, and pizzas — with personal notes of solidarity and support.

OWS has compiled notes from supporters on a Tumblr site called Occupy Wall St. Care Packages:

http://occupywallstreetcarepackages.tumblr.com/

This new site features only a tiny fraction of the thousands of packages and letters of support we have received. It includes messages like this one from Elora and Monte, supporters who live on a farm in West Virginia:

"We stand ready to help #OWS in any way we can, from out here 'Just Off the One-Lane Road...' And we are so grateful for all of you involved in this defense of America. We firmly believe this is "it." If we can't grab this democracy this time, we'll sink and it will be a long time before we will have this opportunity again. Thank you for taking time from your busy life to be there and to email us. Whatever we can do, we are pleased to be a part of this incredible Movement."

We know from history that social movements grow when they have a broad base of support. We are thankful that this movement has attained such a dramatic level of support in a short amount of time. We are hopeful that this people's movement will continue to grow.







88 Comments

10 a.m. All Hands on Deck for Square Reorganizing!
Posted Oct. 20, 2011, 12:31 a.m. EST (3 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



OWS Snapshot
Posted Oct. 19, 2011, 3:30 p.m. EST (4 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



70% of #OWS Supporters are Politically Independent
Posted Oct. 19, 2011, 2:11 p.m. EST (4 weeks ago) by OccupyWallSt



Occupy Wall Street Marks One Month
Posted Oct. 17, 2011, 8:20 a.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



From Tahrir Square to Times Square: Protests Erupt in Over 1,500 Cities Worldwide
Posted Oct. 16, 2011, 1:08 a.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



October 15th - Global Day Of Action
Posted Oct. 15, 2011, 6:12 p.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



The 1% Have Addresses. The 99% Have Messages
Posted Oct. 15, 2011, 11:43 a.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



October 15th Call to Action
Posted Oct. 14, 2011, 11:08 p.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



#OWS VICTORY: The people have prevailed, gear up for global day of action
Posted Oct. 14, 2011, 8:51 a.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



Parents bring Children to #ows tonight
Posted Oct. 14, 2011, 6:29 a.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION: Keep Bloomberg and Kelly From Evicting #OWS
Posted 1 month ago on Oct. 13, 2011, 2:14 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

EMERGENCY #OWS EVICTION DEFENSE:
Prevent the forcible closure of Occupy Wall Street

Tell Bloomberg: Don't Foreclose the Occupation.

NEED MASS TURN-OUT, SHOW UP NO LATER THAN 6 A.M.

This is an emergency situation. Please take a minute to read this, and please take action and spread the word far and wide.

Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum, with occupation actions now happening in cities across the world.

But last night Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD notified Occupy Wall Street participants about plans to “clean the park”—the site of the Wall Street protests—tomorrow starting at 7am. "Cleaning" was used as a pretext to shut down “Bloombergville” a few months back, and to shut down peaceful occupations elsewhere.

Bloomberg says that the park will be open for public usage following the cleaning, but with a notable caveat: Occupy Wall Street participants must follow the “rules”.

NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has said that they will move in to clear us and we will not be allowed to take sleeping bags, tarps, personal items or gear back into the park.

This is it—this is their attempt to shut down #OWS for good.

PLEASE TAKE ACTION

1) Call 311 (or +1 (212) NEW-YORK if you're out of town) and tell Bloomberg to support our right to assemble and to not interfere with #OWS.

2) Come to #OWS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT to defend the occupation from eviction.

For those of you who plan to help us hold our ground—which we hope will be all of you—make sure you understand the possible consequences. Be prepared to not get much sleep. Be prepared for possible arrest. Make sure your items are together and ready to go (or already out of the park.) We are pursuing all possible strategies; this is a message of solidarity.

Click here to learn nonviolent tactics for holding ground.



Occupy Wall Street is committed to keeping the park clean and safe—we even have a Sanitation Working Group whose purpose this is. We are organizing major cleaning operations today and will do so regularly.

If Bloomberg truly cares about sanitation here he should support the installation of portopans and dumpsters. #OWS allies have been working to secure these things to support our efforts.

We know where the real dirt is: on Wall Street. Billionaire Bloomberg is beholden to bankers.

We won't allow Bloomberg and the NYPD to foreclose our occupation. This is an occupation, not a permitted picnic.

1257 Comments

How To Hold Your Ground
Posted Oct. 13, 2011, 2:12 p.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICY
Posted 1 month ago on Oct. 13, 2011, 2:10 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Following respectful and good-faith dialogue with members of the local community which has been rebuilding since the trauma of 9/11, Occupy Wall Street hereby announces the following Good Neighbor Policy:

OWS has zero tolerance for drugs or alcohol anywhere in Liberty Plaza;

Zero tolerance for violence or verbal abuse towards anyone;

Zero tolerance for abuse of personal or public property.

OWS will limit drumming on the site to 2 hours per day, between the hours of 11am and 5pm only.

OWS encourages all participants to respect health and sanitary regulations, and will direct all participants to respectfully utilize appropriate off-site sanitary facilities.

OWS will display signage and have community relations and security monitors in Liberty Plaza, in order to ensure awareness of and respect for our guidelines and Good Neighbor Policy.

OWS will at all times have a community relations representative on-site, to monitor and respond to community concerns and complaints.

Occupy Wall Street October 13, 2011

Note: In conjunction with local community members and their representatives, OWS is also working to establish off-site sanitary facilities such as port-a-potties.

113 Comments

Mr. Auctioneer! New Yorkers Call for Moratorium on Foreclosures. Organizing for Occupation and Occupy Wall Street visit the courts!
Posted Oct. 13, 2011, 2:13 a.m. EST (1 month ago) by anonymous



October 15th Global Day Of Action
Posted Oct. 12, 2011, 3:57 p.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



#OWS Stands In Solidarity With 100 Arrested At Occupy Boston
Posted Oct. 11, 2011, 11:52 a.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



Sign Language
Posted Oct. 9, 2011, 10:38 p.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



Today Liberty Plaza had a visit from Slavoj Zizek
Posted Oct. 9, 2011, 6:04 p.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



#ows Second General Assembly Of Manhattan Meets At 3PM In Washington Square Park - Anti-Flag To Play Set In Solidarity at Liberty Square
Posted Oct. 8, 2011, 1:30 a.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt



AFT fully endorses Occupy Wall Street
Posted Oct. 6, 2011, 4:48 p.m. EST (1 month ago) by OccupyWallSt

Keith Olbermann Takes Down NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg While the Occupy Wall Street Movement Continues to Grow

All,

The extraordinary political journalist and inspiring progressive media activist Keith Olbermann makes one of his typically brilliant and patented 'Special Comments' on the Occupy Wall Street Movement and New York's dangerously clueless billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his futile attempts to crush it.

Kofi


'Countdown' with Keith Olbermann--'Special Comment'
CURRENT TV BROADCAST MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2011


Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Chris Hedges On the Revolutionary Dimensions of the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the Crucial Role of Mass Resistance

Occupy Wall Street protesters react and wave copies of the court order allowing them back into Zuccotti Park as police block them from re-entering, in New York, November 15, 2011. Hundreds of police officers arrested about 200 demonstrators early Tuesday in an operation to clear the nearly two-month-old camp. (Photo: Todd Heisler / The New York Times)

http://www.truth-out.org/what-revolution-looks/1321384587

All,

As always the indefatigable Chris Hedges eloquently and resolutely speaks truth to power and his searing analysis is as usual right on target. Dig...and pass the word...

Kofi


This Is What Revolution Looks Like
15 November 2011

by Chris Hedges
Truthdig [3] | Op-Ed



Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.

Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise. They think they can clean up “the mess”—always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.

Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional super committee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.

The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are “cathartic” and “entertaining,” as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end.

The historian Crane Brinton in his book “Anatomy of a Revolution” laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton’s next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.

I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us.

Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as the clearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obey orders, the old regime swiftly crumbles. When the aging East German dictator Erich Honecker was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig, the regime was finished. The same refusal to employ violence doomed the communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. I watched in December 1989 as the army general that the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended on to crush protests condemned him to death on Christmas Day. Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces to fire into crowds.

The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through a rigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can be while wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies. The resignations of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s deputy, Sharon Cornu, and the mayor’s legal adviser and longtime friend, Dan Siegel, in protest over the clearing of the Oakland encampment are some of the first cracks in the edifice. “Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators,” Siegel tweeted after his resignation.

There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew, as did the spectators, that I was woefully mismatched. Ringers, experienced boxers in need of a tuneup or a little practice, would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought, lie about their long professional fight records, and toy with us. Those fights became about something other than winning. They became about dignity and self-respect. You fought to say something about who you were as a human being. These bouts were punishing, physically brutal and demoralizing. You would get knocked down and stagger back up. You would reel backwards from a blow that felt like a cement block. You would taste the saltiness of your blood on your lips. Your vision would blur. Your ribs, the back of your neck and your abdomen would ache. Your legs would feel like lead. But the longer you held on, the more the crowd in the club turned in your favor. No one, even you, thought you could win. But then, every once in a while, the ringer would get overconfident. He would get careless. He would become a victim of his own hubris. And you would find deep within yourself some new burst of energy, some untapped strength and, with the fury of the dispossessed, bring him down. I have not put on a pair of boxing gloves for 30 years. But I felt this twinge of euphoria again in my stomach this morning, this utter certainty that the impossible is possible, this realization that the mighty will fall.



Links:

[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/9094
[2]
http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/9094
[4] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[5] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[6] http://www.truth-out.org/content/chris-hedges
[7] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[8] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=making-safer-spaces-occupy-wall-street-addresses-questions-security-zuccotti-park/1320679533
[9] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=minority-occupiers-confront-divsions-among-99-percent/1319898493

While Occupy Wall Street Is Attacked by the Police and the State It Only Strengthens the Movement





http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/nyregion/police-begin-clearing-zuccotti-park-of-protesters.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
All,

The state authorities think that if they merely continue to attack, assault, and harass the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators throughout the country that they can and will effectively cripple and destroy this movement. They are dead wrong. Just as in the mass based Civil Rights, black power, labor, women's, anti-war, and gay and lesbian movements of the very recent past (and present) neither they nor we have seen anything yet. This movement is only going to become larger and more resilient as time (and the attacks) go on. History tells us that much. Mark my words: This is only the beginning of what is destined to be the largest, most important, and sustained mass movement in this country in at least half a century. Stay tuned...

Kofi


Judge Backs Camping Ban at Protest Site
By JAMES BARRON and COLIN MOYNIHAN
November 15, 2011
New York Times

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday defended his decision to clear the park in Lower Manhattan that was the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement, saying “health and safety conditions became intolerable” in the park where the protesters had camped out for nearly two months.

Mr. Bloomberg said the city had planned to reopen the park on Tuesday morning after the protesters’ tents and tarps had been removed and the stone steps had been cleaned. He said the police had already let about 50 protesters back in when officials received word of a temporary restraining order sought by lawyers for the protesters. The police closed the park again while a judge heard arguments in State Supreme Court.

But late Tuesday afternoon, the judge ruled for the city, saying the protesters could go into Zuccotti Park but could not take their tents and sleeping bags. The judge, Justice Michael D. Stallman of State Supreme Court, said that the demonstrators “have not demonstrated that they have a First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park, along with their tents, structures, generators and other installations” to the exclusion of the landlord or “others who might wish to use the space safely.”

Mr. Bloomberg had said at a City Hall news conference earlier in the day that in approving the police operation he had to balance free speech against concerns about what had been happening in the park.“New York City is the city where you can come and express yourself,” the mayor said. “What was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that.” He said the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”

The mayor’s comments at a City Hall news conference came about seven hours after hundreds of police officers moved in to clear the park, after warning that the nearly two-month-old camp would be “cleared and restored” but that demonstrators who did not leave would face arrest. The protesters, about 200 of whom have been staying in the park overnight, initially resisted with chants of “Whose park? Our park!”

The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said that nearly 200 people had been arrested, 142 in the park and 50 to 60 in the streets nearby. Most were held on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, among them City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, a Democrat who represents northern Manhattan. He was with a group near the intersection of Broadway and Vesey Street that was trying to link up with the protesters in the park. The group tried to push through a line of officers trying to prevent people from reaching the park.

Later in the day, the police cleared a lot at Canal Street, about a mile away, where some of the protesters had gone after the sweep. About two dozen people were arrested there after protesters snipped a chain-link fence with bolt cutters. At least four journalists who trailed the protesters as they went through the opening in the fence were also led out in handcuffs, including a reporter and photographer for The Associated Press and a reporter from The Daily News.

The mayor’s comments at his news conference came about seven hours after hundreds of police officers moved in to clear the park, after warning that the nearly two-month-old camp would be “cleared and restored” but that demonstrators who did not leave would face arrest. The protesters, about 200 of whom have been staying in the park overnight, initially resisted with chants of “Whose park? Our park!”

The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said that nearly 200 people had been arrested, 142 in the park and 50 to 60 in the streets nearby. Most were held on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, among them City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, a Democrat who represents northern Manhattan. He was with a group near the intersection of Broadway and Vesey Street that was trying to link up with the protesters in the park. The group tried to push through a line of officers trying to prevent people from reaching the park.

The operation in and around the park struck a blow to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which saw the park as its spiritual heart. The sweep was intended to empty the birthplace of a protest movement that has inspired hundreds of tent cities from coast to coast. On Monday, hundreds of police officers raided the main encampment in Oakland, Calif., arresting 33 people. Protesters returned later in the day. But the Oakland police said no one would be allowed to sleep there anymore, and promised to clear a second camp nearby.

The police action was quickly challenged as lawyers for the protesters obtained a temporary restraining order barring the city and the park’s private landlord from evicting protesters or removing their belongings. That left the protesters in a kind of limbo as they waited for Justice Stallman to issue his ruling.

Lawyers for the protesters had argued that the city and the owner of Zuccotti Park had impinged on the protesters’ free-speech rights. The lawyers took particular exception to the fact that the landlord, Brookfield Properties, had imposed rules for use of the park after the protests were underway.

“They issued these rules after the activity started in order to try to limit the activity,” said Arthur Schwartz, a lawyer representing the Transport Workers Union, the Working Families Party and New York Communities for Change, organizations that have joined in the protesters’ cause.

A lawyer for Brookfield said that the company had no problem with people expressing their First Amendment rights in the park. But the lawyer, Douglas H. Flaum, said the protesters needed to be removed because their tents and other equipment posed a safety risk. He also said they preventing other people from using the park.

“It is not meant to be a tent city,” Mr. Flaum said, adding that Brookfield would welcome the protesters back without the tents. “There are very specific health and safety concerns.” The mayor, at his news conference in the morning, read a statement he had issued around 6 a.m. explaining the reasoning behind the sweep. “The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day,” the mayor said in the statement. “Ever since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with” because the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”

“I have become increasingly concerned — as had the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties — that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community,” Mr. Bloomberg said. He added that on Monday, Brookfield asked the city to assist in enforcing the no sleeping and camping rules.

“But make no mistake,” the mayor said, “the final decision to act was mine and mine alone.”

Some of the displaced protesters regrouped a few blocks away at Foley Square, with the row of courthouses on Centre Street as a backdrop, and swapped stories of their confrontations with the police as they talked about what to do next.

One protester, Nate Barchus, 23, said the eviction from Zuccotti Park was likely to galvanize supporters, particularly because a series of gatherings had already been planned for Thursday, the protest’s two-month anniversary.

“This,” he said, referring to the early morning sweep, “reminds everyone who was occupying exactly why they were occupying.”

The midday arrests at the Canal Street lot unfolded next to a triangular space known as Duarte Square, for the first president of the Dominican Republic, Juan Pablo Duarte. The city owns slightly less than half an acre of land there, on the eastern edge of the square. The western section is owned by Trinity Church, a major landowner downtown, and had been fenced off for the winter recently after an art installation was dismantled.

With dozens of police officers watching, protesters climbed to the top of the plywood fence and held a general-assembly-style discussion on whether to “liberate another piece of property,” and about an hour later — after some protesters said they had tried to obtain permission to enter the church’s lot — two protesters dressed in black appeared with bolt cutters. They quickly made an opening in the fence.

As the crowd poured in, police vans sped down Varick Street toward Zuccotti Park, where another group of several hundred protesters was trying to retake the space where they had camped out since mid-September. It was cleaner than it had been in some time: after the protesters were thrown out, workers using power washers blasted water over the stone that covers the ground.

The cleaned-up park caught the attention of passers-by who had become accustomed to seeing the protesters’ tents and tarps. One young father, pushing his toddler son in a stroller, gave police officers guarding Zuccotti Park a thumbs-up sign.

Another man, rushing by in a cream suit, flashed them a huge grin, and a blonde woman stopped in her tracks. “Ooh, good,” she said.

Marybeth Carragher, who lives in a building overlooking the park, said she and other residents were apprehensive about the city’s plan to let the protesters return, without their tents. “I think my neighbors and I are very thankful that the mayor acted,” she said, “but we remain completely outraged for having to endure this for nine weeks.”

The operation to clear the park had begun near the Brooklyn Bridge, where the police gathered before riding in vans to the block-square park. As they did, dozens of protesters linked arms and shouted “No retreat, no surrender,” “This is our home” and “Barricade!”

The mayor’s office sent out a message on Twitter at 1:19 a.m. saying: “Occupants of Zuccotti should temporarily leave and remove tents and tarps. Protesters can return after the park is cleared.” Fliers handed out by the police at the private park on behalf of the park’s owner and the city spelled out the same message.

The protesters rallied around an area known as the kitchen, near the middle of the park, and began putting up makeshift barricades with tables and pieces of scrap wood.

Over the next two hours, dozens of protesters left the park while a core group of about 100 dug in around the food area. Many locked arms and defied police orders to leave. Some sang “We Shall Overcome” and chanted at the officers to “disobey your orders.”

“If they come in, we’re not going anywhere,” said Chris Johnson, 32, who sat with other remaining protesters near the food area.

By 3 a.m., dozens of officers in helmets, watched over by Commissioner Kelly, closed in on those who remained. The police pulled them out one by one and handcuffed them. Most were led out without incident.

The police move came as organizers put out word on their Web site that they planned to “shut down Wall Street” with a demonstration on Thursday to commemorate the completion of two months of encampment, which has prompted similar demonstrations across the country.

The move also came hours after a small demonstration at City Hall on Monday by opponents of the protest, including local residents and merchants, some of whom urged the mayor to clear out the park.

Before the police moved in, they set up a battery of klieg lights and aimed them into the park. A police captain, wearing a helmet, walked down Liberty Street and announced: “The city has determined that the continued occupation of Zuccotti Park poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard.”

The captain ordered the protesters to “to immediately remove all private property” and said that if they interfered with the police operation, they would be arrested. Property that was not removed would be taken to a sanitation garage, the police said.

About 200 supporters of the protesters arrived early Tuesday after hearing that the park was being cleared. They were prevented from getting within a block of the park by a police barricade. There were a number of arrests after some scuffles between the two sides, but no details were immediately available. After being forced up Broadway by the police, some of the supporters decided to march several blocks to Foley Square.

In the weeks since the protest began, Mr. Bloomberg had struggled with how to respond. He repeatedly made clear that he did not support the demonstrators’ arguments or their tactics, but he has also defended their right to protest and in recent days and weeks has sounded increasingly exasperated, especially in the wake of growing complaints from neighbors about how the protest has disrupted the neighborhood and hurt local businesses.



Reporting was contributed by Cara Buckley, Joseph Goldstein, Matt Flegenheimer, Rob Harris, Steve Kenny, Corey Kilgannon and Sarah Maslin Nir.

On the Creative Clarity and Vision of the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Occupy Wall Street, November 6th. (Photo: [clint] [4])

http://www.truth-out.org/originality-occupy-wall-street/1321203807

All,

An excellent analysis by Mr. Wolff of the OWS movement. I thoroughly agree...

Kofi


The Originality of Occupy Wall Street
13 November 2011

by Richard D. Wolff, RDWolff.com [3] | Op-Ed


The political movements of the left that I have participated in over many decades were almost always focused on or prioritized particular issues (wars, civil liberties, civil rights, poverty, collective bargaining, etc.) and/or particular subsections of the population (African-Americans, women, gay people, immigrants, etc.). The authorities almost always took advantage of that focus to separate and isolate the movement from society generally. They were often successful. Even when the authorities failed to provoke general hostility to the movement, they were able to prevent the development of more than a general sympathy for it.

In the short history of OWS and its spread to date, I am struck by its impressive insistence on remaining a movement around a very general and inclusive critique of an unjust economy (99% against 1%) that has corrupted much of US politics and culture. The net result is a built-in systemic critique, sometimes explicit (remarkably often named as capitalism) and almost always implicit. The hesitation to choose among and focus on specific demands reflects the wisdom of maintaining the broad, systemic critique. The taboo against systemic critique – a legacy of post-war anti-communism – seems to be broken. Nonetheless, the struggle to select and prioritize specific demands needs to take time and great care, especially if that struggle is to be accomplished without losing the invaluable systemic critique and demand for change. Most other movements of the left could not accomplish that to their detriment and often destruction.

In its short history, OWS seems already well along in discovering and instituting a new kind of leadership system and organization. The task is daunting and its accomplishment has likewise eluded most left movements in the past. The polarities to avoid are (1) purely horizontal collectives lacking the coordination and shared focus without which massive duplications and wastes of energy and effort breed disorientation and demoralization, and (2) conflict-ridden power concentrations that dissipate and de-energize general initiative and enthusiasm. Here too, interesting explorations of how to navigate between these polarities are underway in OWS. The US left is littered with the debris of movements that crashed on these polarities and/or atrophied from settling into one or the other.

OWS is rooted in the mass disaffection felt about the basic political economy of the US. Those dominating economics, politics and culture seem determined to keep the society moving in just those directions that will deepen that disaffection and thereby strengthen OWS. Income and wealth inequality, alienation from politics, deteriorating job, educational and retirement opportunities all conspire to recruit for OWS. The increased stresses and strains of personal life and relationships do likewise. OWS has already managed to exert combined political and personal attractions on a broad public.

Since 2007, the US has been engaged in this sequence of social events: a capitalist crisis, a trickle-down economic recovery program (that helped the top but never trickled down to anyone else), and an austerity program to pay for that trickle down program. Europe experienced a parallel engagement. However, Europe had much more viable and in-tact labor unions and anti-capitalist political parties and party factions. They enabled the mobilization of Europeans against austerity programs and in some cases also against the trickle-down policies and crisis-ridden capitalism that produced austerity programs. They also reaffirmed and reinforced existing organizational patterns that did not attract much of the new energy emerging on the left.

In contrast, the US has taken longer to react and respond. Yet therein lies an important dialectic of opposites. Precisely because the US has long-declining and therefore weak labor unions and no significantly influential anti-capitalist parties, opposition to the crisis-trickle-down-austerity sequence takes much longer to form and mobilize. People in the US have to rebuild old shells of organization from the bottom up or build altogether new organizations. Yet with this difficulty comes a certain distance from and relative freedom to consider, evaluate and pick carefully among the many old habits, presumptions, organizational forms and styles that have demonstrated their strengths and weaknesses in and for left movements.

In Europe, those oppositional forces that seek to start afresh and independent of the older movements – for example, the various “indignant” groupings – slip quickly into disunity and tension with the existing left organizations. This weakens and divides the left just when the opposite is needed most. In the US, OWS may well be able to avoid that problem precisely because of the old left’s long period of decline and demoralization.

The stunning growth and social influence of OWS in its few weeks of existence augur well for its survival and maturation.


Links:

[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/8973
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/8973
[3] http://rdwolff.com/content/originality-occupy-wall-street
[4] http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintw/6320547357/
[5] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[6] http://www.truth-out.org/content/richard-d-wolff
[7] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[8] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[9] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=lessons-original-occupation-madisons-sheriff-dave-mahoney/1319735448
[10] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=occupy-obama-could-turn-heat-democracy/1319313907

Occupy Cal Protest Rally at University of California Berkeley Campus, Nov. 15, 2011


General Assembly in front of Sproul Hall at UC Berkeley
















PHOTOS BY CHULEENAN

All,

On Monday evening, November 15, 2011, Chuleenan and I participated in a massive rally and protest of Occupy Cal at Sproul Plaza on the University of California, Berkeley campus in which over 4,000 students and community citizens and activists declared our collective intellectual, spiritual, political and ideological solidarity with the national Occupy Wall Street movement and demanded that the state of California honestly address the crucial issues of the need for real democracy in public education, the exploitive and corrupting influences of the banks and Wall Street on the U.S. economy generally, and the critical political, cultural, and economic relationships between higher education, health care reform, financial regulation, systemic structural investment, and science and technology in a global context. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and currently Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley Robert Reich was the keynote speaker who had been chosen by student groups to give the annual Mario Savio memorial lecture in honor of the great and profound legacy left by the late UC, Berkeley philosophy graduate and leader of the famed Free Speech Movement in 1964 Mario Savio (1942-1996). Reich gave his inspiring speech on the exact same steps on the Plaza directly in front of Sproul Hall that Savio gave his famous speech on top of a police car in December of 1964 at the height of the extraordinary campus wide Free Speech Movement (see Video of that incredible speech below). BTW: The huge rally and Reich's speech were terrific. Mario would have been very proud of us...

Kofi



MARIO SAVIO AT SPROUL HALL
DECEMBER 2, 1964




"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"
--Mario Savio, University of California, Berkeley Sproul Hall Plaza--December 2, 1964

"Savio's moral clarity, his eloquence, and his democratic style of leadership inspired thousands of fellow Berkeley students to protest university regulations which severely limited political speech and activity on campus. The non-violent campaign culminated in the largest mass arrest in American history, drew widespread faculty support, and resulted in a revision of university rules to permit political speech and organising. This significant advance for student freedom rapidly spread to countless other colleges and universities across the country."

[Via stonecast, see here: http://www.savio.org/who_was_mario.html