Find a group new year. There are almost 1500 of them.
About Occupy Together Meetups Everywhere
* 9,846 Occupiers
* 1,491 cities
This is OCCUPY TOGETHER’s hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. See what’s going on in your community or get something started!
The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation’s history—at the end of the 1920s. Unemployment has also reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression.
Unemployment is way up.
And that’s just people who meet the strict criteria for “unemployed.” Include people working part-time who want to work full-time, plus some people who haven’t looked for a job in a while, and unemployment’s at 17%
Meanwhile, corporate profits are at an all-time high And CEO’s make 350 times what workers make. It was only 50 times in 1960-1985.
In fact, income inequality has gotten so extreme here that the US now ranks 93rd in the world in “income equality.” China’s ahead of us. So is India. So is Iran.
Click through to see a great set of charts on why people are angry.
When you can borrow money for nothing, and lend it back to the government risk-free for a few percentage points, you can COIN MONEY. And the banks are doing that. According to IRA, the “net interest margin” made by US banks in the first six months of this year is $211 Billion. Nice!
via CHARTS: Here’s What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About….
“We don’t want people to think that we are being co-opted by other movements,” Mr. Philbrook said. “Occupy Chicago, like all the Occupy movements, stands apart from any political parties, stands apart from any existing movement.”
A sometimes tentative police response is adding its own element to the mix. In Atlanta, protesters were warned by the police on Tuesday that if, at 11 p.m., they were still in Woodruff Park, a small oasis in the heart of downtown, they would be arrested. Anyone who does not want to be arrested can simply leave the park, the police said. But protesters said they were told the same thing on Monday. Instead, dozens of police officers showed up but made no arrests.
The protesters also seem to have significant numbers of uncounted allies, silent or on the sidelines, at least for now.
Daniel Eavenson, an engineer in Chicago, said he had only been “witnessing.”
“There are millions of us watching online and sending out our hope,” he said.
via Response of the Police Is Expanding With Protests – NYTimes.com.
“It is immoral to give a tax cut to John Paulson when we are giving budget cuts to school kids in the south Bronx,” Kink shouted in front of Paulson’s home on 86th Street. “It is immoral to give a tax cut to John Paulson when we are cutting for poor seniors in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Our communities need the money!”
The march of roughly 500 was organized by a new coalition of groups, “99 New York,” whose name is a reference to the unofficial slogan of Occupy Wall Street, “We are the 99 percent,” and which formed in the last few weeks. It is made up of Strong Economy for All, United NY, the Working Families Party, New York Communities for Change, and MoveOn. Activists from Occupy Wall Street were also involved in the planning of the march, said 99 New York spokesman Douglas Forand.
via Protesters march on billionaires’ homes – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs says the wealth gap got started with globalization, which allowed a small group of highly skilled people to sell their skills in a world market while forcing less skilled people to compete for foreign labor for every lower wages. Then Reagan decided to dismantle government and the federal government’s been unraveling since then.
You, in fact, call for a renewed emphasis on compassion and social responsibility.
What are our deeper economic objectives? Among these is a sense of well-being, of life satisfaction. Income can play a role in that, but so do things like social trust and honest government – and compassion for other people. This kind of discussion is considered odd and I think that is part of our problem right now. We don’t have effective ways to discuss these things in our society.
Instead, we have people who represent a cult of selfishness, what I would consider Ayn Rand libertarianism. They are political figures who say that the goal of America is to leave [people] alone, and that ideas like compassion and so on are dangerous. What the Republicans have on offer – which is based on this 30-year misdiagnosis – is cruel and deeply wrong, because they express disdain for the idea that people are suffering and they need help.
We’ve arrived at a crossroads about the real meaning of our civilization. I think that we will need to reflect on how to achieve a higher level of happiness in this country — [and think about] issues of social trust, social connectedness, decency, compassion.
via What caused the wealth gap? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.
Spruce Street and One World Trade Center I took part in last Wednesday’s Community/Labor March To Wall St. in New York City. I met some musician buddies at Washington Square Park and we marched to Foley Square with the New York University group, though none of us are affiliated with NYU. From Foley Square, a bit Northeast of City Hall. There we joined up with the main crowd, and a passel of musicians, and headed on to Liberty Plaza, flanked and guided by police all the way.
Not long after we left Washington Square Park, say a five or six blocks out, I noticed this building ahead, and I kept tracking it all the way down:
Photo of 8 Spruce Street by Wally Gobetz
That’s a new luxury apartment building at 8 Spruce Street, just south of City Hall. It was designed by starchitect Frank Gehry.
Does anyone who lives there care about us marchers? I thought. It’s a pricy building, with studio apartments starting at $3770 a month, which is over $42,000 per year, and two bedrooms at $6045 per month, almost $61,000 per year. I’m thinking that, no, the folks who live there are more likely in the 1% who’re living high off of banker’s bonuses than in the 99% who can’t afford health insurance and who won’t have pensions when they retire.
More likely than not, they think things are pretty much OK as they are. Maybe the bonuses are a little slim, but the rabble down here marching to Liberty Plaza, we don’t figure in their view of the world. They have no empathy with us.
But then how could they?
My father was an engineer. He worked in an office. But his work took him into coal mines to collect samples and to inspect the coal face. He knew that mining was dirty and dangerous work and believed that no one should have authority over coal miners unless they’d worked in the mines themselves. Continue reading
But while some Democrats see the movement as providing a political boost, the party’s alignment with the eclectic mix of protesters makes others nervous. They see the prospect of the protesters’ pushing the party dangerously to the left — just as the Tea Party has often pushed Republicans farther to the right and made for intraparty run-ins.
Mr. Obama has spoken sympathetically of the Wall Street protests, saying they reflect “the frustration” that many struggling Americans are feeling. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, have sounded similar themes.
The role of groups like the Democratic campaign committee and Mr. Podesta’s group, sometimes working in recent weeks with labor unions, moves support from talking points to the realm of organizational guidance.
It is not at all clear whether the leaders of the amorphous movement actually want the support of the Democratic establishment, given that some of the protesters’ complaints are directed at the Obama administration.
via Wall Street Protests Gain Support From Leading Democrats – NYTimes.com.
For an explanation with a positive, if silent, ending, see Wall Street: The Dead Face of Domination.
On why the protests won’t stop, see The Banker’s Don’t Get It.
Ah, yes, life is complicated. And ideological purity is the enemhy of people who want to get things done.
The irony is that the same elected Democrats singing the praises of Occupy Wall Street are themselves major recipients of money from … Wall Street!
Does this mean that the Democratic embrace should be rejected? Not necessarily. Occupy Wall Street could, of course, open up political space for Democrats to address unemployment, income inequality, criminality by banks, the overwhelming influence of corporate money in politics and so on. But it’s worth keeping in mind that most if not all of these politicians have been cozy with Wall Street for years; so there are grounds for suspicion.
via Dems backing Occupy Wall St. are funded by Wall St. – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.
Actually this encourages me. Our problems are deep, very deep. Our existing institutions, certainly including the two major parties, filled as they are by self-serving millionaires, are broken and in conflict. We need to grope about, perhaps aimlessly for awhile, but not forever. New coalitions will emerge. But who knows what they will be.
“I understand their cause, I understand their movement, I agree,” he says. “I’m ex-military, I have a college degree, and look what I’m doing: dirty, sweaty, making hardcore money — yet I get taxed crazy. I agree with everything they’re doing, but this is something out of ‘Lord of the Flies.’ I’m waiting for the conch to come out and people to start burning pigs.” He looks around at the more bombastic characters on the scene — a tear-streaked man angrily yelling “I need money!” while banging an empty white bucket, a woman in a Marie Antoinette costume holding a platter of cake. “This is so unorganized,” the laborer says. “The protesters aren’t doing anything that people are gonna listen to and say, ‘You know what, they’re right.’”
via “It’s a protest. It’s not Woodstock” – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.
Truth and Traditions 