Tag Archives: occupy wall street

A Practical or Coalition Strategy for “Truth and Traditions” Party as Paleocon Greens

5 Jun

By Charlie Keil

There is NO split in the Republican Party unless there is a real T for Truth Party that old-fashioned, paleo-conservatives can vote for happily with confidence and in good conserving conscience. By Traditions, plural, we mean the diversity of eco-moralities that once upon a time (pick your pre-industrial era) kept all of us in some kind of balance with “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” If there is no real TnT Party most of those Ron Paul teaparty voters stay trapped inside the Republican Party at election time. You can guess who will win big in 2012, a divided but ‘big tent’ Republican Party. Same party that elected colorful women to governorships in New Mexico and North Carolina. Continue reading →

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Arrests on Lower East Side as May Day Protests Spread – NYTimes.com

1 May

And that’s not all. Action in California too:

The May Day demonstrations took place across the country and in countries across the globe.

In the Bay Area in California, marches and protests snarled traffic and caused road closures. Hundreds marched through Oakland, temporarily closing streets and bank branches and clashes with officers in riot gear, who deployed tear gas on crowds.

Service to the Golden Gate Ferry service, used by many commuters from Marin County, Calif. to San Francisco, was shut down after workers in bitter contract negotiations over health insurance coverage went on strike and picketed ferry terminals.

via Arrests on Lower East Side as May Day Protests Spread – NYTimes.com.

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Roseanne Barr for President

1 May

Roseanne Barr is running for President on the Green Party. Her campaign website:

On August 4th, 2011, Roseanne Barr announced her candidacy for President of the United States on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, declaring that she would not run as a Democrat or a Republican “because they both suck and they’re both a bunch of criminals.” She has since decided to seek the nomination of the Green Party of the United States.

On Day 1 of #OccupyWallStreet, September 17th, 2011, Roseanne became the first public figure to stand with the occupiers in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, delivering a speech before the very first General Assembly.

If elected, Roseanne’s presidency will manifest world peace in less than one year!

You know what they say, if you want to see interesting things happen, set a goal and go after it. Even if you don’t reach the goal, good things will happen. One year! Peace! Sounds good to me.

Go to the campaign Facebook page and Like it. Continue reading →

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Can Citigroup Shareholders Launch a Revolt on Banks? – Business – The Atlantic Wire

19 Apr

The shareholders of Citigroup voted to reject the generous pay package of the CEO Vikram Pandit this week, setting up a potential showdown that could ripple throughout the corporate world. The “advisory” vote — which is required by the Dodd-Frank Act, but is not binding — now puts the company’s directors in awkward position. They can go along with it and ask Pandit to “give back” some of the $34 million it paid him last year, or they can ignore it and defy the people they theoretically work for. Neither option is attractive, but how it plays out could change the very nature of the shareholder-corporation relationship. It’s the first time a major Wall Street firm has had to face such a vote and it probably won’t be the last one to lose it.

… However, it’s now clear from this shareholder move that it isn’t just Occupy Wall Streeters who are annoyed with the outrageous sums that top executives take home. Now they’re actively trying to do something about it.

via Can Citigroup Shareholders Launch a Revolt on Banks? – Business – The Atlantic Wire.

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Five Ways to Support Re-Occupation | The Nation

17 Apr

Empowered by a federal court ruling that allows protesters to legally sleep on public sidewalks, as long as they don’t block building entrances or take up more than half of the available space, #SleepfulProtest is proving to be an effective new tactic helping speed Occupy Wall Street’s re-emergence into the streets and public spaces of the US. (My colleague Allison Kilkenny recently explained and explored this new strategy.)

It’s been so effective, in fact, that this morning at 6:00 am the NYPD, in direct defiance of the 2000 decision Metropolitan Council Inc. v. Safir, which held “public sleeping as a means of symbolic expression” to be constitutionally protected speech, raided the corner across from the New York Stock Exchange where Occupiers have been sleeping. A motion for an emergency injunction against NYPD disruption of the sidewalk protests was filed this morning.

In the meantime, here are five ways you can help support the Re-Occupation of America:

1. Go to Wall Street to join the Occupiers if you can….

2. Spread the word.  …

3. Donate to Occupy Wall Street through its website. …

4. Get ready for the May 1 actions. This is expected to be a major day of resistance on many fronts and of many forms. Do something!

5. Help save Chicago’s Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic.

via Five Ways to Support Re-Occupation | The Nation.

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Occupy Returns to Its Roots With ‘Sleepful Protests’ | The Nation

12 Apr

Now let’s sleep on the sidewalks outside banks, but within legal limits. No big camps, just modest sleep-ins:

The concept of sleepful protests combines Occupy’s two most powerful elements: physical occupations and the targeting of Wall Street, thereby alleviating one of the major criticisms of OWS, which was that the occupations of parks and squares is too far removed from the movement’s actual targets.

When people see Occupiers sleeping outside a bank, the natural question for them to ask is “Why this bank?” And that allows the protesters to segue into an explanation of what Occupy is and what they stand for.

via Occupy Returns to Its Roots With ‘Sleepful Protests’ | The Nation.

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Farmers March with Occupy Wall Street: Sowing the Seeds of Hope and Democracy

28 Dec

According to AlterNet, more than “500 rural farmers, urban farmers, food laborers, community activists and former occupiers” showed up for the beginning of the day at an East Village community garden, which began with Bronx urban farmer Karen Washington telling an energetic crowd of her journey over the past two decades to create a healthy food environment for her neighborhood.

Washington, who helped found the City Farms Markets, a series of community-run farmers markets, was stunned to hear that “food was a privilege and not a right”. So she set out to change that, mainly by putting her hands in the dirt, planting seeds and feeding her community. Through her work in the Bronx, Washington is helping combat the major issues of obesity, diabetes and lack of access to healthy food faced by underserved communities. …

Over the past three decades, the U.S. has adopted economic policies promoted by Wall Street investment banks and agribusiness monopolies that have led to massive concentration in food and agriculture. Today market concentration is so great that only four firms control 84 percent of beef packing and 66 percent of pork production, which has resulted in forcing more than 1.1 million independent livestock producers out of business since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.

via Farmers March with Occupy Wall Street: Sowing the Seeds of Hope and Democracy.

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Where I stand on the Occupy movement – Roger Ebert’s Journal

7 Dec

A clear majority of Americans should be in sympathy with the Occupy Movement. That they are not is a tribute to an effective right wing propaganda machine given voice by Fox News, radio talkers like Rush Limbaugh, and financed by the Koch brothers among many others. The machine’s audience is to oppose its own self-interest and support the interests of the rich….

There was a time in the not very distant American past when it was easier to support a family and buy a home. Now many college graduates find themselves moving back in with their parents. They’re living off prosperity that was built up when the economy wasn’t stacked against them.

President Obama went to Kansas on Tuesday to make the kind of speech I’ve been waiting and hoping for. It was billed as sort of a keynote for his campaign. He said, “This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share and when everyone plays by the same rules.” Isn’t that true? Does everyone get a fair shot? When the Republicans try to exempt the financial industry from regulation, is that playing by the same rules?

via Where I stand on the Occupy movement – Roger Ebert’s Journal.

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A Guide to the Occupy Wall Street API, Or Why the Nerdiest Way to Think About OWS Is So Useful – Technology – The Atlantic

3 Dec

The Occupy movement explained as components of an application interface (API, a programming specification).

The most fascinating thing about Occupy Wall Street is the way that the protests have spread from Zuccotti Park to real and virtual spaces across the globe. Metastatic, the protests have an organizational coherence that’s surprising for a movement with few actual leaders and almost no official institutions. Much of that can be traced to how Occupy Wall Street has functioned in catalyzing other protests. Local organizers can choose from the menu of options modeled in Zuccotti, and adapt them for local use. Occupy Wall Street was designed to be mined and recombined, not simply copied.

via A Guide to the Occupy Wall Street API, Or Why the Nerdiest Way to Think About OWS Is So Useful – Technology – The Atlantic.

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What’s in a Name? “Pepper Spray”

24 Nov

The police use of so-called pepper spray is much in the news and on the web these days, especially as a result of its use at University of California at Davis. According to The New York Times“Megyn Kelly on Fox News dismissed pepper spray as ‘a food product, essentially.” That same story also reports:

To the American Civil Liberties Union, its use as a crowd-control device, particularly when those crowds are nonthreatening, is an excessive and unconstitutional use of force and violates the right to peaceably assemble.

A food product? Excessive and unconstitutional? One and the same product. I understand the name’s derivation, that the active ingredient—technically, oleoresin capsicum—is the chemical that causes the ‘bite’ in peppers. The use of THAT name, of course, automatically associates the spray with food. Not only is food innocuous, it’s necessary for life. So the name tells us that this agent is, at most, an exaggeration or amplification of something that’s good for us: “Eat your spinach, it’s good for you.” We don’t think that such an agent could put someone in the hospital or induce possibly permanent nerve damage. How would these stories play out if the spray was known as ‘liquid pain’ or ‘torture spray’? How would the officers using the agent think of themselves and their actions if they thought of the agent as torture spray rather than as a food derivative?

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