Tag Archives: occupywallstreet

Occupy Offshoot Aims to Erase People’s Debts – NYTimes.com

14 Nov

The group, an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement called Strike Debt, is trying to buy some of the debts that people have accrued — which lenders often sell for pennies on the dollar to third parties who either try to collect on it or bundle it up for resale. Strike Debt, however, is not looking to collect on them; instead it plans to give some debtors the surprise of a lifetime.

“Basically what we’re going to do is exactly the same as what a regular debt buyer would do, with one big difference,” said Thomas Gokey, an artist and teacher. “Rather than collect the debt, we’re just going to abolish it.”

via Occupy Offshoot Aims to Erase People’s Debts – NYTimes.com.

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Monkeys reject unequal pay

21 Aug

Greg Mankiw points us to this revealing video from Frans de Waal. This is an excerpt from a longer TED video, also excellent.

Follow the link and check out the video. It’s wonderful,

via Monkeys reject unequal pay.

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What Does Grassroots Mean Anymore? | Irregular Times

8 May

The idea of grassroots organizing is that it’s supposed to be supported from the lowest levels first, like the way that grass grows, without reliance on centralized organizations or large sources of support. In grassroots organizing, people who have little power individually can form networks together that cannot be easily defeated because even when one part of the organization is attacked, new shoots can rise up to fill in, just as grass roots run in a complex weave of long thin contributions from many different plants to occupy a large space. In a piece of genuine turf, individual roots aren’t growing to create some kind of predetermined shape. The strong mat of green that results from their work is a result of unpredictable growth that doesn’t have a pattern that’s easy to pick apart. Its strength is that it is a jumbled mess.

What George Soros and his wealthy fellows are doing is giving a big load of fertilizer to a group of organizations that grow more like trees. These organizations have a centralized trunk and root system, and without those centralized systems, the organizations will die. Cut them back from the top, and they won’t regrow. They haven’t grown spontaneously from a network of small individuals. They’re the results of single seeds that have grown individually large and powerful.

…Big media organizations such as the New York Times have lost touch with what genuine grassroots organizations look like. What these corporate news operations describe with the the term “grassroots” nowadays is rather like their own organizations: Designed for consumption by individuals, but only though a system of distribution controlled from the top down, powered by large payments from a few sources with a lot of money.

via What Does Grassroots Mean Anymore? | Irregular Times.

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David Graeber: On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet « naked capitalism

28 Oct

2) The Occupiers ‘broke the frame’—the frame of the narrative and the conditioned response, but more than that too—by acting ON THEIR OWN AND WITHOUT REFERENCE TO AUTHORITY, and above all in flat, reasoned, and non-negotiable rejection of the official consensus reality on economics and politics presently operative in our society.

via David Graeber: On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet « naked capitalism.

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On Wall Street, a Protest Matures – NYTimes.com

4 Oct

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN, who gets phone calls from Wall Street CEOs went down to Zuccotti Park to check out the protest.

“Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?” the C.E.O. asked me. I didn’t have an answer. “We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this,” he continued, clearly concerned. “Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?”

A personal safety issue? No. But . . .

… the underlying message of Occupy Wall Street — which spread to Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles on Monday — is something the big banks and corporate America may finally have to grapple with before it actually does become dangerous.

What’s the message?

At times it can be hard to discern, but, at least to me, the message was clear: the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.

And that message is a warning shot about the kind of civil unrest that may emerge — as we’ve seen in some European countries — if our economy continues to struggle.

via On Wall Street, a Protest Matures – NYTimes.com.

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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Why OccupyWallStreet beats Save the Middle Class

2 Oct

A shrewd analysis by Stirling Newberry, whom I first met online in the “old days” at Salon’s Table Talk.

The grind of reality is going to coöpt occupy. The police are not their friends. They have no one to vote for, and so must get more radical until a candidate finds them. Occupy is the meme that takes in the unemployed, the working, the disaffected. Many young people rebel against the very values that “middle class” presupposes.

via The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Why OccupyWallStreet beats Save the Middle Class.

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