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Straight A’s and a Staunch Supporter of the Occupy MovementCall me a radical, call me a hippie, call me a socialist, anarchist, liberal, even a communist – but what I am is a human being who is speaking out and acting out against economic and social inequality.
http://tinyurl.com/6slbtgd Hundreds Rally Against MBTA Cuts, Pack Meeting The proposed MBTA fare hikes_ fall disproportionally on the elderly, disabled, student and low income population, many people said at a packed-to-capacity public hearing Monday night. Following an Occupy Boston rally at Copley Square hundreds of people – many of them college students – flowed into the Boston Public Library. They filled the 342-seat auditorium and 110-seat overflow room by 6:05 p.m. Officials began turning away at least 100 people lined up inside the foyer, and promised to add more public hearings to the _already lengthy list_. http://tinyurl.com/6sjpfal The Fight Against MBTA Service Cuts and Fare Hikes Gets Ugly The latest theater in the war against MBTA fare hikes and service cuts opened Monday with a bang on every corner of the train map. Occupy Somerville forces rallied in Davis Square. Their Jamaica Plain and Dorchester counterparts gathered at Forest Hills and Fields Corner, respectively, to sound alarms about troubling proposals. Leading the pack, a group of loud and determined teens with the Youth Affordabili(T) Coalition joined hundreds from the T Riders Union (TRU) and other activist outfits for a mass rally on Copley Square outside the Boston Public Library, where the MBTA planned a bombshell public meeting for 6pm on Monday night.
Cambridge City Council Tackles Fare Hikes City Council members debated how to best address the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s most recent budget deficit at a Cambridge City Council meeting Monday evening. The MBTA has put forward two proposals, both of which include major cuts to MBTA service and sizable fare increases. The changes, which will increase fares by more than 40 percent, have upset many people in the Boston area. Noah D. McKenna, a molecular biologist at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, who is a member of Occupy Boston and Occupy the MBTA, said that “no hikes, no cuts” was the rally’s primary message. McKenna acknowledged that the MBTA is strapped for money, but said he thought that more of the deficit should be filled by funding from the state legislature rather than from MBTA customers. Occupy Harvard Protesters Remain in Lamont Café despite administration threats Despite warnings from the University that they could lose their library privileges indefinitely if they continue to sleep in the library overnight, members of the Occupy Harvard movement remained in Lamont Café on Monday to protest announced staff reductions in Harvard libraries. Protestors said Harvard University police officers handed out flyers outlining appropriate conduct for Lamont Library users on Monday afternoon. “Students, staff, faculty members, researchers, visitors, and other users who fail to comply with library rules and regulations are subject to revocation of library privileges, disciplinary action, and legal prosecution,” the flyer stated. Occupy shines the light on arbitrary application of the law Now, a new strategy is being deployed to yank the rug from under occupations in four cities: legal power. Politicians have recently passed laws in Honolulu and Charlotte, N.C., that with a stroke of the pen made the occupations illegal, enabling police to sweep them away. Two more occupations, in Boise, Idaho, and Nashville, may be nearing the end as their respective state legislatures are on the verge of outlawing the democratic villages that for months have been thriving next to edifices of power. Critics charge that the anti-Occupy laws reveal how the law is not an objective code that treats everyone equally, but an arbitrary weapon wielded by the powerful. In a separate case, the Hamilton County Commission in Tennessee gets the award for the most innovative and dicey use of the law. After passing a law on Jan. 4 that bans various activities that Occupy Chattanooga is engaged in, the commission filed suit in federal court against nine alleged occupiers, asking for a determination that the law is constitutional as well as payment for legal fees. Lawyers for the group have filed a motion to dismiss, and the suit does appear to be on shaky legal ground because “the county is trying to impose a monetary penalty on a group of innocent people for their political activity.” There is another troubling legal trend impacting the Occupy movement, according to Boghosian. She says that since protesters nonviolently shut down the 1999 World Trade Organization ministerial in Seattle, the National Lawyers Guild has observed how police work with municipalities to create ordinances in advance of “national special security events” such as the Charlotte law. Boghosian says the “event-specific ordinances are often found to be unconstitutional. They ask for prohibitive insurance. They ask for restrictive permits. They tie protesters up in court and this distracts them from the message. It becomes another way the government chills free speech.” http://tinyurl.com/7956wje Occupy the SEC Weighs In on the Volcker Rule The Occupy movement is turning up in surprising places. Yesterday was the deadline for comments to regulators about the Volcker Rule, the part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act that limits the bets financial firms can make with their own money. In the flurry of comments from all corners of the financial industry, one 325-page letter came from an unlikely source: Occupy the SEC. The group’s detailed response won quick praise from some financial bloggers. Felix Salmon calls it “absolutely astonishing” and Naked Capitalism says: “The group seems to have understood and articulated Volcker’s (and the electorate’s) intent pretty effectively.” http://tinyurl.com/8yw4564 In a 325-Page SEC Letter, Occupy’s Finance Gurus Take on Wall Street Lobbyists Yesterday, a group affiliated with Occupy Wall Street submitted an astounding comment letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Point by point, it methodically challenges the arguments of finance industry lobbyists who want to water down last year’s historic Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms. The lobbyists have been using the law’s official public comment period to try to kneecap the reforms, and given how arcane financial regulation can be, they might get away with it. But Occupy the SEC is fighting fire with fire, and in so doing, defying stereotypes of the Occupy movement. Its letter explains: Wall Street Banks Push To Weaken An Already Watered-Down Volcker Rule What the industry doesn’t mention in its effort to weaken the rule is just how successful it has been in watering it down already. With the help of Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R), the industry weakened the rule even before it became law, and it has spent the last year lobbying to make it even weaker. By the time it was unveiled, it was so weak that former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, for whom it is named, said he didn’t like it. And while opponents of the law continue to argue that it will cost the nation’s largest banks substantial sums of money, that is precisely how the law aims to create the long-term economic stability that didn’t exist prior to the financial crisis. As Reuters’ Felix Salmon wrote today, the proprietary trading prohibited by a strong Volcker rule “doesn’t just disappear.” Instead, it moves to hedge funds, brokers, and other “small-enough-to-fail institutions” that aren’t backed by taxpayers: http://tinyurl.com/7o9zqv9 Occupy Prisons Terrina describes what the process is like for those entering the prison system: When someone arrives at DW, you’re stripped, photographed, poked, prodded, asked a bunch of questions that seem to have no bearing on your actual crime or personal situation (although the answers do chart out a path for your life in DOC), and given a piece of dry stale cake to eat. Yes cake. And that is it for the day. When you take into account that the prisoners are awake and traveling before 6am, without food or drink, from the county jail, and scared, anxious and unsure of the upcoming events, not being fed until 6pm is an awfully long time. The women are placed in the first living unit. Although it is called a LIVING unit, you would think it is more like a kennel. The women are allowed out of their cell for one hour a day. At that time, they have to shower, use the phone, and try to learn the rules and regulations of their new surroundings without any guidance from the officers. Yes, it is true that there are “Posted Operational Regulations” (PORs) but … Lord forbid that the officers tell the new inmates how to use the telephone, when they are allowed to shower, how to get their medication, if needed, and, if they are pregnant, they are lucky if they are allowed to receive prenatal treatment for the first month that they are here. The Fetishization of Expression – From “Strategicism” to “Expressivism” The New Left of the early 1960s was informed by the American Civil Rights Movement (CRM) and sought to build on its experiences. And the early CRM was highly strategic, particularly during the time when it was led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). It picked concrete material targets and worked with masses of black southerners through black churches to carefully choose those targets and plan a broader campaign to bring about a definite outcome – the end of legal segregation in the South. The result was a significant improvement in the lives of southern blacks and the soul of the nation.A generation before, American working class organizers did something similar. They worked carefully and patiently through existing labor, neighborhood, ethnic, and workplace structures and networks to develop operational tactics and strategies – shop-steward systems, coordinated work stoppages in key industrial departments (ie, packinghouse kill floors, auto plant foundries), sit-down strikes, community campaigns and more – to bring about the emergence of a durable union presence and collective bargaining to the American industrial sector. The labor militants of the 1930s and 1940s knew what they wanted and how to get it. The result was a significant improvement in living standard and political power of the American working class.
This legacy of rational, planned, deliberate and strategic progressive left activism was largely blown up in the late 1960s. Bank Settlement “Doesn’t Go Far Enough” (radio) The $25 billion bank payout to homeowners announced by the Obama administration “doesn’t go far enough” to address the problem of hundreds of billions in overvalued homes, said Jordan Estavao, of the New Bottom Line coalition. Obama’s new task force on bank fraud is also open to question. “There has been a bank fraud task force set up by the Obama administration in place for the past two years, and they have done very little to bring the law to the banks,” said Estavao. “Certainly, no high level bank executives have indicted, to this point.” http://tinyurl.com/6vxyuz6 Santorum, Flopping In The Uncharted, Gets Mic-Check Rick Santorum’s face was lit from below, the microphone turned flashlight-under-the-chin, not his best look and actually kinda scary. But the local Occupy movement, having walked down the block from its encampment to his speech at the history museum here last night, was not an easily spooked bunch, and neither were the Santorum supporters who tussled with them (nor the cops who reportedly Tasered a couple of Occupiers before dragging them out). The protesters did their mic-check thing again, and again, and the conservatives listened (and, occasionally, shouted “Get a job!”), and Santorum, on the eve of another swaying in the polls, swayed right along with this almost-off-the-rails rally. The candidate talked over the Occupiers as best he could, calling them a “radical element” that relies on “bullying tactics,” before moving right along with his stump speech. Then he stopped, to beamingly thank “our men and women in uniform” as some of them confronted the protesters and pulled out the cuffs. And then Santorum swayed again: “I understand their frustrations,” he said of the movement. “For three years they haven’t been able to find work – their parents must have worked on Wall Street and got the Wall Street bailout Obama voted for.” Occupy protests to emerge from ‘winter lull’ Organizers of Occupy protests around the Midwest will gather next month in St. Louis, pledging to emerge from a “winter lull” as a bigger and stronger force. Occupy Midwest Regional Conference will start with a gathering at 7 p.m. March 15 beneath the Gateway Arch, organizer Chuck Witthaus said Tuesday. A mass occupation will continue through March 18, but not on the Arch grounds. Organizers aren’t disclosing the location. JPMorgan Chase CEO: I Was Safer In Lebanon Than With The Occupy Protesters For Jamie Dimon, the shelter of his Upper East Side mansion isn’t enough to keep him safe from the Occupy protesters. Instead, the JPMorgan Chase CEO said he felt safer halfway around the world that October day when protesters occupied the sidewalk outside his Manhattan home. “That particular day, I was in Lebanon, Beirut doing business over there and I was probably safer over there too,” Dimon told Fox News. Audio: Immanuel Wallerstein – “Upsurge in Movements Around the Globe: 1968 Redux?” (radio) Renowned scholar and author, Immanuel Wallerstein, spoke this past fall at Baltimore’s 2640 cooperative events space, on the significance and relevancy of the current waves of global upheaval and resistance. Wallerstein, recognized for his essential four-volume analysis on modern day capitalism, “The Modern World System”, reflected upon the movements for democracy coming out of the Arab Spring to the blossoming Occupy movement here in the United States. He situates these movements within the broader unstable context of global capitalism and a historical trajectory that could move the globe toward the hardening of capitalism without democracy or a push towards anti-capitalism that embraces wider democratic participation. Occupation Records shuns Apple, Amazon over ‘labor violations’ Occupation Records, the music label launched to support and fund the global Occupy protest movement, has said that it will not use Apple iTunes or Amazon as distribution methods over both companies’ alleged “labor and human rights violations”. The label’s first album, Folk the Banks, is slated for release in mid-March featuring artists including Ani DiFranco, Tom Morello, Sam Duckworth and Billy Bragg. Letter to the editor [MO]: Wealth inequity protest The critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement who see it as an indictment of capitalism and free enterprise are missing its true point. Occupy Wall Street is about the control the wealthy (the 1 percent) have over our political system, rigging it against the 99 percent. The tax code is rigged to favor the rich, as with Mitt Romney’s 14 percent effective tax rate. No oversight of corporate governance leads to CEOs earning hundreds of millions in compensation regardless of performance. Few Wall Street executives have been charged with any crimes by the Obama administration despite the obvious fraud that was committed in the mortgage markets. Members of Congress are amassing personal fortunes using inside information that regular citizens would be prosecuted for. Occupy Buffalo targets county Industrial Development Agency The Occupy Buffalo movement is targeting the Erie County Industrial Development Agency, demanding changes to its policies for granting tax breaks to businesses. About 25 activists, many of them members of Occupy Buffalo, packed the IDA’s monthly board meeting Monday and immediately made themselves heard, interrupting the session twice with group chants and a third time after the agency’s board tabled proposed tax breaks for the Millennium Hotel in Cheektowaga. http://tinyurl.com/7xkakgj “Occupy” tries to prevent fifth eviction [MI] The “Occupy our Homes” movement has taken up the cause of Fred Shrum, another homeowner facing foreclosure in Metro Detroit. Occupy Protesters Help Vet Save Home [CA] The Occupy Movement had a Valentine’s Day message for banks, and it wasn’t about love. Organizers called it “break up with your bank day.” And a foreclosure auction in Chino gave them the perfect venue to express their views. After all, Iraq War Veteran Sgt. Anthony Chavoya was about to lose his family’s Victorville home at a Valentine’s Day foreclosure auction. Breaking up with your bank; Occupy Grand Junction protests at Wells Fargo Occupy Grand Junction stood outside of Wells Fargo’s downtown branch Tuesday. The group is proclaiming the day, Valentine’s Day, as break up with your bank day. Occupy Grand Junction stood outside of Wells Fargo’s downtown branch Tuesday. The group is proclaiming the day, Valentine’s Day, as break up with your bank day. Two occupy members claimed they were withdrawing all the money from their accounts, with plans to transfer it to a smaller, local bank. http://tinyurl.com/86hmlzx Union members, Occupy Atlanta protesters rally against AT&T layoffs Hundreds of demonstrators flooded the plaza outside AT&T’s offices in midtown as Occupy Atlanta protestors and workers fearing big job cuts called for the telecommunications giant to call off the layoffs of hundreds of workers. The company is in the process of cutting 550 jobs across the southeast, 95 of them in metro Atlanta. http://tinyurl.com/788d4g4 Texas Occupy protesters support same-sex marriage at Travis Co. Clerk’s Office Valentine’s Day triggered protests at the Travis County Clerk’s Office by people supporting same-sex marriage in Texas. A group of Occupy protesters showed up to apply for marriage licenses Tuesday morning. Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir explained they could not since same-sex marriage is illegal in Texas. Three people were arrested when they tried to block the marriage license counter. http://tinyurl.com/7ozlbgr Milwaukee Tightens Security When Occupy Coalition Visits A group of 50 activists from the Occupy Coalition gathered in downtown Milwaukee recently to hold a protest of unequal distribution of city funds and a conversation with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. They were met with an enhanced police presence but did not get to meet the Mayor The Occupy Coalition includes Occupy the Hood, Occupy Milwaukee, Occupy Riverwest and Decolonize the Barrio. http://tinyurl.com/82t7464 Occupy Fairbanks sees reward for winter perseverance Occupy Fairbanks survived the harsh Alaska winter and won a national contest hosted by Occupy Supply, which will bring renowned military LGBT rights activist Lt. Dan Choi to Fairbanks. On Jan. 29, CNN circulated a video of a Fairbanks Occupier on its website. Occupy Supply provided CNN with the video, which shows 24-year-old linguistics student Forrest Andresen protesting by hold two signs that read “STOP BUYING IT” and “IN CAPITALIST AMERICA, BANK ROBS YOU!” outside of UAF in minus 43 degrees Fahrenheit. Sleeping outside and protesting while wearing only underwear and boots in cold weather is finally paying off for protestors. Occupy Fairbanks won $5,000 Command Post tents for their “outstanding community activism,” according to the Firedoglake blog founder Jane Hamsher. They are among four other tent winners in New York City, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Flint, Mich. that Occupy Supply announced on Feb. 6.http://tinyurl.com/77pn7cb
The Occupy Ithaca Movement Lives On Joined by members of the Occupy Wall Street movement from New York City, who are currently on a bus tour throughout the Northeast, marchers carried a banner that read, “Celebrate People Power” and shouted chants such as, “Hell no, we won’t go / Ithaca to Cairo.” The march eventually spilled onto the streets, while marchers danced and shouted, “Hands up / hands down / there’s a revolution in this town!” The marchers blocked traffic for a brief moment at the intersection near Collegetown Bagels. Following the march, participants reconvened at the Bernie Milton Pavilion in the center of the Commons. A police officer soon addressed them, declaring that while the protest was allowed, the marchers were not allowed to block roads for safety reasons. Police continued to be present but kept a respectful distance, at least 50 feet from the gathering. The large turnout at the rally was reminiscent of the early general assemblies that took place in Dewitt Park in the fall. Since that time, the number has decreased to about ten or 11 people, but it appears the support for the movement has not entirely subsided. http://tinyurl.com/83bhqed Jesse Jackson on Occupy The discussion focused on poverty and inequality. One question prompted Jackson to discuss his view on the Occupy movement. “Occupy is not about a place, as a camp,” said Jackson. “It is a space. It is the inequality gap and the spirit of justice that seeks to occupy that gap and cry out aloud.” http://tinyurl.com/79f9qec OWS Meets With Members of Dissident Movements From All Over the World In late January, two Wall Street Occupiers took a trip to Porto Alegre, Brazil, to meet with members of dissident movements from all over the world. The thematic Social Forum, serving as an anti-Davos economic forum, was set up to tackle the “capitalist crisis, social and environmental justice.” Nelini Stamp and Amin Husain met with, among others, Chilean student demonstrators, Tunisian revolutionaries and “indignant citizens” from Greece and Spain. http://tinyurl.com/7jnnol7 In Germany’s Financial Capital, The Occupy Protest Soldiers On – Despite The Weather The cold snap gripped much of Europe, freezing rivers, interrupting barges, and threatening heating sources. But it seemed to invigorate the anti-inequality activists in Germany’s financial capital of Frankfurt. The stalwart protesters there are one Europe’s main surviving – and thriving – Occupy Movement encampments. Since October, hundreds of residents have been bivouacking in tents in a quaint park directly across from the European Central Bank. Last week, as temperatures plunged to this winter’s low of -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit), a core group of 38 held their ground and slept in their tents – a survival challenge that was both physical and ideological. http://tinyurl.com/7ark6xm Hillel [OH] hosts ‘Occupy Tel Aviv’ talk On Thursday, Feb. 9, Professor Noah Efron of Bar-Ilan University in Israel gave a talk entitled “The Israeli Citizens Demand Social Justice” in the Cleveland State University Student Center. CSU’s chapter of Hillel, the foundation for Jewish campus life, sponsored the discussion and lunch. Efron was invited to speak to the CSU community about Israel’s version of Occupy Wall Street, known as Occupy Tel Aviv. Israelis today are upset over the income gap between rich and poor, which is the fifth largest among developed nations, and corruption in politics, he said. However, the issue that sparked the creation of Occupy Tel Aviv was the high price of housing in Israel’s cities. The protest started in mid-July of 2011 when a college student, who had been evicted from her incredibly high-priced apartment, invited her Facebook friends to pitch tents and camp out on a Tel Aviv boulevard. By the end of the week, 100 tents had formed a make-shift city. After two weeks, 68 tent cities had sprung up all-over Israel, and 350,000 people had marched together protesting inequality. http://tinyurl.com/7n5gk7e |
One Response to “The OB Media Rundown for 2/15/12”
on February 17th, 2012 at 4:26 am #
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