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Profile: People of Occupy Boston – Al Suarez
BLAST Magazine: What do you do?AS: On camp I worked with both media group and safety group. One of the reasons safety group was important is because outsiders would sometimes come into camp and seemed like they might hurt people. Media group is important because the mainstream media is biased. We need to have our own voice.
Boston Globe Letter to the Editor: General welfare not in the sights of corporate America Steven Syre ( “Politics and private equity,” Business, Dec. 20) states a false dichotomy about private equity firms, saying that they are perceived either as “bold risk-takers serving capitalism, or rapacious predators destroying companies and jobs.” In fact, they are both, which was the point of Occupy Boston’s encampment at Dewey Square, near the downtown financial district. The critical message is that the financial industry and corporate America in general in fact serve only capitalism, an amoral economic theory cum ideology that dictates the maximization of profit as the highest good. This maximization is irrespective of the public interest, i.e. what the Constitution quaintly refers to as the general welfare, being the proper object of a truly democratic government. Will The Echoes Of OWS Be Heard In 2012? A growing frustration between the CEOs on Wall Street and the average Joe sent hordes of protesters to pitch tents and become a part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. But as the year comes to a close, do the protesters feel they’ve been heard? Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz checks in with an Occupy D.C. protester, Charles Zhu, he met in McPherson Square last October.
After months of virtually no use of the Fed’s discount window, borrowing jumped to an average of $400m/day in the week through Wednesday. The Fed reports only the weekly average of daily borrowing and the daily amount outstanding on Wednesday. From these figures, we estimate that on one day last week, total discount window borrowing reached $2.5bn. Of course, the same $400m/day weekly average could have been achieved with a bank borrowing $900mn on Friday. It is unclear what prompted this pick-up in borrowing from the Fed. There was neither a spike in the fed funds rate nor any disruption in the repo market, so we are a bit puzzled. Of course, under Dodd-Frank, the borrowing bank’s name will be released – after two years. Yes, the name of the bank that received what amounts to a Fed bailout will be released in two years, but no, we disagree that there was no disruption in the Repo Market. Perhaps Joseph forgets that the Fed lends out Discount Window cash to “eligible” entities out of Europe. . . where the repo market is in total collapse and wholesale disarray. Revolutionary blogger freed in Egypt A prominent Egyptian blogger freed by an Egyptian judge on Sunday lambasted the military government and said “nothing has changed” since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power in February. The Big Lie You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility. You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded congressmen pick up your mantra and invite you to testify at hearings. You’re chosen for an investigative panel related to your topic. When other panel members, after inspecting your evidence, reject your thesis, you claim that they did so for ideological reasons. This, too, is repeated by your allies. Soon, the echo chamber you created drowns out dissenting views; even presidential candidates begin repeating the Big Lie. The Giving Season: Why the 99% Are Actually More Philanthropic Than the 1% To discover what motivates giving Paul K, Piff, a PhD candidate in social psychology at University of California carried out a series of experiments. He discovered that people earning $15,000 or less are more generous, charitable, trusting and helpful to others than those earning more than $150,000. http://tinyurl.com/7su3evn The First Occupy Wall Street Legislation? In the post-occupation hangover, a (or the) big question is whether or not and to what extent Occupy Wall Street’s message will have managed to translate into actual policy. OWS itself has strenuously refused to get involved in coming up with any legislation, since the movement wants to eschew mainstream politics at large. Today we caught wind of the Restore the American Dream for the 99% Act, which is to our knowledge the first piece of legislation inspired by OWS. The act was written by Congressional Progressive Caucus members Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). Like the OWS movement itself, the proposed legislation is wide-ranging, encompassing job creation measures, new taxes on Wall Street, and Medicare and Social Security protections. http://tinyurl.com/7w4ldvs 99% Occupy Wall Street Movement and Political Prisoners in Iran Iranian activists are raising awareness among protestors at Occupy Wall Street Movement on the situation of political prisoners and the ongoing repression of dissidents in Iran. http://tinyurl.com/77dhvwt It’s Time that We Valued People Over Profits, Poll Results Show The British public want business to put “people before profits” and to see politicians close the gap between rich and poor, according to a new survey. The findings suggest growing support for “responsible capitalism” in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and bankers’ excessive bonuses – and public sympathy with the anti-globalization protests such as the Occupy London camp outside St Paul’sCathedral. http://tinyurl.com/c89pzkc AP data: States shed thousands of public employees State governments across the country have cut more than 80,000 jobs since the beginning of the recession, reflecting steep drops in tax revenue and providing a drag on the economies in many parts of the country, the Associated Press has found. http://tinyurl.com/6n634ka Why we need the government for innovation You can go back to the Revolutionary War and find government’s fingerprints on innovations from machine tools to railroads, electricity transmission, transistors, lasers, the internet, GPS, and every aspect of energy exploration and development. “We don’t pick winners” is not only a canard that reveals a lack of historical perspective. It’s a great way to thwart American global competitiveness because there’s simply no question that other economies, advanced and emerging, are not the slightest bit hamstrung by such ideological myths. http://tinyurl.com/89t9jwu
Assessing the art of the Occupy movement (slideshow) “When you’re in riot gear, everything looks like a riot.” |
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on December 27th, 2011 at 8:01 am #
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