(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
The resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza 😉
Microphones, speakers and bull horns have been banned from use because they lack the permit required by NYC, so when Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz spoke at Liberty Square on Sunday he used the “Peoples’ Microphone”. He was joined by New York Times book reviewer a and economics columnist, Jeff Madrick and looked like he was having a really good time:
It was rather amazing how this just emerged in the middle of Zuccotti park AKA LIBERTY SQUARE. The “people’s mic” check occurred, and suddenly we were listening to two important economists of our time speak to the protestors.
Great point about bullhorns…
Stiglitz is one of the most frequently cited economists in the world. It was great to hear the two of them speak, informally, in this magical setting. All types of people were listening, many folks were recording sound and visuals. The rain had stopped and a question and answer session had followed.
We Are All Human Microphones Now
by Richard Kim
Anyone who’s been down to Occupy Wall Street and stayed for a General Assembly will instantly recognize the call and response that begins, and frequently interrupts, each meeting.
“Mic check?” someone implores.
“MIC CHECK!” the crowd shouts back, more or less in unison.
You see, New York City requires a permit for “amplified sound” in public, something that the pointedly unpermitted Occupy Wall Street lacks. This means that microphones and speakers are banned from Liberty Plaza, and the NYPD has also been interpreting the law to include battery-powered bullhorns. Violators can be sentenced for up to thirty days in prison. Further complicating the matter is the fact that Liberty Plaza is not actually a public park. It’s privately owned by Brookfield Office Properties, landlords to Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, and in addition to amplified sound, they’ve also sought to ban sleeping bags, tents and other equipment from what they call “Zuccotti Park.”
Suffice to say, despite all the attention given to how Twitter, Facebook and livestream video have helped spread the word, the heart of the occupation is most definitely unplugged. But the protesters aren’t deterred one bit; they’ve adopted an ingeniously simple, people-powered method of sound amplification. After the mic check, the meeting proceeds:
with every few words / WITH EVERY FEW WORDS!
repeated and amplified out loud / REPEATED AND AMPLIFIED OUT LOUD!
After his rousing speech Prof Stiglitz appeared on Lawrence O’Donnell’s The Last Word where he discussed discussed the movement and gives some advice to the GOP:
Occupy Wall Street Doesn’t Need to Issue Any Demands (Yet)
by Kevin Gosztola
Over the weekend, Occupy Wall Street held its largest march yet on the streets of lower Manhattan. Somewhere between three and five thousand people participated in the march that ended on the Brooklyn Bridge after the New York Police Department (NYPD) led hundreds to inadvertently commit one of the most powerful acts of civil disobedience in recent American history. Seven hundred or more occupiers were arrested, the largest mass arrest in the country since the protests against the imminent invasion of Iraq.
The past three days saw support grow tremendously, as major unions decided to endorse the occupation. United Steelworkers Union, United Federation of Teachers, 32BJ SEIU, 1199 SEIU, Workers United and the New York Local 1 Transportation Workers Union all came out in support. They and Make the Road New York, New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts and the Alliance for Quality Education now plan to have their members participate in a “Community/Labor March in Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street” on Wednesday at City Hall. New York University (NYU) students have called for a walkout to show solidarity with the occupiers and protest student debt and soaring tuition rates. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has spoken in favor of the occupation, as has Van Jones, whose “Rebuilding the Dream” summit is in Washington, DC, this week.
Take Back the American Dream Conference: Building Off the #OccupyWallStreet Movement
Bt David Dayen
The Campaign for America’s Future expected their conference to be a launching pad for an American Dream Movement that would be a counterpart to the Tea Party, a left populist movement that would branch out across the country. And that movement has built itself up over the past couple months, and was in part responsible for the invisible town hall revolution over August.
But CAF found itself caught by an organic protest movement, a disparate movement organized by a simple theme, an expression of the feeling of mass injustice. Nobody on the left was totally prepared for #OccupyWallStreet, which sprung up on its own. But the groups that have been organizing in similar ways and with a similar theme were more than prepared to support it.
The spirit of #OccupyWallStreet has given a booster shot to this Take Back the American Dream Conference, which last year was completely moribund. The first session at the conference was a paean to #OccupyWallStreet, with video from New York City (the live feed crashed, unfortunately) and even one organizer who camped out in Zuccotti Park speaking. “If we demand something from Wall Street, we’re telling them that they have the power, but we do,” said the organizer from the Working Families Party in New York.
Patriotic Millionaires Echo Occupy Wall Street (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)
At last week’s Occupy Wall Street San Francisco protest, demonstrators gathered in the Financial District chanting, “Why is life a bitch? ‘Cause we don’t tax the rich.” And according to Bay Area-founded Patriotic Millionaires, many of the rich agree.
Now a national organization, the Patriotic Millionaires is a group of super wealthy individuals urging the government to increase taxes on those with incomes over $1 million — the very tax group they represent. Members are largely made up of successful alumni from start-ups like Google, Esprit and Aardvark, and argue that if the 375,000 Americans with incomes over $1 million were taxed more aggressively, the nation could maintain the federally funded programs that helped make them rich in the first place. The group also encourages the expiration of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for the wealthy — cuts that, the group points out, were never meant to be permanent, and are crippling the economy.
Occupy Wall Street is a tea party with brains
By David Weidner, MarketWatch
Commentary: Protesters seek a political process that doesn’t exclude them
More than two weeks after a band of young people began camping out under the shadow of the New York Stock Exchange, the movement to remake America’s inequitable financial system is growing
It’s been called the Woodstock of Wall Street, but that’s hardly an apt comparison. The gathering at Max Yasgur’s farm 42 years ago was built on a generation looking for peace, love, some drugs and acid rock. The kids today are looking for real, tangible change of the capitalist sort. They’re organized, lucid and motivated.
Actually, they have more in common with the tea party movement than the hippie dream, with one key difference. They’re smart enough to recognize the nation’s problems aren’t simply about taxes and the deficit.
They want jobs. They want the generation in power to acknowledge them. They want political change. They want responsibility in a culture that abdicates it. They want a decent future of opportunity.
If that isn’t American, then what is?
Occupy Wall Street’s message
Los Angeles Times Edotorial
It is far too early to suggest that the protesters represent a resurgence of the left. Yet it would be a mistake to write off the movement before it gets started.
The pundit class has largely ignored, dismissed or mocked the Occupy Wall Street protest (the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, for example, calls the protesters “a collection of ne’er-do-wells raging against Wall Street, or something”). We too find it hard to get especially worked up over a series of small demonstrations in a handful of cities, including Los Angeles, involving mostly disaffected people who have trouble expressing what it is they’re against. But isn’t that how the “tea party” started out?
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how this plays out.
It’s highly likely that because Obama has been a Republican-Lite weakling, and the Repubs are motivated and have been shrewd with redistricting & voter ID suppression efforts, he wont get a second term.
Then what happens?
—Do the Dems learn the right lesson from defeat or do they continue to be Corporatists Tools?
—What happens to the protests and the people protesting? A return to the era of apathy or do things finally get serious?