Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

anybody know anything about the sudden silence from various #OWS channels? muttering of the brook on twitter is that the official @occupywallst account is the only game in town suddenly and for no particular reason.

http://www.itisamystery.com/itisamystery.gif

all livestreams down

they're all wasting their breath talking to Steve Malzberg!

there's prob not a lot to be livestreaming atm

i got chills. i'm only human!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquO90QZA1w&sns=fb

ive heard reports of cellphone network shutdowns citywide, which if true is kinda scary

there really wouldn't be a good reason to do that

I mean that would literally fuck wall street people more than ows people

someone on my facebook said the wikileaks truck was stolen!

(i don't know what that means to anyone...)

in any case and for whatever reason, phone reception was apparently lost and the feeds went down

Reports of NYPD deleting phone photo data and confiscating memory cards from arrested protestors

Reports of NYPD deleting phone photo data and confiscating memory cards from arrested protestors

― Put another Juggle in, in the Juggalodeon (kingfish), Thursday, November 17, 2011 11:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

time for another donation to the ACLU. get those lawsuits started, no?

ive heard reports of cellphone network shutdowns citywide, which if true is kinda scary

― am0n, Friday, November 18, 2011 12:44 AM

err not citywide, but u know what i mean

ugh in portland today a woman was raped shortly before the riot police converged on occupyportland tried to march over the steel bridge. they didn't respond to the rape victim for three hours and the police chief/portland mayoral candidate blamed the occupy movement for making the police "too tired" to do their job. Go fuck yourself with that shit.

URL for that is http://t.co/vRpLMj8U btw

also I think maybe being chief of police and running for mayor at the same time is ultra problematic for all kinds of reasons but that probably belongs on some other thread.

i just watched law and order for five hours in jail

and yeah guy who put the zipties on me gave me the same line about the militarized presence at the protest making it impossible to do police work elsewhere and i was like that sounds serious maybe you should take it up w/ your boss

http://media.katu.com/images/111117_pepper_spray_405.jpg

^^^ outside chase today. girl was a trouper.

geez dfh.

dlh, check your fb messages

done!

(obv you already know that though)

also kingfish, checking the other thread i'm sorry i didn't coordinate anything! we need to learn what one another look like at some point because i think chances are good we've seen each other.

You only spent five hours?!? I spent almost twelve, including three avoiding the pool of urine by the clogged toilet that drew ever closer.

it wasn't actually a very short sentence, it was a very long book-and-release.

exactly ten minutes longer in fact than would have enabled me to catch my train. which i am maybe 80% on their doing on purpose.

how many arrested and did you go to a holding area or the hoosegow?

15 i think were arrested in my group, 22 or so more in an earlier action at wells fargo and i'm sure others throughout the day. they took us to a parking garage somewhere i assumed was a cia black site and let most of us go with citations, but i'm an idiot and had looked at my wallet that morning and thought "lol i don't have any cash, i don't even have any money in my bank account, what kind of grandiose delusion is it to carry around a wallet" and left it behind, so i didn't have my ID, so i went to jail, cuz apparently you go to jail if you don't have your ID. a few other guys did too -- most because they had priors; one for the same reason as me -- as did the girl in the pepper-spray photo above, as far as i could tell just for being pepper-sprayed.

all released around 1 AM.

except for two guys who went down a hallway and we never saw again. the hallway led both to the cells and to the exit so they could be anywhere.

we did an earlier thing at bank of america but they locked their doors in time so we just sat outside for a while and sloganed while they yelled "GET A JOB" through the glass. some wag in a suit inside put up a sign saying PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR so i put one up facing in saying PLEASE USE OTHER SOURCE OF GAMBLING FUNDS and he mouthed "that's pretty good" through the glass. they won though because eventually we just left.

oh and somebody commandeered the pompous flagpoles outside of wells fargo and ran up 1) an inverted american flag (totally feel this in the distress-signal sense but probably not the best idea from a PR standpoint oh well) and 2) an OCCUPY banner, which was pretty cool. made the news. the inverted american flag, i mean. of course.

by pretty cool i actually mean that was totally rad and i saluted it and everything.

1) an inverted american flag (totally feel this in the distress-signal sense but probably not the best idea from a PR standpoint oh well)

lol agreed

some wag in a suit inside put up a sign saying PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR so i put one up facing in saying PLEASE USE OTHER SOURCE OF GAMBLING FUNDS and he mouthed "that's pretty good" through the glass

loooool

xp it was satisfying on a complicated personal level for me, though, because of an Embarrassing Incident i had in fifth-grade "flag duty", to see a crowd of people cheering the upside-down flag.

http://media.katu.com/images/111117_pepper_spray_405.jpg
http://i56.tinypic.com/13ydwm9.gif

isn't that chick one of the X-Men

whatever, girl's on some boudica shit

also digging whatever that garment is in bottom left

her right breast?

that was your birthday present

max's brother? http://boingboing.net/2011/11/17/interview-with-the-occupy-wall.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=36761

my 45-year-old brother

as did the girl in the pepper-spray photo above, as far as i could tell just for being pepper-sprayed.

― occupy the A train (difficult listening hour), Friday, November 18, 2011 7:33 AM

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/17/1037332/-OWS-Participants-Your-Rights-Under-Federal-Law-if-You-are-Pepper-Sprayed-Why-You-Should-Sue-

PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR so i put one up facing in saying PLEASE USE OTHER SOURCE OF GAMBLING FUNDS and he mouthed "that's pretty good" through the glass.

this is my favorite ows related story so far

http://boingboing.net/2011/11/17/interview-with-the-occupy-wall.html

see 4 posts up

I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours.

I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her. I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

She wouldn’t take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she’d been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

“I can’t charge you money, this is for the people,” she said.

also let her know that the people need a date this weekend

did you just call her a whore

pretty sure i did not

http://mobile.oregonlive.com/advorg/pm_32330/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=gf9Ghoqi

Occupy Portland: Image of Portland police pepper spraying protester goes viral

there are two dates this weekend: the 19th and the 20th. the people can pick either, or both.

http://www.spirituosenworld.de/produkte/wodka/details/absolut_peppar_gr.jpg

wish there had been pepperoni spray for the free pizza in Foley Sq last night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbeSfDbAAmI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNsG1szQPqo

lol

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11314508/1/tj-maxx-debuts-amid-occupy-wall-street.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN

"People are most excited to get through the barricades," said one TJ Maxx salesperson who was greeting shoppers with "I heart TJ" bags. "One woman ran in and exclaimed, 'I made it!'"

http://touringplans.com/assets/pages/rope-drop-mk.jpg

"People are most excited to get through the barricades," said one TJ Maxx salesperson who was greeting shoppers with "I heart TJ" bags.

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/personalities/personality/1021/character3_0_jpg_90x150_upscale_q85.jpg

LOL

I remember her from the old Corner thread. What was her name...?

hello Jeanketeers!

Hola amigos, it's been a while since I last rapped with ya

jean teasdale

a friend who attended the occupy chicago march yesterday sent this:

http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa356/fugexlac/99CBoT.jpg

While the cops followed the marchers meandering around the loop, a suspension system was rigged and when the crowd came back they raised a big beautiful banner....

that's the board of trade bldg fyi

http://mobile.oregonlive.com/advorg/pm_32330/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=gf9Ghoqi

Occupy Portland: Image of Portland police pepper spraying protester goes viral

― Put another Juggle in, in the Juggalodeon (kingfish), Friday, November 18, 2011 9:26 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

oh rad. was hoping it would become an at least minor Deal; it seemed to have potential.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhl03fZ9Q2w

(much cheering from us waiting to be released when it came on the news. was a relief after the mentalist.)

A group of students launched into a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, to the disgust of an older protester who shouted, “Those bombs bursting in midair created this beast. The Star Spangled Banner is not our song. We will create a new song, a new anthem.” As if to clinch the argument, he added, “Wall Street was built by the Dutch to keep the Native Americans out!” Here, microscopically, were the two sides of Occupy Wall Street: those who believed they were reclaiming an American value that had been lost, and those who believed that there was nothing to reclaim, that an acceptable history did not exist and would have to be created from scratch after a revolution.

Occupy Wall Street Turns A Corner

old lady from code pink got into a long shouting match with our people when they put this up, saying "he would not want to be memorialized in that baby-killer uniform"

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2011/10/31/mn-occupy01_rdp__0504468020.jpg

I think the uniform is the least of that image's problems.

thank goodness 4chan's on our side

Those bombs bursting in midair created this beast. The Star Spangled Banner is not our song. We will create a new song, a new anthem.” As if to clinch the argument, he added, “Wall Street was built by the Dutch to keep the Native Americans out!”

the Sententious Hippie makes his appearance.

It's a lousy song; Woody Guthrie or Ween plz

thank goodness 4chan's on our side

― occupy the A train (difficult listening hour), Friday, November 18, 2011 8:19 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

is there something 4channy abt the image or

http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2011/11/18/berkeley-students-float-tents-over-banned-area/?tsp=1

xp just seemed like the combination of solemn subject people will get upset if you treat lightly + discrepancy in eye size would have been fodder for their mocker hordes but maybe this is a back-in-the-day thing. i guess they're all neuromancers now.

i just ask cause notably that is hanging on our tech tent which is run by a gang of redditors & a dude who's on 4chan a lot

psst hoos you just outed anonymous
eavelay offlay ithway the itchinsnay

haha

lol

lol

Caribou Barbie talkin' all 99ish!

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/18/palin_embraces_ows/singleton/

Yesterday during all the N17, Jim Wallis reached out to a non-trad audience by posting this thru Sojourners:

http://sojo.net/blogs/2011/11/17/church-sanctuary-occupy-movement

...
It’s also a way to connect the generations in the context of a community for people of all ages. Because all social movements inevitably generate tension and even outright conflict, they need safe space, places to rest and rejuvenate. They need sanctuary.

Offering that sanctuary to the Occupiers — at our tables, on our property, in our parish halls and church basements, and in our sanctuaries for the quiet prayer and reflection that every movement needs to sustain itself — could be the beginning of a powerful relationship between the faith community and the leaders of an emerging generation that is so clearly and passionately committed to creating a better world.

Mor lik dis plz:

http://www.workingamerica.org/blog/2011/11/16/occupy-cleveland-helps-a-single-mother-stay-in-her-home/

re: Occupy Oakland
Tim Simons, 28, an organizer with the group, said Occupy activists had picked the site because groups representing businesses in the area - including the Chamber of Commerce and the Lake Merritt-Uptown District Association - were "our enemies."

Simons said the chamber's motives were influenced by banks and large corporations, noting that board members are employed by Visa, Wells Fargo and AT&T.

The business groups pushed for Occupy to be evicted from its first camp at 14th Street and Broadway, Simons said. "They're out here trying to make a buck in this neighborhood through gentrification," he said. "They need to know we're here, too."

this is fucking stupid.

no this is fucking stupid

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/nov/18/occupy-oakland-veteran-beaten-police-video

it's not a zero sum game. both sides are stupid.

chu-chung

no u r stupid!

Tim Simons, 28, an organizer with the group, said Occupy activists had picked the site because groups representing businesses in the area - including the Chamber of Commerce and the Lake Merritt-Uptown District Association - were "our enemies."

Haha what, and you think they picked wall st. because it was the heart of a vibrant urban community or something!?

http://poemhunter.com/poem/advertisement-for-the-waldorf-astoria/

Uh

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/18/the_bizarre_history_of_the_ows_counter_protesters/singleton/?mobile.html

lol that was a good read

hey you guys can have your laptops back

http://assets.motherboard.tv/post_images/assets/000/011/253/Picture_45_large.png?1321630666

http://www.viceland.com/viceblog/15116081owslaps2.jpg

jesus

good connect with L. hughes

http://i.imgur.com/K1sTv.jpg

that's an amazing photo

I remember her from the old Corner thread. What was her name...?

Ha, literally two nights ago I referred to K-Lo as the Jean Teasdale of the right.

Besides owning a finance company called LocateStock in lower Manhattan, John Tabacco is a Fox News contributor, a failed talk radio host, an unsuccessful city council candidate from Staten Island, and a onetime participant in the VH1 show “My Coolest Years.”

lol

you know in the movies where the old soldier puts on his uniform before getting blown away? Yeah, that pic xp

at UC Davis:

http://i.imgur.com/EyAAR.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjnR7xET7Uo

UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza said it would not be safe or sustainable for demonstrators to camp in the quad.

"It's not safe for multiple reasons," Spicuzza said

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45364967/ns/us_news-life/

yes, the safety of those protesters is clearly the officers' main concern...

was not expecting the ending of that video to be so inspiring

watched the last half of it three times

re: Occupy Oakland
Tim Simons, 28, an organizer with the group, said Occupy activists had picked the site because groups representing businesses in the area - including the Chamber of Commerce and the Lake Merritt-Uptown District Association - were "our enemies."

I really wish they'd camp in the park with that horrible Remember Them public sculpture that was basically corporate money doing an end run around duly elected and appointed government bodies. It does sound like their new site is closer to that, at least.

http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/open-letter-to-chancellor-linda-p-b-katehi/

Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats.

! :(

I've been lurking on this thread for a while and that video has depressed and angered me. I'm in the UK and don't have a lot of money at the moment, but I'm wondering. Is there a site you can send money to that can help with the legal costs of the protesters? No country should be doing that to their citizens. Hope you all come out of this for the better. Apologies for the rambling.

chris hedges pulls out all the stops:

The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing.

at UC Davis:

http://i.imgur.com/EyAAR.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/v/BjnR7xET7Uo&fs=1&hl=en

UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza said it would not be safe or sustainable for demonstrators to camp in the quad.

"It's not safe for multiple reasons," Spicuzza said

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45364967/ns/us_news-life/

― Chris S, Saturday, November 19, 2011 3:42 AM (8 hours ago)

i know this is 'legal' in the sense that, like, police can do anything, but how can this happen in broad daylight? i just don't get it

not sure if that's legal in any sense!

Chris Hedges has been on this tip for years now; I wonder how invigorated he is that shit is actually happening.

I saw somewhere that Cali courts have said that pepper-spraying people who aren't being actively violent or physically confrontation is excessive use of force - which puts the pigs squarely in the wrong.

haha:

http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/19/8896362-exclusive-lobbying-firms-memo-spells-out-plan-to-undermine-occupy-wall-street-video

OWS bears many of the hallmarks of a well-funded effort and media reports have speculated about associations with George Soros and others. It will be vital to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.

btw occupy portland has surprise-occupied another park: http://www.portlandoccupier.org/2011/11/19/n19/

Again, when you swim in nothing but the fecal stew of American rightwing politics, you can't really help but assuming & projecting that all politics is as authoritarian and hierarchical as your own. Some insanely rich sugar daddy always must be behind it all, right?

Caribou Barbie talkin' all 99ish!

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/18/palin_embraces_ows/singleton/

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Friday, November 18, 2011 5:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Good example of how the conversation has changed. If the grossest opportunists who will tilt whichever way the wind blows get on board ... well, that's probably the type of douchebags you need on your side to get anything done.

Another one I saw but can't dig up right now was someone asked Boehner about OWS being bad for Republicans and instead of saying "well Obama loves those dirty hippies and the true American people will make him pay" his response was something like "Isn't Obama the largest recipient of Wall Street campaign cash?" Which is true but it's weird to hear a Republican tarring a Democrat as being "too in bed with Wall Street."

uc davis calls for chancellor's resignation after the pepper spray incident

http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/open-letter-to-chancellor-linda-p-b-katehi/

not uc davis at large, but one very courageous assistant professor who doesn't have tenure

whoops yeah "professor" was excised from that post somehow, i do read links before i post them i swear

and yeah that dude is pretty ballsy

dude's a champ. and it's a nice uncompromising letter. chancellor and police chief's voicemails both full as of 9 this morning, unsurprisingly.

for what it's worth cops have been pulling this shit with pepper spray since the mid-90's, after court cases involving abortion clinic protests established precedence for responding to nonviolent demonstrators w/"non-lethal" force. during the Redwood Summer in 97 (I think?) they were swabbing it into people's eyes with q-tips, and spraying my friends in the balls. so sadly this is nothing new.

Meanwhile, in Montreal...

Mayor Gérald Tremblay ... says campers in Victoria Square can keep protesting corporate greed (so long as they don’t build wooden structures.) As he put it on Monday: “We won’t let other cities’ decisions distract us. ... Montreal will show that it’s capable of living in harmony.” (link)

Occupy Montreal protesters spent the better part of Friday dismantling wooden structures and pulling down empty tents in Victoria Square as per the city’s request. The 18 wooden structures that had been erected as more permanent shelter against the coming cold were deemed unsafe by the fire department, and 15 tents that are no longer occupied were also removed. “We’re eager to do this because tonight (Friday) we’re getting our new arctic military tents,” said Paul Bode from the site. (link)

goddamn i love that city.

I've been lurking on this thread for a while and that video has depressed and angered me. I'm in the UK and don't have a lot of money at the moment, but I'm wondering. Is there a site you can send money to that can help with the legal costs of the protesters? No country should be doing that to their citizens. Hope you all come out of this for the better. Apologies for the rambling.

would donate here: http://www.nlg.org/

no idea how active they've been outside of ny, but for zuccotti they've been doing all the legal stuff

Yes Men call drum circle at Bloomberg's townhouse tom'w at 2:

http://yeslab.org/drumcircle

ugh.

^

what's that supposed to accomplish exactly

if it pisses off the old closet queen, I'm for it

UC Davis pepper spraying is currently a top story on Yahoo!:

http://news.yahoo.com/video-shows-pepper-spraying-uc-davis-protesters-173659159.html

Also from Yahoo! front page:

http://news.yahoo.com/us-lobbyists-aimed-smear-occupy-wall-street-report-203329702.html

would donate here: http://www.nlg.org/

no idea how active they've been outside of ny, but for zuccotti they've been doing all the legal stuff

― iatee, Saturday, November 19, 2011 1:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

these guys are handling lots of portland defenses too, including mine.

So has Obama or the administration responded at all to police brutality?

If cops start getting reprimanded for this stuff we are going to see less and less enthusiasm to carck down on protests. It's hard for me to imagine this won"t happen with these videos posted all over the place.

So has Obama or the administration responded at all to police brutality?

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, November 19, 2011 5:58 PM

http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/307851_10150943650055109_557305108_21546938_507057394_n.jpg

Perhaps not actually defending the protesters is enough of a statement.

the right to peaceful assembly, not the right to peacefully assemble tents amirite

right to peaceful assembly:

http://www.wvculture.org/goldenseal/winter07/images/marxtoys.jpg

― tracy mcgr8080

loool

What the fuck has Obama done so far wrt OWS??

Not a damn thing. He's been out of the country for several days.

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/11/19/111911-news-tampa-tank/

meanwhile, in Florida, they're sending in their APC/tank-thing.

http://downloads.thedaily.com/photos/2011/11/18/111911-news-tampa-tank-1-662w.jpg

Because it's florida.

"RESCUE 2"

I...what...

y'know, when civilians start standing in front of that tank, that is really not going to be creating the kind of photos that the police or the government or anyone really wants to be getting out there

they bust that thing out in tampa during spring break all the time nbd

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/310899_253602618031227_100001444721412_776081_2059955155_n.jpg

is there a HATERS GONNA HATE using that photo yet?

^^^that was the v first thing that came to mind when i say that

messed up priorities :-/

>they bust that thing out in tampa during spring break all the time nbd

good to know. in the same way that using pepper spray against citizens has apparently been standard operating procedure for nearly 20 years now without any outrage or reporting, I imagine most cops are wondering what the sudden big deal is

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-ostertag/uc-davis-protest_b_1103039.html

http://www.thenation.com/article/164501/paramilitary-policing-seattle-occupy-wall-street

http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/281233595/LosAngeles_Lakers_logosheet1.png

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2099885,00.html?xid=gonewsedit

On Sunday, protesters plan to rally outside the American Music Awards at L.A.'s Nokia Theatre with the support of Black Eyed Peas rapper Will.i.am, and even plan to put on an Occupy after party, according to Clapier. Will.i.am couldn't be reached to confirm his involvement.

suuuuuuuuuuuuuure

let's raid random houses to check if the battery in their smoke detector is working. if it's not working let's evacuate the residents. fire hazard is no joke.

The Last Big City with an Occupy Camp: What's Los Angeles to Do?

d.c. = small town

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ0t9ez_EGI

^ This is some The Birds shit. Fucking amazing and inspiring.

walk of shame

my

mother

fucking

people

http://i.usatoday.net/news/_photos/2011/11/19/Police-arrest-protesters-in-DC-building-KOK88ST-x-large.jpg

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jnt-VI2QVgxwJ_teZJ1FMQl-3Fkg?docId=CNG.a2552c1b2d133ec083349b793466ce69.a1

http://theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/why-i-feel-bad-for-the-pepperspraying-policeman-lt-john-pike/248772/

Pretty decent mainly sociological take on the state of modern anti-protest police functionality. As an addendum to the previous link.

better quality vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8775ZmNGFY8

Occupy Springfield (MA) confronts anti-gay minister.

Lively is the the author of "The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party," which asserts that Germany's Nazi party was conceived, organized and controlled ... by masculine-oriented male homosexuals."

Chancellor Katehi should call up her hired sadist John Pike and have him pepperspray her driver for violating California Vehicle Code Section 27315 Mandatory Seat Belt Law.
SuzanneCordier 1 hour ago

feel like there's a good chance ows will be more fairly university-centered for the next few weeks thanks to mr. pike

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department’s use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a “compliance tool” that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.

“When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them,” Kelly said. “Bodies don’t have handles on them.”

After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of “active resistance” from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.

“What I’m looking at is fairly standard police procedure,” Kelly said.

otm

Holy shit, this vid is awesome. When you can't get louder or more raucous, freak the fuck outta people with the power of your silence. You can't even hear footsteps.

Waitamin, digitalSLRs are still as loud as analog ones? that's a lot of cameras snapping.

^ This is some The Birds shit.

hi dere ILX

let's get it

global rev just got evicted

like

are you fucking serious mike b

http://occuprint.org/wiki/uploads/Posters/OccupyCongress.png

#j17

"Welcome to Occupy Van Halen, ladies and gentleman!" frontman David Lee Roth yelled just before the band launched into "You Really Got Me," the first in an approximately hour-long, high energy set.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57353711/van-halen-rocks-small-nyc-club/

co-opted by an idiot

(or maybe just a 1% drunk)

better him than the dems amirite #obamaosama

lol u rite #keepthechange

http://nyulocal.com/on-campus/2012/01/06/nyu-student-weaves-elaborate-email-drama-beefs-with-administration-over-ows-and-student-ethics/

lol @ "elaborate email drama beefs"

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxczplTubW1r9dsnbo1_500.jpg

http://fuckthega.tumblr.com/

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

sincere appresh for yr awesomeness from up north mr. HOOS, keep it up.

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxbxhhpbk71r9dsnbo1_400.jpg

ty simon h <3 <3

"Like I said, the real turning point came when we got involved in the encampment. I grew more in the course of that month than I had in several years. It was such an intense experience that it drew us all together; those who shared it as a common reference point were bonded for years afterwards regardless of how their paths diverged. Time itself passed differently. Because I never knew what would happen next, it often felt like I'd lived through a week by the time I lay down at the end of the day. In the heat of that urgency, our different pasts and uncertain futures fell away and all that remained was the concentrated rush of the present."
-- from 'Expect Resistance,' 2007.

any feeds of this?

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/01/guantanamo-bay-rally-to-close-d-c-streets-71294.html

yah a few

ustream.tv/channel/Korgasm

http://t.co/tDgP8FlK

go with kor imo

two fave photos so far

http://yfrog.com/odhh3j:medium

https://p.twimg.com/Ai5Kj9QCQAA7pe3.jpg

so what's with the news being saturated with "Occupy DC is infested with rats" today, Willard?

rats. and a goddamn baby.

can we get evicted already so we can reclaim the moral high ground

i'm sick of being blamed for the actions of a damaged homeless population that have no place else to go

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9S74C6O0.htm

Occupy Pittsburgh to cops: prepare to be rickrolled

and a goddamn baby.

silver lining on this wound up being that it was reported in most local outlets as OCCUPIERS RESCUE BABY

RATS RAISE BABY AS THEIR OWN

so what's with the news being saturated with "Occupy DC is infested with rats" today, Willard?

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 11, 2012 7:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and yeah i mean

there are some rats in DC

most of them are in congress

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/study-americans-believe-conflict-between-rich-poor-is-growing/2012/01/11/gIQAZHibrP_story.html

nvm gr80 posted the same study

RATS RAISE BABY AS THEIR OWN

― spiced with KNOWING THAT YOU'VE PAID YOUR BILLS (I DIED), Thursday, January 12, 2012 5:28 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

so while i was livetweeting the GA found out that the mayor is now imploring park service to evict us

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-mayor-calls-on-national-park-service-to-remove-occupy-protesters-from-mcpherson-square/2012/01/12/gIQAdAmeuP_story.html

we are of course 5 days before this

http://www.occupyyourcongress.info/wp-content/gallery/poster_images/poster.png

park service reiterating that we have the right to stay

gray obv just washing his hands here

trying to blame any havoc to come on #j17 on park service

was livetweeting the GA when a greek jouro @'d me on the story and it was like "holy fuck"

i almost want us to get kicked out this weekend ~just~ so i can smile when five thousand reinforcements show up on monday

ok this totally made my night

http://i43.tinypic.com/jac078.png

fuck yeah

Finally feeling well enough to participate. If all works out, I might come along to the #j17

Kids arrested on campus yesterday afternoon, some of whom were students. We're trying to find out why, under what circumstances.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-buzz/post/protesters-file-for-permit-to-occupy-congress-jan-17/2011/12/28/gIQAQlcYMP_blog.html

typical comments

i forget who it was on the sandbox that asked about a good introductory read on the politics that have informed OWS (& anarchism more broadly) but after recommending it in that instance i'm re-reading david graeber's "direct action" and i wanna rescind anything else i recommended--this is really all you need to get the gist. i mean, hell--

The main point, thought, is that--unlike some of the classical works of Proudhon, Kropotkin, Rocker, Malatesta, De Santillan, and others, written in the shadow of Marxism--contemporary anarchist 'theory,' such as it is, is most explicitly not intended to provide a comprehensive understanding that will instruct others in the proper conduct of revolution. It is not an ideology, a theory of history. It tends, rather, towards a kind of inspirational, creative play.

It is more than anything else an extrapolation from and imaginative projection of certain forms of practice: the experience of working in a small affinity group becomes the model for Primitivists' idealizations of the hunter/gatherer band, assumed to be the only social unit for most of human history; the experience of real experiments in worker control becomes the basis for an imaginary planet in a science fiction story; the experience of sisterhood becomes the model for a matriarchal pagan religion; the experience of a wild moment of collective poetic inspiration or even a particularly good party becomes the inspiration for the idea of a Temporary Autonomous Zone.

Even when contemporary anarchists turn to Marxism, their overwhelming favorite theorists are the Situationists Vaneigem & Debord, the Marxist theorists closest to the avant-garde tradition, who tried to unify theory, art and life.

graeber does his best not to take credit for ows but from what I've seen he really does deserve a lot of credit for ensuring the initial GA took place, which is more than anything responsible for the way this turned out differently than yr average one and done protest

in which an anarchist refuses to be a leader

seriously though, everybody read "direct action"

the first half is like the great novel that could have come out of the battle of seattle, and the second half is incisive stuff like the above

oh also, not that i know anything about this

https://p.twimg.com/AjFxrMkCEAERGyg.jpg

fuck d1c3ytr00p btw

i just started graeber's debt book and it's awesome too. highly recommended and easy to read.

fuck d1c3ytr00p btw

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, January 14, 2012 6:56 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

rescinding this, was written in a fit of piqe

pique, even

Jan 20 & 21 in NYC, Occupy the Courts and Corporations:

http://ows.re-configure.org/

and tonight there's a candlelight march from St John the Divine to Riverside Church? for hardy souls (20 degrees).

abd today at 3 there's a march in Brooklyn from Sunset Park to the courthouse. They really need to get the word out earlier on this stuff so people can make plans.

woop woop

http://j17live.org/

so, the rundown then.

http://occupycapitolhill.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/occupy-congress-002.png?w=640&h=1024

hastags to follow today, january 17th, if you're into that kind of thing:

#J17
#OccupyCongress
#ConnectTheDots -- specifically for links on wall st/gov't collusion in the great american sellout

we've got a team of 12, myself included (@hoosteen), livetweeting all day from the ground at teach-ins, the multi-occupation GA, squads covering our variously arrestable afternoon direct actions ("the day's more aggressive lobbying"), and our evening march.

we're gonna have 50+ livestreams available to choose from at http://www.j17live.org

i might be on al-jazeera at some point.

wall street pr has been with us all weekend working on prep and messaging. chicago and LA and SD all rolled in tonight. boston and miami and st louis are all expected in early tomorrow morning on buses and planes.

tonight i ran into a guy i worked a summer job with 10 years ago. he's here because he's sick of "money that talks louder than me."

the word from mcp is that we've got near 300 tents. another 100 at freedom plaza. rumblings that people might try to keep tents in places we don't already have tents, places with "national" in the name.

this is gonna be good.

Good luck, hoos and all

sounds good, way to start the year

go get em

^^^^^^

best of luck dude

meanwhile, my hometown occupy has been given notice to leave this morning

I can't watch streams, what's goin on?

spending freeze btw

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/occupy-wall-st-faces-its-own-economic-realities/

"in what observers are comparing to Frogger and Red Rover"

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/01/arrests-and-standoff-occupy-congress-turn-tense/47511/

what a fucking day

based on personal history, i know it was hoos that threw a smoke bomb at the white house

highlights

homies out front
https://p.twimg.com/AjYDDE9CEAEAswk.jpg

for the direct action of the day we split into 3 zones for the 3 buildings of congress, color-coded & matched to flags that led the groups: red flag, black flag, blue flag. i (predictably) rode with black flag for livetweeting, but it turned out to be the quietest of the three. red flag, home to a certain Issa--among the richest in congress, 90% of whose campaign contributions don't even come from his district, and also the guy who's trying to kick occupy dc off of federal land--wound up seeing the most action. this was outside.
https://p.twimg.com/AjZCug4CAAEDvjq.jpg

all 3 flags reconvened for the mass march. i was livetweeting & got this reply

@amorrissey
Aaron Morrissey
whatever, let us know when Fugazi gets there. MT @hoosteen: #blackflag now reuniting at the Capitol bldg. #occupycongress #j17
7 hours ago via Twitter for Mac

left for the march that would hit the 3 centers of power. got to the supreme court. it's illegal to hold political signs on the steps of the supreme court (iKNOWright?), and typically it gets you arrested--but the metro PD aren't big fans of mass arrests, sooo
http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/396500_324622100911186_100000901965251_1004922_1493147475_n.jpg

left SC for the white house, and passed the newseum on the way. the newseum has a giant 1st amendment faux-carved-into-stone. we stopped the march to mic check the whole thing, guided by a dozen bouncing laser pointers from the crowd:
https://p.twimg.com/AjZqCvBCQAAcfjc.jpg

"NDAA, we say no way!"
https://p.twimg.com/AjZx9UDCMAE2pB9.jpg

^^ a couple minutes after this some idiot (provocateur? too easy to blame all the stupid shit on fantasy provocateurs) threw a smoke bomb onto the lawn. there were about 30 seconds of panic as people at the gate thought we were being gassed--masks & hoods & goggles went up everywhere before we realized what was going on. predictably, this was all anybody heard about on fox news.

its impossible to have any real perspective on the day's events right now--in the next day or so we'll have a better sense of how it played, i imagine. suffice it to say i'm fucking exhausted, and that this kinda felt like a sneak peek at the G8 in chicago in may.

oh also, the prettiest girl in the world made me a shirt that says "talk radical to me, baby," and i am possibly in love

yay

make sure Issa lets you testify next week

haha

"I'm told that as of this morning, we’re approaching 200 tents in McPherson Square," said BIG HOOS, a 25-year-old McPherson Square protester who has been at the camp since its twelfth day. "The south lawn of McPherson, where we have our general assembly, stays empty by design so that we can have our meetings there. But the rest of the park is filling to the brim ... We do expect that a large number of folks coming for this action are going to be staying with us for the long haul." The city's other encampment, at Freedom Plaza, is also adding members, he said. Last week, Occupy D.C.'s S______ ______ told us each park has a capacity of 500 people.

HOOS stopped short of promising all those people would join in resisting any police effort to evict the protesters. But he said, quite diplomatically, "I know we will have people who are prepared to peacefully defend our space."

still feel v strange abt this kind of thing

also massive lolz

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxz8f7EXjf1qg5xw5o1_500.jpg

when i tweeted abt this response was "shit! we've GOTTA stop putting our secrets in that truck!"

oh here's a nicer shot of the 1st amendment mic check from the front of the march, nb laser pointer

http://d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/full/498118687.jpg?Expires=1326872587&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIYVGSUJFNRFZBBTA&Signature=FvBX3ymFWZ5DJbhLagDOy0ikfKTfY57nq7e26UbTtBibwrRrpKskBwpDerWXw3G6s4xRcsLyZ-00KQatMNQZ3e7RUYV1TKMvij7rnta38m7iCy1scZAAZPy1n2wTXC0EOWABfx1cJIcsknpbjjWpeDDM3fWYayMHz1t6wbKPsKU_

haaa my homegirl made this

https://p.twimg.com/AjYdAptCIAAIN54.jpg

not rly sure i get why the military is above the goblet-swillers there, but

and church should be replaced in that hierarchy by entertainment media/advertising at this point

hoos your homegirl is a fan of gerd arntz!!

http://www.gerdarntz.org/content/gerd-arntz

You're leading an interesting and exciting life HOOS

You're leading an interesting and exciting life HOOS

4real

hoos your homegirl is a fan of gerd arntz!!

http://www.gerdarntz.org/content/gerd-arntz

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, January 18, 2012 11:42 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fwhoah

awesome

oh i posted this in wdyll so forgive me for the repost but <333333

http://i44.tinypic.com/2duxh79.jpg

some idiot (provocateur? too easy to blame all the stupid shit on fantasy provocateurs) threw a smoke bomb onto the lawn.

eyewitnesses saying they saw a whiteshirt cop throw the smokebomb. can neither confirm nor deny.

my favorite chant of the day was in spanish, borrowed from south america, had a nice rhythm to it that had us all dancing down the street

a
anti
anticapitalista

oh and A.N.S.W.E.R. showed up and we all booed

we didn't "all" boo

just lots of us are not big fans of a buncha stalinists posing as a grassroots network

haven't actually watched this but friends are posting it on FB so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QptAVWbm9c&feature=youtu.be

just lots of us are not big fans of a buncha stalinists posing as a grassroots network

<3 yeah fuck the RCP

nice to read yer updates, good luck

OWS greeting Obama at Apollo Theater 6pm tomorrow, but doubt I will be able to get near the place after work.

btw who are The World Can't Wait, and are they doing anything worthwhile?

KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON

who are The World Can't Wait, and are they doing anything worthwhile?

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 18, 2012 9:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

mainly RCP, though they've got some other support--they were formed after the '04 election and their founding charter said that their goal was to 'eject bush and cheney from office in disgrace' because 'the world can't wait for '08'

i kinda wanna start "Occupy Wall Street 4: Last Camp Standing," but there aren't nearly enough messages in this thread, which is depressingly telling

it'll get press again come convention season

so where is the donations link?

i kinda wanna start "Occupy Wall Street 4: Last Camp Standing," but there aren't nearly enough messages in this thread, which is depressingly telling

in truth i haven't been following occupyLA too closely since their encampment got raided (like, i'm not even sure where they've been organizing), and i'm pretty bummed at myself for that. i do think you're doing awesome work hoos and you are strongly advised to kiu w/ both actions and updates

ty guys

heating up in SF

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/21/occupy_san_francisco_gets_down_to_business/singleton/

yeah they got mad real last night

logisitics people for j17 reporting we served 8000 plates of food on tuesday

@timcraigpost
Undercover Video shot by GOP staffers shows #occupydc protesters admitting they camp and get along with National Park Service
1 minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® Favorite Retweet Reply

lmao what the fuck is going on in this hearing

nm - it sounds like they're trying to enforce some kind of semantic distinction between "protesting" and "camping," but the subtext of it also reads like they're being critical of yall for being civil to the park police (THE HORRORS etc)

civil servants engage in civil behavior with civilians shocker

lmao what the fuck is going on in this hearing

― scream blahula scream (govern yourself accordingly), Tuesday, January 24, 2012 4:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

we were all holding our breath waiting for something really damning, and then we realized "wait...'the park service does a good job' is the best you've got?"

the guy right behind the douchleman from south carolina was clearly the person who'd shot it, he couldn't resist grinning behind a fist like HEEHEE WE GOT YOUUUU except they actually didn't

also eleanor holmes norton rules

some friends of mine wrote this

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/01/24/mic-check-occupy-wall-street-offers-a-rebuttal-to-state-of-the-union/

i feel like the 24 hour news cycle has just completely swallowed this up. i don't mean to suggest that it isn't still going on or still potent to some degree, but it seems really noticeable how quickly anything passes out of the news cycle and is thus deemed irrelevant, a judgment all too many are willing to concede.

also can someone explain the point of the guy fawkes masks aside from generalized "rebellion" affect?

i mean even though they are trolls the fact that "zzzz"/"so bored with this" rhetoric is like a thing in comments to articles on OWS is really telling. it's only "old news" or "zzzz" in relation to the ADD cable news cycle. i doubt that a few months after anti-vietnam war protests blew up people, even those opposed, would have greeted it in such a cynical way.

this really really really bothers me because it affects me as much as anyone.

x-post

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta

it seems really noticeable how quickly anything passes out of the news cycle and is thus deemed irrelevant, a judgment all too many are willing to concede.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:23 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you'll get no argument from me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta

right, i'm not going to watch that movie, and nobody else seems to like it, so why do those masks turn up everywhere?

an anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask, begins an elaborate, violent, and intentionally theatrical campaign to murder his former captors, bring down the government, and convince the people to rule themselves.

ugh seriously? embarrassing that people would wear those much less that it would be the "face" of OWS. you might as well give up.

can someone explain the point of the guy fawkes masks aside from generalized "rebellion" affect?

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Wednesday, January 25, 2012 8:23 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yah the movie and then

Also in 2006, the mask began to appear in a popular 4Chan meme called Epic Fail Guy. According to Housh, the suggestion to use the Fawkes mask as protest gear was almost immediate. But some Anons weren’t convinced that the Fawkes mask was right, so they made a short list of alternatives: a Batman mask, classic masquerade masks, a few others.

“Then we called comics and costume shops, all over the world,” Housh says, checking availability and price, and the V mask won out: “It’s available, it’s cheap, and it’s in every city.” (The actual Fawkes had “nothing to do with it, for us,” Housh says.)

Thousands of people in various cities subsequently participated in a day of anti-Scientology street demonstrations, plenty of them wearing the mask. “Videos and images and photographs circulated almost immediately,” says Gabriella Coleman, the incoming Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University and author of the forthcoming Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. “It was just so powerful.” And it cemented Anonymous as, paradoxically, a recognizable phenomenon.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/design/2011/12/guy_fawkes_mask_how_anonymous_hacker_group_created_a_powerful_visual_brand.html

and now...

http://publicintelligence.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/anonymous-global-protest-8.jpg

http://publicintelligence.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/anonymous-global-protest-9.jpg

http://publicintelligence.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/anonymous-global-protest-19.jpg

http://publicintelligence.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/anonymous-global-protest-12.jpg

http://publicintelligence.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/anonymous-global-protest-23.jpg

though that said if you can't hear the assonance between an anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask begins a theatrical campaign to ... bring down the government, and convince the people to rule themselves. and the lots and lots of people running around in these stupid masks lately, i don't really know what to tell you

for my edification is it the "anarchist" part that rubs you the wrong way there or the "violent campaign to murder his former captors" part cause you've got me all http://amciv.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/iww-kat-2007.jpg?w=432&h=478 and i'd rather stand down at 4am frankly

i mean even though they are trolls the fact that "zzzz"/"so bored with this" rhetoric is like a thing in comments to articles on OWS is really telling.

also worth noting here btw that the president of the fucking earth said tonight that he would be cutting taxes "for the 98%," and starting a financial crimes investigation unit, and that there could be "no more bailouts, or handouts, or copouts"

it's rhetoric, maybe, and there's still an awful fucking immunity deal coming down the pike even if o claims to be starting CSI Wall Street--but it's rhetoric in our fucking overton window. we moved it, and the people who want the top job are now having to address income inequality, banking malfeasance, and unjust foreclosures. remember 6 months ago when all they gave a fuck about was the debt clock?

that's a win for us. fuck a park.

Otm and awesome job

Also V for Vendetta is pretty good.

It predicted the use of CCTV in the UK by something like a decade, which doesn't mean that it doesn't glamorize violence or that it's not cartoonish, but it's still something of an interesting text.

Not really a fan of Alan Moore though. Or the movie.

i agree that there are serious victories, i wasn't arguing that. i was just noting that it's possible for people to react with "zzzz" and this is only made possible by the ADD cable news cycle.

so was ows itself

it's rhetoric in our fucking overton window. we moved it, and the people who want the top job are now having to address income inequality, banking malfeasance, and unjust foreclosures. remember 6 months ago when all they gave a fuck about was the debt clock?

that's a win for us. fuck a park.

GO, A HOOS!

It also doesn't really matter if people in general know or admit that the new rhetoric is only there because of OWS...the movement is doing its job by getting the ideas into the conversation whether people acknowledge where they came from or not.

The problem isn't really financial "crimes" so much as a system that encourages financial recklessness. You're not going to find very many people that you could literally charge with a crime, and the ones you find will be an insignificant part of the overall problem. It's not about Madoffs. The system is Madoff.

^

http://assets0.ordienetworks.com/images/GifGuide/clapping/1292223254212-dumpfm-mario-Obamaclap.gif

otm ^

this is what defines the bob woodwards and the josh marshalls of the planet - who are otherwise not very close together on any continuum - that they are hellbent on unearthing a very explicit, incontestable kind of corruption or malfeasance but they have 0 to say about actual politics; they work entirely within whatever overton window they're given

otm

along those lines (guess who):

Noam Chomsky said that Watergate demonstrated how the system polices itself. Woodward and Bernstein weren't all that interested in COINTELPRO, the FBI's program of surveillance and disruption of dissident groups and figures. They probed Nixon's spying on the Democratic National Committee, an action that stepped on numerous elite toes. Nixon and his henchmen overreached with that operation and paid the political price.

Lesson: Don't fuck with those with serious political power. It's a reason why the Reagan gang got away with Iran/contra. Or Bush/Cheney with the Iraq war. Or Obama with the NDAA. I doubt that Romney or Gingrich will be elected; but if one of them is, he has a lot of ground to cover.

The problem isn't really financial "crimes" so much as a system that encourages financial recklessness. You're not going to find very many people that you could literally charge with a crime, and the ones you find will be an insignificant part of the overall problem

Yes and no. It bugs me that there is a rumor that the Justice Department is going to announce next Monday a settlement on the mortgage industry autopen signing fraud case that was opposed by the NY and California attorney generals as being too lenient.

Also, too many people still insist that most Wall Streeters have become successful solely through hard work, and therefore it would be nice to be able to say the Justice Department is indicting people, rather than saying, well Clinton signed off on a Republican prepared bill to get rid of Glass-Stegall and that new looser atmosphere, plus the development of derivatives and post-crash TARP bailouts have allowed Wall Streeters to unfairly profit blah blah blah.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~commodity futures modernization act~~~~~ hi dere

I mean even robosigning strikes me as kind of a red herring tbh, not that it should go unpunished, but (feel free to direct me to corrective links if I'm wrong) my impression is that there are very few cases of actual baseless foreclosure and mostly this is just about bad documentation procedures, whereas the real problem is how the fuck these loans got originated in the first place.

i don't think those two things are separable

punishment for the malfeasors is one aim, but for everybody else, pushing the housing market toward cleanliness is essential for getting out of the economic mess we're in. since these companies wrecked the legal underpinnings of the whole thing via robosigning, there has to be some kind of legal action to unbreak what was done.

madoff went to jail cuz he stole from rich people

hoos is totally right that the speech last night as well as lots of other speeches and interviews and casual remarks by all sorts of politicians not to mention the big to-do over romney's income tax returns demonstrate that the OWS issues really are becoming the national issues, and as soon as it gets warm enough for people to get back on the streets you are going to see OWS leaning more and more effectively on the 2012 circus

the masks drive me crazy but what are you gonna do

(obv there are still people on the streets even in the cold, such as our very own hoos, but the movement's taken the hit we all knew it would from the weather and if it's still relatively alive and active in january, which it is, imagine what this summer's gonna be like)

at least in nyc the movement's taken as much damage from its inherent unwieldiness as it has from the weather / the man

xps i don't really have any interest in sending people to jail when the entire culture of high finance is designed around teaching each new wave of MBAs how most effectively to make a frightened and obsequious government work for you while inventing the most boring and obfuscatory words you can think of for predatory gangsterism; i guess it would be nice to set a precedent but i worry that the sheer labor that would go into prosecuting basically anyone would create the impression that we had fixed the problem

xp oh no doubt, and here in pdx too; i think the relative downtime has been good for us.

that is, the camp here became harder and harder to administer because we couldn't be an effective political movement AND an art installation AND a soup kitchen AND a self-policing extralegal community (for more than a few months; we actually did a pretty good job of being all those things for much longer than i expected) but the winter retreat has i think kept hold of and even gotten better at the first thing, which was the most important thing to me, and when it stops fucking raining and the serious crowds come back we'll have plenty for them to do.

another couple data points: davos elites are freaking out

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/01/davos-man-trembling-his-armani-boots

morgan stanley chief feels the need to appear a hardass about bonuses

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/morgan-stanley-ceo-to-bonus-whiners-just-leave.html?

from the dailybeast soros profile that mother jones article links to:

Occupy Wall Street “is an inchoate, leaderless manifestation of protest,” but it will grow. It has “put on the agenda issues that the institutional left has failed to put on the agenda for a quarter of a century.” He reaches for analysis, produced by the political blog ThinkProgress.org, that shows how the Occupy movement has pushed issues of unemployment up the agenda of major news organizations, including MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News. It reveals that in one week in July of last year the word “debt” was mentioned more than 7,000 times on major U.S. TV news networks. By October, mentions of the word “debt” had dropped to 398 over the course of a week, while “occupy” was mentioned 1,278 times, “Wall Street” 2,378 times, and “jobs” 2,738 times. You can’t keep a financier away from his metrics.

(the question of course is what are the numbers now, not half a month into the protests, and i don't watch cable news so i don't know, but judging from the SOTU and the republican primary i'd be surprised if they aren't pretty similar)

they're certainly down a lot less, but the major pop-messaging of ows -- most specifically "the 99%" and the "the 1%" -- is completely burned into the media's consciousness now.

At least that's how it seems from my casual cable news viewing.

once phrases enter the national dialogue they tend to stick around for a long time

hell I go to nba basketball games and there are people with handmade "OCCUPY THE [ARENA NAME]" signs at pretty much every one.

Which like, sure, whatever that means. But there's something of "this belongs to the people, we can take it back" in the national brain now maybe.

idk if you guys have noticed/heard, but students (not just in CA!) are adopting the occupation tactic and winning small victories

i'm not sure if the tactic has been deradicalized or if it means students are radicalizing, either way i'm good

I go to nba basketball games

^DEFINITELY the 1%

friend of mine left for turkey in early september to do research for his masters thesis on turkish youth movements; the night before he left we got drunk and i asked him if the reason he'd invested so much of himself in the study of radical movements abroad was because he'd despaired of his own countrymen ever tearing themselves away from their hallucinations long enough to do something about their own exploitation/loss of agency and he said yeah; like two weeks after he left occupy happened and i reported on it (smugly) to him via skype while he reported to me on what turned out to be the total absence of significant turkish youth movements; like a month after that the students at the university hosting him started occupying shit. so now he's happy. and then right after that my own academic sphere lit up -- russia, of all places, suddenly decides it's not gonna take it anymore. so yeah, the tactic/vocabulary/spirit spreads like crazy: from america just like it did to america.

/I go to nba basketball games/

^DEFINITELY the 1%

lol morbs upper deck tickets are ten bucks. it's cheaper than a FILM.

oh well, my only ref point is the Knicks so u know

TEN BUCKS? I can't even get into a soccer game for less than double that, and no one even LIKES soccer.

next ill tell you guys what rent is in portland.

Don't do that, I was having a pretty good day before I caught up with this thread.

x-post

So do you folks think Taibbi is being overly simplistic and just rabble-rousing when he implies these execs should be charged, convicted and jailed for fraudulent activity:

Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What's more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even "one dollar" just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick "The Gorilla" Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216

he may be overly simplistic, but that is overshadowed by him being wholly unrealistic; I can't think of anything short of a military coup that would result in those guys serving any jail time, regardless of your opinion on whether they deserve to be put on trial or not

I would like to see Taibbi get a little more specific about the case against any specific executive in terms of proving the actual elements of an actual criminal offense carrying jail time based on the evidence available right now.

I think he's done it other columns or articles...?

Taibbi may be unrealistic but obviously I would be thrilled if any of those folks were even charged.

hell I go to nba basketball games and there are people with handmade "OCCUPY THE [ARENA NAME]" signs at pretty much every one.

Which like, sure, whatever that means. But there's something of "this belongs to the people, we can take it back" in the national brain now maybe.

― Clay, Wednesday, January 25, 2012 1:09 PM (1 hour ago)

very OTM I think.

I would like to see Taibbi get a little more specific about the case against any specific executive in terms of proving the actual elements of an actual criminal offense carrying jail time based on the evidence available right now.

― frogBaSeball (Hurting 2), Wednesday, January 25, 2012 4:21 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the thing is, is it clear what laws they broke? i mean, the did some horrible shit, but do you think there is a law that you could demonstrate to a jury was unambiguously broken? if so, then full speed ahead.

O'Reilly-Cornel-Tavis video

the thing is, is it clear what laws they broke? i mean, the did some horrible shit, but do you think there is a law that you could demonstrate to a jury was unambiguously broken? if so, then full speed ahead.

^^^ this is the problem

I think most people would agree/concede that a good chunk of what was going on was wrong and/or amoral, but I don't know how much of it was provably illegal; furthermore, I think even if it isn't true that the well-being of most of these institutions is integrally tied into the well-being of the country, that story has been spun so well that I can't imagine any Justice Department prosecuting them.

when taibbi accuses the banks of fraud i think most of what he's talking about is the internal emails of i-banks revealing that they were well aware of the worthlessness and danger of various mortgage packages at the same time that they were advising clients that these same packages were extremely secure investments; this was part of the hot-potato game the banks were playing at the time. whether this constitutes legal fraud i'm not expert enough to know; whenever i-bankers are called on it in actual investigatory contexts (see f'rinstance carl levin's famous "shitty deal" grilling of some or other goldman guy) they just mumble until they're allowed to leave the room and then pay a settlement.

that's entirely fair, but re: my second point I think the narrative has taken over

i think this is a great argument for tightening up the laws. but you would have to prosecute them on existing laws and i've yet to read an article that clearly lays out what laws were broken and how you'd be able to successfully establish that to a jury.

next ill tell you guys what rent is in portland.

srsly considering jumping there when I get out of the motherfucking shitty tourist shell that is NYC btw.

btw guys just to counter a lot of the mutterings i hear that things have gotten stagnant--i get an email that looks like this every week:

The Occupations Report: January 25, 2012

http://occupyoakland.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/491214.jpg.indyscaled.jpg

National Day of Action Against Holders Of Private Prison Equity

Occupations from a least 15 cities across the nation took part in actions against holders of private prison equity this Tuesday. Wells Fargo & Co. was one of the main targets of Tuesday’s actions due to its extensive holdings in two private prison companies – GEO and CCA. As part of the National Prison Divestment Campaign, Occupy Nashville protesters assembled on Legislative and marched to Wells Fargo they picketed the bank and delivered a letter encouraging the bank to divest from GEO and CCA. The protesters also distributed fliers and talk to customers about moving their accounts to banks that don’t make money off people’s incarceration.

Nationwide Call to Action: Chase Out Chase Bank
On Friday January 27 at 3:30pm Occupy Atlanta will rally at 404 Glen Iris and march side by side with the Pittman family to Chase Bank where we will demand the deed to the home that is rightfully theirs, letting the bank know we refuse to work with them on their terms. Occupy Atlanta is one of many Occupy groups participating in this nationwide struggle against JPMorgan Chase, a corporation that treats the general public as no more than means to the ends of profit. Like many hardworking individuals across the nation, the late Ms. Eloise Pittman was victimized by predatory lending. The Pittman family has been fighting to save the family home since November 2011. This past week Chase gave the Pittman family an ultimatum: either buy back their home or accept the $2500 “cash for keys” offer. Occupy Atlanta will be escalating the campaign against these predatory banks beginning Friday. Friday's action promises to be bold, diverse and unlike anything Occupy Atlanta has done yet. Pastors from multiple Churches will participate in the march and hold a prayer service outside the bank, while others with OA enact creative direct action.

Occupy Arrests
U.S. Falls 27 Places in Worldwide Freedom of the Press Rankings
Following a record number of journalist arrests during Occupy Wall Street protests, The United States has been downgraded. Reporters Without Borders has released its annual World Press Freedom Index and the United States fell 27 points to No. 47 on the list. We now tie with Argentina, Romania and Latvia at “satisfactory” levels of freedom. Read more at http://wapo.st/xTO2hs


Fighting Foreclosures
Occupy Oakland Plans Mass Takeover of Vacant Building

On January 28, Occupy Oakland will take over a vacant building in the city of Oakland to establish a new home, social center and meeting space for the movement. The “Move-in” action will begin with a two-day festival at the new building site, the location of which will remain undisclosed until the day of the event. The seized building will be converted into a social center for the movement. This building takeover/move-in action was approved by the Occupy Oakland General Assembly and signals a new direction for the Occupy movement: putting vacant buildings at the service of the community. Get more of the story at http://bit.ly/AdMqFf

Local Homeowner Stays in Home - For Now
Occupy Boston - Longtime Malden resident Marie Odestin said she hopes to work with Wells Fargo to keep she and her children in their home, despite a foreclosure auction this morning. A 23-year Malden resident is claiming victory after Wells Fargo decided to repurchase her house at a foreclosure auction earlier this week, a move she said would give her leverage to re-negotiate her mortgage and keep her children in their home. Marie Odestin was joined by 30 protesters outside of her home, with members from groups as varied as City Life, Occupy Boston and the Industrial Workers of the World, who said they were trying to send a message to banks like Wells Fargo that they should work with underwater homeowners.

Move to Amend
Fresno Says End Corporate Rule
Saturday, January 21 - About 100 people held a candlelight vigil at the Federal Court house in Fresno today in opposition to the US Supreme Court’s decision that granted corporations the same rights as people have and allowing them to define their unlimited corporate money in political campaigns as free speech. The National action was called by the Move to Amend campaign (http://www.MoveToAmend.org) and was supported by other national organizations like Public Citizen, Common Cause, People for the American Way, Democracy for America and others. The U.S. Supreme Court in a 5 to 4 decision in January of 2010 upheld “Corporate Personhood” asserting that the 1st and 14th Amendment gives rights to corporations as people and their money can be considered free speech. Thus, this ruling, often referred to as “Citizens United” opened the floodgates to unlimited, often anonymous, corporate spending on elections and the creation of Super PACS with hundreds of millions of dollars for the purpose of tilting the results of elections in a manner that drowns the voices of citizens. Special interest groups can now spend as much money as they wish to influence legislation or to support or attack candidates for election. Because the US Supreme Court made this ruling, now only a constitutional amendment can change this status and definition. Poll after poll in the last 2 years has shown that more than 75% of Americans across party lines oppose this decision.

Congressional Hearings
Jan 27: Senate Congressional Hearings on Voter Suppression Laws.
On Friday, January 27, the City of Tampa will be the host to the Senate Congressional Hearings on the Voter Suppression Laws. This hearing will be with Senator Bill and there will be coalition of organizations from all over the state of Florida will converge on the steps of the Federal Courthouse 801 N. Florida Ave #2 Tampa Fl 33602-3800. The coalition has been in contact with Senator Bill Nelson’s office and they have encouraged people to show up and to make plenty of noise. The hearing will be from 2pm to 4 pm and we have lined up over thirty speakers from all over the state. Please bring your signs and anything else you may need for the dayFor those coming in and would like to stay over night with Occupy Tampa please feel free to contact Occupy Tampa. http://www.occupytampa.org/contact/

Transit Fare Hike Protests
The Cost of Commuting: MBTA’s Fare Proposals
Bostonians have been expressing their outrage about these proposals all over the online world and the topic itself is being tackled by hundreds of bloggers, journalists, and commuters all over the metro Boston area! Occupy Boston members and other activists gathered Monday on the steps of the Massachusetts State House to protest the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s proposed fare hikes and service cuts.
Protesters said the government should be held accountable for the MBTA’s budget deficit. Raising fares would help alleviate the transit system’s fiscal problems, they said, but would unfairly shift the burden to customers.

Twitter has been at the front of this frenzy with thousands of users tweeting their comments to MBTA officials (@mbtaGM), State Officials (@MassGovernor ), or just out to the Twitterverse hoping that someone out there is listening. Several groups have also formed out of the frustration, such as Occupy MBTA (@OccupyMBTA) a Twitter adopting the moniker of the Occupy Boston movement and Students Against T Cuts, (@StudentsTCuts) a group that consists of college students from around Boston who believe that the proposed scenarios are a step backwards in the development of the city’s businesses, people, and institutions of higher education. http://bit.ly/xtUeM4

Occupy AT&T
Occupy Atlanta put out a series of videos asking AT&T workers how they felt about the company’s decision to kill more American jobs and ship them overseas. Here’s what they had to say: http://bit.ly/vZfwit


Environmental Protection
Occupy Burlington Calls for Nuclear Plant Shut-Down
Occupy Burlington (VA) is planning a January 29 action calling for the closing of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The group issued a statement today saying: We condemn Judge Marth’s decision in favor of Entergy against the democratic decision of the people to shut down Vermont Ynkee – a dangerous, polluting nuclear power plant that has been plagued with accidents, leaks, poor maintenance and run by a dishonest company. We stand in solidarity with the Vermont Yankee workers and support a just transition where they receive economic support and retraining.

Occupy Temple U Stands Against Mountain Removal
Monday, 1/23/2012 - Earlier this week, members of the Temple Community Against Mountaintop Removal met with PNC officials led by Senior Counsel and Corporate Secretary George Long in the Board Room on the 2nd floor of Sullivan Hall, on Temple University's campus to discuss PNC's investments in toxic, job-killing mountaintop removal coal mining. At 4:30PM the same day, Monday, January 23rd, members of the Penn Community Against Mountaintop Removalmet with PNC officials led by Senior Counsel and Corporate Secretary George Long in the Franklin Building of the University of Pennsylvania to discuss PNC's investments in toxic, job-killing mountaintop removal coal mining.. Both student organizations are pushing their administrations to deny renewal of PNC's contract.

SOPA/PIPA
Anonymous deletes CBS: Operation Megaupload continues

Story by Michael Stone, National Anonymous Examiner - In a powerful and unique display of virtual prowess Anonymous hacktivists deleted the entire CBS website. The website went down late Sunday morning, and was off line for approximately 20 minutes. In a fury over the government shut down of popular file-sharing website Megaupload, Anonymous has gone ballistic. In an extraordinary performance earlier this week, Anonymous hacktivists successfully disabled multiple government and entertainment websites in an action dubbed Operation Megaupload (#OpMegaupload). Sunday’s attack on CBS is a continuation of Operation Megaupload. Read more at http://exm.nr/AewSS8

Occupy News
Occupy Protesters Build Igloos in Switzerland to Protest Economic ...
By SARAH MASLIN NIR
Occupy movement protesters planned an igloo village near the Congress Center building, where nearly 3000 representatives from more than 100 countries are expected. http://nyti.ms/yxOuzB
The Lede

Kwei Quartey: Occupy Nigeria
By Kwei Quartey
Nigerians took their cue from the Arab spring and Occupy Wall Street, establishing Occupy Nigeria in protest against the gas price jump. http://bit.ly/xVAvAo
The Huffington Post Full Blog Feed

Occupy UMass Boston | OccupyWallSt.org
By OccupyWallSt
https://twitter.com/#!/OccupyUMB For more information. Press Release transcription below the fold from: http://www.scribd.com/doc/78957195/Occupy-UMass-Boston-Press-Release-1-23-20.
OccupyWallSt News

Occupy Wall Street Album to Feature Tom Morello, Crosby Nash ...
Occupy Wall Street now has an A-list soundtrack: the compilation Occupy This Album, which was announced today and will be released sometime this sprin. http://bit.ly/wZEfVL
RollingStone.com: Music News

Yoko Ono Delivers "Peace Postcards" to Occupy Wall Street ...
By Bonnie Alter
You have to give her credit -- Yoko Ono is 78 years old and she is still going strong with her world peace mission. http://bit.ly/w4Bkvk
Latest Items from TreeHugger

Three Occupy Members Arrested Blocking Boca Raton Bridge ...
By The Huffington Post News Editors
Three protestors from Occupy Miami and Occupy West Palm Beach were arrested Monday evening in Boca Raton after laying in the Camino Real Bridge roadway, blocking traffic at rush hour in protest of nearby hedge fund industry ... http://bit.ly/xY92sH
The Huffington Post | Full News Feed

Live updates: Congress probes Occupy DC camp at McPherson ...
By Examiner Staff
Congress this morning is opening the first major investigation of the District's Occupy movement with a hearing focused on why the protesters have been allowed to remain in McPherson Square for the past four months. http://bit.ly/AkW2Ms
Examiner RSS

Occupy Prov. reach deal to end standoff | WPRI.com
Occupy Providence says it has reached an agreement with the city over the opening of a homeless day center that will end a standoff over the protest group's encampment downtown. http://bit.ly/AaggGL
Top Stories | WPRI.com

Monsanto Responds as Maui Occupy Group Launches ...
By Wendy Osher
A week of Occupy Wall Street Maui events kick off today with the establishment of an encampment near the Monsanto offices in Kihei. Company officials respond to the planned demonstration. http://bit.ly/wk7y92
Maui Now

Hearing to address continued presence of Occupy DC | Washington ...
By The Associated Press
Lawmakers are planning to question National Park Service officials on why the Occupy D.C. protest encampment has been allowed to remain in McPherson Square. http://bit.ly/zkLO8T
Examiner AP RSS

City Council votes to send Occupy Charlotte protesters home ...
By Ron Lee
A vote Monday may seal the fate of dozens of protestors who are now calling the land in front of the old city hall home. They've been there for months, and say they don't want to leave. http://bit.ly/w4Bkvk
WBTV – News

PHOTOS: Occupy UMass-Boston, Day 1 | The Boston Occupier ...
By Aliza Howitt
Photos from the first day of Occupy UMass-Boston, where a group of approximately 30 students set up an indoor encampment and held a rally on January 23, 2011. (Photos: Aliza Howitt) share: Digg this post Buzz it up share via Reddit Share ... http://bit.ly/AuK64Z
The Boston Occupier - Free Press

Occupy Boise Protesters May Have to Move | Boise State Public Radio
By Samantha Wright
BOISE, Id – The House State Affairs Committee heard more testimony today on a bill to evict OccupyBoise from state land. It would outlaw camping at the Occupy Boise site across from the Statehouse. http://bit.ly/AvEgYY
Boise State Public Radio

O'Reilly-Cornel-Tavis video

― Dr Morbois de Bologne (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 25, 2012 10:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

<3

xpost

that is all great news save for:

Occupy Wall Street Album to Feature Tom Morello, Crosby Nash ...
Occupy Wall Street now has an A-list soundtrack: the compilation Occupy This Album, which was announced today and will be released sometime this sprin. http://bit.ly/wZEfVL
RollingStone.com: Music News

i can't verify that this is remotely interesting for anybody else, but i was really glad to read this tonight

http://infrontandcenter.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/from-building-tents-to-building-movements-reflections-from-occupy-dc/

"do you know anyone in the ELF? or any other fronts?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI8INgw0xq0

This paper explores a tentative theory of an emerging culture of entitlement among young workers. Using a sample of predominantly college-educated, young, unemployed workers, I explore the new sources of entitlement-belief and examine the proposition that believing oneself to be entitled to a good job heightens dispositions toward radicalism among the unemployed. The findings show strong job-entitlement beliefs among these workers and support the notion that the highly-entitled worker is more likely to develop radical views of his or her unemployment.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/800430

Smart people gonna think

that's 1978, though -- not exactly a high-water mark for youth activism.

it was a high water mark for militancy among both rank and file workers and the unemployed, though. 70s were heavy shit.

it'll be eclipsed

seems like the G8/NATO meetings in Chicago this May are a focal point for a lot of people now, could that be the resurgence of OWS?

we'll get to see how rahm gets his daley on

he'll eclipse all Daleys

one can only hope

We know the banks did shit that was professionally and socially wreckless and unethical. I don't care if it was technically legal or not. That just means the law is as bad as the activity it protects.

it was a high water mark for militancy among both rank and file workers and the unemployed, though. 70s were heavy shit.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, January 26, 2012 5:39 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it'll be eclipsed

― iatee, Thursday, January 26, 2012 5:42 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wut

i am speaking in past tense and you are speaking in future tense

what is going on here

unemployed militancy will! that's all I meant

I wasn't trying to contradict you I just think the 70s will look rosy compared to what's ahead of us

ie, George Soros and the Coming Class War

...which I frankly wd like to arrive before I'm enfeebled.

I wasn't trying to contradict you I just think the 70s will look rosy compared to what's ahead of us

― iatee, Thursday, January 26, 2012 6:16 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh i agree i was just completely flabbergasted by what you meant is all lol

seems like the G8/NATO meetings in Chicago this May are a focal point for a lot of people now, could that be the resurgence of OWS?

― long duk dan (dan m), Thursday, January 26, 2012 5:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fwiw i got this email yesterday

ADBUSTERS TACTICAL BRIEFING #25

http://www.adbusters.org/files/newsletter/2012/adbusters_occupychicago_s.jpg

Hey you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

Against the backdrop of a global uprising that is simmering in dozens of countries and thousands of cities and towns, the G8 and NATO will hold a rare simultaneous summit in Chicago this May. The world’s military and political elites, heads of state, 7,500 officials from 80 nations, and more than 2,500 journalists will be there.

And so will we.

On May 1, 50,000 people from all over the world will flock to Chicago, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and #OCCUPYCHICAGO for a month. With a bit of luck, we’ll pull off the biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen.

And this time around we’re not going to put up with the kind of police repression that happened during the Democratic National Convention protests in Chicago, 1968 … nor will we abide by any phony restrictions the City of Chicago may want to impose on our first amendment rights. We’ll go there with our heads held high and assemble for a month-long people’s summit … we’ll march and chant and sing and shout and exercise our right to tell our elected representatives what we want … the constitution will be our guide.

And when the G8 and NATO meet behind closed doors on May 19, we’ll be ready with our demands: a Robin Hood Tax … a ban on high frequency ‘flash’ trading … a binding climate change accord … a three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals … an all out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East … whatever we decide in our general assemblies and in our global internet brainstorm – we the people will set the agenda for the next few years and demand our leaders carry it out.

And if they don’t listen … if they ignore us and put our demands on the back burner like they’ve done so many times before … then, with Gandhian ferocity, we’ll flashmob the streets, shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe … we’ll make the price of doing business as usual too much to bear.

Jammers, pack your tents, muster up your courage and prepare for a big bang in Chicago this Spring. If we don’t stand up now and fight now for a different kind of future we may not have much of a future … so let’s live without dead time for a month in May and see what happens …

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

also my favorite dc douchenozzle is planning what he's calling the "National Occupation of Washington," a world social forum-style weeklong event for the end of march that would include tents along with seminars & conferences

my local corporate personhood solutions working group is also putting together a conference about (uh) solutions to corporate personhood that would more than likely coincide with "NOW," and would fall right in the middle of their 8 week escalating action plan

xp that posting was part of what I was talking about

'preparations' are already well underway here, meaning mostly mayor Rahm pushing new resolutions regarding detention/fines for protesters through the city council & the cop blogs posting about how they plan to obscure badge #s etc

oh god chicago cop blogs

hoos be careful lest you tangle with uncleshavedlongcock

also lol @ "gandhian ferocity"

the cop blogs posting about how they plan to obscure badge #s etc

― long duk dan (dan m), Thursday, January 26, 2012 8:01 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha that discussion of black duct tape was hilarious

RT @exileinflyville: Reading @Adbusters "announcement" I have to conclude they think they invented @OccupyChicago & idea of NATO/G8 protests

occupy kegger this weekend

Please announce!

An autonomous group has announced an Occupation Party for this
Saturday in Williamsburg, in the interest of starting a series of
Rolling Occupations, mounting a Spring Offensive, and exacerbating the
situation in the city in order to catalyze, contextualize, and build
capacity towards the May First General Strike. In short, to weave a
fabric of insubordination beginning in one neighborhood and ballooning
outwards.

Everyone is invited to be the crisis they want to see in 2012, set
up whatever plans for action, and fundamentally alter the occupied
space as they see fit. So far we've heard of dancefloors, cinemas,
teach-ins, and propaganda distribution to name a few, so bring your
wildest ideas and the elements necessary to realize them. Keep in mind
the mild risk of police intervention, but also the possibility of
staying over, so pack accordingly.

We'll be converging at 207 North 8th Street at 10pm before heading
to the space, which has lain vacant for years now, and is owned by a
bank known to invest in bio-, chemical, and nuclear weapons, as well
as cluster bombs used specifically by Qaddafi against the 2011
insurgency. We'll stay as long as we can, do as much as we can, and
there are contingency plans set up in the event of eviction. Besides,
we can always take it to the street.

The call is out: spread it any way you can, by phone, internet,
conversation. If all goes well we'll be doing this again in two weeks.

Sincerely,
________

Everyone is invited to be the crisis they want to see in 2012

loll i love this

i wanna be a flu pandemic

Hey guys, I'm about to start serving coffee Tuesday and Thursday mornings at a local coffee shop/bookstore that got taken over by Occupiers and turned into a volunteer co-op when it was going to go out of business. It'll be fun! Come get a cup and a pastry!

And a good read! We got those too.

So park pd gave us a "final warning" that theyre gonna start enforcing the no camping regs starting monday at noon. They won't be evicting en masse, cause they know how bad that looks, they'll just be targeting those with no other place to go and those with outstanding warrants for CD etc. They want a death by a thousand cuts. We plan to provoke and protect.

I'm helping plan our protection strategy.

Monday is gonna be awesome?

So glad I got fired last week.

things going down in Oakland again today

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/29/us-oakland-protests-idUSTRE80S00520120129

http://www.livestream.com/occupyoakland

I'll say

http://www.ustream.tv/occupyoakland

so just heard on the stream that they're looking at a couple hundred arrests tonight

also, people are saying that an Officer #119 beat a female medic, knocking some teeth out

find these makeshift anarchy/peace-symbol shields from the Oakland clash today kind of adorable tbh

http://i.imgur.com/eJ1YC.jpg

yeah shit popped the fuck off tonight

acts of violence, property destruction and overnight lodging will not be tolerated," police said in a statement.

lol

had an action outside the "alfalfa club" tonight, an annual under-the-radar gathering of legislators and judges and CEOs--200 of the most powerful people around. we glitterbombed lieberman and there was a naked rave in the street for a couple of hours (cop: "yalls party looks ~way~ more fun than theirs"). at one point a small team snuck through an alleyway to a side entrance we heard they were sneaking them in through to avoid our blockade, got (literally) chased out of the alley by horse cops, which was pretty harrowing shit.

after a moment to regroup we decided that "on 10 we're gonna all sprint THAT WAY to create a diversion" while our other team got into the building to prep for a banner drop. ten count and we suddenly took off full tilt the other direction from the building, which gave me the high point of the night--hearing 4 cops running behind me while out of their shoulder radios came "THEY'RE RUNNING, THEY'RE RUNNING"

banner drop worked out nicely

damn, Oakland!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_-GUR0V6Zg

like, reality actually went Cyberpunk on us just in time for 2012 (between the storm troopers, anti-corporatist underground, Anonymous, etc)

^^^otm

the last couple seconds of that video are fucking scary

just silence and "go, go"

Several hundred kettles and held at gunpoint while awaiting arrest on charges of 'failure to disperse'

http://twitpic.com/8d0ykv/full

/kettled

Thank you autocorrect

Caught in the Kettle - Occupy Oakland Move-In Day march January 28 2012

Volume 18 in a series by Myles Boisen

BUSTING A MOVE

A crowd of around 2000 amassed at Oscar Grant Plaza at noon today for the Move-In Day event. This action - which has been in the works since late December - proposed to take over a city-owned vacant building and convert it to a center for Occupy Oakland. Shortly after 1 pm. the march began winding through downtown Oakland, accompanied by banners, a sound truck, several carts loaded with furnishings, and a contingent of 15-20 anarchists with matching peace sign shields.

The target of the action was the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center at 10th and Fallon streets, adjacent to the Oakland Museum of California. As the march approached police organized to cordon off streets, diverting marchers through the campus of Laney College directly across the street from the auditorium. OPD officers, aided by helicopter surveillance, worked methodically to keep Occupiers from gaining access to the block-long building. As the march snaked through a construction zone to the less-accessible facade of the building, I witnessed smoke bombs and flash grenades being shot to disperse the crowd (see photo). The main smoke trail is a canister being thrown back at police, a tactic which may account for some of the reported police injuries today.

According to reports gathered from social media and livestreams, tear gas was also used on marchers, and there have been two instances of protestors shot with rubber bullets. As of 4:15 PST I saw no reports of arrests.

CAUGHT IN THE KETTLE

After I got separated from the first Move-In march, I walked a few blocks over to my office to load photos and dash off a report to Huffington Post. The march had gotten pushed back into downtown Oakland, and later returned to OGP. Hearing that a second march was planned for the evening, allegedly to a second vacant building, I returned to 14th and Broadway.

The march was just moving out as I arrived, and snaked through downtown, north along San Pablo, then jogged over to the park at 19th and Telegraph. This park, with narrow streets around its perimeter and a chain link fence around the grassy rectangle, was the location of the first attempt of OPD to "kettle" or contain the march. Lines of officers moved in to prevent escape to San Pablo via side streets, and there were some seriously panicked faces among many of the marchers.

A member of the Oakland TAC (tactical action committee) proposed rushing one of the police lines closest to the bulk of the crowd, and then without warning smoke bombs were detonated at that corner of the square. People rushed the other way, covering their mouths and noses, and I noted a chalky dryness in my throat, but none of the characteristic stinging effects of tear gas. As there was nowhere else to go, the chain link fences around the park itself were flattened and marchers streamed out along the wide, unprotected side of the park facing Telegraph Avenue.

From there, propelled by a giddy rush of adrenaline and gulps of water, we continued north on Telegraph through the uptown arts district, past shops and apartments with residents coming out to cheer and high-five the Occupiers. The march took a hasty right turn towards Broadway at 28th, a narrow street that again held trouble. All along Telegraph police cruisers and large passenger vans full of OPD had tailed the march closely, but with no threatening behavior. Yet as we entered this narrow uphill street and the march slowed down, officers left their vans and traveled on foot, forcing the people at the back to nervously pick up their pace.

I thought I was still in the middle of the pack, and broke out for a moment to take a few photos from the front steps of a medical office, only to find a group of about 5 officers running up on me with batons drawn, yelling and forcing me back down into the street. There was no chance to get a photo of them without getting clubbed.

As we were about to reach the safety of wide and well-lit Broadway, I didn't think too much about what had happened, but did put on the hustle to stay in the center of the march and warn any journalists I saw lingering too far back. And then - after a couple more quick-paced blocks - came the shouts "We're being kettled!" The march had walked into a police line across 23rd, and police behind us had moved up to cordon off 24th street as well. With no other escape possible on this block, suddenly dozens of people rushed up the steps of, and into, the YMCA building. Some were able to escape out the back, while I watched from the opposite side of the street as most of these folks on the steps and sidewalk in front of the Y got descended on instantly by cops, like ants on a fresh PB&J sandwich.

No one was being allowed to leave the area, so I chilled out against a building, put my camera away to avoid bringing additional attention to myself, and waited. A continual recorded announcement was being looped over a loudspeaker "you have ignored an order to disperse and will now be arrested". The only thing is there was no prior order to disperse, and no possibility to disperse once we were kettled. In addition I want to emphasize that there was no vandalism during the downtown march, no violence, and no provocation or reason for a mass arrest that is said to have netted 150-200 marchers.

At one end of the block I talked to a bicyclist who said he was not part of the march, but - as often happens in these circumstances - had gotten unwittingly caught up in the kettle. We went to ask nearby officers if we could leave the area and were told no, but were gruffly advised to check at the other end of the block. The answer there was the same for us, although a few journalists with credentials were being allowed out. I wished the bicyclist good luck, and then ran into a diminutive college-aged woman whose friend had gotten out, leaving her there alone and nearly in tears.

And - as often happens in these circumstances - time slowed down. Waaay down. Looking back on it, I realize I was not concerned about my future; when I might eat next or if I would make a planned trip out of town on Sunday or even what Santa Rita jail would be like. I looked at the faces around me, memorizing details, as all around me on the "safe" side of Broadway people looked pissed off, scared, bored, anything but amused as we watched dozens of our comrades being zip-tied on the other side of the median. Officers were shifted around, mostly away from us, and eventually anyone not in restraints was allowed to walk out. The teary-eyed college girl and I shook hands and laughed, and I ducked into a nearby bar for a soothing Belgian brew.

As of 9:30 judging from the livestream dozens of people remained sitting on the street in front of YMCA, restrained with zip ties around their wrists since about 6:30. At 11pm people are still being brought out of the YMCA under arrest, and after midnight there are still people in the area being processed before being sent off to jail. Four sheriff's busses had been filed up with detainees so far. Included in the arrest were journalists Gavin Aronson (Mother Jones magazine,) Susie Cagle (OO-allied freelancer,) Occupy medics, and anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in the kettle.

Thanks to all of you who expressed your concern for me today. Keep it strong and safe people, and please support the OO bail fund for those who weren't lucky enough to get out tonight.

Myles Boisen

MEDIA LINKS

https://www.wepay.com/donations/275088
Support the Occupy Oakland bail fund

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_-GUR0V6Zg
OPD Uses tear Gas and Percussion Grenades on Protestors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFaviIoy4rg&sns=fb
Some overlap with the above video, including very clear footage of marchers approaching a police line to help a woman lying on the ground, calling for a medic, and OPD shooting projectiles at them in response.

Also very clearly at 2:34 some agitator (?) throwing something at the cops.

Steps closer to federal receivership. Nice to see that the OPD still doesn't give a fuck.

One of the remarkable things about Occupy is how kind people are to each other. As I have at other protests here, I met many good and decent people with whom I had great conversations. Most of these people really care about the state of our world, and have embraced this movement with gratitude for having a place where they can figure out ways to take that caring and turn it into tangible action.

I point this out because no matter what the mainstream media says about Saturday’s action, there’s a big piece of the story that can only be absorbed by walking with these people and getting to know them. The heart of Occupy Oakland is so good. It’s been a bit broken by all the repressive police actions, ranging from waging war on the Occupiers the day of the first raid, to arresting people for things as petty as taking a blanket out of a garbage can. In spite of all the attempts to break the the movement’s heart and destroy it, it continues on, beating strongly and moving forward.

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/29/occupy_oakland_open2012/singleton/

Why were they trying to occupy a vacant government building? Do they just think they have right to do whatever they want with everyone's property? I'm all about the message here, but don't know about stuff like this.

so I guess I'm sposed to go to WashSq by 7pm:

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/155073/medical-professionals-join-washington-square-demonstration

(not that I'm a med professional, except peripherally)

Why were they trying to occupy a vacant government building? Do they just think they have right to do whatever they want with everyone's property? I'm all about the message here, but don't know about stuff like this.

― Spectrum, Sunday, January 29, 2012 1:47 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dunno who's fault this is, it's probably complicated, but i feel like the message is getting lost on the mass-media level and "occupy" has come to = confrontations with cops, rather than issues of economic fairness.

i mean even in many of occupy folks' own write-ups it's like 90% about the confrontation and 10% about whatever they were there to protest.

Why were they trying to occupy a vacant government building? Do they just think they have right to do whatever they want with everyone's property? I'm all about the message here, but don't know about stuff like this.

as I understand it, the plan was to occupy a long vacant building owned by an absentee landlord and start a community center. so it's not a matter of "doing what they want with everyone's propert," tho that's a convenient generalization

"occupy" has come to = confrontations with cops

I was warning against this trend in the thread for airing our misgivings about OWS. A certain amount of this is unavoidable, because that confrontation will be thrust upon any large protest. What's dangerous is letting the movement be goaded into making this the new center of gravity the movement revolves around.

It is ridiculously easy to iniate the kind of street theater where the cops beat up on people. What's harder is showing the cops are actually beating up on a legitimate idea. That is where the value of organization, unanimity of purpose, and a clear strategy come forward.

The crop of youtubes from yesterday don't scan too well without context; it gave me the initial impression of a group of protesters facing off with a line of cops and agitating until they charged, When you read the stories, you realize they were corralled onto that street and then gassed and shock grenaded, at which point, yes, some people began throwing things back at them, and then they charged. The salon story is a must read; it was a trap. I've spoken to a few of my friends yesterday and a lot of them were randomly beaten by cops trooping through the crowds and side alleys, randomly - they'd take a few hits and then keep going, basically just to wind people up and raise the level of disorientation and panic. It was basically just a war zone, and it is horrifying to think even for a second that the fucking 'optics' on this one would land on the side of the OPD - hopefully they won't once more accounts go up

xp - yes - that 'legitimate idea' did not get through yesterday. There's Orwell's great quote about 'when I see a policeman with a club beating a man on the ground, I don't have to ask what side I'm on' - yesterday was unfortunately more complicated than that

But they shouldn't have been, because from what I'm hearing that is exactly once again what happened

Trying to takeover somebody's property, no matter how good their purpose, puts their message on the wrong side of things. If you're going to do illegal shit as a form of protest, at least make it a part of something absolutely necessary to what you're accomplishing. If they felt the property was being underutilized, there's a process for that. If the process fails, protest the process, etc. etc... and sometimes there's nothing you can do re: private property. It's like they went from Step 0 to Step 20 without thinking of the consequences.

Wrong for the cops to overreact, but it's hard to sympathize with unnecessary illegal action on part of the protestors. Which is a damn shame, because I really want there to be a movement for economic reform.

Wow guys

a government building is private property?

somebody said it was owned by an "absentee landlord". so which is it?

this is kindof a side-note, they got michael taussig to give this talk about his involvement w/ occupy wall street. it was more like poetry, it was so beautiful, a load of people from lsx showed up, the aisles were packed. its about one of the nights that the eviction was postponed.

Don't think it matters significantly re: government or private property. Anywho, if you care about your community you don't go around fucking it up cuz you like, hate the pigs, maaan.

Why not invest time in community service or forming and taking action on a realistic agenda? It's not a rad party with all your buds, it's hard, time-consuming work without personal publicity, or big glorious stories you can tell your kids one day, or any of that, but it's important to do. This makes the idealist in me weep. /rant over

I've got too much going on ATM to respond to the comments made here in the last 24 hours, but I'd just like to register that there's a lot false dichotomying (<-- yeah I'll make it a word) bullshit happening. If I still care after tomorrow I'll be responding here.

thanks for your condescension btw

I'm busy, icing a baton head wound courtesy of a pushy cop, and trying to figure out if my friend in the hospital after his tazing is going to jail tonight or tomorrow for his "disorderly conduct," so forgive me for having a low tolerance for bullshit, cop or otherwise.

geez hoos, tk care

taking action on a realistic agenda?

ohhhh fuck, u for got the quotes there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsuGvyoE21Y&feature=player_embedded

a proud moment in policing

looks like captain bong rip got a total buzz kill right there. but seriously, there's a ton of capital the NY protests brought to the movement, and Occupy Oakland stuff is just flushing it down the toilet. which is tough, it's hard to control the people/message when it's something that anyone can take up.

http://occupywallst.org/article/dc-occupier-attacked-and-hospitalized-park-service/

"capital," you're being funny on purpose now I bet.

The audio on that video clip was seriously difficult, but as near as I could make out, the police officer says that raising one's hands in the air is "disorderly conduct", and that is what precipitated the arrest. He was most likely tazed for not instantly grasping the need for complete submission, but insisting on trying to walk away. He also raised his voice. He got about three steps befor they tazed him.

I'm busy, icing a baton head wound courtesy of a pushy cop, and trying to figure out if my friend in the hospital after his tazing is going to jail tonight or tomorrow for his "disorderly conduct," so forgive me for having a low tolerance for bullshit, cop or otherwise.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, January 29, 2012 11:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i applaud your efforts and energy and courage but sometimes you use your OWS street cred as a kind of trump card. i think your experience and actions give you insight and awareness of some important stuff but it doesn't make you right by default, nor does it give you the power to just bat away sincere questions and concerns.

i'm really familiar w/ this from wisconsin btw where some arguments would reach the point where people were nearly just shouting out how long they had been at the capitol building, etc. "have you been down here in the trenches with us" has a lot of moral force but it doesn't mean you get to dismiss the rest of us.

don't think saying "I'm too busy to argue right now" is really the same as "bat away sincere questions"

Spectrum maybe you have never heard of squats before? It's a common legal principle in many countries that abandoned property can be taken over, but you seem a lot more concerned with the letter of the (U.S.) law so whatever. Squats involve a lot of hard work and I don't think most of the folks planning on that building takeover had any illusions about that.

and I guess I have to also point out here that cops deliberately create these confrontations (i.e kettling people AFTER preventing them from entering the building). Blaming the protestors for reacting is imo getting on a pretty high horse. What would you do if some cop knocked your friends' teeth out for no reason? Or if you were teargassed and arrested for riding your bike down the wrong street at the wrong time? I mean yeah it's a global stage and ideally people maintain some level of media consciousness, but shit gets heated.

that's true. i guess it's partly the combo of the confrontational images and the optics of the folks there -- mostly young folks, wearing lots of anarchist badges and masks etc, cursing and yelling things full of bravado and resentment. i can't blame any particular person for this, it's just the dynamics of the thing, but it makes it so easy to dismiss as a kind of "young folks acting out" thing. maybe i'm getting the wrong impression, but the demographics seem to have kind of "distilled" in the last few weeks/months.

http://nameigoob.blogspot.com/2012/01/what-really-happened-at-occupy-oakland.html

the idea of occupying the Kaiser Center was super-ballsy. i question whether anyone seriously thought they could do it, or if it was really just about the gesture. This is a city-owned building that the City of Oakland has gone back and forth for years now about what to do with it -- keep it and turn it into something revenue-generating or sell it? It's probably the most valuable piece of city-owned vacant real estate.

am & Spectrum reflecting the uselessness of Obamney voters

from watching youtubes when occupy shit goes down, my impression is that "young folks acting out" is always preceded by riot cops attempting to incite riots by using shock grenades, tasers, tear gas, batons, etc. i see confrontations like the one in oakland as non-violence vs violence, but that the militarism of police as a manifestation of the state's will would erode my sense that we live in a good and free society, especially when i'm just trying to march/squatting for the greater good. it seems that protests like this get so much attention one the one hand bc it seems like some third world rebellion in frickin CA, and on the other bc protestors don't seem to be asking for anything crazy, yet get the tactic of overwhelming force thrown at them.

rightwing aggregating site's description of yesterday's Washington Post article saying leave the rich alone, we just need to educate the poor and get them married: With his typically inimitable and lucid prose, James Q. Wilson appears in today’s Outlook section of the Washington Post today with a clear-eyed deconstruction of the whole inequality blather of the left: “Angry About Inequality? Don’t Blame the Rich.” Aw, what fun is that? There’s a lot packed into this relatively short article, so you should read the whole thing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/angry-about-inequality-dont-blame-the-rich/2012/01/03/gIQA9S2fTQ_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop

James Q. Wilson, a former professor at Harvard University and UCLA, is the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy at Pepperdine University

In the hours after the protester was tased, more than 15,000 people logged on to SaveOccupyDC.org to sign an online petition asking for the Park Service to allow protesters to remain camping in either park.

No further confrontation today yet?

what was the point of vandalizing City Hall, destroying 100+ year old models, etc.

(in Oakland, that is)

I have more sympathy for the dudes in DC than in Oakland, which just seems like a total mess

that wapo thing

In his book “The Poverty of the Poverty Rate,” Nicholas Eberstadt shows that over the past 30 or so years, the percentage of low-income children in the United States who are underweight has gone down

haha

Barack Obama & Leon Panetta destroying a 225-year-old Constitution, that's a total mess

didn't know Panetta and Obama had taken up residence inside a scale model of Oakland City Hall

I saw some young 'jugalos' spray-painting a wall with "jugalos for life" shit and then take photos next to it. They were just young and stupid kids; some good protesters cleaned it up later in the night.

How fucked up is your protest movement when you have to clean up after juggalos?

Occupy PsychoCircus

L

that wapo thing

_In his book “The Poverty of the Poverty Rate,” Nicholas Eberstadt shows that over the past 30 or so years, the percentage of low-income children in the United States who are underweight has gone down_

haha

omg

am & Spectrum reflecting the uselessness of Obamney voters
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 30, 2012 6:21 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sorry dr. morns but as we've established elsewhere you are King Uselessness. your entire persona is built around supposedly devastating cynicism about everything involving contemporary politics.
so i may be useless, but you are uselessness as a principle. so pot meet kettle etc.

you may be right, every man has his reasons, etc

use "cynicism" one more time to change yr name to Nude Spock

There is no way to exclude 'the wrong element' from local Occupy protests because it all takes place in public areas. If some shithead juggalos show up, you cannot blame the non-juggalos for their being there, or for them acting like shitheads.

However, a protest movement that is going to survive this sort of thing needs to act to dissociate themselves from this sort of thing. I would recommend that local Occupy groups innoculate themselves as much as possible, by forming a policy and publicizing it, that whenever they see violent or destructive behavior, the legitimate protestors will call 911 and report it.

They should issue statements, not just condemning the violence or destruction, but insisting that police respond to it, while carefully pointing out that herding non-violent protestors into small spaces before ordering them to disperse, and gassing them, beating them or tasing people sitting quietly, is not an appropriate way to deal with violence, bcz, you know, the people they are mistreating aren't the violent ones. Both pieces of this message need to be vehemently stressed.

I deeply sympathize with hoos, bcz he is one of the ones who is busy trying to manage these messages in the face of a corporate-controlled media, while stuck between the hair-trigger riot cops on the one hand and the opportunistic thrill seeking juggalo-types on the other. And he isn't getting paid for this!

amst/morbs it'd be nice if you kept your personal beefs out of this thread

ie you're acting like a couple of juggalos

how is responding to accusations of "cynicism" purely based on my opinions "personal"?

Bc you initiated a personal attack.

an objective voice at last

GET A ROOM

seriously you guys are just ruining random threads at this point and believe me nobody gives a fuck about yr love/hate relationship

^^^otm

kool, this is now a ShakeyBlow politics thread, bye

sorry bout that.

Like I said on another thread that I follow but never write in, I get fed up w/ Morb's schtick being a predictable line of cynical, un-clever disruptive trolling busting in on otherwise interesting and incisive discussion. I recognize that I just further the noise, so I promise to hold my tongue (or thumbs).

give em hell morbs!

oh yay, Shakey Mo making glib disparaging statements about Oakland again. Dude, you are coming dangerously close to sfgate commenter territory.

okay...?

no one answered my question

"what was the point of vandalizing City Hall, destroying 100+ year old models, etc."

likely to get out some anger. dunno if you're being serious.

from what i've heard: as far as the vandalism of City Hall goes, apparently that wasn't intentional -- it was accidental -- there were physical struggles with security/cops and those items got damaged. The only intentional damage was the flag burning.

Quan is going to "call some of the national leadership of Occupy" to see if they'll rein in Occupy Oakland or disown them. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/30/BAPQ1N0G9K.DTL&tsp=1

right.

mission accomplished!

xp

if that doesn't work, she'll call the protesters' moms and tell them how disappointed she is in them.

picturing Quan calling a payphone near Zuccotti hoping someone in power answers.

lol

I guess I'm not really clear on what Occupy Oakland is trying to accomplish with their tactics. if they just want to continue to fight a running street-war with the cops, well okay you got it, good job. just seems like a waste of resources for an already-strapped City fully stocked with asshole cops.

well, they stated they wanted to open a community center and provide services to the community, so i'd guess they're trying to accomplish that.

illegally taking over a building - a public building that's owned by the city - maybe not the best way to accomplish that

just guessing here, but there may already be some clearly established process for opening a community center, I'm not sure

squatting has a pretty long tradition. they didn't succeed but i don't think that their attempt was the complete failure of tactics you seem to.

explain the clearly established process for upending the current economic system that favors the rich and the rich only and starves our cities of their resources. i think you elided that.

wait I thought the goal was to open a community center

explain the clearly established process for upending the current economic system that favors the rich and the rich only and starves our cities of their resources. i think you elided that.

google+ iirc

seems like the best way to find out what's going on with any occupation would be to go down & ask

why bother when you can argue on the internet.

The first step in upending the current economic system is to hold a dance competition at the vacant building and *poof!* there's your community center. Seems to work whenever an evil developer is trying to turn one into an orphan factory/kitten blood processing plant.

orphan factory/kitten blood processing plant=jobs amirite.

Quan is going to "call some of the national leadership of Occupy" to see if they'll rein in Occupy Oakland or disown them. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/30/BAPQ1N0G9K.DTL&tsp=1
― wmlynch, Monday, January 30, 2012 4:38 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i actually empathize w/ her to some extent but this is completely hilarious.

http://www.thejournal.ie/protesters-take-over-nama-owned-building-and-open-it-to-the-public-339068-Jan2012/

I've been down to OccupySF (back when there was one) - I'm not bothering going over to Oakland, I have other shit to do. But way to not engage with the issue - which is tactics and the efficacy thereof.

just like you didn't engage with the oakland occupiers. i am noticing a pattern

“This is about lifting the veil of secrecy around NAMA and making the buildings available to the public,” Mick O’Broin, a member of the group told TheJournal.ie today.

M'OB RULE

fuckin postrophes

wasn't there a separate thread for occupy concern-trolling?

I don't live in Oakland fyi

xp

honestly not trying to do any trolling, sorry to upset whatever hivemind thing you guys got going here jesus christ

shakey mo will be first against the wall in the glorious new regime imo