Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

It was back in 1999 that people used to pretend “the Black Bloc” was made up of nihilistic primitivist followers of John Zerzan opposed to all forms of organization. Nowadays, the preferred approach is to pretend “the Black Bloc” is made up of nihilistic insurrectionary followers of The Invisible Committee, opposed to all forms of organization. Both are absurd slurs. Yours is also 12 years out of date.

MY MAN

this is good too:

After the fiasco of Seattle, of watching some activists actively turning others over to the police—we quickly decided we needed to ensure this never happened again. What we found that if we declared “we shall all be in solidarity with one another. We will not turn in fellow protesters to the police. We will treat you as brothers and sisters. But we expect you to do the same to us”

i don't have anything useful to contribute right now but i just wanted to say it's been real interesting and informative reading the many contributions on this thread. thank you.

Same here, and kudos to Hoos.

i have no idea how to engage w the latest turn this thread had taken. i mean i just wanna be like " idk maybe read some foucault" otherwise i have to like reconstruct the entire terrain everything i think is built on. this isnt meant to be snide but the world is a terrible place where do i start?

this is all I can find so far from today (something for the celebrity-freak fans in the first 20 seconds):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D4hv_4t1nQ&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4od4QQVK1o&feature=player_embedded

i don't actually know who that guy is, but its memorable. i'm sure there will be dance remixes up in a day or two.

Tune-yards show Thursday night started in Lincoln Center Allen Room and then went outside:

Before the concert ended, she announced that she would continue it outdoors in Columbus Circle, to “occupy” it. She had come prepared. Her crew had half a dozen large yellow-and-black flags and many spools of yellow-and-black tape, printed with “Occupy” instead of “Caution.” While a man (not a band member) played a baritone bugle, the gathering marched with flags around the Columbus monument and encircled it with the tape.

Eventually Ms. Garbus climbed up on the monument and delivered an oration interspersed with the chorus of her song “Bizness,” “Don’t take my life away.” Her speech was repeated by the audience in the Occupy movement’s human-microphone style.

“I will speak when I feel like speaking!” she declared. “I will be loud when I need to be loud! I will be heard when I need to be heard! I will not let a word like ‘occupy’ scare me or make me feel boxed in!” She led the crowd in a sustained chord. And by the time the police arrived, she was gone.

J*n Parel3s review

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/arts/music/tune-yards-at-the-allen-room.html?ref=arts

that AB 'person' illustrates why no one, esp libs, has to pay any attention to him ever.

(isn't he the one who called a certain columnist/erstwhile ILXor an 'appletini partyboy'?)

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/occupy-dc-eviction/all/1

http://nplusonemag.com/concerning-the-violent-peace-police

yeah that rulez <3 graeber

still need to read debt goddammit

this will not go well

http://rt.com/usa/news/summit-chicago-law-public-725/

part way through debt right now and it is awesome. i love graeber.

there must be some way for folks to record and anonymously upload for viewing. i can't believe that that law hasn't been struck down as unconstitutional. it's fucking ridiculous.

it isn't uploading that's the issue, it's the act of holding a camera

yah, good point. it is entirely illegal to videotape anything in chicago then?

sounds like it? i dunno

Ugh, I forgot about that. I recorded cops on video while they shut down an unlicensed march. They were pretty shitty w/ the marchers, and they saw me filming, so I'm a little surprised they didn't at least tell me to stop.

The ACLU is challenging such no video laws I think

there must be some way for folks to record and anonymously upload for viewing. i can't believe that that law hasn't been struck down as unconstitutional. it's fucking ridiculous.

― wmlynch, Sunday, February 12, 2012 11:23 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://openwatch.net/apps/

that Chi law will certainly make Rahmbo our next "Better Than the Republicans" president.

the story of how i came to be looking at the Square on google street view is too boring to tell, but suffice it to say i'm doing that now and it's making me sad.

ps this

http://tech.nycga.net/2012/01/05/three-complaints-about-ows/

and this

http://thefutureofoccupy.org/2012/02/05/can-occupy-occupy-strategy/#blog_subscription-2

are both v good imo

http://www.occupythesec.org/

Occupy the SEC has submitted a 325 page letter to the SEC, FDIC, the Federal Reserve and the OCC, to comment on the notice of proposed rulemaking for the Volcker Rule. In our comment letter, we answered 244 out of 395 questions asked by the Agencies.

The Agencies involved in the Volcker rulemaking process have an historic opportunity to redress many of the economic wrongs of the past, and create a future that privileges the interests of the many rather than the few. We ask that the Agencies vigorously implement the considerable responsibilities that have been discharged to them by Congress, remain faithful to the statute’s intent and consider the comments contained in this letter.

that is srs awesome--just got an email about that this morning, is it making news?

I saw it mentioned on a blog:

http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/02/14/citizen-lobbyists-occupy-the-sec-delivers-comment-letter-for-volcker-rule/

and, ooh, Time magazine blogger likes them:

There’s nothing “wrong” with protests built around placard-hoisting and park-squatting, but Occupy the SEC is definitely doing something right with its radically different tact. The OWS-offshoot has submitted a 325-page letter to federal financial regulatory agencies on the Volcker Rule, a controversial measure designed to prohibit banks from proprietary trading, or making investments with their own dollars rather than their customers’, that was passed as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/14/occupy-the-regulatory-open-comment-period/

http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/01/prosecutor-preet-bharara-busts-wall-street/?iid=sl-main-feature

Salon.com takes apart the Time Magazine cover story

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/08/preet_bhararas_toothless_bite_of_wall_street/singleton/

There’s a simple reason for that: Preet Bharara is not busting Wall Street. He’s not collaring the masters of the meltdown. He’s done nothing to even slightly discomfit Wall Street’s still-ferocious money machine, or has yet to bring to justice the architects, enablers and continuers of the 2008 financial crisis — the bankers who got us into that mess, and the ones who are continuing to extract pain from foreclosed homeowners, in the New York area and beyond.

radically different tact

Time magazine blogger obv not a sailor.

salon has been fucking killing it lately

before/after

http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/402602_10150553864283196_506993195_9487639_1512946400_n.jpg

Completely trolling here, but slightly before-er:

http://www.princeofpetworth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/5494911431_5077637be4.jpg

like before winter or what?

Occupy DC really killed the grass.

it's sod

>_<

Stimulus money paid for that sod. Really. I read someone grumbling about that.

Well that changes everything. Hoos, you and your people are going to have to exercise your freedom of speech somewhere that taxpayers don't somehow support/pay for, I'm afraid. That should only rule out...streets, sidwalks, parks, town halls, squares, greens, school properties, government buildings and properties, libraries, national parks, state parks...did I forget any?

Seriously though, it's pretty amazing how quickly they can throw down new sod. They'll be in and out in an hour. nbd.

Insider Trading is basically the "dope on the table" of financial crime, imo. xposts

more praise for the Occupy the SEC group:

http://www.businessweek.com/finance/occupy-the-sec-weighs-in-on-the-volcker-rule-02142012.html

Occupy Maine is no more

:(

the VP of development for the right-wing Tax Foundation, writing to the National Park Service in November:

Sounds to me like you don’t recognize who votes for you — and who butters your brad (sic) with their labor. It isn’t Occupy DC — it isn’t the new generation of class warfare you are propping up — it is me. I am disgusted. I am angry and want this to end. Yesterday I read that the Occupy DC residents at McPherson Square expect to go home and have someone else support them if they are not willing to work. I have no desire to pay for this via my tax dollars you take from me in so many ways. They do not have a permit and it is unlawful for them to be there. If I tried to camp in one of these parks you would make me leave.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/02/14/emails-on-occupy-dc-show-how-opposition-to-national-park-service-escalated/

more graeber
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/david_graeber_debt_economics_occupy_wall_street.php
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/david_graeber_debt_economics_occupy_wall_street_part2.php

di we already post aaron bady's badass review of debt itt?

http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/david-graebers-debt-my-first-5000-words/

love Graeber

DG: It would have been perfectly feasible to take the trillions of dollars that they essentially printed to bail out the banks and give it to mortgage holders, because what the banks had were mortgage-based securities that were no good anymore. If they just paid the mortgages using the same money, that in effect would have bailed out the banks.

DJ: That wouldn’t have been a debt cancellation.

DG: Well, I’m just giving an example. It would have had the same effect as a debt cancellation, because they would have printed money to pay the debts. The irony is that they chose instead to give the money directly to the banks and not bail out the mortgage-holders. Which is a pattern that you see over and over again in world history—one of the more dramatic consistencies I’ve noticed in the history of debt: debts between equals are not the same as debts between people who are not equals.

Debts between either poor people or rich people, that they have with each other, can be renegotiated or forgiven. People can be extraordinarily generous, understanding, forgiving when dealing with others like themselves. But debts between social classes, between the rich and the poor, suddenly become a matter of absolute morality. And that’s what we saw; it’s a very, very old pattern.