Deep Politics Forum

y: Gregg Levine Sunday March 18, 2012 4:30 am

Occupy Wall Street OWS M17

Zuccotti Park, NYC, 3/17/12. (photo: G. Levine)

Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street protestors filled Zuccotti Park on Saturday to celebrate the first six months of the movement. The action began midday, and included marches by groups of protestors around nearby streets in the Financial District. By 10 PM the crowd in Zuccottialso known as Liberty Parkhad swelled to over 700 (some reports go as high as 1,000).

The mood in the park was light and celebratory when the sounds of bagpipes were heard, approaching from the west. Hundreds in the park moved toward the noise, only to witness NYPD officers preventing the pipers from entering the park, arresting at least one. Some on the scene said that the pipers were not affiliated with OWS; they had come to NYC from Brittany to participate in the St. Patrick's Day parade, and later decided to play for occupiers.

While the pipers had drawn much of the crowd to the southwestern part of the park, uniformed NYPD officers moved in to remove a makeshift tent (a plastic tarp thrown over a rope strung between two trees). As police were doing this, loud shouts of "get out" were heard. That order came from a blue-shirted community affairs officer, though, and was not directed at protestors but at the uniformed cops that had just moved in to remove the tarp. Those officers complied and filed quickly toward the east side of the park.

Shortly after that, however, dozens more uniformed NYPD moved into position around the park, and at around 11:30 PM entered the park en masse. Though no announcement was audible on the east side of Zuccotti, reports say police told protestors the park was being closed for "cleaning." While many occupiers moved out of the park, a large number remained, some linking arms, others behind orange netting recognizable as the material police have used to "kettle" protestors in the past.

At that point, police began grabbing protestors and placing them in plastic cuffs. Some were escorted out of the park to waiting wagons on Broadway. Other occupiers lay down or went limp and had to be carried out of the park.

But other protestors encountered a more violent response. Accounts include reports of a broken thumb, possible broken jaw, and police using their boots to hold protestors' faces on the ground. Others said they were pushed forcefully down the street; one visitor to the park reported being hit from behind with a nightstick.

The NYPD quickly filled the two wagons they had waiting at the scene. Police cleared a swath of sidewalk on the east side of the park and constructed a pen out of metal barricades to hold other arrestees until more transport arrived. Some of those protestors were face-down on the ground, others were standing; some were held by police.

An MTA city bus labeled "out of service" arrived, and police began loading it with cuffed occupiers. Some were escorted easily onto the bus, but others were moved more aggressively. Multiple officers were seen holding down one arrestee inside the bus.

One woman, wearing a bright yellow shirt, was moved forcibly onto the bus, only to be moved off of it minutes later. The woman was jerking wildly and appeared to be having a seizure. She fell or was forced to the ground within feet of leaving the bus. Some close to the scene said they saw police holding her down with knees on her torso.

Members of the crowd shouted at cops to get her medical attention. Nothing happened immediately; it was about 20 or 30 minutes later that a Fire Department EMT and ambulance arrived on the scene.

As police were clearing Zuccotti, a group of 100 or more mobilized to march up Broadway, announcing their destination was Union Square Park. Dozens of NYPD followed in squad cars, vans, on scooters and on footstopping marchers at several intersections, occasionally warning them to stay on the sidewalk. It is now reported that near 10th street, at around 12:20 AM, police became more violent, punching one marcher in the face, slamming him against a glass door, breaking the glass and drawing blood.

[Note on the account above: I was at Zuccotti Park from about 10:15 till around midnight. I then marched north along Broadway and caught up with marchers. I broke off at Broome Street to get to a computer and upload video. When I use terms like "reports," "reported," "accounts include" or "some said," I am conveying what others on the scene told me or what others have reported since. Otherwise, if it happened in the time I was there, I saw or heard it, myself.]

Now for the video:

This first video begins as cuffed occupiers are walked or dragged out of Zuccotti Park and onto waiting police wagons. The two wagons are quickly filled and their doors closed. Remaining arrestees are made to wait in the street, and then inside a hastily constructed pen of metal barricades.

At approximately 5:44 in the video, one handcuffed protestor yells, "This police officer is not wearing his name or his badge number. Please report it."

About ten minutes later, a city bus arrives to transport the remaining arrestees. At about 33 seconds in, a woman with red hair and a bright yellow shirt is briefly seen being led inside the bus. Approximately one minute later, the same woman is visible, but this time is jerking uncontrollably as she is pulled off the bus. Once off, she either falls or is brought to the ground by the police restraining her.

comment on this22 Comments Recommend
Tags: #OWS, #Occupy, NYPD, Zuccotti Park, seizure, M17, arrests, police brutality
22 Responses to Occupy Wall Street: Zuccotti Park Reoccupied for Semi-Anniversary; Dozens Arrested (Video)

firedancer March 18th, 2012 at 5:30 am 1

Thank you very much for the report Gregg. Keep the light shining on this type of treatment!
Reply
realitychecker March 18th, 2012 at 5:31 am 2

The forces of repression make clear their intent to take up where they left off, only now with the aid of new repressive laws and precedents in place. Obama signals his approval by his silence. Any person who votes for Obama is sending the message that repression like this is okey-dokey.
Reply
TarheelDem March 18th, 2012 at 5:35 am 3

Thanks for this coverage.
Reply
seaglass March 18th, 2012 at 5:45 am 4
In response to realitychecker @ 2

Its only ok it seems for large TOO BIG TO FAIL Corps. to Occupy the Gov't and own it.
Reply
realitychecker March 18th, 2012 at 5:49 am 5
In response to seaglass @ 4

The battle lines are now drawn as clearly as they can ever be. We will see whether the people want freedom or not.
Reply
Phoenix Woman March 18th, 2012 at 6:24 am 6

Think about it:

Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg were so eager to beat up peaceful Occupiers along with bagpipers from Brittany! that they took hundreds of cops off St. Paddy's Day drunk detail to do it.

Wonder how many drunken robberies, fistfights, knifefights, and gunfights occurred that wouldn't have happened if all the cops in New York hadn't been sent out to punch some hippies instead?
Reply
wendydavis March 18th, 2012 at 6:39 am 7

"…the park was being closed for "cleaning." The unintended metaphor is not lost on us.

And yes, rc; the battle lines are being drawn. Those who aren't clamoring for freedom now are those who believe they have it.

TarheelDem: please stay safe in Chicago; our thoughts, prayers, gratitude and respect will be with you; wish my body could be with you, too.
Reply
wendydavis March 18th, 2012 at 6:40 am 8
In response to wendydavis @ 7

I forgot to offer you my thanks, Gregg Levine.
Reply
fitley March 18th, 2012 at 6:46 am 9
In response to realitychecker @ 2

So I take it you'll be voting for Gingrich?
Reply
jpjones March 18th, 2012 at 7:12 am 10
In response to fitley @ 9

Typical Obamabot straw man bullshit.

I'll be voting in November for someone whom does not sicken and disgust me, for someone whom I won't have to make pathetic excuses for, someone whom I believe represents real courage and commitment to the values I hold. Which means I'll be writing in a name maybe Dan Choi, maybe Bradley Manning, maybe Jane Hamsher.

And if you support assassination by fiat, the imprisonment of journalists and whistleblowers, perpetual war, kowtowing to the US Conference of Bishops, secret back room deals with corporate lobbyists, and protection of war criminals and Wall Street con artists, then you are in the fortunate position of inevitably winning the next election whether you vote for Obama, Gingrich, Romney, or Santorum.
Reply
Eclair March 18th, 2012 at 7:54 am 11

I am happy, no, delighted and reassured, to see that the bus used to haul off these peaceful protestors, is labelled "Clean Air Electric Hybrid."
Reply
caleb36 March 18th, 2012 at 8:10 am 12

I know people are tired of anti-Obama rants, and there have been too many of them, but really!! One word from the president could help drastically to stop this nationwide abuse of peaceful OWS demonstrators. I am also sickened that Obama yesterday, after working on behalf of the 0.01% for almost four years, says that protecting the economic stature of the middle class is the defining issue of our time. The man is such a phony!
Reply
mzchief March 18th, 2012 at 8:13 am 13

I was monitoring the action real-time from multiple Twitter, live stream, video capture, image still and blog post roll ups of accounts and footage. I review prior to posting to my Twitter stream as I go. Here's a roll up of much of the atomic data I saw and reTweeted but in a Storify form by Meg Robertson (Digital Producer at MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show. Also a fan of NYC news) of what happened last night posted shortly after the bulk of the action by NYPD:

"Police Brutality Reports from #M17 at Zuccotti Park" | Storified by Meg Robertson | 6 hours ago · 517 views

Here's the video footage I've been waiting for of what I was hearing @TimCast describe as it happened regarding the targeted attack and potential medical neglect by NYPD of Occupy Wall Street Activist Cecily McMillan:

Julia C. Reinhart ‏ @juliacreinhart
@rdevro #ows Video of girl in seizure after being arrested at #M17 Zuccotti Park. Cops don't help for quite some time http://youtu.be/An8OCm-Gl2U
YouTube
1:32 AM 18 Mar 12 via TweetDeck · Details

Tim was describing what looked like seizures by Cecily as they were happening. Onlookers were yelling for medical and being ignored. NYPD was concern about filtering out media and documentation of what was going on. Tim tried to get closer and was repeatedly harassed despite his verified Chicago press credentials. Other live streamer and credentialed media were intercepted by NYPD and removed. Interestingly, YouTube blocked Russia Today's YouTube channel without explanation last night and YouTube videos were posted about that as soon as it happened.

AMY GOODMAN: This weekend marked six months since the launch of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last September 17th and launched protests around the world that gave voice to "the 99 percent." Activists in New York City marked the occasion by attempting to reoccupy the movement's birthplace: Zuccotti Park, renamed "Liberty Plaza." A protest there Saturday drew more than hundreds of people, and included street theater and dancing.

But police were also on the scene and appeared determined to stop any attempts to re-establish the Occupy encampment. At least 73 people were arrested. Many reported excessive use of force by officers with the New York Police Department. This is a protester describing what happened after activists tried to set up tents in Zuccotti Park Saturday night.

PROTESTER: Some people wanted to reoccupy the park, so people were out here with their sleeping bags, and there were a few tents. The officers basically came into the park and smashed the tarp down that people were lying under, and they began trying to arrest people.

AMY GOODMAN: In one widely reported incident, a young woman suffered a seizure after she was pulled from the crowd and arrested. Witnesses say police initially ignored Cecily McMillan as she flopped about on the sidewalk with her hands zip-tied behind her back, but she was eventually taken away in an ambulance.

Meanwhile, not far from the park, thousands of activists and intellectuals gathered at the Left Forum this weekend to discuss the theme "Occupying the System." Renowned independent filmmaker and activist Michael Moore headlined the event Saturday. He said he had never seen a movement spread with greater speed than Occupy Wall Street.

MICHAEL MOORE: I have never seen a political or a social movement catch fire this fast than this one. And, you know, I'm in my fifties, so I've lived through enough of them and knew about those that came before me. And what's so incredible about this movement is that people haveit wasreally, it hasn't taken six months. It really just took a few weeks before they started to take polls of people, Americans, and they found that the majority of Americans supported the principles of the Occupy movement. This was back in October.

And then they took another poll, and it said 72 percent of the American public believes taxes should be raised on the rich. Seventy-two percent. I mean, I don't think there was ever a poll that showed a majority in favor of raising taxes on the rich, because up until recently, a vast majority of our fellow Americans believed in the Horatio Alger theory, that anyone in America can make it, it's an even and level playing field. And now theythe majority, at least, vast majorityknow that that's a lie. They know that there's no truth to that whatsoever. They know that the game is rigged. And they know that they don't have the same wherewithal on that playing field that the wealthy have.

AMY GOODMAN: At the end of his speech, Michael Moore urged people to join the movement and go down to Zuccotti Park.

MICHAEL MOORE: I really want to encourage you to not let this moment slip by. Our ship has really come in. The spotlight is on Occupy Wall Street. And I thinkI think this is ourthis is our invitation to head over to Zuccotti Park. It's a 10-minuteit's a 10-minute walk. Five minutes if you're young. Huh?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [inaudible]

MICHAEL MOORE: All right. So, go ahead, start the banner. And again, thank you, everybody, for coming here tonight. Let's notlet's not lose the moment. The moment is ours and our fellow Americans'. Thank you. Occupy Wall Street!

AMY GOODMAN: Hundreds heeded Michael Moore's call and helped swell the ranks of the Occupy protest Saturday night. Democracy Now! correspondent and now Guardian reporter Ryan Devereaux tweeted, quote, "Today's events feel like any given day last fall with #OWS."

Well, Ryan joins us now to talk more about Occupy Wall Street. We're also joined by two of the people who led a discussion at the Left Forum about strategic directions for the Occupy movement: Frances Fox Piven, professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, a frequent target of right-wing pundits; and in D.C., we're joined by Stephen Lerner, the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign, on the executive board of the Service Employees International Union, has been working with labor and community groups nationally on how to hold Wall Street accountable.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Ryan, let's begin with you with an update on what took place on Saturday night.

RYAN DEVEREAUX: Well, on Saturday night, protesters had been in the park since about 1:00 in the afternoon, and it had been a day that had been marked with some tension, but also a lot of joy. People were really enjoying the opportunity to be in the park again to talk to each other, to meet new people and discuss issues. At about 11:30, though, a representative from Brookfield Properties, which owns Zuccotti Park, said that he was working with Brookfield security, made an announcement that people had to leave the park because they were violating the rules. I asked him what rules they were violating. He said that they had brought in sleeping equipment and erected structures in the park, and these were violations of the rules. He made this announcement via megaphone, but he was drowned out by protesters. And I should say that the structures that I witnessed were a tarp that was strung over a cord tied between two trees, and protesters also hadthey had symbolic tents up on polls that they were carrying around. It wasn't as if they had created a tent city in the park or anything like that.

But the protesters decided to stand their ground, and the police moved in, in lieu of the Brookfield security. And it was rows upon rows of police officers coming into the park through the front entrance, coming down the stairs. And the protesters, dozens of them who chose to stand their ground, were gathered in the center of the park. Their arms and legs were locked. They were sitting in planters right there in the middle of Zuccotti. And the police moved in to break them apart. It was a violent scene, by just about all accounts, police ripping protesters apart from each other, people being hit, people being dragged across the ground, multiple reports of young women being pulled by their hair across the ground. I saw a young woman writhing on the ground in pain with a white-shirted police officer standing over the top of her telling her to shut up. It was really gruesome. I talked to a lot of people who were there on the eviction on November 15th, and they said that the course of the day, you know, the interactions with the police and the protesters were the most violent they had seen. Following people being pulled out of the park, you know, dozens of arrests, there was a winding march through the city, which resulted in, you know, a handful ofa handful more arrests.

What was really disturbing for a lot of people that were there on the scene was one incident with a young woman named Cecily McMillan who, witnesses say, suffered from a seizure. She was handcuffed in the street sidewalk area near the entrance to the park. She was on the ground. Videotape seems to show her convulsing. You can hear people screaming to help her, to call 911. Witnesses that were there said that it took approximately 22 to 23 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. People were really disturbed that there were hundreds of police officers there and no paramedics, and also disturbed by the fact that you see a number of police officers standing around this young woman as she's convulsing, and no one seems to be doing much of anything. I spoke to a young man who said he was a paramedic inan EMT in Florida, who was disgusted by the way that McMillan was treated. He said her head wasn't supported. Numerous witnesses that I spoke to said that her head was bouncing off the concrete. The paramedics said that she could have easily died. McMillan was taken from the scene by ambulance to a local hospital and then transferred to police custody.

AMY GOODMAN: Did they take the handcuffs off of her?

RYAN DEVEREAUX: Eventually they took the handcuffs off, but it was quite some time she was on the ground convulsing in handcuffs. And people were screaming to let her loose, take the handcuffs off, stabilize her. People felt like it didn't seem like the officers knew what they werewhat they needed to do to handle her.

AMY GOODMAN: Is she in jail now or the hospital?

RYAN DEVEREAUX: She's in jail now, as far as we know. Attorneys with the National Lawyers Guild are particularly concerned because, despite repeated efforts, they haven't been able to speak to her. These attorneys have told me that in most cases, it would be easy for them to speak to a potential client, to speak to someone who isyou know, who's in police custody but has been hospitalized. But those efforts have been stopped. It's unclear exactly why. The police have released a video that they claim shows McMillan hitting an officer, hitting a police officer, shortly before her seizure. I don't fully understand how that relates to her care or, you know, why it was that she wasn't taken to the hospital. It seems irrelevant, and it doesn't seem to address the issue of why she hasn't been able to speak to an attorney. We do know that she is charged with a felony, but it is unclear what exactly those charges are, because, again, the attorneys haven't been able to speak to her.

AMY GOODMAN: But she waseventually, an ambulance came?

RYAN DEVEREAUX: Eventually an ambulance came.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of healthcare, what happened to the Occupy medic?

RYAN DEVEREAUX: This was after protesters were cleared out of the park. An Occupy medic, who, by most accounts, from people that I spoke to, is a soft-spoken, pretty nice young guy, was grabbed by police for reasons that are unclear to me. He was directly in front of me at the moment that he was grabbed, and he was thrown into a glass door. Some people said that his head hit the door, but I was standing there, and I couldn't tell what part of his body hit the door. But it was a massive crack left in this glass door. People were shocked at the force that was used. The young man, as he was being pulled away by police officers, looked me in the eye and said that he had been punched in the face. I asked photographers there on the scene. They said he had been punched in the face multiple times.

And this was something that, you know, repeated peoplerepeatedly I heard accounts of people who said that they had been hit in the face. I heard accounts of protesters saying that they were directly verbally threatened by police officers. I saw a high level of intimidation from a number of police officers towards protesters. And it should be said that there were police officers who seemed to be making an effort, or at least just trying to do their job, but it is the guys who go out of their way to not be like that that tend to stand out and that tend to scare people and tend to hurt people. And, you know, protesters were saying that this was really an ugly scene. The attorneys who were looking at cases that are developing out of these arrests are saying that they're seeing more resisting arrest charges, which they tell me often sort of is code word for fighting with police officers or police officers beating someone up.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to break, and then we're going to come back. Ryan Devereaux with The Guardian now, used to be a fellow here at Democracy Now! It's great to have you back. We'll also be joined by Frances Fox Piven and Stephen Lerner in a moment.

AMY GOODMAN: Our guests, Ryan Devereaux with The Guardian, Frances Fox Piven of City University of New York, and Stephen Lerner, labor organizer.

Frances Fox Piven, you were at the Left Forum that ultimately led into this mass march to Zuccotti Park. It's been six months, September 17th, that people occupied Zuccotti Park, calling it Liberty Plaza or Liberty Square. Assess the movement, where we are at this point.

FRANCES FOX PIVEN: Well, I think the movement is reconnoitering at theafter two months of occupations, which were dramatic, brilliant, imaginative, I think captured something for the American people. I think the American public resonated to the "We are the 99 percent" Occupy Wall Street slogans. After two months, a lot of the occupations were leveled. And I think that what has been happening is that the occupiers and all the people who really responded to their rhetoric, to their dramatic depiction of financial capitalism in control and out of control, what people have been figuring out how to do is to move the protest into the neighborhoods, into the workplaces, into the schools.

I think, in the end, it may turn out that evicting the occupations was the precipitant of expanding the movement, because the movement's agenda has broadened, and they're now experimenting with reoccupying foreclosed homes, for example, with ways of rallying to the defense of workers who are locked out or on strike. And with the spring, I think there's going to be a lot of protest in the universities and the colleges. And young people are very responsive to the appeals of Occupy, to their cultural style. And everybody in the colleges understands that high unemployment, high student debt spells foreclosed opportunities for a life.

AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Lerner, talk about the focusing on the banks, like Wells Fargo, like Bank of America, and all that has been happening with those protests.

STEPHEN LERNER: One thing I think that Frances started to touch on here was the idea that we talk about Occupy Wall Street, and it's opened the door to engage directly with all the people who have been devastated by out-of-control corporate and bank and Wall Street power. So in the case of Bank of America and Wells Fargo, there's millions of people who are underwater, 11 million, in their homes, meaning that their homes are worth less now when they bought them, and they're drowning in the debt. So there's a campaign to say, let's force the banks to write down the principal on those mortgages by $300 billion so that folks can stay in their homes. And that would create a million jobs. It would save people $5,000 on average a year in mortgage payments.

And I think it's part of how we think about combining the horizontal energy and vision and passion of Occupy with the more vertical traditional community- and labor-based groups. And when the two of them meet, we'll get the combustion of saying Wall Street is drowning the country, and they're doing it in neighborhoods and communities all over. And it's when people both are occupying in New York and Wall Street and resisting in their homes, their workplaces and schools, that we can engage the millions of people we need to do to build the kind of movement we need at this time in history.

AMY GOODMAN: As Frances was just talking about, the building spring momentum, you have the Democratic and Republican conventions in the summer, the Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. The final day when President Obama will address the delegates will take place at Bank of America Stadium. Can you talk about this, Stephen?

STEPHEN LERNER: Well, there's a shareholder meeting first on April 24th in San Francisco at Wells Fargo, where thousands of people are going to come, and they're going to say to Wells Fargo, this is where decisions are made that will decide our futures, and we're going to confront them there. And then in early May, Bank of America will have its meeting in Charlotte. And occupiers and community groups and environmentalists and people from all over the country are going to be coming to Charlotte.

And in a way, I think we can think about it as the first convention. It's going to be the convention of regular people, of the 99 percent, who are going to be saying to Bank of America, "It's wrong that you're stealing our homes. It's wrong that you're funding coal powerthat you're funding coal. It's wrong that you're ripping off students on student debt." And I think we can really capture the imagination of the country by being at the Southern Wall StreetCharlotteand demonstrating both inside the meetings with people who have proxies, who have bought shares, and outside, that the real decisions are made in corporate boardrooms, not in Washington, and that's the place we have to be in the weeks and months ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you recommending people buy stock?

STEPHEN LERNER: Well, there's a lotyou know, Bank of America shares were recently down to $5, so a lot of people have bought stock and are planning to go to that meeting and try to be citizen shareholdertaxpayer shareholders, and have a say. There's a window. You have to buy it, I think, 60 days before the shareholder meeting to be eligible. So I'm not sure if the window's shut. But lots of people have bought stock, and lots of people are going to go to Charlotte.

And I think the issue aboutwe're calling it "confront corporate power," is these meetings have the illusion of democracy. They say, "Oh, we're going to have a vote of shareholders on corporate policies." We want to lift up all the issues about how out-of-control Wall Street and corporate power are dragging the country down. And so, I think it's going to be an opportunity to make the point again and again that unless regular people can have a say in how corporations run, that we're not going to be able to fix the economy, we're not going to be able to regain power in this country. So I urge everybody to think about coming to Charlottewe don't have the exact day of the meeting; it's normally around a May 9thand folks to come to San Francisco on April 24th, and directly confront the folks who have dragged the country down and get richer and richer at all of our expenses.

AMY GOODMAN: Frances Fox Piven, there is so much being made of the economy is improving, and Occupy movement in this country has gone away. The police have broken down the encampments. What is your assessment of that and

FRANCES FOX PIVEN: Well, no, it's not gone away. I don't think it's gone away at all. Everywhere I look, I hear about Occupy East Harlem, Occupy the South Bronx. I think Occupy has spread out. And this kind of mobilization, this kind of building outrage, confronts a financial steering mechanism in the American economy, which is very vulnerable. It's very vulnerable to the indignation and outrage of the millions and millions of ordinary people who are losing their nest egg. They're losing their home, everything they put into their hopes for a stable future. They're losing their pensions. They are graduating from the college they worked so hard to get into and to stay in; they're graduating with massive debts.

Well, in the background of this, there is, I think, the basic relationship between these lenders and these debtors. They have made so many Americans into debtors. Well, you know, it isn't true, necessarily, that debtors are powerless and lenders have all the power, because the lenders depend on those debtors accepting their debts and putting their shoulder to the wheel and taking the extra job and working very hard until they pay the massive debts that have been piled on their heads. So I think financial America isthe financial corporations are also vulnerable at this point in time, if we can mobilize the indignation, the outrage of the people who have been screwed.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Piven, a number of your books have dealt with the Great Depression, also the social movements of the 1960s. Can you put Occupy in historical context?

FRANCES FOX PIVEN: Yes. I think that not only in the 1960s and in the Great Depression, but from the beginning of the American Republic, it has been these periodic risings of ordinary people that have humanized American society. And sometimes the reforms that were implemented in response to the outrage, the indignation and the defiance, sometimes they did not last. But something lasted. Something lasted of the Revolutionary-era mobs who demanded radical democracy. Something lasted of the struggle of abolitionists for the freeing of the slaves. And something lasted of the Populist movement. Something lasted of the labor uprisings of the 1930s. And of course a lot lasted of the victories of the civil rights movement.

But without these movements, what happens is that the big corporations of America really flood, overflow democratic processes with propaganda and with their lobbying and with their campaign contributions. Democracy doesn't work in the absence of protest movements. Protest movements are what give us that part of democracy that we have achieved. And I'm absolutely convinced that Occupy is the beginning of another massive protest movement. Protest movements have a long life10, 15 yearsand they are what we have to rely on to take our country back.

AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Devereaux, you've been following the protesters on the ground. How are people organizing? Are they coming together? Are they splitting apart? Is there national organizing going on?

RYAN DEVEREAUX: There's certainly national organizing going on, and, you know, there always has been communication between the different Occupy groups throughout the country. Here in New York City, they've taken it upon themselves to start sort of a spring training program. So every Friday they have people, supporters, meeting together to go over different ways to handle situations, you know, at public demonstrations, situations with police, how to work

AMY GOODMAN: News has come out around Occupy being infiltrated by police, monitored by police, Occupy protesters being surveilled.

RYAN DEVEREAUX: Yeah. Well, tomorrowwell, tomorrow there's going to be a rally. There's going to be a press conference discussing the NYPD's handling of Occupy Wall Street. There are going to beOccupy Wall Street protesters are going to be calling on communities that have been affected by the police department, particularly heavily in recent months. We have the Muslim community that is citing these AP reports that indicate that the police have been monitoring the community for years, gathering intelligence and keeping them in some sort ofkeeping that intelligence on record, even when there is no indication of wrongdoing. There are these massive numbers of stop-and-frisks thatstop-and-frisks, police stop-and-frisks in low-income communities, communities of color, throughout New York City that have been rising every year, that, many protesters point out, often lead to the sort of violent confrontations police have with citizens that you see at the protests, but they happen every day, you know, away from the cameras in communities that don't get any attention, and they happen to, you know, young men, young men of color, generally. This is something that's important to Occupy Wall Street protesters. They see an intersection between the concentration of wealth and power and the way that, you know, the police handle the public. So tomorrow there's going to beyou know, they're going to be having a press conference Saturday. They're going to be calling on all these affected communities to come out for a day of action.

In the longer term, Occupy Wall Street is looking at targeting Bank of America with monthly actions, GE, Wells Fargo. There are a lot of things in the works. You know, what Occupy is really focusing on is having different sort of individual groups working together onyou know, they work on their projects, but these projects all have a purpose. And they work together in individual groups when they're on the street and in larger campaigns.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Stephen Lerner, there was a very powerful moment a month into the Occupy Wall Street movement, after September 17th, when union presidents and union organizers, members of unions came out, tens of thousands of them, to Foley Square in New York City. They held a rally in support of Occupy, and then they marched to Occupy Wall Street. The issue of co-opting was raised even there, even by the union leaders, saying, "We're not doing this to lead the movement, but to support the movement." But what about now, the issue of where Occupy stands with unions, that you traditionally work with, with church organizations, with human rights and social justice groups? Do you see some kind of larger integration?

STEPHEN LERNER: You know, I think that's the moment we're in that's so exciting. In California yesterday, a community group, ACCE, and the longshoremen reoccupied the home of a longshoreman that had been evicted from his home. I think we're at that sweet spot where we don't need to worry about co-optwell, we should always worry about co-optionwhere the issue isn't co-option, labor or Occupy or community groups. It's the moment where we can come together and put millions of people in the street. It's a moment where we can come together and talk about shutting down shareholder meetings where people don't have a voice. I think there's never been a more exciting time in my 30 years of organizing to imagine building the kind of movement that can transform the country, that can really talk about redistributing wealth and power. And there's never a better time to get involved. I think the key thing we have to do isthere's not one tactic, there's not one thing folks should do; it's the combination of many threads of work that will build this up to be the kind of movement that Frances talks about that changes this country forchanges this country in a historic and wonderful way.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us, Stephen Lerner, labor organizer, speaking to us from Washington, D.C.; Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York, author of numerous books; and Ryan Devereaux with The Guardian, following the protesters on the ground.

The 2nd Circuit Slams Occupy Wall Street Hero' Judge Rakoff
By Massimo Calabresi | March 16, 2012 | 24

Remember how last fall that "heroic" Manhattan-based U.S. district court judge Jed Rakoff "ripped the SEC a new one" by blocking a massive settlement the agency had proposed with Citigroup for the bank's allegedly knowing and fraudulent acts in the run-up to the great recession? At the time of Rakoff's decision last November, I wrote:

When U.S. district judge Jed Rakoff rejected a $285 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup on Nov. 28, he effectively marched out of the federal courthouse on Foley Square and took his place as the most powerful protester in Zuccotti Park. In a blunt court order, Rakoff broke with decades of judicial deference to the feds and suggested that regulators were enabling Wall Street's efforts to hide allegedly "knowing and fraudulent" acts from the public. While the decision's long-term effects depend on the case's future in the courts, it could immediately impose new standards of accountability and disclosure on an often too cozy system of financial oversight.

It turns out that whole "breaking with decades of judicial deference" thing is a problem, legally speaking. On Thursday, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees district courts in New York, Connecticut and Vermont, ripped Rakoff a new one, staying his ruling and suggesting that his decision misunderstood their previous rulings, overstepped his authority to challenge regulators and made unwarranted assumptions about what had actually happened in the case. The stay can be found here (pdf). Reports the New York Law Journal:

The Second Circuit said Judge Rakoff (See Profile) failed to show proper deference to the SEC's judgment that the settlement of fraud claims stemming from the sale of mortgage-backed securities was not against the public interest… [and] stayed Judge Rakoff's ruling ordering a trial in the case while the circuit considers appeals by both the SEC and Citigroup. The panel said both parties showed they would probably prevail in their challenges to Judge Rakoff's decision… [and said Rakoff] "prejudges the fact that Citigroup had in fact misled investors."… "[Further Rakoff] does not appear to have given deference to the SEC's judgment on wholly discretionary matters of policy," the circuit said [and]… "misinterpreted" certain rulings in holding it was against the public interest to approve a settlement in which Citigroup made no admission of liability, when in fact, those rulings "stand for the proposition that when a court orders injunctive relief, it should insure that injunction does not cause harm to the public interest."… Finally, the court said it had "no reason to doubt" the SEC claim that the settlement was in the public interest…

Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement, "We are pleased that the appeals court found no reason to doubt' the SEC's view that the settlement ordering Citigroup to return $285 million to harmed investors and adopt business reforms is in the public interest. As we have said consistently, we agree to settlements when the terms reflect what we reasonably believe we could obtain if we prevailed at trial, without the risk of delay and uncertainty that comes with litigation. Equally important, this settlement approach preserves resources that we can use to stop other frauds and protect other victims.

So will Rakoff's decision still compel higher standards of disclosure by banks making settlements with the SEC? Maybe. This win by the SEC will receive a lot less attention than the initial Rakoff ruling, even though the latter is clearly going to be reversed. So perhaps Rakoff's goal of attracting attention to the SEC's deal making will turn out to have been an end in itself.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2012/03/16/the...z1pvSMacAP

NYPD Infiltrated Liberal Political Groups, According To New Documents
23rd March 2012
http://www.antifascistencyclopedia.com/?p=56475
(View the documents here PDF)

By MATT APUZZO and ADAM GOLDMAN

AP, March 23, 2012

spies nypd cia muslim n 300x224 NYPD Infiltrated Liberal Political Groups, According To New Documents NEW YORK Undercover NYPD officers attended meetings of liberal political organizations and kept intelligence files on activists who planned protests around the country, according to interviews and documents that show how police have used counterterrorism tactics to monitor even lawful activities.

The infiltration echoes the tactics the NYPD used in the run-up to New York's 2004 Republican National Convention, when police monitored church groups, anti-war organizations and environmental advocates nationwide. That effort was revealed by The New York Times in 2007 and in an ongoing federal civil rights lawsuit over how the NYPD treated convention protesters.

Police said the pre-convention spying was necessary to prepare for the huge, raucous crowds that were headed to the city. But documents obtained by The Associated Press show that the police department's intelligence unit continued to keep close watch on political groups in 2008, long after the convention had passed.

In April 2008, an undercover NYPD officer traveled to New Orleans to attend the People's Summit, a gathering of liberal groups organized around their shared opposition to U.S. economic policy and the effect of trade agreements between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

When the undercover effort was summarized for supervisors, it identified groups opposed to U.S. immigration policy, labor laws and racial profiling. Two activists Jordan Flaherty, a journalist, and Marisa Franco, a labor organizer for housekeepers and nannies were mentioned by name in one of the police intelligence reports obtained by the AP.

"One workshop was led by Jordan Flaherty, former member of the International Solidarity Movement Chapter in New York City," officers wrote in an April 25, 2008, memo to David Cohen, the NYPD's top intelligence officer. "Mr. Flaherty is an editor and journalist of the Left Turn Magazine and was one of the main organizers of the conference. Mr. Flaherty held a discussion calling for the increase of the divestment campaign of Israel and mentioned two events related to Palestine."

The document provides the latest example of how, in the name of fighting terrorism, law enforcement agencies around the country have scrutinized groups that legally oppose government policies. The FBI, for instance, has collected information on anti-war demonstrators. The Maryland state police infiltrated meetings of anti-death penalty groups. Missouri counterterrorism analysts suggested that support for Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, might indicate support for violent militias an assertion for which state officials later apologized. And Texas officials urged authorities to monitor lobbying efforts by pro Muslim-groups.

Police have good reason to want to know what to expect when protesters take to the streets. Many big cities, such as Seattle in 1999, Cincinnati in 2001 and Toledo in 2005, have seen protests turned into violent, destructive riots. Intelligence from undercover officers gives police an idea of what to expect and lets them plan accordingly.

"There was no political surveillance," Cohen testified in the ongoing lawsuit over NYPD's handling of protesters at the Republican convention. "This was a program designed to determine in advance the likelihood of unlawful activity or acts of violence."

The result of those efforts, however, was that people and organizations can be cataloged in police files for discussing political topics or advocating even legal protests, not violence or criminal activity.

By contrast, at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests and in related protests in other cities, officials at the U.S. Homeland Security Department repeatedly urged authorities not to produce intelligence reports based simply on protest activities.

"Occupy Wall Street-type protesters mostly are engaged in constitutionally protected activity," department officials wrote in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the website Gawker. "We maintain our longstanding position that DHS should not report on activities when the basis for reporting is political speech."

At the NYPD, the monitoring was carried out by the Intelligence Division, a squad that operates with nearly no outside oversight and is so secretive that police said even its organizational chart is too sensitive to publish. The division has been the subject of a series of Associated Press articles that illustrated how the NYPD monitored Muslim neighborhoods, catalogued people who prayed at mosques and eavesdropped on sermons.

The AP left phone messages with Cohen and two NYPD press officers last week seeking comment about the undercover operation in New Orleans. They did not return the calls.

The NYPD has defended its efforts, saying the threat of terrorism means officers cannot wait to open an investigation until a crime is committed. Under rules governing NYPD investigations, officers are allowed to go anywhere the public can go and can prepare reports for "operational planning."

Though the NYPD's infiltration of political groups before the 2004 convention generated some controversy and has become an element in a lawsuit over the arrest, fingerprinting and detention of protesters, the surveillance itself has not been challenged in court.

Flaherty, who also writes for The Huffington Post, said he was not an organizer of the summit, as police wrote in the NYPD report. He said the event described by police actually was a film festival in New Orleans that same week, suggesting that the undercover officer's duties were more widespread than described in the report.

Flaherty said he recalls introducing a film about Palestinians but spoke only briefly and does not understand why that landed him a reference in police files.

"The only threat was the threat of ideas," he said. "I think this idea of secret police following you around is terrifying. It really has an effect of spreading fear and squashing dissent."

Before the terrorist attacks of September 2001, infiltrating political groups was one of the most tightly controlled powers the NYPD could use. Such investigations were restricted by a longstanding court order in a lawsuit over the NYPD's spying on protest groups in the 1960s.

After the attacks, Cohen told a federal judge that, to keep the city safe, police must be allowed to open investigations before there's evidence of a crime. A federal judge agreed and relaxed the rules.

Since then, police have monitored not only suspected terrorists but also entire Muslim neighborhoods, mosques, restaurants and law-abiding protesters.

Keeping tabs on planned demonstrations is a key function of Cohen's division. Investigators with his Cyber Intelligence Unit monitor websites of activist groups, and undercover officers put themselves on email distribution lists for upcoming events. Plainclothes officers collect fliers on public demonstrations. Officers and informants infiltrate the groups and attend rallies, parades and marches.

Intelligence analysts take all this information and distill it into summaries for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly's daily briefing, documents show.

The April 2008 memo offers an unusually candid view of how political monitoring fit into the NYPD's larger, post-9/11 intelligence mission. As the AP has reported previously, Cohen's unit has transformed the NYPD into one of the most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies in the United States, one that infiltrated Muslim student groups, monitored their websites and used informants as listening posts inside mosques.

Along with the political monitoring, the document describes plans to use informants to monitor mosques for conversations about the imminent verdict in the trial of three NYPD officers charged in the 2006 shooting death of Sean Bell, an unarmed man who died in a hail of gunfire. Police were worried about how the black community, particularly the New Black Panther Party, would respond to the verdict, according to this and other documents obtained by the AP.

The document also contained details of a whitewater rafting trip that an undercover officer attended with Muslim students from City College New York.

"The group prayed at least four times a day, and much of the conversation was spent discussing Islam and was religious in nature," the report reads.

Eugene Puryear, 26, an activist who attended the New Orleans summit, said he was not surprised to learn that police were monitoring it. He said it was entirely peaceful, a way to connect community organizers around the issues of racism and the rights of the poor. But he described it as a challenge to corporate power and said the NYPD probably felt threatened by it.

"From their perspective, they need to spy on peaceful groups so they're not effective at putting out their peaceful message," he said. "They are threatened by anything challenging the status quo."

___

View the document here (PDF).

Contact the Washington investigative team at dcinvestigations(at)ap.org

MARCH 20, 2012
"This stuff doesn't feel like minutia, it feels fundamental to me".
Race, Gender and Occupy

by SWETA VOHRA and JORDAN FLAHERTY
At a recent panel discussion on the Occupy movement, a left-leaning professor from New York University speculated that identity politics the prioritising of issues of race and gender in movements for justice could be a plot funded by the CIA to undermine activism. While most commentators do not go this far, the idea that activists who focus on these issues are "undermining the struggle" has a long history within progressive organising. And in Occupy Wall Street encampments around the country these debates have often exploded into public view.
For the past six months, we have been following the Occupy movement for a two-part documentary on Occupy for Fault Lines. We have spent weeks in conversation with activists as they have planned actions and struggled to keep their movement relevant through a cold winter. And organisers have told us repeatedly that they feel these discussions around race and gender, far from weakening the movement, have lent it strength and made organising more accountable to the communities most affected by the economic crisis.
The process of challenging structural oppression has been difficult. We spoke to many women and people of colour who felt pushed out of Occupy. Some activists, already bruised by dismissive media coverage, tried not to let these conflicts show. When internal conflicts would arise they tried to not let it happen on camera. But what we did observe are many fiercely intelligent activists dedicated to waging these struggles within Occupy and strengthening the movement with their work.
The 99 per cent
When people gathered in Zuccotti Park on September 17, the anger at corporate greed was a unifying call. This was a protest that in large part was about shifting power from the wealthy to the many. It was a mostly white crowd, but it sought to incorporate a wide range of voices.
The economic crisis in the US had made the white middle class question their future. Soaring unemployment rates, suffocating student loan debt, and thousands of foreclosures began to close in. This reality propelled the Occupy movement forward. And many feel that the presence of so many relatively privileged white people brought increased media attention and public sympathy. 

Organisers told us they immediately saw the next step as needing to raise awareness among the many young people new to activism that came flocking to occupations. "It's the job of the social justice movement to continue that conversation," says Max Rameau, a co-founder of Take Back the Land, who advised many of the Occupies.
He told us that occupiers need to "make sure this isn't just a movement of the way white people have gone from being able to every day shop at particular malls, and now they have to shop at reduced, discount stores … this has to do, really, about inequality and long-term inequality, including communities who have suffered for years, not just because of the recent economic downturn".

Manissa Maharawal, a PhD student and Occupy activist, said: "I love the discourse of the 99 per cent. I think it's great, I think it's been really unifying. But I would like it to go along with saying something like: We are the 99 per cent, but the way that we experience the 99 per cent can be very different'."

Jack Bryson, a 49-year-old black public service worker, became an activist after his sons witnessed the killing of their friend Oscar Grant at the hands of transit police in Oakland. When he heard that Occupy Oakland had named their camp Oscar Grant Plaza, he came to check it out. He was excited by what he found, but also thought many young white activists he met had a lot to learn about poverty and repression. "The black community, for 400 years, [have] always been the 99 per cent," Bryson said. "Welcome to our world."
Bryson was one of many who told us that Occupy activists needed to understand the ways in which communities of colour experience the criminal justice system. He noted that Occupy Oakland had faced intense police repression. But, he told us, what many failed to realise was that police brutality is a daily fact of life in many communities. "Black, young men … would love to come out here. But what happens here, with the police? It happens on Saturday nights to black young men leaving a nightclub, or a black young man going into a gas station and being followed by the police."
Boots Riley, a hip-hop artist and Occupy Oakland organiser, added: "I think that what happens normally is the media has most of white America looking at people of colour as deficient, savage, and when they see something happen to them by police they believe that it was somehow their fault.
"Our ideas and views about the police are very tied in to our ideas and views about why people are poor."

If OWS wanted to be a movement that was going to shift power in the US, these organisers felt it had to come to terms with the fundamental differences in the ways that communities of colour experienced racism, how women experienced patriarchy, and how queer and transgender communities experienced homophobia and gender bias. If Occupy Wall Street wanted to talk about envisioning an alternative community, activists would first have to face their own privilege. 

That awareness has involved active organising by white anti-racists, as well as the activists of colour who engaged deeply in the movement, despite often facing attacks for bringing up issues of race and gender.
"I was totally impressed by the leadership that was coming from young people of colour, young women of colour," activist and scholar Angela Davis told us in a conversation about Occupy camps she visited on the East coast.
"I think it's good that there's some white men getting involved, but they also have to recognise that, in order to be involved in this campaign of the 99 per cent against the one per cent, we have to recognise that the 99 per cent is hierarchically developed by itself." 

Davis told us that Occupy was indebted to a long history of direct action led by women and by people of colour. She specifically noted the legacy of resistance in prisons, led by those behind bars.
"Let's recognise that we're not artificially imposing these issues on the Occupy movement," added Davis. "The Occupy movement has organically risen from those movements."

For Lisa Fithian, one of many white activists who seeks to challenge race and gender bias in the movement, this consciousness raising is a crucial part of struggling for justice. She told us: "What I teach is that those with more privileges whether because your colour of your skin, your gender, your education, whatever, how do you use those privileges strategically to raise those of all?
"We have to take our privileges, become conscious and use them to actively change the social relationships, and access, and availability of resources," she added.
Blocking the process
Manissa Maharawal, a South Asian woman, has been one of Occupy Wall Street's most eloquent and passionate defenders. But she almost walked out of the movement on one of her very first visits to Zuccotti Park. When she, along with several people of colour, stood up in front of hundreds of people to block a proposal at a very early Occupy Wall Street assembly, she felt anger and hostility from many of those present. She says it's "still one of the more intimidating things that I've had to do in my life".
The proposal was for a document called the Declaration of the Occupation, and she felt language in the document erased oppression faced by people of colour. 

She did not want to have to block the proposal and face the angry stares of hundreds of people. However, says Maharawal, it's something she had to do. "What struck me then was that if I want Occupy to be something that's around for a long time in my life … it needs from the very beginning to be a movement that's taking these things on," she explained. "And that is thinking about not just corporate greed and financial institutions, but is thinking about how these things are connected to racism, to patriarchy, to oppression generally."
Ultimately, Maharawal and others who agreed with her succeeded in changing the language of the declaration. Nearly two months later, one of the white male activists who had expressed his frustration with her came up to her to thank her for her intervention. "I'm really glad you did that, I learned a lot right then," he told her.

"Making these connections is difficult, it's been like constant work in this movement," says Maharawal. But, she adds, "this stuff doesn't feel like minutia, it feels fundamental to me".
She says this movement is about creating a real alternative to our current system, and, for her, that means fighting these systemic issues. "Why are we going to create a system that just re-creates all these oppressions? That recreates racism, that recreates oppression, that recreates gender hierarchy? Why would I want to be a part of that?"
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/20/r...cupy/print

Occupy Fights Foreclosure Fighting to Save Defrauded Family's Home
By Cheryl Aichele

http://www.laprogressive.com/occupy-fights-foreclosure/

Today is a victory for Dirma and her family, most significantly for her special needs daughter Ingrid! All respect to OFF LA and supporting Occupiers! Occupiers from all over, including Occupy Pasadena, Occupy Miami and Worchester MA!

Occupy Fights Forclosures Los Angeles were contacted by Dirma about attempts to illegally foreclose upon her home. Dirma has filed bankruptcy, which halts foreclosure proceedings, but Maxim Properties claim to own the house and are forcing foreclosure proceedings. On the 26th, they sent sheriffs to evict the family. Occupiers were there and took up task, explaining the issues to them. One occupier was momentarily cuffed and detained in a sheriff's vehicle, but Occupy won through and the family, who had been given five minutes to remove themselves and all of their property, are back in the house.

Even worse, Dirma had engaged the services of Golden Globe Investments to help end the foreclosure. It turns out they are possibly not even licensed to do this, and Occupiers had to show up and Occupy their offices in order to get Dirma's paperwork and $4,500.00 investment returned!!


Note that their daughter, Ingrid, suffers from toxic plasmosis cerebral palsy, and is unable to care for herself. Maxim and the sheriffs wanted to throw her out on the street. The family have nowhere else to go, as renters balk at Ingrid's condition. The home has a long wheelchair ramp from the front door to the sidewalk....

March 26th:


Photo by Deniz Occupy Guevarra:





Photos by Damon D'Amato:








Livestream:



March 27th:






We canvassed the neighborhood and talked with other homeowners, discussing Dirma's situation and calling them to a neighborhood General Assembly. We found several seemingly empty homes...but onward to the GA:




Dirma's daughter Ingrid. I took a photo of Ingrid, who is seemingly nearly always in anguish, but in attempted sensitivity, will not share it. Just know that she can use your prayers, and her home.




Dirma's sons. Sorry for cutting one of you off:




Livestream!




Michelle Shocked brings it together with music:






Kicking bank ass!





Livestream, neighborhood general assembly:

Mr., Mrs., or Ms. Ruffbear, if you prefer honorifics to show that you are opposed to an egalitarian society, you obviously haven't seen these three videos:
http://counterpsyops.com/2012/03/15/u-s-election-management-brought...
You can't impose democracy on anyone, you just stop imposing tyranny and what you have left is democracy.
Do you really think that people would rather have their jobs outsourced than participate in decision making?
Do you really think people would rather have their tax money spent on wars and bailouts they oppose than participate in decision making?
Do you really think that people would rather die from toxic corporate pharmaceuticals (a leading cause of death in this country), or a total lack of access to health care for themselves and their children than participate in decision making?
Do you really think that people would rather have the entire planet so polluted that it becomes unsuited for human life, than participate in decision making?
Do you really think that the people who sign petitions and vote don't want a voice in government?
Do you think that people who risk being beaten and arrested just to protest the government's policides, don't want to participate in decision making?
You're the one who doesn't want to participate in decision making and would rather vote for corporate puppets to make your decisions for you. Have you boycotted all Occupy Genderal Assemblies to show how much you don't want to participate in decision making? People want to participate in decision making so badly that even after being beaten, maced, pepper-sprayed, stun-gunned, and arrested, they keep coming back.
Many countries have democratic forms of government. Just because a government isn't a corrupt tyranny like ours, doesn't mean there is no government. Do you think Abraham Lincoln was insane when he spoke about "government of the people, by the people, and for the people?" That he was using hyperbole and fomenting hysteria?
You HAVE no participation. You BELIEVE that your votes are counted, but they really aren't. I know you won't watch the three videos in the article I just provided a link to, but other readers will and they will see how you are basing your beliefs on willful ignorance, denial, and refusal to face reality and look at the proven, documented facts. Watch the people in the second video cast their votes, and then look at what the results from the central tabulator say. That election official lost his job for pursuing the truth, by the way. He's a genuine hero of democracy. And if he couldn't tell that an election was rigged, how could you?
I haven't called for a general strike, although I have joined the call and support the strike. The general strike has been called for by various groups, including Occupiers, workers, unions, and many other sectors of the 99% who want a voice in government more than they want a job that doesn't pay a living wage, has no benefits, and can be outsourced tomorrow.
What I have called for is an election boycott in 2012.
I want social and economic justice for all, not just for a privileged few who are apparently happy with the status quo like you are. When was your job outsourced? When was your home fraudulently foreclosed? When were you denied coverage for you or your kids in a medical emergency?
There's a standing reward somewhere on the internet of a huge amount of money for anyone who can prove that a single vote on an electronic touch voting machine was ever counted accurately. It has been posted for years and nobody has ever stepped forward to claim the money. Watch the videos and see how easily elections are stolen--even you could do it. And this isn't with a touch screen, this is with the supposedly much more secure optical scanner. They have a video somewhere of a chimpanzee rigging an election, it's that easy. You may trust Goldman Sachs to report the results accurately, but some of us do not. In fact there are more of us who don't trust a government or any system within that government, including elections, where Goldman Sachs has so much influence, than there are people like you who do.
People are moving so fast that I can't keep up with them. Watch the woman weeping in the second video. I'm not certain, but that might be Vickie Karp, on of many prominent election integrity activists of the past decade. Listen to what she says. You're calling people like me names for telling the truth. Why do you want to hide the truth? Are you afraid of it?
I know you're more afraid of me, of other Occupiers, of your neighbors, of workers, of the poor, and of ordinary people than you are of the genocidal oligarchs in our government who commit crimes against humanity. You trust the war criminals, and you're quite sure that if you ask them, they'll allow you your useless convention, since it has no hope of changing anything and will leave the oligarchs in power. You just don't trust ordinary people. And there's only one possible reason that you wouldn't trust ordinary people, Ruffbear, and that's because you're not one of us, you're one of the 1% or working for the 1%. If you were one of us, one of the 99%, you'd know that we're much more competent, intelligent, hard-working, and compassionate than our government. We are the people. And like we always say, there ain't no power like the power of the people, 'cuz the power of the people don't stop. That's right!
Notice that I'm not trying to win you over. There's no such thing. There are people who are part of the 99% and don't realize it yet, but there are also people whose job it is to subjugate the 99% on behalf of the 1%. They can't be won over until the government falls and their paychecks stop, so it is a waste of time to try.
What I am trying to do in this discussion with you is to let other people see where you're coming from, what your attitudes are, and what your motivations are. Once they understand how stupid, lazy, incompetent, and contemptible you think we are, they will understand why your constitutional convention is just a gimmick to get out the vote for the 1%. For you, abrupt change would be catastrophic. It is different for us. Many of us will die if change doesn't come quickly enough. We're the ones without jobs, homes, or health care, and some of us are relatives and friends of innocent children being drone bombed by our government in other countries every day. We want to live and we want our sweet little nieces and nephews, and the darling nephews and nieces of our friends to live, so change can't come too quickly for us, only for you.
Oh, and by the way, this is not the 1920, China is not as totalitatiran as the US, the cold war is over, we won, and nothing changed. So we're mad as hell and we're not going to vote for your system any more. Not even if you run Hillary Clinton against Lady Gaga and put seven Constitutional amendments on the ballot. We know the game is rigged and we also know that the only ones still trying to pretend that it isn't are the conmen rigging the game and their shills who are in on it.

Matt Taibbi talks about Bank of America at an Occupy Wall Street day of action, February 29th, 2012. He wrote this article for OWS, and passed it out to the crowd. It's an informative and urgent call to action for Americans from all walks of life.

There are two things every American needs to know about Bank of America.

The first is that it's corrupt. This bank has systematically defrauded almost everyone with whom it has a significant business relationship, cheating investors, insurers, homeowners, shareholders, depositors, and the state. It is a giant, raging hurricane of theft and fraud, spinning its way through America and leaving a massive trail of wiped-out retirees and foreclosed-upon families in its wake.

The second is that all of us, as taxpayers, are keeping that hurricane raging. Bank of America is not just a private company that systematically steals from American citizens: it's a de facto ward of the state that depends heavily upon public support to stay in business. In fact, without the continued generosity of us taxpayers, and the extraordinary indulgence of our regulators and elected officials, this company long ago would have been swallowed up by scandal, mismanagement, prosecution and litigation, and gone out of business. It would have been liquidated and its component parts sold off, perhaps into a series of smaller regional businesses that would have more respect for the law, and be more responsive to their customers.

But Bank of America hasn't gone out of business, for the simple reason that our government has decided to make it the poster child for the "Too Big To Fail" concept. Because it is considered a "systemically important institution" whose collapse would have a major, Lehman-Brothers-style impact on the economy, two consecutive presidential administrations have taken extraordinary measures to keep Bank of America in business, despite a staggering recent legacy of corruption schemes, many of which were simply overlooked by regulators.

This is why the question of whether or not Bank of America should remain on public life support is so critical to all Americans, and not just those millions who have the misfortune to be customers of the bank, or own shares in the firm, or hold mortgages serviced by the company. This gigantic financial institution is the ultimate symbol of a new kind of corruption at the highest levels of American society: a tendency to marry the near-limitless power of the federal government with increasingly concentrated, increasingly unaccountable private financial interests.

The inevitable result of that new form of corruption is this bank, whose continued, state-supported existence should naturally outrage all Americans, be they conservative or progressive.

Conservatives should be outraged by Bank of America because it is perhaps the biggest welfare dependent in American history, with the $45 billion in bailout money and the $118 billion in state guarantees it's received since 2008 representing just the crest of a veritable mountain of federal bailout support, most of it doled out by the Obama administration.

For instance, with its own credit rating hovering just above junk status, Bank of America has been allowed to borrow tens of billions of dollars against the government's credit rating using little-known bailout programs with names like the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. Since the crash of 2008, it's also borrowed billions if not trillions in emergency, near-zero interest rate loans from the Federal Reserve it took out $91 million in rolling low-interest financing from the Fed on just one day in January, 2009.

Conservatives believe that a commitment to free market principles and limited government will lead us out of our economic troubles, but Bank of America represents the opposite dynamic: a company that is kept protected from the judgments of the free market, and forces the state to expand to take on its debts.

Last summer, for instance, the Bank in order to satisfy creditors who were nervous about the enormous quantity of risky assets on its balance sheet decided to move some $73 trillion (that's trillion, with a T) in exotic derivative bets from one end of the company into the federally-insured, depository side of the bank.

This move, encouraged by the Obama administration, put the American taxpayer on the hook for an entire generation of irresponsible gambles made by another failed investment firm that should have gone out of business, but was instead acquired by Bank of America with $25 billion in taxpayer help Merrill Lynch.

When did we make it the job of the taxpayer to buy failed companies, and rescue companies from their own bad decisions? How is that conservative?

Meanwhile, if you're a progressive, Bank of America is the ultimate symbol of modern predatory capitalism. This company has knowingly sold hundreds of billions of worthless securities to unions and pension funds (New York state filed two different lawsuits against Bank of America and its subsidiaries on behalf of its pension fund, one of which was settled for $624 million) brazenly overcharged its depositors (it was forced to pay customers $410 million in restitution for bogus overdraft charges), and repeatedly lied to its shareholders (most notoriously, it lied about billions in losses on Merrill Lynch's books before asking shareholders to approve its merger with the firm).

Moreover, Bank of America has ruthlessly preyed upon millions of homeowners, throwing them out on the street on the strength of doctored, "robosigned" paperwork created through brazenly illegal practices they helped pioneer the firm sped struggling families to foreclosure court using perjured affidavits produced in factory-like fashion by the hundreds or thousands every day, with full knowledge of management. Through the firm's improper use of an unaccountable private electronic mortgage registry system called MERS, it also systematically evaded millions of dollars in local fees, forcing some communities to cut services and raise property taxes.

Even when caught and punished for its crimes by the authorities, Bank of America has repeatedly ignored court orders. It was one of five companies identified in two separate investigations earlier this year that were caught continuing the practice of robosigning, even after promising to stop in a legally binding consent decree. Last summer, the state of Nevada sought to terminate a settlement over mortgage abuses it had entered into with Bank of America after it found the company was brazenly violating the agreement, among other things raising payments and interest rates on mortgage customers, despite the fact that the settlement only allowed them to modify loans downward.

Over and over again, we see that leveling fines and punishments at this bank is not enough: it simply ignores them. It is the very definition of an unaccountable corporate villain.

Companies like Bank of America are a direct threat to national security, for many reasons. For one thing, they drive smaller, more honest banks out of business: since the market knows the federal government will never let Bank of America fail, it charges less to lend the bank money. That gives Bank of America, despite its near-junk credit rating, a competitive advantage over a smaller, regional bank that might have a better credit rating, but doesn't have the implicit support of the federal government.

Worse still, stock market investor dollars that normally would go to more customer-friendly, more creative, and more commercially dependable firms will instead continue to flow to Too-Big-To-Fail behemoths like Bank of America, as buying stock in a company with implicit state support will be considered almost a safe-haven investment, like buying gold or Treasury bills.

This robs more deserving and ingenious entrepreneurs of scarce capital, and also encourages existing companies to pour resources not into better performance and increased productivity, but into lobbying and government influence. The result will be fewer Googles and Apples, more bad banks, and more campaign contributions for politicians.

Moreover, we've seen throughout our history that when criminal organizations are not punished, they tend to be encouraged to commit more crimes. Five years from now, our government's decision to avoid jailing Bank of America executives for their roles in the vast robosigning program may result in a situation where no court document of any kind can be trusted, as companies will realize that it is cheaper and easier to simply invent legal affidavits than to draw them up properly and accurately.

What will your defense be against a future lawsuit for a credit card debt or a foreclosure, when your bank walks into court with a pile of invented documents? Will you wish then that you'd fought harder for Bank of America to be punished now?

And the state's decision to allow Bank of America to pay a middling, $137 million fine for the rigging of bids for five years of municipal bond issues a very serious crime that robbed taxpayers of millions in revenue, and incidentally is exactly the sort of thing we used to put mobsters in jail for, when the rigged contracts were for cement instead of bonds may mean that down the road, all municipal bond issues will be rigged.

In recent years, Too-Big-To-Fail banks like Bank of America and Chase and Wells Fargo have been caught rigging the bids for financial services in dozens of municipalities nationwide. Worse, these same banks have repeatedly been let off the hook by regulators, who rarely seek jail sentences for the offenders, and more often simply apply fractional fines to the companies caught. This behavior, if left unchecked, will ultimately mean that we will all have to pay more for our roads, our traffic lights, our sewers, in fact all public services, as the banker's secret bonus will soon become an institutionalized part of the invoice. And it'll be our fault, because we didn't do anything about it now.

The only way to prevent this kind of slide to total lawlessness is to break this unhealthy relationship between bank and government. It would be a great sign of America's return to healthier capitalism if we could allow one of the worst of public-private monsters, Bank of America, to sink or swim on its own, in the free market.

We don't want Bank of America to fail. Our position is, it already is insolvent, and already has failed and only our tax dollars, and our government's continued protection, is keeping that failure from becoming more common knowledge. There are many opinions about the nature of modern American capitalism. Some think the system is no longer able to meet the needs of ordinary people and needs to be radically overhauled, while others like it just the way it is.

But one thing that everyone on this spectrum of beliefs can agree upon is that our system doesn't work when corrupt companies, companies that should fail in the free market, are kept alive by the government. When we allow that, what we get is a system that is neither capitalism nor socialist, but somewhere more miserably in between a bureaucratic state in which profit is not tied to performance, but political power.

We have to break that cycle, and we can. Even with the enormous levels of state support, Bank of America has been teetering on the edge of collapse for years now. In December of 2011, its share price briefly dipped below $5, a near-fatal event in the firm's history. The market has reacted violently to bad news about the bank on multiple occasions in the last year after news of layoffs, after hints that the government might not bail the bank out completely in the event of a collapse, and after significant new lawsuits were filed. Each of these corrections nearly sent the company into a tailspin, but it was always rescued in the end by the widespread belief that Uncle Sam would bail it out in the event of a collapse.

We need to put a dent in that belief. We need to convince politicians and investors alike to allow failure to fail.