Occupy Wall Street Protesters March Over Brooklyn Bridge For Six Month Anniversary
Posted: 04/ 2/2012 9:17 am Updated: 04/ 2/2012 9:17 am
Occupy Wall Street protesters marched over the Brooklyn Bridge Sunday to commemorate six month anniversary of their first protest on the Bridge, which resulted in over 700 arrests.
A few hundred gathered to mark the occasion, starting their walk at Zuccotti Park, going over the pedestrian path of the Bridge and ending in Cadman Plaza.
This April Fools Day march was a far cry from its predecessor, which was the first large and visible clash of the Occupy movement -- and the ensuing mass arrests launched the cause into the nation's consciousness. Then protesters took over the roadway, which is what led to the police clash. Sunday's march had them walk peaceably over the bridge without a confrontation.
"This is not April Fool's Day for us," protester Yoni Miller told DNAinfo. "The NYPD are the only people treating Occupy Wall Street like April Fool's Day everyday."
A general assembly convened at Cadman Plaza, but the crowd dispersed once the rain came in.
San Francisco Building Occupied During Occupy Wall Street Day of Action
By Andre Tartar
A man plays percussion during the Occupy DC carnival at McPherson Square in Washington on March 31, 2012. DC's McPherson Sq., one of the last occupier redoubts.
Yesterday an Occupy Wall Street action in San Francisco of between 100 (the AP reports) and 300 (says the San Francisco Chronicle) protesters achieved one of the first real occupations of 2012, taking over an abandoned building belonging to the city Archdiocese where it plans to set up a permanent homeless shelter. (Here's some biblical irony for you. A banner on the building's outside read, "Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses.") While it remains unclear whether the protesters will be allowed to stay the Archdiocese is meeting today to discuss the occupation yesterday marked a serious attempt to break out of the doldrums where the Occupy movement has been languishing.
Beyond San Francisco, there was also some activity in New York City, where some 100 protesters, including a contingent of the Granny Peace Brigade, returned to the Brooklyn Bridge to mark the anniversary of the mass arrests there six months ago. And in Boston, a similar number turned out for an April Fools' Day rally in Dewey Square, carrying signs like "Tax the Poor" and "Bigger Cages, Longer Chains."
Still, these turnouts are a far cry from the hundreds, if not thousands, that turned out in the fall. In November, Occupy Wall Street commanded up to 14 percent of national news coverage now, it barely registers.
Occupy Wall Street leaders are no doubt acutely aware of how little coverage they are getting and how pessimistic the coverage that they do garner is. "Less Visible Occupy Movement Looks for Staying Power," read a Times headline this weekend, while still others suggest "regaining momentum" is likely at the top of the group's agenda. With their spring offensive in the offing, Occupy Wall Street really is in desperate need of an adrenaline boost.
"They have fewer people, and it's not a new story anymore that there were people protesting in the streets or sleeping in parks," the president of the liberal nonprofit Center for American Progress told the Times. "They need to think of new ways to garner attention and connect with people around the country."
Yesterday's actions may have won the Occupy Wall Street vanguard a few more headlines, including this one, but if they wish to recapture the national conversation they will have to surprise and shock us again tent cities and bank boycotts may not cut it anymore.
G20 Toronto Riots perpetrated by Agents Provocateurs of the Police
by Ghada Chehade
Global Research
July 13, 2010
Picture: Agents provocateurs at SPP protest in Montebello in 2007
Smoke and Mirrors
Two weeks after the G20 protests in Toronto it is becoming more and more apparent that what many of us suspected is indeed true: the June 26 violence' (i.e. property damage and police-car fires) was most likely perpetrated by agents provocateurs of the police. I recall walking back down Yonge Street after the June 26 demonstration and seeing smashed commercial windows and later watching the spectacle of burning police cars on the mainstream news; it all seemed surreal and quite staged. It felt a bit like being in a parallel universe. The demonstration broadcast on TV was not the demo I had just come from. None of the folks I was with during the demonstration saw windows being smashed or cars being set on fire, and when we saw the spectacle plaid out in the media we instantly knew that the vandalism was either staged or provoked, or both. Now evidence is beginning to surface that proves that these acts were at least partly carried out by undercover agents. As was the case at the Security and Prosperity Partnership' meeting protests at Montebello Quebec on August 20, 2007, it is the agents' boots that gives them away. In a recent article, Terry Burrows draws on photos from the Globe and Mail to demonstrate that black bloc' provocateurs and the uniformed armoured police were wearing in Toronto (as at Montebello) the identical government issued combat boots" [1].
It's likely that the agents provocateurs went off with other black block' people away from the larger march to set the stage for what Burrows aptly calls a "massive government / media propaganda fraud." This orchestrated spectacle of violence and destruction has at least three main functions or effects: it diverts attention away from the G8/G20 and any discussion on how they serve to plunder and exploit the world's resources, peoples and economies (the very issues raised by protestors); it serves to demonize demonstrators and delegitimize much-needed dissent and protest against global capitalism and its aforementioned devastation and; it serves to justify the billion dollar security bill that Harper put on the Canadian people. After weeks of insisting that the grounds for a one billion dollar police presence was specifically to stop so called black block tactics and violent groups,' when the time came police were no where to be seen and/or were given clear orders from the command centre that said "Do not engage," meaning to stand down and do nothing [2].
Rather than protect' the downtown district from violence and property damage, police actually used their resources and hugely disproportionate presence to demonize, intimidate and corral protestors. In Toronto police used what Catherine Porter of the Toronto Star calls the Miami Model [3]. This model is used by police agencies at demonstrations across the globe from Genoa to Pittsburgh. As Porter explicates, the formula includes a number of now-common police tactics: The first is information warfare. Leading up to the demonstrations protestors are criminalized and dehumanized, presented as terrorists' and threats' that the city needs to defend against. Then there is intimidation, wherein police conduct random searches of perceived activists, midnight raids on organizers' homes before demonstrations etc. Another tactic is the self-defense rationale by police that "they threw rocks" so we had to use tear gas, rubber bullets and make arrests. In Toronto, rock-throwing, window-smashing "thugs" (as Harper called them), burning cars, and the over 1000 people arrestedonly 263 of whom were charged with anything other than breach of the peace [4]are part of a carefully orchestrated diversion and serve as scapegoats that allow the Canadian national security state to justify the insane cost of security for the summit as well as its police-state tactics and the increased militarization of public engagement. The last ingredient of the model is the police congratulating themselves for a "job well done" regardless of how many people are needlessly arrested (most of them never charged) or abused in the process.
The corporate media are complicit in this model and, as one would expect the result of implementing it is that protestors are demonized in the mainstream and legitimate dissent is therefore delegitimized. The real issues and the grievances of the protestors unfortunately never make the news and instead the act of demonstrating becomes the point of focus. The spectacle of violent protests' and/or riots' dominates the headlines and is subterfuge for any discussion on or critique of the G8/G20 and global capitalism.
The Truth Will Come Out
It is hopeful that in the days, weeks and months to come government and police will be forced to admit (under similar circumstances as in Montebello, Quebec in 2007) that much of the vandalism and fire-setting was undertaken by those encouraged, directly or indirectly, by agents provocateurs. It is also hopeful that police will have to answer for their disgraceful tacticsbolstered by regulationduring the G20 demonstrations (in fact a June 9 announcement was made that the Ontario Ombudsman is launching an investigation into the controversial security regulation passed by the province prior to the June 26-27 G20 summit) [5]. These tactics, apart from mass indiscriminate arrests, include arresting and beating a deaf man; arresting without-cause and violently removing the prosthetic leg of an amputee; strip searching young women in the make shift detention centre and threatening an Independent Media Centre (IMC) journalist with "gang rape;" and also using an electrical Taser device on another IMC reporter with a heart pacer despite having been informed of his condition and told not to use the devise on him [6].
It has also recently surfaced that the much-feared five-meter rule never even existed. As it turns out a temporary regulation affecting the Public Works Protection Act, which was approved in secret by Dalton McGuinty's cabinet on June 2 on the request of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, never existed in the manner that protestors and legal counsel were led to believe. The media was complicit in underreporting the approval of the regulation initially on June 2 until they finally dropped the bombshell only days before the demonstrations, not allowing protestors and their legal team to properly and thoroughly examine the regulation. As a result the regulation was misinterpreted by protestors and misapplied by the police to an area beyond the security fence, when in actuality it was in regards to an area inside the security zone all along [7]. Toronto Police chief Bill Blair has admitted that he allowed the five-metre rule to be "misinterpreted" by citizens in order to "keep the criminals out." Ultimately, it was little more than a trapone that led both the police on the ground and the protestors to exaggerate the powers police legally had to search individuals and demand identification.
Exposing duplicitous regulatory maneuvers and black block' agents in government issued attire is without question a necessity and a positive thing for our movements. So too are the demands for a public inquiry into the heinous and illegal tactics of the police against people on the streets. It is critical that we expose the state as corrupt and demonstrate that it will break the law and trample all over our charter and human rights in the process of protecting global capital. If these issues are given more than cursory attention in the mainstream media it will serve to show the state's despotic hand, and delegitimize police claims and actions against protestors. Still the images of burning cars and broken windows will forever live in the public imagination and many are likely to think of protestors as thugs, even after the police admit they placed agents provocateurs in our midst.
If 9/11 has taught us anything it is that holes in the official story' unfortunately do little to raise mass suspicion or scrutiny. Simply put, focusing on exposing police and government fraud, lies and abuses is very important but also puts us in a reactionary position with respect to the state. While a focus on the abuses of civil liberties and human rights that occurred during the G20 demonstrations in Toronto is hugely important, it simultaneously serves as yet another departure from the issues we initially came out to protest (the systematic global devastation of people and the environment wrought by the policies of the G8 and G20, and global capitalism generally).
Time to Reassess our Tactics
What is ever more apparent and frustrating is that our movements seem to be increasingly unwilling pawns in a larger systematic strategy designed to distract people away from any critique of the international banking structure and global capitalism while undermining the tactics and hindering the transformative potential of resistance movements. At sanctioned and even unsanctioned marches protestor's physical movements are increasingly limited and dictated by police and the state. During the G20 demonstrations police corraled and herded us, holding us where they wanted us, stopping the march long enough for riot cops to get into position ahead of us, blocking off key intersections, and attempting to insight some form of violent' response. As Porter explains, a popular police tactic is "kettling." Here, "Officers on bike or horses herd protesters into an enclosed space, so they can't leave without trying to break through the police line. Take the bait; you provoke a beating or arrest." In the end, the June 26 march in Toronto did not get anywhere near the much hyped about security fence. And even if it had, focusing on "getting to the fence" is not the goal or purpose of the global justice movement (one should hope). It was hard not to feel herded during the demonstration, almost like walking into a trap. They ultimately used our march to create media distractions/spectacles and set us up as being "violent." As has happened before, our message did not get out; it did not reach the public. In other words, the police state/media used our demonstrations to create and/or perpetuate a negative image of protest in the public eye.
Maybe we need to change our tactics, perhaps holding our demonstrations away from downtown/summit locations so that the state will have no one to frame and scapegoat for their staged vandalism, fires etc., and no ways of justifying these huge security budgets [8]. Simply put, perhaps it is time to change our organizational, mobilization and agitation model(s) since the police state seems to repeatedly set traps for activists and demonstrators, and use uswith the help of the corporate mediaas a diversion from any real discussion of the global social justice issues we are attempting to raise and promote. It may be necessary to consider whether existing forms of resistance and agitation serve to help our movements and causes or undermines them and put us in harms way. Alternative strategies that may be worth exploring could involve organizing in a more covert fashion so that the state does not know exactly when and where to expect us. We could even use the fact that they infiltrate our meetings and mobilization campaigns against them. Here we could purposely spread misinformation at meetings and online about proposed events and demonstrations, leading the state and police to deploy resources and security goons to protests that never materialize. In the case of the G20 demonstrations in Toronto, if we were not there to be arrested by the hundreds and framed for smashing windows and burning cars, the Canadian security state would not be able to justify its billion dollar security budget. What if instead of protesting downtown in the designated zones they expect us to be in, beside the summits, we held our acts of resistance and opposition outside of the city altogether [9]? Then what? Could they blame or frame us for their staged acts of violence if there is no one there to police' save for a handful of undercover agents posing as black bloc'? If we refused to play our part in the "Miami Model" it may help to show their hand.
It seems clear by now that the state's policy is one of staging or inciting violence one day (while conveniently not arresting anyone during the actual occurrence of the violence) and then rounding up hundreds of protectors the next day and throwing them in jail (though they are not linked to the violence). The media helps create the manufactured connection between the arrests and the violence by incessantly looping images of smashed windows and burning cars one day and then images of mass arrests and sound bite headlines about the numbers of arrests etc. without any explanation or contextualization so as to suggest (without words) that the arrests must be somehow linked to the violence of the day before. We could deploy a counter-tactic that is fluidsuch that if violence and/or property damage were to occur due to so-called black bloc tactics; we do not stick around waiting to be arrested the next day. We could have a contingency plan that dictates that when/if (staged) violence erupts; we disband and regroup according to media savvy back-up plans, perhaps moving our actions completely outside of the downtown area. This is one way to send the public a message of disowning the violence so that we cannot be faulted or scapegoated for it. Ultimately, our publicized plans for demonstrations should be used as bait to mislead and expose the police and media [10]. In turn we gain politically by humiliating the police and leaving nothing for the media to photograph except legions of over-funded riot cops and their undercover agents.
I want to suggest to all of those who are opposed to global capitalism (and its goon the capitalist police state) and the myriad destructions it renders unto the majority of the world and the environment, that perhaps it is time for our resistance movements to get a little more savvy and creative; to use misinformation and infiltration as they have done on us, and perhaps to move our organization and mobilizations underground instead of listing every planned event or action on our websites for the state to read and the media to broadcast. No more being pawns in a rigged game. This is not a retreat; quite the contrary it is a movement toward an evolution in strategy and tactics that may put us a few steps ahead of the capitalist state and ensure both the survival of our movements and the advancement of our agendas and causes. It is time for us to consider whether protests/ demonstrations (and social movement organization and mobilization generally) in their current form further our cause(s) and affect palpable change. Stop being their pawn and start playing with the system. Just something to think about…
Ghada Chehade is a doctoral candidate, activist and poet living in Montreal
Prosecutors on Wednesday dropped charges against a city councilman accused of resisting arrest while trying to get to the former Occupy Wall Street encampment as police raided it last fall.
Manhattan prosecutors said they couldn't prove the case against Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez because they didn't have an account from a key figure.
Rodriguez, a supporter of the Occupy demonstrations, said he was trying to get to the park to observe police clearing out protesters early on Nov. 15.
Authorities said he insisted on trying to pass through a barricade, knocked into the female officer and crossed his arms to try to keep from being handcuffed. Rodriguez, who had visible scrapes on his head when he was released that night, said officers had assaulted him.
"The dismissal of these charges is in line with what I have said from the beginning: that I was acting legally as an observer, which is my right as an elected official," the Democrat said in a statement Wednesday. He had faced misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest and obstructing governmental administration.
Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Michele Bayer told a judge that prosecutors had concluded there was "no evidence to corroborate" Rodriguez' claims of being attacked and that his arrest was lawful.
Although she credited the officers involved in his arrest with acting professionally that night, she acknowledged that prosecutors don't have testimony from one officer at the heart of the incident: the officer - unidentified in the court complaint - whom Rodriguez is accused of bumping.
"As we don't have the testimony of this specific female officer, we cannot prove the charges against this defendant beyond a reasonable doubt," Bayer said.
The DA's office declined to say why that officer's testimony wasn't available. But Rodriguez's lawyer had a theory.
"From the moment I saw an unnamed female officer in the complaint, it appeared to me to be a fiction," said the attorney, Andrew Stoll.
Rodriguez, 46, was among about 200 people arrested in and around the park as police swept in that day. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he'd ordered the encampment cleared out because of health and safety concerns. Protesters were later allowed back, but their tents, sleeping bags and other living accoutrements were not.
Rodriguez represents parts of northern Manhattan.
Occupy Wall Street Escalates The Battle For Union Square
By Nick Pinto Fri., Apr. 6 2012 at 3:02 PM
The nightly showdown in Union Square.
The Battle for Union Square continues.
The branch of Occupy Wall Street protesters who have colonized Union Square for the past three weeks continue their nightly standoff with the New York Police Department, which each night deploys more than fifty officers to clear the park and stand guard along a wall of metal barricades to make sure no one gets in.
In recent weeks protesters have turned this nightly 12 a.m. ritual into an opportunity for street theater that points up the waste and absurdity of the NYPD's heavy-handed response. Friday nights, for example, they stage The People's Rap Battle, in which anyone can challenge an officer to hip-hop combat. As you might expect, the police invariably forfeit.
Over the last week, some protesters have adapted to the nightly eviction by trying to sleep in front of the retail outlets of some of the major banks the movement has long targeted, but police have thwarted those efforts, arresting some and forcing the rest to move.
Last night, the protesters undertook a new form of street theater, staging a teach-in to inform the assembled police officers about the state of the law.
David Graeber, an author who has been closely involved with the movement, read aloud from an enlarged copy of a 2000 federal court ruling that held sleeping on the sidewalk as a form of political protest was legal, as long as protesters don't take up more than half the sidewalk or otherwise act disorderly.
They then showed the ranks of officers a large map of the area, pointing out the bank locations outside of which they intended to sleep, and declared their intention to do so in a way that complied with the law. Austin Guest, one of the organizers of the event, called officer's attention to the numerous video cameras, legal observers, and members of the press that would be watching what went down.
The protesters walked across the street to the Bank of America, and started rolling out their sleeping bags. Police officers initially assured the campers "It's all good." Guest reported that around 3:30, two police officers roused protesters sleeping in front of a CitiBank location and forced them to stand. When protesters again read the officers the law, took their badge numbers, and threatened to report them to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the officers left without making any arrests.
Not everyone in the movement is convinced that this standing conflict with the police is the best course of action. Some even criticize the Occupiers' focus on Union Square altogether.
"There's this whole circus every night surrounding the police and trying to be in the park overnight, but what's the point?" asked Dimitry Sheynin, who's been involved with the movement since it's days in Zuccotti Park. "Sure, you can make an argument that it's important to have a space for the movement here during the day, but if anyone tries to tell you that serious organizing happens at 4 a.m., they're fucking stupid."
Sheynin and others are particularly concerned that the presence of Occupy Wall Street has disrupted the community of homeless people who had been allowed to sleep in the park until the protest encampment led police to shut the park down entirely every night.
"I consider the entire scene at Union Square to be the opposite of what Occupy Wall Street represents," Sheynin said. "The day you arrived here, you displaced a community that had been here for 20 years. You came in in a way that affected other people, you didn't get their consent, and you didn't even try to talk to them."
Some who share that sentiment expressed concern at the decision to read the 2000 court ruling, which distinguishes sleeping on the street as a form of political speech (protected) from sleeping on the street for other reasons (not necessarily protected).
"When you read that ruling to the police, you're basically telling them 'If you want to bother people for sleeping on the sidewalk, don't do it to us protesters, do it to those smelly homeless people,'" said one disapproving OWS-er.
Graeber says he doesn't see it that way.
"Our position is that when homeless people are sleeping in the street, they're involved in a political protest too," he says.
And the movement needs to be able to stay in the park, Graeber says, not only because it serves as a space for discussion, community outreach, and symbolic dissent, but because protesters need somewhere to lay their heads.
"A lot of the people are are real occupiers," Graeber said. "They left their homes, they left their jobs. For a while we were able to give them shelter in churches, but now they're actually in need of a place to sleep. So this is fulfilling an immediate practical need; it's not just a symbol."
Am I the only one who gets the creeps from that "Anonymous" business?
Wall Street: #Occupied
Published: Tuesday 10 April 2012
For the first time since our movement against economic inequality and political corruption began, over 40 Occupiers are literally occupying Wall Street near the corner of Broad across from the New York Stock Exchange.
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For the first time since our movement against economic inequality and political corruption began, Occupy Wall Street is literally occupying Wall Street. As of 3am eastern time, over 40 Occupiers are sleeping on Wall Street near the corner of Broad across from the New York Stock Exchange. Everyone angry at the greed of the financial system is encouraged to bring a sleeping bag! Follow on Twitter: #SleepOnWallSt, #SleepfulProtest. Update: Just before 8am Eastern, NYPD arrived with zipties and informed the protesters they had to be out of the way. Occupiers are engaging with stock traders, tourists, workers, and other folks in the financial district and plan to hold an assembly in Liberty Square later.
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On April 6, NYPD gathered once again for the nightly ¨eviction theater¨ only to find Occupiers had moved to the sidewalks and erected a sign declaring their legal right to do so. When police moved in arrest them, Occupiers on livestream read the law permitting sleeping on sidewalks as political protest. In Metropolitan v. Safir, the U.S. District Court covering New York City ruled that ¨ the First Amendment of the United States Constitution does not allow the City to prevent an orderly political protest from using public sleeping as a means of symbolic expression." The police backed down. The tactic quickly became a model for other Occupations. Occupy DC can be found sleeping outside of a Bank of America near their old encampment at McPherson Square, while Occupy Philadelphia have taken their message and sleeping bags to Wells Fargo on Chestnut Street, near occupied Independence Mall.
Now, the tactic has been applied to, finally, occupy Wall Street.
These bank protests are part of the latest wave of the spring resurgence of Occupy leading up to a major day of demonstration and a General Strike on May 1st. From the Chicago Spring to recent attempted re-occupations in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and many other places, as long as banks keep taking our homes and receiving massive public bailouts from corrupt governments, we will make our discontent known by making our new homes right in front of them.
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http://www.nationofchange.org/wall-stree...1334071628
How Occupy Wall Street Plans to Take Down Bank of America, and How You Can Help
Monday, 09 April 2012 12:28 By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
Bank of America: the very name is meant to conjure up comforting, red-white-and-blue fantasies of a bank of the people, by the people, and for the people.
But as Matt Taibbi pointed out in his latest feature for Rolling Stone, while there's almost nothing the megabank does that is for the people, it sure as hell is paid for bythe people. It got $45 billion just in bailout money, and trillions (with a T) in emergency loans from the Federal Reserveand not only did it not pay taxes last year, it received a tax refund of $1 billion. And yet it's still teetering on the edge of collapse.
Unless we do something soon, we might be heading for yet another people's bailout of America's bank.
Occupy Wall Street has decided to fight back. "This bank is not working, and the people should be deciding how to break up this bank, how it should be democratically run, before it gets either another bailout or is bought out by some other bank," Nelini Stamp, an Occupy Wall Street participant and organizer, told AlterNet.
Big Bad BAC
Bank of America just can't seem to stay ahead of its public relations disasters. Just last week, the news hit that the bank paid its CEO, Brian Moynihan, $7.5 million last yeara year in which the company's stock dropped 58 percent and when it lost claim to its place as the nation's biggest bank (to JP Morgan Chase). That was a sixfold pay increase, in case you were wondering, from the year before. So: your company's stock price plummets, you get sued left, right and center, and you get a giant raise?
But outrage over its CEO's pay is the least of the zombie bank's concerns. More pressing is an impending downgrade (another one) of its credit rating. Right now, Moody's rates B of A as Baa1but this May, along with other financial giants, it might drop that rating to Baa2just two steps above junk.
What does that actually mean? Well, according to Susanne Craig and Peter Eavis at the New York Times, "The three banks that stand to be the most affected by a ratings downgrade have already said that they would have to put up billions of dollars more in collateral to back trading contracts."
Then, of course, there's the constant lawsuits, settlements, and battles with various state and federal government officials. Yves Smith reported this week that four pension funds may have stuck a wrench into the process of the $8.5 billion settlement over bad mortgages from Bank of America's Countrywide mortgage subsidiary. A U.S. District Judge in Manhattan ruled that the suit against Bank of New York Mellon, in the case, could proceed, and Smith noted, "If other parties follow the lead of these four pension funds against Countrywide trusts, you could see enough holes shot in the settlement deal so as to render it useless to Bank of America (indeed, worse than useless: the deal provides for expanded indemnification for Bank of New York Mellon, so if angry investors saddle up to sue BoNY and BofA, it might find itself worse off, depending on the nature and level of damages awarded against BoNY)."
That's just one settlement among manyas Taibbi wrote, last year, the bank settled for $335 million with the Justice Department after it pushed black and Latino borrowers, perfectly qualified for normal mortgages, into much riskier subprime loans. And it paid a $137 million fine for conspiring with other banks to rig the process by which cities and towns choose banks to manage their money. Taibbi explained, "in an attempt to avoid prosecution, it applied to the Justice Department's corporate leniency program, essentially confessing its criminal status: As plaintiff attorneys noted, the application 'means that Bank of America is an admitted felon.'"
Taibbi continued:
"In sum, Bank of America torched dozens of institutional investors with billions in worthless loans, repeatedly refused to abide by contractual obligations to buy them back, evaded hundreds of millions in local fees and taxes, pushed tens of thousands of people into foreclosure using phony documents, ignored multiple court orders to stop its illegal robo-signing, and exploited President Obama's signature mortgage-relief program. The bank fixed the bids on bonds for schools and cities and utilities all over America, and even conspired to try to game the game itself by fixing global interest rates!"
Yet, after all this, the bank is still chugging along, hiking up fees on customers who can't afford them, and sending collections agencies after people who don't even have debt anymore. And it remains supremely confident that no matter how many lawsuits or downgrades, it will always have access to the next government bailout.
There's no greater proof of this than the fact that not long ago, Bank of America was allowed, with the blessing of the Fed, to move a huge chunk of potentially toxic derivatives from its shaky investment banking arm, Merrill Lynch, to the publicly-insured Bank of America itselfguaranteeing an FDIC bailout if the debt goes bad.
"This, in essence, is the business model underlying Too Big to Fail: massive growth based on huge volumes of high-risk loans, coupled with lots of fraud and cutting corners, followed by huge payouts to executives," Taibbi wrote.
Break It Up
Back in January, Public Citizen put forth a petition calling for Bank of America to be broken up by regulators, who have the authority to do so under Section 121 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. A group of economists and activist groups signed on to a separate letter to the Treasury Secretary, the Fed and the FDIC, calling for investigation into the country's biggest banks to see if more of them were deserving of dissolution.
And now, Occupy Wall Street has set its sights on B of A.
"Our specific demand is to break up Bank of America because we're done with this too big to fail thing. Bank of America is too big, it has been failing and we want to highlight exactly how it's failing," Nelini Stamp told AlterNet.
To target the big bank, OWS has a variety of tactics ranging from direct actions to coordinated Move your Money efforts, and as their spring offensive continues, they're ratcheting up the pressure on B of A.
Of Move your Money, Stamp said, "We want to make sure that people feel like that is a direct action unto itself. It's not just 'I'm just moving my money from here,' but actually people are feeling empowered and knowledgeable about the choices that they're making when they're making their banking decisions."
On April 13 in New York, Occupy will be holding a "move your money relay," escorting people from Bank of America branches, where they'll close their accounts, to community banks and local credit unions, where they'll hold celebrations to welcome people to their money's new home. And May 9th is Bank of America's annual shareholder meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina (the same city where just a few months later, Democrats will converge to re-nominate Barack Obama for a second presidential term at Bank of America stadium). Other activist groups like the Rainforest Action Network and the New Bottom Line are joining Occupiers in calling for actions in Charlotte to protest the bank's policies.
"As the top financier of America's dirty, outdated coal industry, which pollutes American communities every day, Bank of America has become emblematic of everything the 99% struggles to change," Amanda Starbuck of Rainforest Action Network said.
It can be easy to get lost in the mess of evils that Bank of America is responsible for, but the OWS crew wants to make sure that focus stays on the bank's responsibility, both itself and through its Countrywide mortgage subsidiary, for thousands upon thousands of foreclosures. (The bank controls 17 percent of all of America's home mortgages, according to Taibbi.)
In New York, Organizing for Occupation has been doing blockades at foreclosure auctions, Stamp said, disrupting the process of selling off homes. The week of April 16, there will be more auctions in the city, and Occupy activists plan to target homes specifically being foreclosed upon by Bank of America and Countrywide, calling attention to the fact that foreclosures are more than numbers on a balance sheetthat each one represents a person, a family, being put out on the street. "We want to highlight that banks steal homes," Stamp said.
If you can't make it to a foreclosure blockade and you've already moved your money away from Bank of America (or never banked there in the first place), the Occupy crew is inviting other activists to take a page from their book and move into a local Bank of America branchand then share your experience online. In what they call "living-rooming," a crew from Occupy's Direct Action group brought furniture into a local Bank of America branch and settled in to hang out, telling the bank employees that they were renting the place outfor the $230 billion in bailouts the bank had gotten from them and people like them. "It's your home too!" they announced.
While moving into a Bank of America lobby isn't a permanent solution for thousands of people left homeless by predatory banking, it is a fun way to remind the banksand the general publicthat Bank of America is, in fact, our bankthat it's us who've paid for it, and that if it tanks again, we're going to be the ones on the hook for bailing it out. To prevent that from happening, Occupy and an ever-growing number of organizations and experts are calling, ever louder, to break up the big bank before it breaks the economyagain.
Occupy Wall Street Escalates The Battle For Union Square
By Nick Pinto Fri., Apr. 6 2012 at 3:02 PM
The nightly showdown in Union Square.
The Battle for Union Square continues.
The branch of Occupy Wall Street protesters who have colonized Union Square for the past three weeks continue their nightly standoff with the New York Police Department, which each night deploys more than fifty officers to clear the park and stand guard along a wall of metal barricades to make sure no one gets in.
In recent weeks protesters have turned this nightly 12 a.m. ritual into an opportunity for street theater that points up the waste and absurdity of the NYPD's heavy-handed response. Friday nights, for example, they stage The People's Rap Battle, in which anyone can challenge an officer to hip-hop combat. As you might expect, the police invariably forfeit.
Over the last week, some protesters have adapted to the nightly eviction by trying to sleep in front of the retail outlets of some of the major banks the movement has long targeted, but police have thwarted those efforts, arresting some and forcing the rest to move.
Last night, the protesters undertook a new form of street theater, staging a teach-in to inform the assembled police officers about the state of the law.
David Graeber, an author who has been closely involved with the movement, read aloud from an enlarged copy of a 2000 federal court ruling that held sleeping on the sidewalk as a form of political protest was legal, as long as protesters don't take up more than half the sidewalk or otherwise act disorderly.
They then showed the ranks of officers a large map of the area, pointing out the bank locations outside of which they intended to sleep, and declared their intention to do so in a way that complied with the law. Austin Guest, one of the organizers of the event, called officer's attention to the numerous video cameras, legal observers, and members of the press that would be watching what went down.
The protesters walked across the street to the Bank of America, and started rolling out their sleeping bags. Police officers initially assured the campers "It's all good." Guest reported that around 3:30, two police officers roused protesters sleeping in front of a CitiBank location and forced them to stand. When protesters again read the officers the law, took their badge numbers, and threatened to report them to the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the officers left without making any arrests.
Not everyone in the movement is convinced that this standing conflict with the police is the best course of action. Some even criticize the Occupiers' focus on Union Square altogether.
"There's this whole circus every night surrounding the police and trying to be in the park overnight, but what's the point?" asked Dimitry Sheynin, who's been involved with the movement since it's days in Zuccotti Park. "Sure, you can make an argument that it's important to have a space for the movement here during the day, but if anyone tries to tell you that serious organizing happens at 4 a.m., they're fucking stupid."
Sheynin and others are particularly concerned that the presence of Occupy Wall Street has disrupted the community of homeless people who had been allowed to sleep in the park until the protest encampment led police to shut the park down entirely every night.
"I consider the entire scene at Union Square to be the opposite of what Occupy Wall Street represents," Sheynin said. "The day you arrived here, you displaced a community that had been here for 20 years. You came in in a way that affected other people, you didn't get their consent, and you didn't even try to talk to them."
Some who share that sentiment expressed concern at the decision to read the 2000 court ruling, which distinguishes sleeping on the street as a form of political speech (protected) from sleeping on the street for other reasons (not necessarily protected).
"When you read that ruling to the police, you're basically telling them 'If you want to bother people for sleeping on the sidewalk, don't do it to us protesters, do it to those smelly homeless people,'" said one disapproving OWS-er.
Graeber says he doesn't see it that way.
"Our position is that when homeless people are sleeping in the street, they're involved in a political protest too," he says.
And the movement needs to be able to stay in the park, Graeber says, not only because it serves as a space for discussion, community outreach, and symbolic dissent, but because protesters need somewhere to lay their heads.
"A lot of the people are are real occupiers," Graeber said. "They left their homes, they left their jobs. For a while we were able to give them shelter in churches, but now they're actually in need of a place to sleep. So this is fulfilling an immediate practical need; it's not just a symbol."