Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Peter Lemkin]

Occupy Wall Street offshoot to buy and abolish millions of dollars of debt for the 99 percent

By Sam Byford on November 15, 2012 09:44 pm Email Email Larry @345triangle

Personal debt is a huge problem in the US, but some Occupy Wall Street alumni think they have a solution. Since it's possible for banks to sell debt for a fraction of its worth onto third parties who then attempt to collect the full amount, Occupy offshoot Strike Debt wants to become one of those buyers except it won't collect. After gathering donations, the Rolling Jubilee project will purchase debt from banks and wipe it off the record. The launch event is currently being streamed on its website.

At the time of writing the Rolling Jubilee had raised $243,127, which it claims gives enough buying power to cancel $4,867,367 of debt. The unprecedented scheme has a few logistical kinks; while it highlights the fact that 62 percent of bankruptcies are caused by poor health, for example, there's no way for it to know whose debt it's purchasing. It also won't be able to buy out student loans due to the lack of a secondary market. Still, it could be a compelling project for anyone who wants to make their charitable donations worth 20 times as much.


Just to update...they have now raised [as of 11/17/12] $309,548 - enough to abolish $6,195,781 of debt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To donate Link.

Brilliant!

It is really gaining traction, as it DOES something concrete and doesn't involve having to tangle with the police, et al. In two days they got enough to abolish 1.2 million in debt and the rate is currently increasing [this is only about three days old]....that would conservatively amount to 400 million to on billion in debt relief per year, if this continues and grows!..maybe MUCH more!

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

An Interview with Cornel West on Occupy, Obama and Marx
by SHOZAB RAZA and PARMBIR GILL

This interview with Dr. Cornel West was conducted following the Oxford Union Debate on November 22nd 2012.

SR: Why are you here speaking in favour of the Occupy Wall Street movement?

CW: The Occupy movement being the major public response to a 30 year class war against poor and working people, not just in the American Empire but around the world, that to have this space this space has of course been consecrated by the Malcolm X's of the world, the Desmond Tutus, and so many others who have come through here it has a certain visibility, an international form, and so I figured it would be right.

SR: There have been some critiques of Occupy Wall Street from the Left: for example, that it failed to significantly engage with the labour movement and trade unions in the US or that its radically decentralized structure made it very difficult to arrive at decisions to accomplish particular objectives. And so moving forward, what are the lessons that we, as participants in Occupy and supporters of it, can learn from the movement?

CW: I think we have to draw a distinction between social motion and social movements. Social movements are very rare because they require a sophisticated level of organization, of leadership, of persons who are highly courageous and willing to actually pay a price. Social motion is very important because it helps shape the climate of opinion and that's exactly what the Occupy motion has been all about it helps shape the climate of opinion. But it was in many ways so heterogeneous, so diverse in all of its various voices and perspectives. What I loved about it was that there was a lot of respect. It wasn't dogmatic, imposed from above, professional revolutionaries coming in with Truth (with a capital T') and imposing it on everybody. That's what we were wrestling with in the 60's and 70's. You didn't have that kind of thing this time around and that was very important.

On the other hand, it was difficult to sustain it. But I think that the next wave of social activism will be among young people and it's going to take a variety of different forms. I'm old school so I have to learn from young people for example, about social networking to forms of democratic expression that I haven't even thought of in that regard. I have a respect for the anarchists precisely because though I'm not one they have a powerful critique of concentration of power in the nation-state. And as a black man in America dealing with the repressive apparatus, you live under death threat every day from your own government. You know governments can be vicious and that's the history of black people in America. So then the anarchists say we want democratic accountability, not just of the corporations (which, coming out of the socialist tradition, I accept) but we want to make sure that the government doesn't have a concentration of power, especially instrumentalities of violence which can be brought to bear on dissidents, who are then criminalized and assassinated.' And that's very important. Yet at the same time, as a radical democrat or a deep democrat, in the end I'm not an anarchist but anarchism has some deep truths that one has to take into consideration.

PG: Cornel, you campaigned for Obama in 2008 but unlike many other critical supporters of the President, your critique of his policies eventually eclipsed your support as his first term unfolded. And as a result you've found yourself in confrontation with former comrades but still brother like Michael Eric Dyson, Al Sharpton and others, who remain allied to the Obama regime while purporting to be critical of it from within.

CW: You don't see too much criticism coming from either one of them though! (laughs). I think they've sold their soul for a mess of Obama pottage!

PG: Right, and it's obvious that these confrontations have led many in the mainstream American press to denounce you, but even then your popularity among poor and working people in America and across the world continues to grow. How do you account for that?

CW: Well, one important thing to keep in mind is that in the 65 events that I did, at each stop I would tell them that we must bring Reaganism to a close McCain and Palin were the last moments of Reaganite policy (unregulated markets, indifference towards the poor, stagnating wages) and that if Obama won, I would break dance in the afternoon and be his major critic the next morning. That's how I ended every speech. And so I broke dance in the afternoon [when Obama won in 2008] because we did stop McCain and Palin. But the next morning I knew the social forces behind him (Wall Street and so forth) needed to be called into question. So when I went after Larry Summers, went after Tim Geithner, went after Gary Gensler and all the Wall St. folk who inhabited his space, his cabinet, Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, and so forth, they [his supporters] said you're turning on the President!'. I said no, I'm just being consistent. I'm being true to what I said'. But then that's where the demonization set in. But, you know, that goes with the territory.

PG: Was there a break-dance this November?

CW: God, no! He's had four years and he's proved himself to be a Wall St. President, he's proved himself to be imperial to the core, he's proved himself to be a war criminal. And you have to call that for what it is. And people say oh you hatin' ' and I say I'm a Christian. I hate the deed; I don't hate the person', because he has the potential to change. Malcolm X was a gangster for a long time; he was wrong, he changed and he became a great freedom fighter. All of us have the capacity to change, you see. And so in that sense, you know, as a Christian, you love your enemies' which means you better have some! (laughs) Because if you take a stand for poor and working people, you gonna' have some enemies! That was part of what Jesus had in mind if you go through life with no enemies, you're probably not living a good life. You're going to have enemies if you take a stance. And, the question about loving them is not sadomasochistic: you're not loving your oppressors because they're beating you down but because they're still human beings and you know you have the capacity, inside of you, to actually engage in those same kinds of vicious forms of revenge, envy, domination, hatred and so forth. And therefore that allows a self-critique within your own soul. But, you know, I don't want to get too theological here but the point is that it's been a challenge. But what's interesting now is that more and more people are coming around. I gave a talk in San Francisco with 4,000 people; in New York, 3,000 people. You think, wow, this thing is getting bigger and bigger and bigger!'.

PG: Right, and the enemies grow apace.

CW:Absolutely! In this recent moment with the Middle East, you see it so very clearly that US policy is imperial to the core and Obama is right at the centre of it. And yet he puts up with these criminal massacres of precious folk. That doesn't mean you have to be pro-Hamas Hamas has gangsta' proclivities too, but they're a resistance movement against occupation. No mention of the occupation at all in the US discourse. That's a sign that they're hiding and concealing a fundamental reality that not just Hamas but the Palestinian people are wrestling with. My God, I am against occupation no matter what! The sad thing is that if it was Palestinian occupation of Jewish brothers and sisters, Hamas would probably be heroes in America. In that case, I would be in solidarity with my Jewish brothers and sisters. I wouldn't be supportive of Hamas' attack on innocent people but I would be calling for an end to Palestinian occupation of Jewish brothers and sisters. But that kind of double standard, that's the hypocrisy that needs to be pointed out.

SR: On Democracy Now!, with Amy Goodman, you referred to Obama as a Rockefeller Republican in blackface'. Can you explain why that description is fitting?

CW: Well because discourse in America has moved so far to the Right that Romney is far Right, and Obama is centrist. And a Rockefeller Republican in the 60's and 70's was in many ways very much what Obama is now. He's calling for cuts with little bit of revenue increase with the tax from the well-to-do, but it's going to be very modest, he keeps saying. There's no serious talk about a massive investment, private or public, for jobs, for decent housing, and for education. And his foreign policy is not only continuous with Bush but in some ways even worse.

PG: For that much, Rockefeller Republican would've been sufficient. So, why blackface'?

CW: Well, because he's a black man. Because, you see, a black face in America makes a difference. Race matters in America. You can get away with a lot. Just by being black, people just assume you've got some connection to folk catching hell. Because when you get to New York, as soon as you get there, just go to the chocolate side of town and see the levels of social misery: the 50% of unemployment amongst young people, the 20% unemployment for everybody, the 40% of young kids in poverty, and so forth. So with a black face, they just figured that Obama must be progressive. Not necessarily! Clarence Thomas? No! Barack Obama is much more progressive than Clarence, but he's in the centre. He's a centrist.

PG: So you mentioned race. And it's clear to everyone that, among other things, the relationship between race and class is fundamental to any understanding of US society in the present. You manage, more than many other critics, to hold the two categories together very well affirming, on the one hand, the irreducibility of race to class, how the suffering of Native Americans, Blacks and Latinos is about more than just exploitation, while maintaining, on the other hand, that poor and working whites have little in common with white elites and so are indispensable to the struggle against racism as well as capitalism. What do you find to be the challenges of thinking in this way and are you ever tempted to cast one category, race or class, as the more decisive political force?

CW: Well, I think it shifts from historical context to historical context. I don't think that history has any kind of essentialist narrative that always reflects the relation between race, class, gender, empire, region, and nation. All of these various categories have to be dipped in space and time, which is to say they have to take historical forms. And so various moments, for example slavery in 1860's, it's fairly clear, that's racialized. They're workers, but it's racialized because it was white supremacist slavery. And so the issue of race split the country right down the middle barbaric civil war, 750,000 now dead but it was still a class issue (as Dubois points out in Black Reconstruction). It was still a class issue but it took a racial form. And more and more these days, race is taking a class form because you've got a black middle class that is often times indifferent to the black poor. I'll give you an example: that if middle class brothers and sisters, who I love deeply, were going to jail at the same level as Black poor brothers and sisters going to jail, who I love deeply, we'd have a different kind of black leadership. A qualitatively different kind of black leadership. Because the mass incarceration of America is class incarceration, for the most part. And so in that sense, you see my god the class divide is much deeper now than it was before and therefore you have to raise those issues in the name of justice, in the name of truth and in the name of love, because it's not a matter of hating the black bourgeoisie, it's just hating their cowardice, it's hating their indifference, it's hating their complacency. It's hating the fact that somehow they think their child has more weight and value on the moral scale than Jamal and Latisha on the block. And that to me is just wrong.

Now of course that's also true for the larger society. Can you imagine white young brothers and sisters going to jail at the same level as the black poor? Oh shoot, there'd be a White House conference every three days! Every three days! Oh my god, Suzy's going to jail! Johnny's going to jail! (laughs) One out of three whites incarcerated? Oh my god!

SR: There's been a revival of Marxism: for example, commentators have noted that since 2008, sales of Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto have risen. You describe yourself as a non-Marxist socialist'. Can you elaborate?

CW: I think that a Marxist analysis is indispensable for any understanding, not just in the modern world but for our historical situation. I think in the end it's inadequate but it is indispensable because how do you talk about oligarchy, plutocracy, monopolies, oligopolies, asymmetrical relations of power at the workplace between bosses and workers, the imperial tentacles, profit maximizing and so forth. That's not Adam Smith. That's not John Maynard Keynes. That's Karl Marx.

It's inadequate in the end because of the cultural issues. You have to deal with death, you have to deal with dread, despair, and disappointment. You have to deal with anxiety, insecurity, fears and so forth. And Marx just didn't go in that direction. And people say, well, you can go with Freud'. Yeah Freud got some interesting things to say, no doubt about that. But it's indispensable and, in the end, inadequate. But it's a beautiful thing to see the revival of a Marxist analysis. I think Marx was the great secular prophet of 19th century Europe. And that makes a difference.

PG: One predicament a lot of students like us have been having is that we want to get involved in political struggles for emancipation of various kinds. But we find ourselves in the university, and there's this sense that the University is somehow in contradiction with those struggles, that there's a gulf between them. Of course, you have the Marxist notion of the unity of theory and practice, which suggests these things can't actually be separated in a productive way. And then you have the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser who argues that philosophy represents class struggle in theory.' In his view, academic disciplines within the university are themselves terrains on which struggles for emancipation must be fought. As a student, teacher and writer of philosophy yourself, and as someone who has maintained an active presence outside the university while still teaching within it, would you agree with Althusser? How important do you think it is to theorize our present predicaments and the means of overcoming them in relation to the more immediate struggles for better wages, shelter, food, status etc?

CW: Well, I think firstly you need to have an analysis of your workplace, and the academy is a professional managerial site in capitalist society, with deep ties to the military-industrial complex (in the US at least) , with deep ties to a US government with contracts, and more and more of them being bought out by the powers that be.

Now, what happens to the Humanities is that it is more and more marginalized because its more about science, technology, computers, so the Humanities are left very much on the periphery in this regard. But I believe any context is one of struggle. After teaching in prison all these years, if they can struggle in prison, we can struggle at Oxford, or Harvard, Yale or Princeton, or whatever it is, you see what I mean! (laughs). But you just have to be aware of what the structural constraints are.

Now the wonderful thing about universities is that they have a self-understanding (whether it's true or not) of robust, uninhibited critical exchange, just like what we had tonight. That's a beautiful thing. That's 1823 to have that space. And of course it's very fragile: you know it still has its structural constraints, it's not always going to be workable, and they're going to have certain censorship that's still functioning in various ways. But that means then that you're able to think critically. And then you can use whatever results you have as a form of weaponry in the struggles that you choose. So I highly encourage one to be in the academy, if one is so inclined. I've spent a lot of time with hip-hop artists, and they say we're more free than the academy'. Oh really? Radio, video and recording industry all owned by the same oligarchs. Now, how're you going to get a deal? And when you get the deal like Lupe [Fiasco], he gets a deal and then they try to push him out. That's a different kind of context but it's the same struggle because he's trying to be real. They want him to do g-string records and everything else. And he says well, I don't want to sell out like that' but he's got to, you know, support his family.

PG: And then they sign Chief Keef.

CW: (laughs) Yeah we've got to pray for that Chicago brother! But he's so young, he's only 16, we gonna' straighten him out!

Shozab Raza and Parmbir Gill are Oxford University graduate students of Anthropology and History, respectively.

[Peter Lemkin]

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[Peter Lemkin]

Sun Dec 23, 2012 at 11:39 PM PST

by Liepar Destin

FBI Treated Occupy Like A Terrorist Group

Now that it's been over a year since the Occupy movement swept across the country, FOIA requests are being fulfilled, revealing uncomfortable details about how authorities viewed the protestors. One such request by the Partnership for Civil Justice came through this weekend, and the 112 heavily redacted pages reveal that the FBI approached the Occupy Wall Street protests as "criminal activity" -- which is not terribly surprising -- and investigated the groups as perpetrators of "domestic terrorism" -- which is fairly unsettling. More specifically, the Feds enlisted its own as well as local terrorism task forces in nine different cities across the country to investigate Occupy. In Memphis, the group was lumped together with Anonymous and the Aryan Nation in discussing the threat of "domestic terrorism."

[Peter Lemkin]

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin with a look at newly revealed documents that show the FBI monitored the Occupy Wall Street movement from its earliest days last year. Internal government records show Occupy was treated as a potential terrorism threat when organizing first began in August of 2011. Counterterrorism agents were used to track Occupy activities despite the internal acknowledgment that the movement opposed violent tactics. The monitoring expanded across the country as Occupy grew into a national movement, with FBI agents sharing information with businesses, local police agencies and universities. One FBI memo warned that Occupy could prove to be an "outlet" through which activists could exploit "general government dissatisfaction." Although the documents provide no clear evidence of government infiltration, they do suggest the FBI used information from local law enforcement agencies gathered by someone observing Occupy activists on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: The heavily redacted FBI records were obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund through a Freedom of Information Act request. We invited the FBI to join us on the program to discuss the latest revelations, but they declined. Instead, spokesperson Paul Bresson issued a written statement saying, quote, "The FBI cautions against drawing conclusions from redacted FOIA documents." He also said, quote, "It is law enforcement's duty to use all lawful tools to protect their communities."

Well, for more, we're joined by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard. She's executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which obtained the documents showing how the FBI monitored Occupy Wall Street, joining us now from Washington, D.C.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Mara. Tell us what you found. We've got time. Tell us what you found in these documents.

MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD: Well, the documents, as you stated, show that the FBI and American intelligence agencies were monitoring and reporting on Occupy Wall Street before the first tent even went up in Zuccotti Park. The documents that we have been able to obtain show the FBI communicating with the New York Stock Exchange in August of 2011 about the upcoming Occupy demonstrations, about plans for the protests. It shows them meeting with or communicating with private businesses. And throughout the materials, there is repeated evidence of the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, American intelligence agencies really working as a private intelligence arm for corporations, for Wall Street, for the banks, for the very entities that people were rising up to protest against.

AMY GOODMAN: Interesting that they came out on Friday before Christmas?

MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD: Well, we certainly thought so. We have been trying to get these documents for more than a year. The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund filed original FOIA demands with federal agencies as well as municipalities and police departments all around the United States, and we did so in the fall of 2011, when there was evidence of a coordinated crackdown on Occupy all around the country. And we wanted to get the documents out to be able to show what the government was doing. And the FBI has stonewalled for a year, and we were finally able to get these documents. They came to us, you know, as you said, the Friday before the holiday weekend. And we wanted to get them out to people right away. We assumed the FBI was expecting that, you know, it would just get buried. And instead, I have to say, it was, you know, great to be able to get these up and have people around the United States be able to see what the FBI is doing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Mara, what about the issue of actual infiltrators, either paid or sent in by law enforcement or the FBI into the Occupy groups?

MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD: Well, the documents are heavily redacted. There is a lot of material that, on the pages themselves, we cannot see. And the documents also, in terms of the breadth and scope of the production, we believe that there is a lot more that's being withheld. Even when you go through the text of the documents, you can see that there's a lot more in terms of meetings and memos that must exist. And we are filing an appeal to demand and fight for more material to be released.

But even in these heavily redacted documents, you can see the FBI using at least private entities as a proxy force for what appears to be infiltration. There isthere are documents that show the Federal Reserve in Richmond was reporting to the FBI, working with the Capitol Police in Virginia, and reporting and giving updates on planning meetings and discussions within the Occupy movement. That would appear, minimally, that they were sending undercovers, if not infiltrators, into those meetings.

There is another document that shows the FBI meeting with private port security officers in Anchorage, Alaska, in advance of the West Coast port actions. And that document has that private port security person saying that they are going to go attend a planning meeting of the demonstrators, and they're reporting back to the FBI. They coordinate with the FBI. The FBI says that they will put them in touch with someone from the Anchorage Police Department, that that person should take the police department officer with him, as well.

And so these documents also show the intense coordination both with private businesses, with Wall Street, with the banks, and with state police departments and local police departments around the country.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to break and then go specifically to several of the documents you got under the Freedom of Information Act. We're talking to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, who is the executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which got the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, has been trying to get them over the past few years. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We go back right now to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which released documents showing how the FBI monitored Occupy Wall Street. I want to turn right now to one of the documents. I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González. I want to turn to part of a memo dated October 19, 2011, from the FBI's field office in Jacksonville, Florida. The document is titled, quote, "Domain Program Management Domestic Terrorism." It shows the FBI was concerned the Occupy movement, quote, "may provide an outlet for a lone offender exploiting the movement for reasons associated with general government dissatisfaction." In particular, the document cites certain areas of concern in Central Florida where, quote, "some of the highest unemployment rates in Florida continue to exist." Mara, can you talk about this idea of a lone offender threat?

MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD: I think that that is very much a measure of box checking by the FBI. I don't believeand their documents show that they did not believethat this was a movement that posed a threat of violence. Now, throughout the documents, they're using their counterterrorism resources and counterterrorism authorities, they are defining the movement as domestic terrorism and potentially criminal in nature. But the fact is, they also throughout the documents say that they know that this is a peaceful movement, that it is organized on a basis of nonviolence. And by that logic, of course, you can investigate everyone in every activity in the United States on the grounds that someone might do something sometime. And, in fact, think about the tea party rallies. The tea party was having rallies all around the United States where their members come carrying weaponsthey're open carryingincluding at events where the president of the United States was speaking. But the FBI is turning its attention to this movement.

And when they reference the locations in Florida, I think that's actually a political analysis, a recognition that this is a movement whose time has come. And whether it's in hibernation right now, it is based on an organic reality of the economic situation in the United States. And the FBI is referencing the high level of unemployment, the needs that people have, and it's a recognition, too, of the dynamism and the dynamic nature of the people of the United States, the people all over the world, when they organize and come together. That's the threat that we believe the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are truly focused on, not a threat of violence.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Mara, I'd like to turn to another document from the FBI's New York field office that shows FBI personnel met with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange on August 19th, 2011, to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests that were set for the following month. The memo describes the meeting, saying, quote, "Discussed was the planned anarchist protest titled 'Occupy Wall Street,' scheduled for September 17, 2011. The protest appears on anarchist websites and social network pages on the internet." The memo goes on to say, quote, "Numerous incidents have occurred in the past which show attempts by anarchist groups to disrupt, influence, and or shut down normal business operations of financial districts." Talk about these meetings between law enforcement and the parties targeted by Occupy Wall Street, Mara.

MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD: Well, again, the documents throughout show that they know that the movement is nonviolent. And the FBI routinely uses reference to anarchists and demonizing anarchists or a political ideology as if it's anidentical with criminal behavior. And so, they often reference anarchists in these materials and other materials that we've gotten over the years in our litigation, even where they know there are not acts of violence. And we also know how frequently the police themselves, you know, mask up and infiltrate demonstrate demonstrations, posing themselves as the anarchists that they're always saying that they're worried about.

But those documents again show the FBI working with private industry, with the banks. They're not bringing evidence of real threats of violence. They're talking about political uprising. And I think we can be sure that if they had evidence of criminal activity, they wouldn't have redacted it. They would have been happy to produce that. But they don't have it. And over and over again, you have the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security basically conducting themselves in a form of police statism in the United States against the people of the United States.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what about the historical precedent here, the history of the FBI's involvement in monitoring, surveiling and sometimes disrupting peaceful, dissident activity in the United States?

MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD: Well, exactly. This is just part and parcel of the long history of the FBI. And this is not the first incident, it is not going to be the last, and it's not the worst, to be honest. We all know that. It's notyou know, the FBI has a long history '50s, '60s, '70s of mass surveillance, of targeting of people based on political ideology, of efforts to disrupt the movements for social justice, for efforts to shut down black liberation movement, the antiwar movement. And in the '70s, of course, there were these great revelations about the abuses of the FBI, of the CIA, of other security agencies. And there were the Church Committee hearings. There were supposedly protections put in place. But we can see, you know, decade after decade, with each social justice movement, that the FBI conducts itself in the same role over and over again, which is to act really as the secret police of the establishment against the people.

AMY GOODMAN: Mara, a document from October 2011 indicates law enforcement from the Federal Reserve in Richmond, Virginia, was giving the FBI information about Occupy Wall Street. It says the Federal Reserve source contacted the FBI to, quote, "pass on information regarding the movement known as occupy Wall Street." Interestingly, the memo also notes that Occupy Wall Street, quote, "has been known to be peaceful but demonstrations across the United States show that other groups have joined in such as Day Of Rage and the October 2011 Movement," it says. The memo describes repeated communications to, quote, "pass on updates of the events and decisions made during the small rallies." Can you talk about the significance of this document, Mara?

MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD: That document is one of the ones that would indicate the FBI was minimally using private entities or local police departments as proxy forces for infiltration, for undercover operations, to monitor, surveil, collect information. And that document, too, and the series of documents also showed the breadth of the reporting. So you have individuals on the ground with the Federal Reserve Bank, with the state police agencies, apparently monitoring and collecting information on the planning discussions of protests in Richmond, reporting them into the FBI and also reporting them into state fusion centers and to other intelligence and domestic terrorism data centers.

Now, the data warehousing in the United States, the mass collection of data on the people of the United States, is of great concern. And you can see, through these documents, the FBI is collecting a lot of information on completely lawful activities, on the activities of people who are not alleged to have committed criminal acts, are not planning criminal acts, who actually are engaged in cherished, First Amendment-protected activities. And yet, it's being collected under the imprimatur of domestic terrorism or criminal activity and being entered into these mass databases, which have a huge level of dissemination and access and which are virtually unregulated.

[Magda Hassan]

Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent

• • Naomi Wolf
    
  • guardian.co.uk, Saturday 29 December 2012 14.58 GMT
    
  • Jump to comments (338)
    

Police used teargas to drive back protesters following an attempt by the Occupy supporters to shut down the city of Oakland. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall so mystifying at the time was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document reproduced here in an easily searchable format shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.
The documents, released after long delay in the week between Christmas and New Year, show a nationwide meta-plot unfolding in city after city in an Orwellian world: six American universities are sites where campus police funneled information about students involved with OWS to the FBI, with the administrations' knowledge (p51); banks sat down with FBI officials to pool information about OWS protesters harvested by private security; plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target; and even threats of the assassination of OWS leaders by sniper fire by whom? Where? now remain redacted and undisclosed to those American citizens in danger, contrary to standard FBI practice to inform the person concerned when there is a threat against a political leader (p61).
As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, put it, the documents show that from the start, the FBI though it acknowledgesOccupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a "terrorist threat":

"FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) … reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat … The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conductingsurveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country."

Verheyden-Hilliard points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it "police-statism":

"This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a "Bank Fraud Working Group" met in November 2011 during the Occupy protests to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its "domestic terrorism" unit. The Anchorage, Alaska "terrorism task force" was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan "joint terrorism task force" was issuing a "counterterrorism preparedness alert" about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the "Bank Security Group" multiple private banks met to discuss the reaction to "National Bad Bank Sit-in Day" (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state's Occupy members' details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its "joint terrorism task force" aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.
Jason Leopold, at Truthout.org, who has sought similar documents for more than a year, reported that the FBI falsely asserted in response to his own FOIA requests that no documents related to its infiltration ofOccupy Wall Street existed at all. But the release may be strategic: if you are an Occupy activist and see how your information is being sent to terrorism task forces and fusion centers, not to mention the "longterm plans" of some redacted group to shoot you, this document is quite the deterrent.
There is a new twist: the merger of the private sector, DHS and the FBI means that any of us can become WikiLeaks, a point that Julian Assange was trying to make in explaining the argument behind his recent book. The fusion of the tracking of money and the suppression of dissent means that a huge area of vulnerability in civil society people's income streams and financial records is now firmly in the hands of the banks, which are, in turn, now in the business of tracking your dissent.
Remember that only 10% of the money donated to WikiLeaks can be processed because of financial sector and DHS-sponsored targeting of PayPal data. With this merger, that crushing of one's personal or business financial freedom can happen to any of us. How messy, criminalizing and prosecuting dissent. How simple, by contrast, just to label an entity a "terrorist organization" and choke off, disrupt or indict its sources of financing.
Why the huge push for counterterrorism "fusion centers", the DHS militarizing of police departments, and so on? It was never really about "the terrorists". It was not even about civil unrest. It was always about this moment, when vast crimes might be uncovered by citizens it was always, that is to say, meant to be about you.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...CMP=twt_gu

[Peter Lemkin]

Thursday, January 17, 2013
Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking Letter to US Senate

Dear Senators,

It is now up to you to restore the integrity of the Department of the Treasury.

As the Department's web site states, Treasury's job is to:

"Maintain a strong economy and create economic and job opportunities by promoting the conditions that enable growth and stability…protecting the integrity of the financial system, and manage the U.S. Government's finances and resources effectively."

President Obama's nominee, Jacob Lew, does not measure up to the task.

Since the days of the Clinton Administration, the office of the Treasury Secretary has morphed into the custodian of Wall Street interests, allowing fraudulent banking practices to lead us into a recession, paying little or no heed to the concerns of Main Street about economic growth or jobs. Moreover, unlike the George W. Bush presidency where Enron executives were jailed little has been done since the latest crisis to prosecute the people responsible for the widespread criminality and total disregard of ethics and values in finance.

The new Treasury Secretary should be an individual who looks out for the 99%, not a Timothy Geithner clone who would rather save financial players than enforce the law. We need someone who will focus on the productive economy and jobs. We need someone who will push back against Wall Street, not someone who will do their bidding.

Jacob Lew's tenure at the original too-big-to-fail bank, Citigroup, has disqualified him. He received a $900,000 bonus from Citi in 2008, essentially paid out of the taxpayer bailout, just before he returned to government. At best this has the "appearance of impropriety".

As HSBC's "too big to jail' settlement shows, the too-big-to-fail problem persists. We need a Treasury Secretary who will work to address this. Despite being near the heart of the storm, or perhaps because he was at Citigroup, Jack Lew shows no recognition that the current structure of the banking system is the heart of the problem. We must block his appointment.

Criminality and greed are embedded in the culture of the financial system and only major reform will get rid of it. Please join us in our efforts to reject Jacob Lew and ask President Obama to nominate someone who can truly live up to the mandate of the U.S. Treasury.

Sincerely,

Members of the OWS Alternative Banking Group

Marni Halasa

Josh Snodgrass

Hannah Appel

Linda Brown

Nicholas Levis

Cathy O'Neil

Anchard Scott

Yves Smith

Akshat Tewary

Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking

[Magda Hassan]

David C. Gorczynski, of Pennsylvania's Occupy movements, was arrested and charged with two felonies for holding two signs: one saying "You're being robbed" and another that said "Give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob a country." Gorczunski is being charged with bank robbery and "terroristic threatening". He was released on $10,000 bail. Felonies for Free Speech.

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[Peter Lemkin]

David C. Gorczynski, of Pennsylvania's Occupy movements, was arrested and charged with two felonies for holding two signs: one saying "You're being robbed" and another that said "Give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob a country." Gorczunski is being charged with bank robbery and "terroristic threatening". He was released on $10,000 bail. Felonies for Free Speech.

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One doesn't know if one should laugh or scream.....I choose SCREAM! The Empire really has NO CLOTHES!!!!!! What a JOKE it is! Felony sign making and 'free' speech.....****! Give him 30 years for speaking the Truth!......? Insane! It is the prosecutor who should be in handcuffs and facing charges!