Could this mark the beginning of an actual movement, or is it just some college kid protest that will amount to fuck-all?
I've been watching these protests grow over the last several years. Many many times they have not been shown on "lame stream" media, even when they have orders of magnitude greater participation than tepid TeaPee'er orchestrated rallies.
This is refreshing and encouraging to see on main stream media news ... this means a significant media consciousness level raising imho. We here in our local group have been encouraging the protesters, especially the ones dedicated to non-violent protest (in the Gandhi\King tradition).
Message 3 I don't think it's getting the desired effect though. There are videos circulating of the Wall St. employees sitting on the balconies, sipping champagne and laughing at the protestors.
Which are being seen in main street america homes, where champagne is a luxury they haven't had in years?
Message 5 I hope as time goes on that this protest will gain momentum and media interest, but saying "we have had enough" without no way to back it up seems futile.
We've had support protests in Providence to put our feet to the protests.
Message 7 This is where the internet stuff going viral can help us. People should see where the money is coming from and in what quantity and vote for those whose money best represents what they want. Big Pharma? Don't vote for them. Or - if you like Big Pharma, vote for them. See who they owe, see who is pulling the strings.
Vote for the least monied candidates!
What's really sad is that that horrid despicable concept of robo-calling potential voters actually works. USA voters really need a big slap upside the head.
In general, the more you see it advertised, the more utter shit it is. Buy against the advertising!!! And that goes quintuple for politicians.
Amen brotha!
Message 8 More importantly, I think we need the rest of the 99% to realize what is being done. They need to realize that the people they think have their best interests in mind, don't.
This is where local support protests at local banks and protest information campaigns on social media help out -- facebook twitter etc can spread the information, pictures and videos around the country without needing to get them on media news.
Message 9 There, IMO, just are not enough people suffering in the USA yet...it is coming as you have said. When we no longer have SS, welfare, food-stamps...ect then there will be enough people to make a difference....it won't be peaceful I suspect.
We now have the highest poverty level in decades, as people drop off the unemployment charts into the abyss, children starving, elderly getting shortchanged. There is a lot of anger out there.
The TeaPee'ers tapped into that anger initially, and there was a groundswell, but people have realized that the TeaPee party has been bought out by the Koch brothers and no longer represent the common man: attendance at their rallies has been steadily dwindling as people find they are betrayed.
Social Security, Welfare, Healthcare, Unemployment and other social programs being attacked by the TeaPee honchos leaves betrayed people looking for better solutions.
I would advocate moving Election Day to Veteran's Day Holiday. No extra holiday for business owners to whine about. Build it up as part of your Patriotic support of the Veterans. Vote & see a parade.
Or allow voting for a week, with paper mail in ballots freely available.
Counts are validated and counted in secure manner with results confirmed against registered voters and confirmed by voters (double blind security?)
Results not announced until electoral college -- allows any state with recount issues to get it done.
quote:The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. It built large-scale public works such as dams and bridges, warships, hospitals and schools. Its goals were to spend 3.3 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in all, to provide employment, stabilize purchasing power, and help revive the economy. Most of the spending came in two waves in 1933-35, and again in 1938. Originally called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, it was renamed the Public Works Administration in 1939 and shut down in 1943.[1]
The PWA spent over $6 billion in contracts to private construction forms that did the actual work. It created an infrastructure that generated national and local pride in the 1930s and remains vital seven decades later.
quote:President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" aimed at promoting economic recovery and putting Americans back to work through Federal activism. New Federal agencies attempted to control agricultural production, stabilize wages and prices, and create a vast public works program for the unemployed. The West saw the heavy use of Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps workers in National Forests and National Parks, and on Indian reservations for work on natural resource related projects and a legacy of buildings, roads, bridges, and trails remains in the Pacific Northwest as a result of these many projects.
quote:In mid-1935 the Roosevelt administration redesigned the federal government’s role in providing relief. The federal government continued to provide work relief for the unemployed who were employable through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), but returned much of the responsibility for direct relief of unemployables to state and local governments. Meanwhile, under the Social Security Act of 1935 the federal government established a series of matching grants for the states to help them in providing aid to dependent children, aid to the blind, and old-age assistance of the elderly poor. The Social Security Act also provided funds for states to administer Unemployment Insurance programs. The old-age pension system that we commonly call Social Security began collecting taxes in 1938 and the first pension payments were made in 1940.
We still reap the benefits of those programs, especially the direct social and public benefits we don't see coming back from military systems\agencies. Money well spent IMHO.
A similar program today, that would be voluntary service to the country and provide a means for young people to get around the country, meet other Americans, see different aspects of America than their home neighborhood.
This could also be made a condition of immigration: work two years for the national benefit during the day, take english\history (american) at night, and whatever else to end up with a GED, and at the end qualify for citizenship.
Could also be an alternative sentencing for minor crimes, and would likely result in less recidivism (studies have show that education reduces recidivism, but GOPs have shut down the programs because they spend money on "those" people when "they" should be paying for the crime of growing up poor [/rant]).
Could be a good thing.
Of course the Wall Street Protesters are already doing national service ...
You take each issue and place where you are on the bell curve, then average the results, weight the ones you feel more strongly about heavier and you end up with an approximation.
Do that with everyone, and you will find a lot of variation in the middle and less as you get out to the extremes.
If the GOP are less variable than the DEM then that indicates they are more extreme than the DEM.
Problem is the apathetic middle that has opinions and concerns but don't see enough difference to bother voting. Voting NONE would be interesting to see.
REVISIT :: Occupy Wall Street :: Occupy *ALL Street USA :: Call to Action
Hi hooah212002 et al
For updates on the stage of the protest from the protesters side (rather than mixed mass media) follow the original link -- see the police brutality that has already occurred, see that this is more than a college kid flash in the pan protest:
We have the ability to keep this moving: there are many support protests popping up all over the nation. There is one planned for Providence RI next Saturday, for example.
quote:When the skies opened up around 5:40 p.m. and participants became increasingly drenched, the group -- with ages ranging from their 20's to 60 and beyond -- held its ground, with the tone set by Jarad Paul, serving as one of its facilitators.
The gathering was billed as an organizing session, with participants breaking into smaller groups -- media, food/sanitation/medical, goals/tactics and facilitation -- as a step toward planning the next series of events. They will include a protest in front of the state Departrment of Education in downtown Providence, tentatively set for 4 p.m. Friday, and a much bigger Occupy Providence event to coincide with a national day of protests on Oct. 15.
Search for OccupyWallStreet or #ows on facebook etc to see if there are protests near you.
quote:Op-Ed Columnist Confronting the Malefactors By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: October 6, 2011
When the Occupy Wall Street protests began three weeks ago, most news organizations were derisive if they deigned to mention the events at all. For example, nine days into the protests, National Public Radio had provided no coverage whatsoever.
It is, therefore, a testament to the passion of those involved that the protests not only continued but grew, eventually becoming too big to ignore. With unions and a growing number of Democrats now expressing at least qualified support for the protesters, Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.
What can we say about the protests? First things first: The protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.
It is the beginning of a movement, just as the Civil Rights Movement started with small simple protests.
This cuts across age groups and it cuts across cultural groups and it cuts across political groups.
Demand What Of Their Congressman? Trickle UP not down! Take care of the PEOPLE
Hi GDR
... The government representing these people had no real choice but to pony up in response to this blackmail as the economic downside was intolerable. ...
No, they could have let the banks fail and they could have bailed out the people.
The same amount of money given to the people would have solved both the economic crisis and the social disruption caused by the ripple of mortgage dominoes throughout the economy.
What this was, is simply a lesson in the hard truth of economics: an economy grows from the bottom up, not from the top down. The "Trickle-Down Theory" that conservatives and corporate bobbleheads so like to espouse is a failed theory: the failure happened from the bottom up, and it was no trickle. It happened because trickle down did not occur as promised: the people saw their earnings diminish instead of grow, and then they reached the point where there was no where else to go but failure.
I think what the people in the street are asking for is that their government do something or anything that brings integrity and justice to financial institutions.
Look at the signs:
"we are the 99%" means those NOT in the top 1% earning bracket, so this includes virtually everyone (yes Buz, even you).
"we pay taxes" means those corporations that make massive profits, with government handouts yet, should pay taxes and the rich should pay their fair share as well.
"we did not cause the recession" - it was caused by the financial institutions and the greedy rich, that kept promising a drop of honey but never letting it fall.
There are a lot of people with a lot of concerns about how Wall Street policies have impacted their lives ... for the worse (charging high fees and interest rates and sucking profits off the top). This is why it seems so diverse: it isn't a packaged agenda (like the tea baggers), it is the people: children, elderly, healthy, disabled, all of us in one big melting pot, all concerned that the cause of the financial crisis has not been dealt with and the bailouts did little but pad a few pockets and golden umbrellas, while Main Street saw squat.
What else can people do to draw attention to the situation? At least in Canada we had some regulation when it came to our banks and as a result we have what has been noted as the strongest banking system in the world. We did not even come close to having one of our banks fail.
And I am happy to have a large part of my retirement funds there, and do my banking at a Credit Union.
Modulus put a finger on it when he said it was about restoring the Glass—Steagall Act ... or at least restoring the regulation of banks and investments (most people probably don't know about the act or that critical sections were repealed by money sucking GOPs).
quote:The Banking Act of 1933, Pub. L. No. 73-66, 48 Stat. 162, enacted June 16, 1933, was a law that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the United States and introduced banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation.[1] It is most commonly known as the Glass—Steagall Act, after its legislative sponsors, Senator Carter Glass (DVa.) and Congressman Henry B. Steagall (DAla.-3). Some provisions of the Act, such as Regulation Q, which allowed the Federal Reserve to regulate interest rates in savings accounts, were repealed by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999, by the Gramm—Leach—Bliley Act, named after its co-sponsors Phil Gramm (R, Texas), Rep. Jim Leach (R, Iowa), and Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R, Virginia).[2][3]
The repeal of provisions of the Glass—Steagall Act of 1933 by the Gramm—Leach—Bliley Act effectively removed the separation that previously existed between investment banking which issued securities and commercial banks which accepted deposits. The deregulation also removed conflict of interest prohibitions between investment bankers serving as officers of commercial banks. Some economists believe this repeal directly contributed to the severity of the Financial crisis of 2007—2011 by allowing Wall Street investment banking firms to gamble with their depositors' money that was held in commercial banks owned or created by the investment firms.[4][5][6][7][8][9]
I've said before that it was deregulation that was the culprit, and it looks like I am not alone with that conclusion.
I don't think that we can make any clear cut statements of failed theory. I go back to the simple question of integrity. Frankly I believe, whether through capitalism, socialism or trickle-downism, that the system will work if those with the power are honest, fair and have their interests be about more than their own.
We have had trickle-down theory ever since Reagan, IIRC, but the poorest keep getting poorer.
It doesn't work in good times and it certainly doesn't work in bad times.
When the failure came it was from the bottom -- the people that could pay initially but could not keep up as their money continued to decline and interest rates increased.
When the failure started, there were just a few foreclosures, but they snowballed, and suddenly it was the major banks that were in trouble.
Now back-pedal: IF the people had been able to pay their mortgages THEN the collapse would not have occurred.
The much trumpeted hoopla touted promised trickle-down failed to get to them in time -- and 6+ terms of presidents is a long time. The trickle of at least some money down should have occurred if the theory had even an iota of reality to it. There was none, in fact the effects at the bottom of the economic pyramid were negative: the gap between rich and poor has increased.
By comparison the collapse took but a few weeks. The trickle up of the economy from the bottom to the top was rapid and readily visible to all.
I do think that there should have been far more restrictions but on the financial institutions including executive compensation.
There used to be, the GOP got them removed via deregulation. The same people that promised the land of milk and honey from trickle-down of hand-outs to the rich by massive tax-cuts.
... that the system will work if those with the power are honest, fair and have their interests be about more than their own.
BIG "if" there. When they aren't ... then government needs to regulate them to provide a minimal level of fairness ... that's one of the things government is supposed to do ... and when that doesn't happen, then you protest, publicly loudly and in large crowds: that is when you occupy wall street.
It's not a single articulated message, it is the voice of the people, from mom&pop senior citizens to college loan kids, to cherry-picked anti-semites who still are upset about the economics (but who are pointed out to poison-well the argument) and who ALL want economic reform ...
... who all want to see ethical behavior in government and in the provisions of mortgages and loans with reasonable interest rates and conditions, and who want to see some of the effect of the massive bail-out spending reach to their pockets and their lives.
I'm no expert but I would say that sounds good in theory but not in practice. The reason being is that so many people, either through direct employment, investments including pension plans etc had their future tied up in these institutions. I'd also make the observation that governments are not well positioned to dole out money to individuals when it is need and where it is needed. I suppose they could just cut taxes but that won't help those put into bankruptcy by all of this.
If the same amount of money had been distributed to pay for the foreclosures, then those bankruptcies would not have occurred, the banks would not have been in a position to fail, and the economy would not have suffered the domino effect that we have seen. If - at the same time - regulations had been revived or put into place, such that the "sub-prime" were no longer legal, and no new mortgages would qualify without proper assets (a condition we have now by default rather than regulation) then we would be further along the road to recovery -- recovery from decades of a failed experiment in economics.
"Occupy Wall Street" releases official declaration
quote:As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
The topic is about the OCCUPY WALL STREET protest, and about how wall street policies have affected all our lives ... at our (the 99% of us anyway) loss.
There is a support protest -- Occupy Providence -- here in Rhode Island tomorrow, and if you check your news and are interested there are also protests planned in many other locations (even in europe), so you can probably find one near you.
My time in the last several weeks has been taken up with participating in Occupy Providence and helping dad cope with the deteriorating health of my mother. I am taking a small reprieve today.
A little more direct democracy might help.
I found it quite curious that the market and european governments reacted so negatively to the idea that the greek people would vote on whether or not to accept a package that would affect their lives for years to come. I wish the "tarp" bailout had been put to a public vote and that the Iraq invasion had been put to a public vote ... that the jobs bill would be put to a public vote ... and on and on.
The problem with socialism in the U.S. is that we've socialized corporate losses while privatizing their gains.
The socialism in this country is approached from a capitalistic view, cost\benefit, and devoid of empathy for fellow humans (which are unimportant to people that define corporations as entities with first amendment rights - choosing machines over people).
There needs to be a balance between the needs of the people in general (the promise of socialism) and the ability of some people to attain great things (the promise of capitalism).
Perhaps with a bit more direct democracy, the oligarchs would feel that they have to buy us off rather than our politicians. If the only difference was that instead of millions flowing into politicians' coffers, every kid in the U.S. could have enough bread to eat and could go to the circus every year, I'd call that an improvement.
Or watch the circus on C-Span?
We already have a Constitution designed to protest us from a tyrannical majority, so I'm not too concerned about national referendums that might erode, for example, civil liberties. Besides, our representative democracy is doing a pretty good job of eroding those already
There are two ways to propose amendments to the Constitution:
quote:The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, ...
and two ways to approve them:
quote: ... which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
It would be interesting to call for conventions in the states to discuss possible amendments.
The Occupy Movement is about participatory democracy, with the occupy demonstrations behaving in a manner that we would like to see governments behave.
The Occupy Movement is about changing government by peaceful evolution rather than by bloody revolution, showing that we do not need to resolve conflicts with violence.
The Occupy Movement is not about immediate goals\gratification, but about long term missions to encourage justice, equality, liberty, freedom, peace.
The Occupy Movement is about working within the system to make changes that improve government and social institutions.
We are the people, and we take to heart the opening mission statement of the constitution:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. " Page Not Found
Our goal is to improve the perfection of our various governments (local, state, federal), to reduce injustices everywhere, to increase domestic tranquility, and to provide for defense, general welfare and liberty for all of us and for our posterity, regardless of race, sexual orientation, cultural and social backgrounds.
In the 60's we saw the power of peaceful movements to change governments and move social behavior away from the bigotry of the past. Much still remains to be done, particularly in the area of economic injustice. It is done by working together, not by fighting.
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