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Wall Street Protesters In It For The Long Haul
A protest in New York dubbed "Occupy Wall Street" appears to be settling in for the long term. Twice a day, protesters leave the tents, makeshift kitchen and free bookstore set up in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan and begin a slow march down the sidewalk.
A protester marches on Friday in New York City as part of larger demonstration focused on corporations, wealth and income distribution. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) Anywhere from hundreds to thousands of supporters are showing up for marches each day. A protest on the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday resulted in about 700 arrests. Another major demonstration is set for mid-week as union members join protesters.
Pick just about any cause, including the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia in September, and it's likely represented here. The primary focus is on corporations, the wealthy and income distribution.
The objective, as protester Mike Luciano from Pennsylvania puts it, is "taking the big cats down, bringing down Wall Street, changing how the government works and the dirty deals are done."
Occupy Wall Street protesters have been camped in Zuccotti Park for about two weeks, and an organizer says they are planning to improve infrastructure so they can stay there for months.
Luciano says he belongs to a union. Given recent reports that local organized labor is starting to get behind the protest, he expected to see more fellow union members.
Next Wednesday afternoon, several unions are planning a march from City Hall to the protest site. That day there likely will be only one march.
"We have been in the past doing two — one at 9 and one at 4 ... for the opening and closing bells," says Victoria Sobel, a college student at Cooper Union and a protest organizer. "I believe we are moving toward one march a day to have a bigger march."
That does not mean this protest is winding down. Sobel says organizers hope to improve infrastructure for the estimated 200 to 300 people who are living at the protest site so they can stay here for months. There's a makeshift kitchen already set up, but few options for bathrooms.
Despite organizers' intentions, the big question is how long the city will let the protesters occupy the park. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has not yet answered that question definitively.
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Show AllSo the 'high & mighty' NPR deigns to cover Occupy Wall Street after studiously ignoring it in a manner that Fox Noise Channel would envy and emulate. One of the probably unintended though beneficial side-effects for progressives is to see what media outlets are on our side, and which are there to sell subscriptions while remaing largely useless.
Seeing as how Occupy Wall Street is in an oddly similar place as the Tea Baggers in April of 2009, what happens is next is vital. They've been noticed and will the 'professionals' move in and hijack it as the GOP's political shills did with the Tea Baggers?
"The primary focus is on corporations, the wealthy and income distribution."
Oooooooooh ... I think Michael Moore, the John stewart writing team and every conscious comedian just got handed a silver platter on a see-saw with the litany from friday. Can't wait to see what they do with it.
The primary focus should be on the Fed-Banking Cartel monetary system which is a total scam, and is at the root of all our problems. The documentary "The Secret of Oz" and the Zeitgeist films explain it all very well.
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Though I love the solution proposed in the 3rd Zeitgeist film "Zeitgeist: Moving Forward" , getting there from here seems "utopian", and they totally neglect the issue of the spiritual evolution of humanity.
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However, I have a feeling that some of the Wall Street protesters are part of or are aware of The Zeitgeist Movement.
Initially, I would have expected the Police to have eliminated the protest and arrested 'everyone' - if necessary by the use of force - by now. However, there appear to be some sympathies for the non-violent protests against Wall Street among the Police. There are several pecularities here. The absence of riot-gear, with the effect that the police is more identifiable. The high presence of 'whiteshirts' in the forefront, which might indicate that the upper management among the Police do not trust the ordinary policemen on this issue without 'proper guidance'.
To me, this suggests that the Police upper management do not trust the NYPD to carry out a wholesale (and probably unfair and possibly violent) arrest of the demonstrators.
That leaves only three options: 1) Let the protests continue but try to manage and contain them in a low-agressive manner. 2) Bus in police or military from afar in order to get someone willing to beat up the 'liberal' protesters in a heavy-handed manner. 3) Do a 'Haymarket' to try and destroy the sympathies the policemen might have for the demonstrators.
They are already doing #1, but it will not suffice. There will be all kinds of problems with #2, including an angry local police force. That leaves #3, so look out for provocateurs and violent acts that might injure and kill police, and which can be blamed on the protesters.
Interesting take. It's also worth noting that a ruling is expected soon in the lawsuit against unlawful police tactics during the 2004 RNC, so maybe they are waiting to find from the courts how much they can get away with.
Of course not every police as an individual is a threat to liberty...but the reality is big-city police departments have long histories of abusing their already expanded, invasive powers, disrespecting Constitutional rights and intimidating any who challenge (or just videotape) their actions.
There should be no bowing to Bloomberg's Fascist Blue-Shirts and their undemocratic thuggery and abuse of power. The Blue-Shirts otherwise known as the NYPD is an organization that has an undemocratic, authoritarian culture and is in deep need of lawsuits and lessons of how police are to act in a democratic, Constitutional society...in fact Bloomberg is one of the corporate oligarchs who should be protested.
More people need to protest, organize and stop the corruption and ownership of our democracy, representatives and courts (thanks to the Corporate Supreme Court Citizen v. United) by corporate fascists and oligarchs such as the lilliputian Bloomberg.
Ah good old NPR/FOX news.
Thank you all, in the NY protests, for your courage and your care.
Your point is well taken; though I suspect very few, particularly those with families to support have quit their jobs to join the protest. On the other hand, if you don't work 7 days out of the week and can make it to the site where concerned citizens are protesting, why wouldn't you join?
By the way, all food is purchased through capitalist enterprizes, including bean sprouts and tofu. If you know of any supermarkets or farms that give away free food please be kind enough to share that info with the rest of us.
In accordance with what you say, there are many ways to support them. If you are like me and cannot sleep out in the park, just go by whenever you can, as often as you can. Bring food. (Not so much fresh produce. They have told me they have too much of that). Wear old clothes and help with the food table or dishwashing. (They use bleach, so you need to wear old clothes). Contribute money, water or dry clothes. Make a sign. Get up at the "mike" (that Greek chorus thing) and make a statement about why you came. Do jail support if people are arrested.
I met a state senator from Kansas at the action. She had come to NY for a family celebration and brought her mother to the park. Said she just had to be there. Make it a tourist destination if you are from out of town or have out of town guests. No need to go to Grant's Tomb. This is living history.
"big question is how long the city will LET the protesters occupy the park"??? what do you mean LET--isn't it the people's park paid for by the people's money????
i'm going this week...an eight hour round trip drive from western mass is nuthin' compared to what these (mostly) young folks are organizing...time to walk the talk!! who's going to join me? let's go and show the fat cats of big business IN NUMBERS that we are serious!!!!!!! get on a bike, your hiking shoes, a plane, a train, a bus, your car and get down to nyc or one of the other sister protests in many other cities...let's put some truth behind the saying " THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED'!!!!
It's my understanding that Zuccotti Park is a privately owned park and its owners have simply tolerated the presence of the OWS core group for the time being, but no one knows how long. I have little doubt that if this is the case, then Mayor Bloomberg is probably ramping up pressure on them to let him use the cops to evict the protesters.
If it were a public park I think the cops would've already evicted them on some trumped up grounds.
So National Petroleum Radio finally chimes in with a half-assed micro-sound-bite bit of drivel that attempts to paint the Occupy Wall Street protesters in as extreme a light as possible:
"The objective, as protester Mike Luciano from Pennsylvania puts it, is 'taking the big cats down, bringing down Wall Street, changing how the government works and the dirty deals are done.'"
"Taking the big cats down" and "bringing down Wall Street" coupled to the idea of changing the government makes the OWS protesters all sound like a bunch of blood-lusting bolsheviks set on a path of violent revolution.
I wonder how long it took NPR propagandist Jeff Brady to find that more militant quote considering the fact that OWS is a proudly non-violent movement. I bet he spent hours looking for just the right words from some inarticulate youth to use them to try to smear the entire movement as some sort of potential domestic terrorist threat.
It's ten thousand times more more accurate to say that the objective of Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD white shirts is to bring OWS down, hassle and oppress sympathy protests as much as they can get away with, and help participate in corporate media minimalization or hard spin of this movement as a potentially violent revolutionary/terrorist threat to the present "security" of neo-liberal capitalist status quo.
To CD editors: Don't waste our time with corporatist, militarist, Zionist crap from NPR when you already feature so many better American and foreign news and news commentary sources. Take a look at NPR's and PBS Newshour's corporate sponsor lists over the last decade and ask yourselves if you really support their agenda and influence on the PBS, NPR and more commercial mass media in general. If you don't, then please don't re-post their Orwellian prole-chow on this site.