Occupy Wall Street Movement: An American Spring

[FayeforCure]

I will be Downtown Chicago for 5 days later this week. If they are still going strong I contribute some pizzas and poster board.

SWEET!

Can't believe the protest crowd in Madrid this weekend:



And what about Times Square in New York:

[FayeforCure]

Awe, so cute!

Occupy Hawaii:

[avs]

We aren't going away - love the mom pic too - thanks for posting it

[RiversideLoki]

I love and support the occupy movement. But really, isn't OccupyJax a bit lacking in teeth? I mean.. our occupy movement is like "Occupy Hemming Plaza for a few hours on the weekends, and by occupy we mean sorta visit then go back to our suburbs."

Even Tampa has a better occupy movement than us.

[hillary supporter]

I love and support the occupy movement. But really, isn't OccupyJax a bit lacking in teeth? I mean.. our occupy movement is like "Occupy Hemming Plaza for a few hours on the weekends, and by occupy we mean sorta visit then go back to our suburbs."

Even Tampa has a better occupy movement than us.

Our movement is great. We are and will gain support moving ahead!

[Ralph W]

The occupiers mean well but they were outnumbered and scared of by those dastardly homeless people.

[BridgeTroll]

The occupiers mean well but they were outnumbered and scared of by those dastardly homeless people.

Actually... this saturday they were moved to the pocket park on Main St after a group of religious folks moved in and started playing gospel music.  It was a nice sunny day so I decided to go to Hemming to check out the scene.  I walked around a bit... picked up a few flyers... I think I heard two actual protest chants when the TV crew showed up.  And then... the gospel music began.  The clash of cultures was... well... hilarious.  The cops moved in sensing possible trouble... and convinced the protestors that the gospel folks had just as much right to the park as they did.  After a brief discussion the protestors picked up their signs and marched off to Main St... the vagrants resumed their places... the gospel folks danced and sang... and I retired to Octoberfest at European St.  All in all it was an interesting afternoon...

[FayeforCure]

No Worries BT.......Occupyjax isn't going to be at Hemming Park anymore:



Time


Saturday, October 22 · 11:00am - 5:00pm




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Location


Riverside Park

753 Park Street




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Created By


Occupy Jacksonville




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More Info


11:00-12:00pm Gather, Make Signs

12:00-1:00pm Rally (Everyone has the opportunity to join the Stack and speak for two minutes)

1:00-2:00pm Teach-in (Experts will lecture on key areas related to the movement)

2:00-3:00pm General Assembly (Business Meeting/Work Group Presentation of Motions)

3:00pm March to First Guaranty Bank across from the Riverside Arts Market and then disperse and show patronage to all the small local businesses (Remember - we must NOT disturb the Arts Market, but instead encourage it. They are the 99%!).

Some Working Groups may choose to meet up back in the park at 4pm.

[FayeforCure]

http://occupyjax.forumotion.com/t28-formal-press-release#59

Formal Press Release
by Evey Today at 10:59 am

.Here is what I propose be our formal press release:

Hundreds from across Florida will assemble in downtown Jacksonville to hold the first Jacksonville General Assembly in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City. As a leaderless organization, Occupy Jacksonville seeks to establish a permanent presence in the First Coast area.

At Hemming Plaza, 135 Monroe Street West, crowds will gather at noon to discuss issues, peacefully protest corporate greed and political corruption, and march Saturday, October 8th at 2:00 p.m. The People of Occupy Jacksonville are not governed by any one individual or group, but instead use the General Assembly forumâ€"established by Spaniards earlier in the year and imitated by the Occupy Wall Street protestorsâ€"to create a symposium through which general consensus can develop. The first Jacksonville General Assembly will act as a “Town Hall” forum for debate, dialogue and dissent amongst Floridians who identify the modern economic climate as a key component to national and global unrest.

With 1% of the population overseeing nearly 40% of the nation’s assets, and with economic decisions in Washington D.C. and on Wall Street hindering progress in every sector across the nation, many are in agreement that something needs to change. However, politicians in both major parties continue to side with financially prosperous individuals and corporations at the expense of the other 99% of the population. Those include people of all political, religious, socioeconomic, racial and educational backgrounds. The Jacksonville General Assembly, in solidarity with the New York General Assembly and others across the nation, seeks to address these issues by hearing from all perspectives indiscriminately and forming a united response agreed upon by the entire collective.

Occupy Jacksonville wants to stress its nonviolent approach to societal conversation. Though many individuals will come together from their diverse traditions to protest and march in solidarity, the Jacksonville General Assembly will act as the cornerstone upon which the needs of the 99% will be cautiously built. The collective as a whole is its own spokesperson; no individual opinion represents the consensus of the Jacksonville General Assembly.

All are welcome. None will be turned away. Nonviolence is paramount

Wow, powerful statement about the police response in NY (the original thread that started this conversation)........."there is no honor in confronting unarmed civilians in riot gear............this is not a war zone!"

If you want to go hurt people.........go to Iraq

United States Marine Corps. Sgt. Shamar Thomas from Roosevelt, NY went toe to toe with the New York Police Department. An activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement, Thomas voiced his opinions of the NYPD police brutality that had and has been plaguing the #OWS movement.

Thomas is a 24-year-old Marine Veteran (2 tours in Iraq), he currently plays amateur football and is in college.

Thomas comes from a long line of people who sacrifice for their country: Mother, Army Veteran (Iraq), Step father, Army, active duty (Afghanistan), Grand father, Air Force veteran (Vietnam), Great Grand Father Navy veteran (World War II).

http://www.youtube.com/v/WmEHcOc0Sys?

[buckethead]

That was absolutely inspiring, Faye. Thanks for sharing.

God Bless our troops.

[FayeforCure]

That was absolutely inspiring, Faye. Thanks for sharing.

God Bless our troops.

Thank you for that wonderful comment. Something else that you probably haven't heard through the corporate  media is that the NY Police Department was instantly taken to court by the Transport Workers Union of Greater New York after NY Police arrested those 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge.
They are also saying: This is not a war zone!

Total over-kill at tax payers' expense:



Transit Workers Union Files Restraining Order To Prevent NYPD From Using Drivers

First Posted: 10/4/11 10:47 AM ET Updated: 10/4/11 12:49 PM ET



The New York City Transit Workers Union filed a restraining order Monday to prevent the NYPD from forcing city bus drivers to transport arrested demonstrators in MTA vehicles, NY1 reports.

On Saturday, 744 people, protesting as part of the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement, were penned and arrested as they marched across the Brooklyn Bridge. The NYPD, strapped for a way to take so many prisoners to city precincts, commandeered five MTA buses and their drivers.

The Transit Workers Union Local 100's executive committee, which oversees the 38,000-member organization of city subway and bus workers, had voted unanimously only a few days earlier to support the protesters.

According to The New York Daily News, Union President John Samuelsen called ordering bus drivers to drive prisoners "a blatant act of political retaliation."

"This was a peaceful protest until the police came along,” Samuelsen told The New York Post, adding that cops are technically allowed to commandeer bus drivers in case of an emergency but scoffed at the notion that Saturday’s events were even close to crossing that threshold.

“This is not 9/11. There was no state of emergency whatsoever. They have no right to press our bus operators into performing emergency services,” he said. “We’re down with these protesters!”

Police officials have yet to comment on the injunction filed by the TWU.




Mayor Bloomberg insists the NYPD acted appropriately Saturday, despite some protesters' claims that the NYPD tricked them into getting arrested.

The TWU is scheduled to join the protesters this Wednesday, October 5, for a large rally to express explicit support.

Another union, SEIU 32BJ, which represents city doormen, security guards and maintenance workers, is using its Oct. 12 rally to express solidarity with the Zuccotti Park protesters.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/04/occupywallstreet-transit-_n_994000.html

[Sigma]

October 20, 2011 12:00 A.M.
Railing Against Reality
What are the root causes of the multifaceted unrest in the Western world?

Last week, protests broke out again in Europe, from Rome to London. The month-long Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York have spread. The current unrest follows this summer’s riots in London and flash-mob incidents in U.S. cities. In 2009 and 2010, tea parties turned out hundreds of thousands in protests against the Obama administration’s policies and eventually gave him the largest midterm rebuke since 1938.

All of these protests, of course, are vastly different â€" or are they really?

Ostensibly, the Wall Street protests rail against a small elite who makes a lot of money by lending, investing, and speculating â€" although the protesters don’t seem to worry much about the mega-salaries of actors, professional athletes, or sympathetic multimillionaires such as Al Gore, George Soros, and John Kerry. American flash mobbers and London hoods thought it was okay to take things that were not theirs, since they have less than others. The tea partiers were simply tired of paying more taxes for big-government programs that they thought only made things worse.

In the current left and right anger â€" somewhat analogous to the upheavals of 1848 or the 1930s â€" the common denominator is frustration that Western upward mobility of some 60 years seems to be coming to an end. In response, millions want someone or something to be held accountable â€" whether Wall Street insiders, or wasteful and corrupt governments, or the affluent, who have more than others.

Unfortunately, political leaders â€" unwilling to risk their careers by irking the people â€" have offered few explanations for the root causes of all the various unrest. Instead, they assure us that Social Security is solvent, or that pensions and wages can remain sacrosanct, or that billionaires and millionaires are alone culpable. Sometimes they exploit race and class divisions in lieu of explaining 21st-century realities.

So here goes an explanation for the multifaceted unrest. For the last six decades, constant technological breakthroughs and growing government subsidies have given a billion and a half Westerners lifestyles undreamed of over the last 2,500 years. In 1930, no one imagined that a few pills could cure life-threatening strep throat. In 1960, no one planned on retiring at 55. In 1980, no one dreamed that millions could have instant access to civilization’s collective knowledge in a few seconds through a free Google search.

Yet, the better life got in the West for ever more people, the more apprehensive they became, as their appetites for even more grew even faster. Remember, none of these worldwide protests are over the denial of food, shelter, clean water, or basic medicine.

None of these protesters discuss the effects of 2 billion Chinese, Indian, Korean, and Japanese workers’ entering and mastering the globalized capitalist system, and making things more cheaply and sometimes better than their Western counterparts.

None of these protesters ever stop to ponder the costs â€" and ultimately the effect on their own lifestyles â€" of skyrocketing energy costs. Since 1970 there has been a historic, multitrillion-dollar transfer of capital from the West to the Middle East, South America, Africa, and Russia through the importation of high-cost oil and gas.

None seem to grasp the significance of the fact that, meanwhile, hundreds of millions of Westerners were living longer and better, retiring earlier, and demanding ever more expensive government pensions and health care.

Something had to give.

And now it has. Federal and state budgets are near bankrupt. Countries like Greece and Italy face insolvency. The U.S. government resorts to printing money to service or expand entitlements. Near-zero interest rates, declining home prices, and huge losses in mutual funds and retirement accounts have crippled the middle classes.

Bigger government, marvelous new inventions, and creative new investment strategies are not going to restore the once-taken-for-granted good life. Until “green” means competitive renewable energy rather than a con for crony capitalists, we are going to have to create and save capital by producing more of our own gas and oil, and relying more on nuclear power and coal.

Westerners will have to work a bit longer and more efficiently, with a bit less redistributive government support. And they must confess that venture capitalists, hedge funds, and big deficit-spending governments are no substitute for producing themselves the real stuff of life that millions now take for granted â€" whether gas, food, cars, or consumer goods.

Otherwise, a smaller, older, and whinier West will just keep blaming others as their good life slips away. So it’s past time to stop borrowing to import energy and most of the things we use but have given up producing â€" and get back to competing in the real world.

[FayeforCure]

October 20, 2011 12:00 A.M.
Railing Against Reality
What are the root causes of the multifaceted unrest in the Western world?
------------------------
A smaller, older, and whinier West will just keep blaming others as their good life slips away.

Funny to see that the Occupy Wall Street movement is not limited to the West..........

Why is that?

Because unregulated capitalism as tried all over the world has concentrated income and wealth with fewer and fewer people, leaving the rest of us behind.

And you say "get used to it"





Seems like Canada, Europe and Australia are still in good shape relative to the US in providing their people with a good lifestyle in terms of a better income distribution.

The US meantime has joined the ranks of many African countries and Argentina, Venezuela, Equador and China with very unequal income distribution.

Even India and Egypt has a better income distribution than the US!!! Imagine that!

This is a list of countries or dependencies by income inequality metrics, including Gini coefficients, according to the United Nations (UN) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality (where everyone has the same income) and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality (where one person has all the income, and everyone else has zero income). Income distribution can vary greatly from wealth distribution in a country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

And you feel a further slide in income inequality for the 99percenters in the US is A-OK, because they had it too good?!?!

Too good compared to Europe? Or too good compared to India?

People all over the world are speaking up against income inequality in a world where there is enough to go around in a sustainable way.

There is enough money to go around in the US..........it's just immensely concentrated among a few....... even companies that are making record profits are just sitting on $2 trillion dollars!

[jaxnative]

Capitalism â€" laissez-faire capitalism â€" is the ideal economic system. It is the embodiment of individual freedom and the pursuit of material self-interest. Its result is the progressive rise in the material well-being of all, manifested in lengthening life spans and ever-improving standards of living.

The economic stagnation and decline, the problems of mass unemployment and growing poverty experienced in the United States in recent years, are the result of violations of individual freedom and the pursuit of material self-interest. The government has enmeshed the economic system in a growing web of paralyzing rules and regulations that prohibit the production of goods and services that people want, while compelling the production of goods and services they don't want, and making the production of virtually everything more and more expensive than it needs to be. For example, prohibitions on the production of atomic power, oil, coal, and natural gas, make the cost of energy higher and in the face of less energy available for use in production, require the performance of more human labor to produce any given quantity of goods. This results in fewer goods being available to remunerate the performance of any given quantity of labor.

Uncontrolled government spending and its accompanying budget deficits and borrowing, along with the income, estate, and capital gains taxes, all levied on funds that otherwise would have been heavily saved and invested, drain capital from the economic system. They thus serve to prevent the increase in both the supply of goods and the demand for labor that more capital in the hands of business would have made possible. They have now gone far enough to have begun actually to reduce the supply of capital in the economic system in comparison with the past.

"It turns out that virtually all of the problems the Occupy Wall Street protesters complain about are the result of the enactment of policies that they support and in which they fervently believe."Capital accumulation is also impaired, and can ultimately be turned into capital decumulation, through the effects of additional government regulation in raising the costs of production and thus reducing its efficiency. This applies to practically all of the regulations imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Food and Drug Administration, and the various other government agencies. The effect of their regulations is that for any given amount of labor performed in the economic system, there is less product than would otherwise be produced.

Now anything that serves to reduce the ability to produce in general serves also to reduce the ability to produce capital goods in particular. Because of such government interference, any given amount of labor and capital goods devoted to the production of capital goods results in a smaller output of capital goods, just as any given quantity of labor and capital goods devoted to the production of consumers' goods results in a smaller output of consumers' goods. At a minimum, the reduced supply of capital goods produced serves to reduce the rate of economic progress. A reduction in the supply of capital goods produced great enough to prevent the addition of any increment to the previously existing supply of capital goods, and thus to put an end to capital accumulation, brings economic progress to a complete halt. A still greater reduction, one that renders the supply of capital goods produced less than the supply being used up in production, constitutes capital decumulation and thus a decline in the economic system's ability to produce. As indicated, the United States already appears to be at this point.

The problem of capital decumulation has been greatly compounded as the result of massive credit expansion induced by the Federal Reserve System and its policy of easy money and artificially low interest rates. This policy led first to a great stock-market bubble and then a vast housing bubble, as large quantities of newly created money poured into the stock market and later the housing market. Between these two bubbles, trillions of dollars of capital were lost. In both instances, vast overconsumption occurred as people raced to buy such things as new automobiles, major appliances, vacations, and all kinds of luxury goods that they would not have believed they could afford in the absence of the effects of credit expansion, often incurring substantial debt in the process.

In the one case, it was the artificial rise in stock prices that misled people into believing that they could afford these things. In the other, it was the artificial rise in home prices that produced this result. The seeming wealth vanished with the fall in stock prices and then again, later, with the fall in housing prices. In the housing bubble, moreover, millions of homes were constructed for people who could not afford to pay for them. All of this represented a huge loss of capital and thus of the ability of business to produce and to employ labor. It is this loss of capital that is responsible for our present problem of mass unemployment.

Despite this loss of capital, unemployment could be eliminated. But given the loss of capital, what would be required to accomplish this is a fall in wage rates. This fall, however, is made virtually illegal as the result of the existence of minimum-wage laws and pro-union legislation. These laws prevent employers from offering the lower wage rates at which the unemployed would be reemployed.

Thus, however ironic it may be, it turns out that virtually all of the problems the Occupy Wall Street protesters complain about are the result of the enactment of policies that they support and in which they fervently believe. It is their mentality, the Marxism that permeates it, and the government policies that are the result, that are responsible for what they complain about. The protesters are, in effect, in the position of being unwitting flagellants. They are beating themselves left and right and as balm for their wounds they demand more whips and chains. They do not see this, because they have not learned to make the connection that in violating the freedom of businessmen and capitalists and seizing and consuming their wealth, i.e., using weapons of pain and suffering against this small hated group, they are destroying the basis of their own well-being.

However much the protesters might deserve to suffer as the result of the injury caused by the enactment of their very own ideas, it would be far better, if they woke up to the modern world and came to understand the actual nature of capitalism, and then directed their ire at the targets that deserve it. In that case, they might make some real contribution to economic well-being, including their own.George Reisman, Ph.D., is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics and the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics

Rest of article:  http://mises.org/daily/5773/In-Praise-of-the-Capitalist-1-Percent

[JeffreyS]

These Liberals taught us how to deal with the likes of the East India Trading Company and a self righteous ruling class.



Finally some Americans are heeding their lessons and trying to defend Western Liberal Democracy.