Posts Tagged Zuccotti Park

Photography In Public Is Not A Crime | Techdirt

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Legal on August 23, 2012


 

Photography In Public Is Not A Crime

from the protecting-the-first-amendment dept 

Sadly, we talk way too often about police arresting people for doing nothing other than taking a picture or filming them. The police officers being filmed and photographed make these arrests using various excuses, but frequently the charges get dropped for lack of merit. The reason charges rarely stick when an officer is filmed is because filming police, or anyone in a public space, is not illegal. Some people may not like it, but it is a fact.

The New York Times is waking up to this fact that photography is not a crime. In an interview with Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counselor for the National Press Photographers Association, they get down to the nitty gritty of the legalities surrounding this age old tradition. They also talk a bit about just why such arrests are happening more frequently.

Since 9/11, there’s been an incredible number of incidents where photographers are being interfered with and arrested for doing nothing other than taking pictures or recording video in public places.

It’s not just news photographers who should be concerned with this. I think every citizen should be concerned. Tourists taking pictures are being told by police, security guards and sometimes other citizens, “Sorry, you can’t take a picture here.” When asked why, they say, “Well, don’t you remember 9/11?”

I haven’t really thought of criminalizing photography as something to do with 9/11 before. I know that a lot of our rights have been eroded since that day, but the photography aspect never really clicked until now. Just as Mickey can’t make heads nor tails of this argument, I am struggling to find a connection here. I don’t recall cameras being a part of the plots to destroy the Twin Towers, Pentagon or White House.

Of course there could be more reasons for this increase in arresting photographers. Mickey suspects that part of the reason is the proliferation of the camera. Pretty much everyone with a smart phone has a camera capable of taking some very high quality pictures. Prior to this boom, the police had some modicum of control over the press. They knew the press wasn’t going to be everywhere and were used to not being under constant recordable surveillance by the public. Now that anyone could be filming them or taking their picture, they are more on edge and more prone to lashing out.

When this happens, it is important for those accused to know their rights. However, it is also important for the police to know the public’s rights as well. While you, as a photographer, may know that you have the right to take pictures or film in a public space, some officers may not know or may have forgotten that fact. That is why the Mickey and others have been working with police to keep officers reminded of that right.

Q. After photographers were stopped from photographing the police clearing Occupy Wall Street protestors from Zuccotti Park, you and representatives of a media coalition including The Times, met with the police commissioner Ray Kelly. What happened at that meeting?

A. It was on Nov. 23. I asked the commissioner if he would reissue the “finest message” from 1999 that dealt with the police cooperating with the press. He did that. It was read at 10 consecutive roll calls in every single station house and precinct.

The finest message is a policy statement on police interactions with the press. It states that officers are not to interfere with videotaping and photographing in public places. It also reminds officers that they have an obligation to assist the press whenever possible. This is very similar to the recent news when the DC police chief laid down the law on filming of officers.

Hopefully, continually repeating this message will help slow down this barrage of arrests for photographing the police. As more officers are reminded of the rights of the cameras-wielding public, we will hopefully start to see fewer future incidents. It would be great if other police departments across the nation follow the lead of NY and DC police in proactively spreading the word about the rights of the public to record and photograph the police.

Photography In Public Is Not A Crime | Techdirt.

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Magnanimous Banker Hires Occupy Wall Street Protesters | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Humor/Parody on November 16, 2011


‘I Like Your Pluck!’ Says Gracious Plutocrat

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

 

NEW YORK—Saying the recently arrested protesters had just the right kind of tenacity and pluck needed to shake up the financial services industry, magnanimous and benevolent Morgan Stanley banker Hank Billings approached members of the Occupy Wall Street movement Tuesday morning and hired each and every one of them on the spot. “This is exactly the kind of self-starting, ‘won’t go home till the job’s done’ kind of attitude I like to see,” said the gracious Billings, claiming that he had grown to admire “the cut of [the activists'] jib” since the movement began in mid-September and that “moxie such as [theirs]” should not go unrewarded. “You all were out there every day, giving it everything you had, and by God if you ever took no for an answer. Sure, you all took some digs at me, but who needs a bunch of yes-men standing around, anyway?” Billings then reportedly smiled, shook each protester’s hand, and said he would see them all in the office “bright and early Monday morning,” noting that a personal history of lawbreaking had never hindered anyone’s career on Wall Street.

 Magnanimous Banker Hires Occupy Wall Street Protesters | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.

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Police Oust Occupy Wall Street Protesters at Zuccotti Park – NYTimes.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Opinion, Social, Society, Wall Street on November 15, 2011


By JAMES BARRON and COLIN MOYNIHAN

Published: November 15, 2011

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Richard Perry/The New York Times

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Todd Heisler/The New York Times

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The police announced that protesters could go back in the park.

 

New York City on Tuesday reopened the park in Lower Manhattan where the Occupy Wall Street movement was born not long after a judge upheld the city’s move to clear the park and bar the protesters from bringing back their tents or staying overnight.

The police opened the gates to Zuccotti Park just after darkness fell and let in a single-file line of people as a crowd surrounded the park. Some chanted “Let us in. Let us in.”

“You have to walk through a gantlet of officers,” said Andy Nicholson, 54, of Manhattan, who entered the park, stopped and was told by the police to move along. “It’s all about control,” he said.

The park had been closed since a surprise police raid that began at about 1 a.m. The police not only removed the protesters who had camped there for almost two months, they removed their tents, tarps and belongings. As the morning unfolded, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday defended the decision to clear the park, saying “health and safety conditions became intolerable” in the park.

He also told a City Hall news conference that in approving the police operation, he had had to balance concerns about free speech against concerns about what had been happening in the park.

“New York City is the city where you can come and express yourself,” the mayor said. “What was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that.” He said the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”

Mr. Bloomberg said the city had planned to reopen the park on Tuesday morning after the protesters’ tents and tarps had been removed and the stone steps had been cleaned. He said the police had already let about 50 protesters back in when officials received word of a temporary restraining order sought by lawyers for the protesters. The police closed the park again while a judge heard arguments in State Supreme Court.

The judge, Justice Michael D. Stallman, handed down his decision late Tuesday afternoon, ruling for the city and saying the protesters could go into Zuccotti Park but could not take their tents and sleeping bags. Justice Stallman said that the demonstrators “have not demonstrated that they have a First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park, along with their tents, structures, generators and other installations” — to the exclusion of the landlord or “others who might wish to use the space safely.”

The mayor’s comments at a City Hall news conference came about seven hours after hundreds of police officers moved in to clear the park, after warning that the nearly two-month-old camp would be “cleared and restored” but that demonstrators who did not leave would face arrest. The protesters, about 200 of whom have been staying in the park overnight, initially resisted with chants of “Whose park? Our park!”

The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said that nearly 200 people had been arrested, 142 in the park and 50 to 60 in the streets nearby. Most were held on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, among them City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, a Democrat who represents northern Manhattan. He was with a group near the intersection of Broadway and Vesey Street that was trying to link up with the protesters in the park. The group tried to push through a line of officers trying to prevent people from reaching the park.

Later in the day, the police cleared a lot at Canal Street, about a mile away, where some of the protesters had gone after the sweep. About two dozen people were arrested there after protesters snipped a chain-link fence with bolt cutters. At least four journalists who trailed the protesters as they went through the opening in the fence were also led out in handcuffs, including a reporter and photographer for The Associated Press and a reporter from The Daily News.

The operation in and around the park was a blow to the Occupy Wall Street movement, which saw the park as its spiritual heart. The sweep was intended to empty the birthplace of a protest movement that has inspired hundreds of tent cities from coast to coast. Participants focus their criticism on a financial system that they say favors the rich and corporations over ordinary citizens. On Monday, hundreds of police officers raided the main encampment in Oakland, Calif., arresting 33 people. Protesters returned later in the day. But the Oakland police said no one would be allowed to sleep there anymore, and promised to clear a second camp nearby.

The police action was quickly challenged as lawyers for the protesters obtained a temporary restraining order barring the city and the park’s private landlord from evicting protesters or removing their belongings. That left the protesters in a kind of limbo as they waited for Justice Stallman to issue his ruling.

Occupy Wall Street’s legal team had spent most of the day trying to reverse the reasoning the city used as the legal underpinning for the sweep. The protesters’ lawyers said after Justice Stallman issued the decision that their clients would continue their struggle.

“This has not stopped the movement,” said Yetta Kurland, one of the lawyers for the protesters. “Win, lose or draw, the 99 percent will continue to show up, continue to express themselves.”

The mayor, at his news conference in the morning, read a statement he had issued around 6 a.m. explaining the reasoning behind the sweep. “The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day,” the mayor said in the statement. “Ever since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with” because the protesters had taken over the park. “I have become increasingly concerned — as had the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties — that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community,” Mr. Bloomberg said. He added that on Monday, Brookfield asked the city to assist in enforcing the no sleeping and camping rules.

“But make no mistake,” the mayor said, “the final decision to act was mine and mine alone.”

Some of the displaced protesters regrouped a few blocks away at Foley Square, with the row of courthouses on Centre Street as a backdrop, and swapped stories of their confrontations with the police as they talked about what to do next.

One protester, Nate Barchus, 23, said the eviction from Zuccotti Park was likely to galvanize supporters, particularly because a series of gatherings had already been planned for Thursday, the protest’s two-month anniversary.

“This,” he said, referring to the early morning sweep, “reminds everyone who was occupying exactly why they were occupying.”

The midday arrests at the Canal Street lot unfolded next to a triangular space known as Duarte Square, for the first president of the Dominican Republic, Juan Pablo Duarte. The city owns slightly less than half an acre of land there, on the eastern edge of the square. The western section is owned by Trinity Church, a major landowner downtown, and had been fenced off for the winter recently after an art installation was dismantled.

With dozens of police officers watching, protesters climbed to the top of the plywood fence and held a general-assembly-style discussion on whether to “liberate another piece of property,” and about an hour later — after some protesters said they had tried to obtain permission to enter the church’s lot — two protesters dressed in black appeared with bolt cutters. They quickly made an opening in the fence.

As the crowd poured in, police vans sped down Varick Street toward Zuccotti Park, where another group of several hundred protesters was trying to retake the space where they had camped out since mid-September. It was cleaner than it had been in some time: after the protesters were thrown out, workers using power washers blasted water over the stone that covers the ground.

The cleaned-up park caught the attention of passers-by who had become accustomed to seeing the protesters’ tents and tarps. One young father, pushing his toddler son in a stroller, gave police officers guarding Zuccotti Park a thumbs-up sign.

Another man, rushing by in a cream suit, flashed them a huge grin, and a blonde woman stopped in her tracks. “Ooh, good,” she said.

Marybeth Carragher, who lives in a building overlooking the park, said she and other residents were apprehensive about the city’s plan to let the protesters return, without their tents. “I think my neighbors and I are very thankful that the mayor acted,” she said, “but we remain completely outraged for having to endure this for nine weeks.”

The operation to clear the park had begun near the Brooklyn Bridge, where the police gathered before riding in vans to the block-square park. As they did, dozens of protesters linked arms and shouted “No retreat, no surrender,” “This is our home” and “Barricade!”

The mayor’s office sent out a message on Twitter at 1:19 a.m. saying: “Occupants of Zuccotti should temporarily leave and remove tents and tarps. Protesters can return after the park is cleared.” Fliers handed out by the police at the private park on behalf of the park’s owner and the city spelled out the same message.

The protesters rallied around an area known as the kitchen, near the middle of the park, and began putting up makeshift barricades with tables and pieces of scrap wood.

Over the next two hours, dozens of protesters left the park while a core group of about 100 dug in around the food area. Many locked arms and defied police orders to leave. Some sang “We Shall Overcome” and chanted at the officers to “disobey your orders.”

“If they come in, we’re not going anywhere,” said Chris Johnson, 32, who sat with other remaining protesters near the food area.

By 3 a.m., dozens of officers in helmets, watched over by Commissioner Kelly, closed in on those who remained. The police pulled them out one by one and handcuffed them. Most were led out without incident.

The police move came as organizers put out word on their Web site that they planned to “shut down Wall Street” with a demonstration on Thursday to commemorate the completion of two months of encampment, which has prompted similar demonstrations across the country.

The move also came hours after a small demonstration at City Hall on Monday by opponents of the protest, including local residents and merchants, some of whom urged the mayor to clear out the park.

Before the police moved in, they set up a battery of klieg lights and aimed them into the park. A police captain, wearing a helmet, walked down Liberty Street and announced: “The city has determined that the continued occupation of Zuccotti Park poses an increasing health and fire safety hazard.”

The captain ordered the protesters to “to immediately remove all private property” and said that if they interfered with the police operation, they would be arrested. Property that was not removed would be taken to a sanitation garage, the police said.

About 200 supporters of the protesters arrived early Tuesday after hearing that the park was being cleared. They were prevented from getting within a block of the park by a police barricade. There were a number of arrests after some scuffles between the two sides, but no details were immediately available. After being forced up Broadway by the police, some of the supporters decided to march several blocks to Foley Square.

In the weeks since the protest began, Mr. Bloomberg had struggled with how to respond. He repeatedly made clear that he did not support the demonstrators’ arguments or their tactics, but he has also defended their right to protest and in recent days and weeks has sounded increasingly exasperated, especially in the wake of growing complaints from neighbors about how the protest and the police department’s reactions to it have disrupted the neighborhood and hurt local businesses.

 Police Oust Occupy Wall Street Protesters at Zuccotti Park – NYTimes.com.

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Businesses, like the protesters, need to stand up – The Washington Post

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Business, Economy, Jobs, Social, Society on November 13, 2011


 

By Marco Reinoso, Published: November 12

Superstar Deli, the business I own and run, in 1985, a few years after I immigrated I opened to New York from Ecuador. I’m proud of my 26 years contributing to the local economy and to the character of this community as a small business owner.

But all is not well on Main Street, neither here in Brooklyn nor on Main Streets across America. In recent years, I’ve seen my business decline by 70 percent. Now, I’m on the brink of closing. Small businesses all around me are locked in the same struggle to pay the bills, make payroll and keep our doors open.

So, what should we learn from Occupy Wall Street? We should learn that small businesses, like the Occupy demonstrators, have been shortchanged by the growing inequality that brought on the economic crisis and gave birth to this protest movement. Small businesses, too, are the 99 percent.

Indeed, the growing economic divide has affected small business owners just as much as our customers who are out there protesting in Zuccotti Park. When the few hundred richest Americans control as much wealth as millions of the poorest, that is not good for small businesses. They may be power hungry, but the 1 percent can’t eat enough sandwiches to keep all the delis in New York open. We need the 99 percent.

We should learn that our current challenges are the product of public policies, policies we have the power to change. Today, multi-national corporations are allowed to dodge their taxes to the tune of $100 billion or more a year by hiding profits in off-shore accounts, starving the country of needed revenues while our customers lose jobs and our businesses suffer. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Just like the Occupy movement has galvanized people to action, small business owners need to stand up and be counted if we want to set the country on a new course, a course that levels the playing field for our businesses.

We need to stand up for sensible immigration policies to ensure that the next generation of new Americans and new business owners (like I was in 1985) can pursue their dreams.

We need to stop the big business assaults on basic safeguards that protect the air we breathe and our customers’ pocketbooks.

And we need to expose the “dark money” that moves from corporate treasuries to third party interest groups faster than my neighborhood’s gossip, allowing big corporations to buy elections and shape laws without their fingerprints showing up.

Small business owners have an opportunity and a responsibility to help our elected leaders see through the corporate lobbyists’ agenda to the real people who walk into our stores every day. It is here — in delis like mine across the country — where you’ll find the 99 percent.

Marco Reinoso, owner of Superstar Deli in Brooklyn, New York, serves on the steering committee of Small Business United, a local business group affiliated with the Main Street Alliance network.

 Businesses, like the protesters, need to stand up – The Washington Post.

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Occupy protesters declare Goldman Sachs guilty, get arrested | McClatchy

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Banking, Business, Economy, Finance, Society, Wall Street on November 4, 2011


By Gianna Palmer | McClatchy Newspapers

NEW YORK — In the latest round of demonstrations calling for corporate accountability, 16 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested in front of the global headquarters of Goldman Sachs in lower Manhattan.

A New York Police Department spokesperson confirmed that nine men and seven women were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

The protest began with a mock trial of the giant investment firm at 10 a.m. in Zuccotti Park, the protesters’ base. During “A People’s Hearing of Goldman Sachs,” a group gathered to hear testimony from people who shared stories of how they were directly affected by Goldman Sachs’ influence on financial markets. Civil rights activist and Princeton professor Cornel West also spoke at the panel, as did journalists Chris Hedges and Nomi Prins.

A five-month McClatchy investigation in 2009 revealed how Goldman Sachs peddled billions of dollars in shaky securities tied to subprime mortgages on unsuspecting pension funds, insurance companies and other investors when it concluded that the housing bubble would burst.

Shortly before noon, the protesters began to make their way to 200 West St., Goldman’s headquarters.

“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” the protesters chanted as they walked. Some drummed, other held signs. One protester held a piece of cardboard that read simply, “GREED.” Another said: “Goldman Sucks.”

Police with plastic handcuffs dangling from their belts walked alongside the demonstrators as they marched north on Church Street, past the National September 11 Memorial. The group arrived at the Goldman Sachs building just before 12:30 p.m.

At least 19 police offers stood on the pedestrian walkway watching as protesters blocked the front entrance of the building and delivered their “guilty” verdict. Soon, a white-shirted police officer entered the crowd with a megaphone and asked the protesters to leave. By this time, a small group had sat in a circle on the ground.

“You will be arrested, I repeat, you will be arrested,” the officer told the group when they stayed sitting, arms linked.

The majority of people moved to a nearby walkway.

“We stopped listening to orders, when will you?” a man shouted in the direction of the police, who were now gathered around the remaining group, all of whom would be arrested.

Among the first was activist Bill Talen, commonly known as Reverend Billy — an activist actor who was led away in plastic cuffs. The arrests were largely a nonviolent affair, though some protesters struggled as the officers picked them up by their hands and feet.

“First Amendment rights, First Amendment rights,” one woman shouted as she was handcuffed and led away to nearby police vans.

By 1 p.m., all of protesters in front of the Goldman Sachs entrance had been arrested. The same white-shirted officer then warned the remaining crowd of protesters that they were obstructing pedestrian and vehicular traffic and would be subject to arrest if they stayed.

The crowd slowly marched away, as a handful of employees in the Goldman Sachs building stood by the windows watching the protesters from several floors up. Police on foot and on motorcycles followed the group back to Zuccotti Park.

“The police as an institution are in a position where they’re protecting the real criminals, the people who are responsible for the economic state of the world right now,” said Zack Rosen, 22, as he was leaving Goldman Sachs headquarters. Rosen, who was previously arrested in another Occupy Wall Street protest, said he thought the demonstration “went great.”

Occupy protesters declare Goldman Sachs guilty, get arrested | McClatchy.

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Where does Occupy go from here? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Banking, Business, Economy, History, Internet, Jobs, Opinion, Perspective, Social, Society, Wall Street on October 25, 2011


TUESDAY, OCT 25, 2011

Where does Occupy go from here?

Historian Michael Kazin explains what the Occupy campaign can learn from past movements

BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT

 

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We’re a little more than a month into Occupy Wall Street, and there are signs that public interest in the protest campaign is cresting.

According to an analysis by Micah Sifry, the number of Facebook “likes” for Occupy groups, as well as the number of Occupy-related Google searches — admittedly crude tools for measuring public interest — appear to be leveling off.

Meanwhile, winter is approaching in New York and questions remain about whether the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg will allow protesters to continue the original occupation in lower Manhattan, which has become the heart of the movement.

For a historically informed take on the challenges and opportunities Occupy Wall Street faces, I spoke to Michael Kazin. He is professor of history at Georgetown and author of “American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.”

We’re now a month-plus into this. Does Occupy Wall Street remind you of any past movements or does it seem like a fundamentally new type of thing?

This is the first time in a long time, perhaps since the 1930s, that the left — and I think this protest does belong to the left, though a lot of people who are involved in it wouldn’t call themselves that — has focused on economic injustice as a central issue. That is both new and of course harks back to the beginnings of the New Deal. At that time, most activists on the left were primarily targeting economic inequality — in the form of wages, the lack of democracy at work, and resistance by industrial corporations to recognizing unions. What’s obviously different now is that Occupy Wall Street has been put together by people who are  proud of being children of the Internet age: with horizontal organization, leaderlessness and consensus decision-making. The main tactic is about hanging out with and learning from one another. There is no sense of how the tactic will lead to either taking political power or having a big share of political power. This movement seems to think from tactic to tactic, rather than tactic to strategy.

Is there precedent for this kind of form and structure?

Many a protest campaign begins this way. The sit-ins at Woolworth lunch counters beginning in February 1960 had an end — desegregation of public facilities — but they weren’t quite sure of where it was going after that. They just thought, “This is a neat tactic that will draw attention.” And it did. That began with four students in Greensboro, N.C. But it soon blossomed, and now their lunch counter is in the Smithsonian. The movement against the Vietnam War also began with very small protests in 1964, and then grew into ones with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. So protests can grow and become catalysts for larger and more diverse movements.

The two examples you just mentioned had obvious, discrete goals they were trying to accomplish. In contrast, Occupy Wall Street has only a broad theme. Are there precedents for this?

There was Coxey’s Army in 1894, which was the first group to march on Washington. They were mostly unemployed people with a vague demand for public jobs. But they were basically just pissed off about the widespread depression of that era, and they were determined to compel Congress and the president to do something. Like Occupy, they did not have a well-worked-out agenda. Historians disagree about what effect the march had. But it certainly dramatized the situation of the poor and the unemployed, much as Occupy Wall Street is trying to do. People marched from around the country on Washington; they took freight trains, and hitchhiked on wagons, and walked a lot, too. It was very dramatic and the press covered it very widely. But the depression continued until 1897.

What can Occupy learn from history about how to sustain itself beyond the initial burst of interest and energy?

I think protests like this have to progress from tactic to strategy if they are going to endure. They have to either start their own organization — as the sit-in movement started SNCC — or link up with other organizations. The problem with that strategy  is that what’s gotten people’s attention is the clever, somewhat novel tactic Occupy is using — and the participatory, very small-d democratic nature of it. The next step will inevitably not be that clever and novel. But for it to go anywhere, the Occupiers have to figure out, to some degree, what kind of demands they want to make. That doesn’t mean they need a 12-point program, but maybe a three-point program. They have to figure out what sort of relationship they want to have with existing groups on the left. But with no leaders and everything run by consensus, how do you make these decisions?

What’s more likely to happen — and I think to some extent already is happening — is that this will become a catalyst for other people to do other kinds of things about economic inequality. I think it’s likely that Occupy Wall Street will be seen as a spark. I think it’s unlikely that people are going to stay in the park for month upon month unless they are homeless. Most people eventually will want to get on with their lives. In the end, a tactic, no matter how successful, is just a tactic.

You earlier made the distinction of a protest campaign versus a movement. What makes a movement?

I think a movement first of all has to be sustained. It has to have some sense of direction. It has to be able to assess when it’s succeeding and when it’s failing. And it has to have some kind of leaders. They don’t have to be elected, but I think it’s better if they are because then they are accountable. You don’t have to have one leader. For all the attention on Martin Luther King Jr., he was not the only leader of the black freedom movement. There were many, some in local areas, some as heads of national organizations. The better orators often became leaders, for better or worse

So where do you see Occupy heading?

The most optimistic way to look at it is that this protest campaign will be a catalyst for people working on issues of economic justice anywhere in the country and, to a degree, in other countries as well. The negative possibility is that this will devolve like the global justice campaign of a decade ago, which is best known for the Battle of Seattle in 1999. It seemed hugely exciting at the time. I wrote a long Op-Ed in the New York Times in which I predicted this would be the beginning of broad new attack on concentrated wealth, comparable to the populist movement in the 1880s and 1890s. But it fizzled. Its targets, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, were hard for most Americans to get excited about. In “American Dreamers,” I quote an activist who says it was pretty hard to get people to understand what the World Bank actually did. Occupy Wall Street is more visceral. Young people are afraid they’re not going to get jobs. People are unemployed. They are losing their houses. These are issues that everyone understands. 

Where does Occupy go from here? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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Free Wood Post – Wall Street Raided, Hundreds of Banksters Arrested

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Humor/Parody on October 25, 2011


October 25, 2011

By Nurmi Husa

 

Early this afternoon, in a carefully coordinated series of simultaneous assaults, hundreds of police officers raided the corporate headquarters of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and several other large banks and arrested all the top management.

According to multiple sources the NYPD threw cans of tear gas cleverly disguised as Grey Poupon jars into executive dining rooms, surprising the banksters at lunch. Sources claim that the police quickly subdued the dumbfounded executives, ziptied their hands behind their backs and dragged them out to waiting paddy wagons by lapels, ties, shoelaces and in a number of instances, by thumbs and even ears.

Occupy Wall Street protestors in Zuccotti Park watched the operation in utter amazement. Several fainted out of sheer excitement and had to be revived by EMTs on hand.


From the Occupy Wall Street Twitter feed:

“The NYPD isn’t coming after OWS for a change!” noted blogger and usually stay-at-home dad, Justinian Nosario, who by chance had been bringing protestors a vat of homemade gluten-free jelly donuts at the time of the raid. “This is going to blow up the blogosphere. It’s a game-changer.”

Free Wood Post.

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