“Whoever is Smoking Weed, Stop It!”: Points Blog Occupies Wall Street | Points: The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society. For the last few weeks Points has maintained a judicious silence about the populist protest movement(s) clustered under the name of “Occupy Wall Street.” Though we certainly don’t shy away from politics here, we do try to stay at least nominally on topic. While OWS’s capacious platform, not to mention its street theater aesthetic, suggests that participants may have definite ideas about drug policy, the issue has not come to the fore in either mainstream media or progressive coverage of the movement. Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em-- Not At least it hadn’t until last Thursday, when an otherwise bland LA Times piece (the movement is growing and facing logistical hurdles; celebrities are visiting and they are rich– what does it all mean??)
Included, as a colorful background detail, the quotation that appears in this post’s title. A ban on alcohol and drugs in the occupied areas makes strategic sense–sort of. Not Exactly a Hockey Mom The Center--No, Make that the Base--Cannot Hold. Occupy Wall Street needs to occupy Congress and lobbyists. And now it seems to be finding its voice with the movement known as Occupy Wall Street. Like the tea party, OWS began as a loose collection of people who knew they were getting a raw economic deal but were unsure precisely why. They both started with a surge of grass-roots politics. Both tapped into the national zeitgeist, feeding on the unfocused background radiation of economic angst.
When the tea party burst onto the national stage, I had high hopes they would address some of the persistent economic problems that our two-party political system was ignoring. But the direction of the tea party tilted hard right, shifting from the economic to the partisan. Obamacare and taxes — neither of which were responsible for our laundry list of economic woes — became their focus. That shift created a vacuum waiting for a group of angry Americans to fill it. Credit “The Daily Show” with changing all that. Now, the founders of OWS must consider what to do next. I suggest the following three goals: Chomsky to Occupy: move to the next stage - This Just In.
Noam Chomsky has advice for the Occupy movement, whose encampments all over the country are being swept away by police. The occupations were a "brilliant" idea, he says, but now it's time to "move on to the next stage" in tactics. He suggests political organizing in the neighborhoods. The Occupy camps have shown people how "to break out of this conception that we're isolated. " But "just occupying" has "lived its life," says the man who is the most revered radical critic of American politics and capitalist economics.
Chomsky gave his counsel answering questions in a small group after a speech Monday evening, December 12, in the 1000-seat Westbrook Middle School auditorium (a/k/a Westbrook Performing Arts Center), which was filled to capacity. The speech was sponsored by the University of New England's Center for Global Humanities. #OCCUPY: Complete coverage of #Occupy in New England and beyond "Don't be obsessed with tactics but with purpose," he suggested.
Much is at stake. My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters | Politics News. Occupy Wall Street's Top Priority Should Be to Kill the Bush Tax Cuts - James Kwak - Business. How can our do-nothing Congress respond to the needs of the 99 percent? The first step is to do nothing and let the Bush-Obama tax cuts expire. The Occupy Wall Street protesters could not have picked a better target. The U.S. financial industry, symbolically headquartered around that Lower Manhattan street named for a "earthen wall" in 17th century New Amsterdam, epitomizes everything that is wrong with America today. For years, bankers got spectacularly rich manufacturing toxic securities and passing them off onto unsuspecting customers. Letting the tax cuts die is not a panacea, but a first step toward a making more progressive policies possible. Wall Street is not the source of all evil, of course, and better financial regulation would not solve all the problems of inequality that Occupy Wall Street has brought to the public's attention.
It's widely acknowledged that OWS is asking good, tough questions. Letting the Bush tax cuts die is a good idea, not a panacea. How a seedpod led to $400,000 bail and eight felony charges | #OccupyOakland Media. “I always wear a rainbow-colored scarf,” said 65-year-old grandmother Sweet Grass Longhouse over the phone. “That’s how you’ll know it’s me.” It was Sweet Grass’s first time attending a General Assembly of Occupy Oakland, and as she approached the group that gathered before the Sunday afternoon GA at 19th and Telegraph, she wrapped both of her hands around a large paper pad. At the top of the pad, she had taped a photograph of her arrested son. Her left hand also held two small seedpods.
She greeted the group with a broad smile, asking if it was an appropriate time to explain her son’s situation. Her story begins in a similar way to many stories from January 28. “The march felt tense,” said Sweet Grass. Sweet Grass stayed with the group until 12th and Oak, and then decided to head home. 45 minutes later, the police arrested Govinda. Here’s what happened in the meantime: he walked to the retaining wall at Laney College, directly across from where the fence had just come down. Occupying the 'Wall Street Journal' - Susie Cagle - National. The protest movement is appropriating the names and logos of corporate-owned publications. Is it copyright infringement or satire? Courtesy of Scott Johnson Scott Johnson had published only two issues of his Occupied Oakland Tribune when he received a cease and desist order from The Oakland Tribune's parent company, the Bay Area News Group.
"The first thing I thought was, Is this real? The Oakland Tribune contends that Johnson's use of their name, albeit "Occupied," and an altered Tribune tower logo are infringements on the company's trademark. Huntington, who did not respond for comment, said that Occupied Oakland Tribune's name and logo were "a problem," though the Bay Area News Group was considering dissolving the Oakland Tribune until late 2011 amidst a round of heavy cutbacks. "As soon as I had any time to think about it, it became more and more clear that we can win this thing," says Johnson. The Occupied Chicago Tribune has had a less easy time of it. But of Oakland's Occupy? The four habits of highly successful social movements. (On Monday, I asked Rich Yeselson for his thoughts on Occupy Wall Street. Yeselson, a research coordinator at Change to Win, is a skilled organizer and a thoughtful historian of social movements in America and Europe.
On Tuesday, he sent over some notes, and I think they’re worth publishing in full. All opinions expressed here are his own. -- Ezra) Occupy Wall Street participants are protesting corporate greed. (Spencer Platt - GETTY IMAGES) The Wall Street protests seem to be gathering strength and expanding beyond the geographic limits of downtown Manhattan. Americans--infatuated with the next new thing, and proud to believe they are outside the constraints and burdens of history--love neophytes, gifted amateurs. But anger alone can’t sustain action. Movement building is exhausting, highly skilled work. Experienced organizers teach the less experienced and expand the circle of competent leadership. Bank of America petition. The Oakland Commune. From Occupation to 'Occupy': The Israelification of American domestic decurity. 18 November 2011 UC Davis police pepper spray students. (Photo: Reuters/Brian Nguyen) Originally published in Al Akhbar on 2 December 2011.
In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations. At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured.
Fighting “crimiterror” Rebecca Solnit, Ms. Civil Society v. Mr. Unaccountable. [Note for TomDispatch Readers: TomDispatch now closes for Thanksgiving. We’ll be back next week, of course. In the meantime, those of you who would like to offer support to this site can still contribute $75 and get a personalized, signed copy of my new book, The United States of Fear (or, for $140, that book and a signed copy of my previous book, The American Way of War).
To do so, just click here and go to the TomDispatch donation page -- and know that you have our eternal thanks for keeping us alive and well! Tom] When it set up its campsite at Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street was facing in only one direction: toward the financial heart of the planet two blocks away. The police, who promptly surrounded the encampment and organized their own occupation of the neighborhood, were in a sense facing in the other direction: toward Ground Zero, where new glass-sheathed towers were rising to replace those destroyed on September 11, 2001. Nothing, of course, had to be this way. Press Release: Anonymous Hacked Documents Reveal Law Enforcement Spied on Occupy and Shared Information with Private Intelligence Company, STRATFOR | Deep Green Resistance. January 26, 2012 Contact Deep Green Resistance: Lierre Keith lierrekeith[at]yahoo[dot]com Aric McBay aric[at]aricmcbay[dot]org (847) 773-7478 View documents here.
View Deep Green Resistance response and picture of Stratfor employee. Computer hackers known as Anonymous leaked information obtained by hacking into private intelligence firm Stratfor’s computer network. The documents – what Anonymous is calling a teaser – suggest that from at least October to November 2011 Stratfor worked with Texas law enforcement to infiltrate the Occupy movement and spy on the Deep Green Resistance movement. The document contains emails in which Stratfor employees discuss Occupy Austin and Deep Green Resistance. Deep Green Resistance condemns the surveillance and infiltration of activist groups by law enforcement and private corporations and calls on activists and their allies to expose and protest this violation of all of our constitutional rights.