Occupy Wall Street | NYC Protest for American Revolution Move to Amend Legalize Democracy Film | Move to Amend Documentary 24,460 views 6 months ago Legalize Democracy is a 30 minute documentary about Move to Amend. Fast-paced and action-oriented, this DVD is a great tool for folks looking to get involved in Move to Amend or help spread the word. Produced by Move to Amend, Directed by Dennis Trainor, Jr., financed by grassroots donations. Cost for the DVD is sliding scale -- you determine what you can pay ($10-25) -- additional funds will be used to help underwrite Move to Amend's grassroots organizing work. Help spread the word by hosting a house party to support Move to Amend and show the film. Download our discussion guide to help with group discussion after the film (pdf):
Robert Kuttner: Wall Street: From Protest to Politics "There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them." --Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, French politician (1807-1874). When elected leaders largely ignore a disgrace like the financial collapse of 2008, sooner or later popular protest fills the vacuum. The Wall Street protests are heartening -- but also a measure of the utter failure of the usual machinery of democracy to remedy the worst pillaging of regular Americans by financial elites since the 1920s. For three years, we have been wondering, where is the outrage? The ingenuity of occupywallst.org, its spread to other cities, its blending of internet-organizing with on-the-ground protest, is inspiring. But sooner or later, protest will need to turn to politics. And God knows, we missed the rendezvous we were supposed to have with democratic politics in January 2009. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, despite heroic efforts by progressives, stopped just short of separating financial speculation from ordinary banking.
Loss of chance in English law Loss of chance in English law refers to a particular problem of causation, which arises in tort and contract. The law is invited to assess hypothetical outcomes, either affecting the claimant or a third party, where the defendant's breach of contract or of the duty of care for the purposes of negligence deprived the claimant of the opportunity to obtain a benefit and/or avoid a loss. For these purposes, the remedy of damages is normally intended to compensate for the claimant's loss of expectation (alternative rationales include restitution and reliance). The general rule is that while a loss of chance is compensable when the chance was something promised on a contract[1] it is not generally so in the law of tort, where most cases thus far have been concerned with medical negligence in the public health system. Contract[edit] Remedies[edit] In contract cases, the court is usually interested in securing the performance of what was agreed. Public policy[edit] Causation[edit] Negligence[edit]
Rabbi Michael Lerner: The Message and Strategy That Is Needed by Occupy Wall Street This past weekend, Occupy Wall Street demonstrations were held in over 951 cities in 82 countries as people around the globe joined in an international day of solidarity against the greed and corruption of the 1%. The media, trying to discredit all the demonstrators, say we don't know what we are for, only what we are against. So I believe there is much to be gained were we to embrace the following 20 second sound bite for "what we are for." We want to replace a society based on selfishness and materialism with a society based on caring for each other and caring for the planet. Ok, it was two minutes instead of 20 seconds, but we deserve that amount of time. Strategy? For direct action, we need to begin non-violent sit-ins aimed at disrupting the normal operations of those corporations that have acted illegally and immorally, but gotten away with it because their friends control the Democratic Party as well as the Republican.
Pure economic loss Economic loss is a term of art[1] which refers to financial loss and damage suffered by a person such as can be seen only on a balance sheet rather than as physical injury to the person or destruction of property. There is a fundamental distinction between “pure economic loss” and “consequential economic loss”, as pure economic loss occurs independent of any physical damage to the person or property of the victim. Usually, "pure economic loss" in tort, particularly in negligence, is not recoverable as damages or otherwise.[2] It has also been suggested that it be called "commercial loss" as injuries to person or property could be regarded as "economic".[1] Examples of pure economic loss include: Loss of income suffered by a family whose principal earner dies in an accident. The latter case is exemplified by the English case of Spartan Steel and Alloys Ltd v. In Australia it is very difficult to recover pure economic loss in negligence if it is not consequent to property damage. W.
Rabbi Michael Lerner: Praying With Our Feet at Occupy Oakland When my teacher and mentor at the Jewish Theological Seminary Abraham Joshua Heschel told me and others that he had been "praying with his feet" when he participated in the Selma Freedom march in 1965, he confirmed for many a way of overcoming the dichotomy between my religious practice and my radical politics. In many ways, the anti-war movements of the '60s and early '70s of the last century felt like that kind of community prayer. I had that experience again at my various visits to Occupy Oakland, most intensely this past Wednesday, November 2, 2011. It was a strong protest of the class war that has been waged by the wealthiest 1 percent of the population -- and their hired guns in the media, political world, and educational institutions -- against the 99 percent of the population who have suffered both materially and spiritually in the past four decades. Some of the scenes I liked best: And, like the '60s, there were also problems. But the key is to have compassion for everyone.
Alec Baldwin: What Occupy Wall Street Has Taught Me Have you seen Hard Times: Lost on Long Island? The film won the Audience Award/Best Documentary at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October. The documentary follows a group of unemployed men and women, ranging in age from their late thirties into their sixties, who are looking for work while living in certain middle class suburbs on Long Island. I had not seen the film during the festival itself, but when I screened it the other day, I realized the true meaning, for me, of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Hard Times is a disturbing film that puts a face to the unemployment crisis in America in a rather effective way. In America today, we are told that unemployment now hovers at around nine percent, while other sources insist that those statistics are underreported and are closer to 12.5 percent. The rest of us try to go about our business. It is somewhat easier to sidestep the raw helplessness of one in eleven or even one in eight.
Untellable Truths Materialist Perspectives The differences between Democratic progressives and the president over the tax deal the president has made with Republicans is being argued from a materialist perspective. That perspective is real. It matters who gets how much money and how our money is spent. But what is being ignored is that the answer to material policy questions depends on how Americans understand the issues, that is, on how the issues are realized in the brains of our citizens. Such understanding is what determines political support or lack of it in all its forms, from voting to donations to political pressure to what is said in the media. What policies are proposed and adopted depend on how Americans understand policy and politics. From the progressive viewpoint, the president keeps surrendering in advance — giving in to conservatives before he has to and hence betraying Democratic principles. Progressives differ on the reasons for the president’s behavior. Helping the Other Side
Open Left Look to the left. Look to the right. - Ken Honeywell A little over three years ago, I found out what was really important to my neighbors. After almost 50 years on the planet, I finally understood what it was that would get them out in the streets, mad as hell, carrying, literally, torches and pitchforks and placards, shutting down traffic as they marched toward the Governor’s Mansion. It was not the sorry state of our public schools. It was not a recent escalation in crime that was creeping into the city’s tonier neighborhoods. It was not the rising levels of poverty and homelessness and hunger, the growing problem of childhood obesity, or the fact that Forbes had ranked Indiana 49th of 50 states in environmental quality. It was not an ill-considered war that was killing our young men and women and costing the nation billions of dollars. It was property taxes. Our property taxes had shot up shockingly, all at once, and my neighbors were stunned. No matter: most of them were blowing smoke. Horrors! I mean that figuratively.
Rabbi Michael Lerner: Obama (and Biden) Have No Clue About What's Bothering Their Political Base Shortly before the California Democratic primary in 2008, the San Fransisco Chronicle invited me to write a short article explaining why I, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, was supporting Barack Obama. Like most other progressive activists, I understood that a president is limited in what s/he can accomplish in limiting the power of America's economic and political elites and in restraining the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical and health care profiteers, the oil industry's relentless destruction of the environment, or the selfishness and materialism that had become the hallmark of Wall Street and increasingly the "common sense" that was conveyed by the media and advertising into the consciousness of many Americans. President Obama is now traveling the country seeking to rebuild the enthusiasm he generated in 2008, and seems clueless as to why it is not there. And the Democrats who followed his lead seem similarly clueless. So what happened?