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I'm still busy with the article, but here are a couple updates. The first is from the group itself (they have organized) and the second a commentary before the 700 were arrested:
First ‘Official’ Statement From the Occupy Wall Street Movement
Source: Dangerous Minds
Sunday, October 02, 2011
This was unanimously voted on by all members of Occupy Wall Street last night, around 8pm, Sept 29. It is our first official document for release. We have three more underway, that will likely be released in the upcoming days: 1) A declaration of demands. 2) Principles of Solidarity 3) Documentation on how to form your own Direct Democracy Occupation Group. This is a living document. You can receive an official press copy of the latest version by emailing c2anycga@gmail.com.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
Comment On This ZNet Article See All Comments (1)
 | Corporate Spectre?By Jones, David at Oct 02, 2011 15:38 PM |
So in essence the demon here is "limited liability" , the legal status corporations get? I think this is problematic in that it obscures the oppressive, undemocratic social relations inherent to the profit system more generally. The message is the same essentially as Sarah Palin's or even Ron Paul's : We want a kinder, gentler, "small business" capitalist model like back in the good old days. Not "crony" or "corporate" capitalism but free market capitalism, on the one hand, or Keynesian capitalism on the other. Neither of which is possible now.
Wall Street is simply a symbol of a power structure which has proven itself unjust and unsustainable (i would add barbaric). All the "they have's" listed above are only symptoms of that structure. Until the courage is found to deny consensus until the word capitalism is inserted in place of corporations, this will just be another exercise in progressive movement building dominated by NGO's and non-profit community organizers. ( a perfect example being Van Jones' piece).
Wall Street is simply a symbol of a power structure which has proven itself unjust and unsustainable (i would add barbaric). All the "they have's" listed above are only symptoms of that structure. Until the courage is found to deny consensus until the word capitalism is inserted in place of corporations, this will just be another exercise in progressive movement building dominated by NGO's and non-profit community organizers. ( a perfect example being Van Jones' piece).
Occupying Wall Street On A Saturday Afternoon
Before you read on, watch this: a video from the base camp of the #OccupyWall Street protest that is now in its seventh day. It’s called “No One Can Predict the Moment of Revolution.” (The video was produced by Martyna Starosta and her friend Iva.)
These are the faces of a wannabe revolution, more than a protest but not yet quite a major Movement. The spirit is infectious, perhaps because of the sincerity of the participants and their obvious commitment to their ideals.
Occupy Wall Street is more than a protest; it is as much an exercise in building a leaderless, bottom-up resistance community with a more democratic approach to challenging the system where everyone is encouraged to have a say.
But saying that also leads to a conflict between my emotional identification with the kids that have rallied in this small park/public space on Liberty Street to exercise some liberty, with a despairing analysis that wishes this enterprise well but harbors deep doubts about its staying power and impact.
This privately owned park -- devastated by debris on 9/11 and then rebuilt by a real estate magnate who named it after himself -- is also a place that is under 24 hour surveillance from a hostile New York City police Department which has put up a fence on one side of the park, brought down a spy tower from Times Square to track the participants from on high, and sprinkled infiltrators into the crowd.
By the time I left, late on Saturday afternoon, the police arrested 70 people who had joined a march that went from Wall Street to Union Square, New York’s traditional gathering place for political rallies for nearly l00 years. (You can watch it all on a live stream: http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution)
In many ways this is a 2011 style protest modeled after Tahrir Square in Cairo. It is non-violent, organized around what’s called a “General Assembly” where the community meets daily to debate its political direction and discuss how it sees itself. There are no formal leaders or spokespeople, no written down political agenda and no shared demands.
They focus on using social media. Twitter is their megaphone.
They have no sound system. When participants want to make an announcement, they yell “Mike Check,” which is repeated by the whole crowd. They also repeat the announcement, a few words at a time, so everyone can hear it.
This bottom-up anarchist sensibility and ideology conflicts with the mass mobilizations of old where an organization issues a call and a coalition of groups carries it out.
I ran into one of yesterday’s movement leaders, Leslie Cagan, who ran United for Peace and Justice and organized the massive anti-Iraq war protests and marches in New York and Washington before and after. She was as intrigued as I was about this gathering of the committed. She found the focus a bit vague but seemed willing to give it a chance to grow and learn by making its own mistakes.
Other 60’s activists like Aron Kay, known as the “pie man” for all the famous and infamous people he pied in the face to protest their crimes and misdemeanors—including Andy Warhol for dining with the Shah of Iran—was also showing his solidarity by turning up and squatting in the park.
Lower Manhattan on a Saturday is usually a Mosque less Mecca for tourists visiting Ground Zero, a crime scene if there ever was one. It is a symbol of a national failure to defend this country as well.
It’s also the place where the 911 Truth Movement shares its findings weekly about what “really happened” with visitors.
Just a few blocks away is another crime scene: Wall Street, which symbolizes an ongoing economic failure. In this past week, access has been limited and in this free country of ours protestors could not parade in front of the NY Stock Exchange, another privately run financial institution. That led Yves Smith of the Naked Capitalism blog to opine, “I’m beginning to wonder whether the right to assemble is effectively dead in the US.”
Many banks like Chase doubled their security forces and put up fences to protect themselves from the people the NY media has labeled “kids and ageing hippies.”
The panic in the exchange is mirrored in the insecurity in the streets where surveillance cameras, private police forces and NY cops defend the bastions of privilege.
The police went on the offensive Saturday with mass arrests of activists. Scott Galindez filed this report on Reader Supported News: “While the live feeds were up I witnessed a very powerful arrest of a law student whose parents were recently evicted from their home. He dropped to his knees and gave an impassioned plea for the American people to wake up! There are reports of police kettling protesters with a big orange net, at least five maced, and police using tasers.”
There were also reports of the use of mace, tear gas and pepper spray which hit two older women. We are so used to these storm trooper tactics that most expect them. There had been fewer arrests last week, although the police seem to now have identified key organizers and are singling them out.
On Saturday, police gave out a notice saying that it is now illegal to sleep in the park. They then put up a sign on a park wall. I watched a member of the police command, a “white shirt” named Timoney, march into the park and gruffly ordere the communications team that spends most of its time tweeting out the latest news, to take down some large umbrellas the activists were using to protect their computers from rain.
The police consider these “structures” and prohibit them. Earlier in the week, they arrested people for using tarps to protect their gear. (They don’t see the irony in that term given the way the TARP law bailed out the banksters.)
Many of the people in park believe the end may be coming with the police eager to end what they see as a Woodstock on Wall Street complete with topless teens and long haired militants. This assemblage clearly affects their macho identity as upholders of law and order, as they define it. They probably agree with the right wing Red State website that calls the protesters a “menagerie.”
I wouldn’t rule out mass arrests once a provocation, theirs or the protesters, provides the pretext.
Will the Occupy Wall Street collectives be able to continue to occupy a zone that has been occupied for years by the greedsters of the finance world?
More importantly, will the issues they are trying to draw attention to, however symbolically, be taken up by others?
Will it take more cracked heads or even a police killing to move New Yorkers to support a campaign to rein in Wall Street?
Where are the unions and New York’s progressive democrats and organizations? Why aren’t they in the streets?
Why don’t they realize that economic justice issues are essential to transforming this oligarch driven country?
I having been calling for years for more protests on Wall Street to put the issues of Wall Street crime on the agenda, But with media barely covering this “occupation,” with the activists being denigrated for their youth and inexperience, will this one have the impact I was hoping for?
It seems unlikely.
News Dissector Danny Schechter directed Plunder The Crime of Our Time, and wrote a companion book about the financial crisis as a crime story (Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com). Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org.
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