Renaissance of the Occupy Movement

 Renaissance of the Occupy Movement and a Brilliant Illustration:

Illustration: one of my pet peeves, in fact indignations, is the feckless, subservient, behavior of the so-called “Arab League” as it say ‘yes master” to the West on any and all issues.  It represents anything but the sentiments of the Arab people in general.

This brilliant depiction by Carlos Latuff shows how they look while Gaza Burns.  They have also done nothing concerning Shalabi, a Palestinian woman who has been on a hunger strike during “Administrative Detention” by Israel for over a month now.

More of his fine work may be found at any of these sites:

http://twitter.com/CarlosLatuff
http://latuffcartoons.wordpress.com/
http://twitpic.com/photos/CarlosLatuff
http://latuff2.deviantart.com
http://ferroviasdobrasil.blogspot.com

Occupy Wall Street are attacked again by Bloomberg’s thugs and stormtroopers:

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• NYC Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez Detained in Zuccotti Raid, Urges Mass Involvement in OWS

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• Occupy Wall Street Draws Massive Turnout in NYC and Across the Nation to Mark 2-Month Milestone

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• Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on Paramilitary Policing From WTO to Occupy Wall Street

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• As Occupy Enters Third Month, a Look at How Protesters Are Building a Global Movement

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Links

• “Dozens arrested as Occupy Wall Street marks anniversary with fresh protests.” By Ryan Devereaux. (The Guardian, March 18, 2012)
• Read Ryan Devereaux’s Reports at The Guardian
• Follow Ryan Devereaux on Twitter: @RDevro
• 6 Months of Occupy Wall Street Reports on Democracy Now!
• New York Times profiles Democracy Now!'s Ryan Deveraux

Rush Transcript

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Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This weekend marked six months since the launch of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which began last September 17th and launched protests around the world that gave voice to "the 99 percent." Activists in New York City marked the occasion by attempting to reoccupy the movement’s birthplace: Zuccotti Park, renamed "Liberty Plaza." A protest there Saturday drew more than hundreds of people, and included street theater and dancing.
But police were also on the scene and appeared determined to stop any attempts to re-establish the Occupy encampment. At least 73 people were arrested. Many reported excessive use of force by officers with the New York Police Department. This is a protester describing what happened after activists tried to set up tents in Zuccotti Park Saturday night.

PROTESTER: Some people wanted to reoccupy the park, so people were out here with their sleeping bags, and there were a few tents. The officers basically came into the park and smashed the tarp down that people were lying under, and they began trying to arrest people.

AMY GOODMAN: In one widely reported incident, a young woman suffered a seizure after she was pulled from the crowd and arrested. Witnesses say police initially ignored Cecily McMillan as she flopped about on the sidewalk with her hands zip-tied behind her back, but she was eventually taken away in an ambulance.
Meanwhile, not far from the park, thousands of activists and intellectuals gathered at the Left Forum this weekend to discuss the theme "Occupying the System." Renowned independent filmmaker and activist Michael Moore headlined the event Saturday. He said he had never seen a movement spread with greater speed than Occupy Wall Street.

MICHAEL MOORE: I have never seen a political or a social movement catch fire this fast than this one. And, you know, I’m in my fifties, so I’ve lived through enough of them and knew about those that came before me. And what’s so incredible about this movement is that people have—it was—really, it hasn’t taken six months. It really just took a few weeks before they started to take polls of people, Americans, and they found that the majority of Americans supported the principles of the Occupy movement. This was back in October.

And then they took another poll, and it said 72 percent of the American public believes taxes should be raised on the rich. Seventy-two percent. I mean, I don’t think there was ever a poll that showed a majority in favor of raising taxes on the rich, because up until recently, a vast majority of our fellow Americans believed in the Horatio Alger theory, that anyone in America can make it, it’s an even and level playing field. And now they—the majority, at least, vast majority—know that that’s a lie. They know that there’s no truth to that whatsoever. They know that the game is rigged. And they know that they don’t have the same wherewithal on that playing field that the wealthy have.

AMY GOODMAN: At the end of his speech, Michael Moore urged people to join the movement and go down to Zuccotti Park.

MICHAEL MOORE: I really want to encourage you to not let this moment slip by. Our ship has really come in. The spotlight is on Occupy Wall Street. And I think—I think this is our—this is our invitation to head over to Zuccotti Park. It’s a 10-minute—it’s a 10-minute walk. Five minutes if you’re young. Huh?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: [inaudible]

MICHAEL MOORE: All right. So, go ahead, start the banner. And again, thank you, everybody, for coming here tonight. Let’s not—let’s not lose the moment. The moment is ours and our fellow Americans’. Thank you. Occupy Wall Street!

AMY GOODMAN: Hundreds heeded Michael Moore’s call and helped swell the ranks of the Occupy protest Saturday night. Democracy Now! correspondent and now Guardian reporter Ryan Devereaux tweeted, quote, "Today’s events feel like any given day last fall with #OWS."
Well, Ryan joins us now to talk more about Occupy Wall Street. We’re also joined by two of the people who led a discussion at the Left Forum about strategic directions for the Occupy movement: Frances Fox Piven, professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, a frequent target of right-wing pundits; and in D.C., we’re joined by Stephen Lerner, the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign, on the executive board of the Service Employees International Union, has been working with labor and community groups nationally on how to hold Wall Street accountable.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Ryan, let’s begin with you with an update on what took place on Saturday night.
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Well, on Saturday night, protesters had been in the park since about 1:00 in the afternoon, and it had been a day that had been marked with some tension, but also a lot of joy. People were really enjoying the opportunity to be in the park again to talk to each other, to meet new people and discuss issues. At about 11:30, though, a representative from Brookfield Properties, which owns Zuccotti Park, said that he was working with Brookfield security, made an announcement that people had to leave the park because they were violating the rules. I asked him what rules they were violating. He said that they had brought in sleeping equipment and erected structures in the park, and these were violations of the rules. He made this announcement via megaphone, but he was drowned out by protesters. And I should say that the structures that I witnessed were a tarp that was strung over a cord tied between two trees, and protesters also had—they had symbolic tents up on polls that they were carrying around. It wasn’t as if they had created a tent city in the park or anything like that.
But the protesters decided to stand their ground, and the police moved in, in lieu of the Brookfield security. And it was rows upon rows of police officers coming into the park through the front entrance, coming down the stairs. And the protesters, dozens of them who chose to stand their ground, were gathered in the center of the park. Their arms and legs were locked. They were sitting in planters right there in the middle of Zuccotti. And the police moved in to break them apart. It was a violent scene, by just about all accounts, police ripping protesters apart from each other, people being hit, people being dragged across the ground, multiple reports of young women being pulled by their hair across the ground. I saw a young woman writhing on the ground in pain with a white-shirted police officer standing over the top of her telling her to shut up. It was really gruesome. I talked to a lot of people who were there on the eviction on November 15th, and they said that the course of the day, you know, the interactions with the police and the protesters were the most violent they had seen. Following people being pulled out of the park, you know, dozens of arrests, there was a winding march through the city, which resulted in, you know, a handful of—a handful more arrests.
What was really disturbing for a lot of people that were there on the scene was one incident with a young woman named Cecily McMillan who, witnesses say, suffered from a seizure. She was handcuffed in the street sidewalk area near the entrance to the park. She was on the ground. Videotape seems to show her convulsing. You can hear people screaming to help her, to call 911. Witnesses that were there said that it took approximately 22 to 23 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. People were really disturbed that there were hundreds of police officers there and no paramedics, and also disturbed by the fact that you see a number of police officers standing around this young woman as she’s convulsing, and no one seems to be doing much of anything. I spoke to a young man who said he was a paramedic in—an EMT in Florida, who was disgusted by the way that McMillan was treated. He said her head wasn’t supported. Numerous witnesses that I spoke to said that her head was bouncing off the concrete. The paramedics said that she could have easily died. McMillan was taken from the scene by ambulance to a local hospital and then transferred to police custody.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they take the handcuffs off of her?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Eventually they took the handcuffs off, but it was quite some time she was on the ground convulsing in handcuffs. And people were screaming to let her loose, take the handcuffs off, stabilize her. People felt like it didn’t seem like the officers knew what they were—what they needed to do to handle her.
AMY GOODMAN: Is she in jail now or the hospital?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: She’s in jail now, as far as we know. Attorneys with the National Lawyers Guild are particularly concerned because, despite repeated efforts, they haven’t been able to speak to her. These attorneys have told me that in most cases, it would be easy for them to speak to a potential client, to speak to someone who is—you know, who’s in police custody but has been hospitalized. But those efforts have been stopped. It’s unclear exactly why. The police have released a video that they claim shows McMillan hitting an officer, hitting a police officer, shortly before her seizure. I don’t fully understand how that relates to her care or, you know, why it was that she wasn’t taken to the hospital. It seems irrelevant, and it doesn’t seem to address the issue of why she hasn’t been able to speak to an attorney. We do know that she is charged with a felony, but it is unclear what exactly those charges are, because, again, the attorneys haven’t been able to speak to her.
AMY GOODMAN: But she was—eventually, an ambulance came?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Eventually an ambulance came.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of healthcare, what happened to the Occupy medic?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: This was after protesters were cleared out of the park. An Occupy medic, who, by most accounts, from people that I spoke to, is a soft-spoken, pretty nice young guy, was grabbed by police for reasons that are unclear to me. He was directly in front of me at the moment that he was grabbed, and he was thrown into a glass door. Some people said that his head hit the door, but I was standing there, and I couldn’t tell what part of his body hit the door. But it was a massive crack left in this glass door. People were shocked at the force that was used. The young man, as he was being pulled away by police officers, looked me in the eye and said that he had been punched in the face. I asked photographers there on the scene. They said he had been punched in the face multiple times.
And this was something that, you know, repeated people—repeatedly I heard accounts of people who said that they had been hit in the face. I heard accounts of protesters saying that they were directly verbally threatened by police officers. I saw a high level of intimidation from a number of police officers towards protesters. And it should be said that there were police officers who seemed to be making an effort, or at least just trying to do their job, but it is the guys who go out of their way to not be like that that tend to stand out and that tend to scare people and tend to hurt people. And, you know, protesters were saying that this was really an ugly scene. The attorneys who were looking at cases that are developing out of these arrests are saying that they’re seeing more resisting arrest charges, which they tell me often sort of is code word for fighting with police officers or police officers beating someone up.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to break, and then we’re going to come back. Ryan Devereaux with The Guardian now, used to be a fellow here at Democracy Now! It’s great to have you back. We’ll also be joined by Frances Fox Piven and Stephen Lerner in a moment.

Strategic Directions for Occupy Wall Street: Foreclosing Banks, Defending Homes, Making History

Famed sociologist Frances Fox Piven and labor organizer Stephen Lerner discuss how Occupy Wall Street could grow into a major political movement that draws millions into the streets. "I’m absolutely convinced that Occupy is the beginning of another massive protest movement," Fox Piven says. "Protest movements have a long life—10, 15 years—and they are what we have to rely on to take our country back." Fox Piven is professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of "Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America." Lerner is a labor organizer who was the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign and is on the executive board of the Service Employees International Union. He has been working with labor and community groups nationally on how to hold Wall Street accountable. "I think there’s never been a more exciting time in my 30 years of organizing to imagine building the kind of movement that can transform the country, that can really talk about redistributing wealth and power. And there’s never a better time to get involved," Lerner says. We are also joined by Guardian reporter Ryan Devereaux, who has been reporting on Occupy Wall Street extensively. [includes rush transcript]

Filed under  Occupy Wall Street, Election 2012

Guests:

Frances Fox Piven, author and professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her latest book is Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven?: The Essential Writings of the Professor Glenn Beck Loves to Hate, as well as Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America.
Stephen Lerner, the architect of the Justice for Janitors campaign. He is on the executive board of the Service Employees International Union and works with labor and community groups nationally on how to hold Wall Street accountable.
Ryan Devereaux, a journalist for The Guardian and a former Democracy Now! fellow who has been reporting on Occupy Wall Street.

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Links

• “Occupy! and Make Them Do It.” By Frances Fox Piven (The Nation, April 2, 2012)
• “Dozens arrested as Occupy Wall Street marks anniversary with fresh protests.” By Ryan Devereaux. (The Guardian, March 18, 2012)
• Read Ryan Devereaux’s Reports at The Guardian
• Follow Steven Lerner on Twitter: @StephenLerner
• Follow Ryan Devereaux on Twitter: @RDevro
• 6 Months of Occupy Wall Street Reports on Democracy Now!

Rush Transcript

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.Donate >

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: Our guests, Ryan Devereaux with The Guardian, Frances Fox Piven of City University of New York, and Stephen Lerner, labor organizer.
Frances Fox Piven, you were at the Left Forum that ultimately led into this mass march to Zuccotti Park. It’s been six months, September 17th, that people occupied Zuccotti Park, calling it Liberty Plaza or Liberty Square. Assess the movement, where we are at this point.
FRANCES FOX PIVEN: Well, I think the movement is reconnoitering at the—after two months of occupations, which were dramatic, brilliant, imaginative, I think captured something for the American people. I think the American public resonated to the "We are the 99 percent" Occupy Wall Street slogans. After two months, a lot of the occupations were leveled. And I think that what has been happening is that the occupiers and all the people who really responded to their rhetoric, to their dramatic depiction of financial capitalism in control and out of control, what people have been figuring out how to do is to move the protest into the neighborhoods, into the workplaces, into the schools.
I think, in the end, it may turn out that evicting the occupations was the precipitant of expanding the movement, because the movement’s agenda has broadened, and they’re now experimenting with reoccupying foreclosed homes, for example, with ways of rallying to the defense of workers who are locked out or on strike. And with the spring, I think there’s going to be a lot of protest in the universities and the colleges. And young people are very responsive to the appeals of Occupy, to their cultural style. And everybody in the colleges understands that high unemployment, high student debt spells foreclosed opportunities for a life.
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Lerner, talk about the focusing on the banks, like Wells Fargo, like Bank of America, and all that has been happening with those protests.
STEPHEN LERNER: One thing I think that Frances started to touch on here was the idea that we talk about Occupy Wall Street, and it’s opened the door to engage directly with all the people who have been devastated by out-of-control corporate and bank and Wall Street power. So in the case of Bank of America and Wells Fargo, there’s millions of people who are underwater, 11 million, in their homes, meaning that their homes are worth less now when they bought them, and they’re drowning in the debt. So there’s a campaign to say, let’s force the banks to write down the principal on those mortgages by $300 billion so that folks can stay in their homes. And that would create a million jobs. It would save people $5,000 on average a year in mortgage payments.
And I think it’s part of how we think about combining the horizontal energy and vision and passion of Occupy with the more vertical traditional community- and labor-based groups. And when the two of them meet, we’ll get the combustion of saying Wall Street is drowning the country, and they’re doing it in neighborhoods and communities all over. And it’s when people both are occupying in New York and Wall Street and resisting in their homes, their workplaces and schools, that we can engage the millions of people we need to do to build the kind of movement we need at this time in history.
AMY GOODMAN: As Frances was just talking about, the building spring momentum, you have the Democratic and Republican conventions in the summer, the Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. The final day when President Obama will address the delegates will take place at Bank of America Stadium. Can you talk about this, Stephen?
STEPHEN LERNER: Well, there’s a shareholder meeting first on April 24th in San Francisco at Wells Fargo, where thousands of people are going to come, and they’re going to say to Wells Fargo, this is where decisions are made that will decide our futures, and we’re going to confront them there. And then in early May, Bank of America will have its meeting in Charlotte. And occupiers and community groups and environmentalists and people from all over the country are going to be coming to Charlotte.
And in a way, I think we can think about it as the first convention. It’s going to be the convention of regular people, of the 99 percent, who are going to be saying to Bank of America, "It’s wrong that you’re stealing our homes. It’s wrong that you’re funding coal power—that you’re funding coal. It’s wrong that you’re ripping off students on student debt." And I think we can really capture the imagination of the country by being at the Southern Wall Street—Charlotte—and demonstrating both inside the meetings with people who have proxies, who have bought shares, and outside, that the real decisions are made in corporate boardrooms, not in Washington, and that’s the place we have to be in the weeks and months ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you recommending people buy stock?
STEPHEN LERNER: Well, there’s a lot—you know, Bank of America shares were recently down to $5, so a lot of people have bought stock and are planning to go to that meeting and try to be citizen shareholder—taxpayer shareholders, and have a say. There’s a window. You have to buy it, I think, 60 days before the shareholder meeting to be eligible. So I’m not sure if the window’s shut. But lots of people have bought stock, and lots of people are going to go to Charlotte.
And I think the issue about—we’re calling it "confront corporate power," is these meetings have the illusion of democracy. They say, "Oh, we’re going to have a vote of shareholders on corporate policies." We want to lift up all the issues about how out-of-control Wall Street and corporate power are dragging the country down. And so, I think it’s going to be an opportunity to make the point again and again that unless regular people can have a say in how corporations run, that we’re not going to be able to fix the economy, we’re not going to be able to regain power in this country. So I urge everybody to think about coming to Charlotte—we don’t have the exact day of the meeting; it’s normally around a May 9th—and folks to come to San Francisco on April 24th, and directly confront the folks who have dragged the country down and get richer and richer at all of our expenses.
AMY GOODMAN: Frances Fox Piven, there is so much being made of the economy is improving, and Occupy movement in this country has gone away. The police have broken down the encampments. What is your assessment of that and—
FRANCES FOX PIVEN: Well, no, it’s not gone away. I don’t think it’s gone away at all. Everywhere I look, I hear about Occupy East Harlem, Occupy the South Bronx. I think Occupy has spread out. And this kind of mobilization, this kind of building outrage, confronts a financial steering mechanism in the American economy, which is very vulnerable. It’s very vulnerable to the indignation and outrage of the millions and millions of ordinary people who are losing their nest egg. They’re losing their home, everything they put into their hopes for a stable future. They’re losing their pensions. They are graduating from the college they worked so hard to get into and to stay in; they’re graduating with massive debts.
Well, in the background of this, there is, I think, the basic relationship between these lenders and these debtors. They have made so many Americans into debtors. Well, you know, it isn’t true, necessarily, that debtors are powerless and lenders have all the power, because the lenders depend on those debtors accepting their debts and putting their shoulder to the wheel and taking the extra job and working very hard until they pay the massive debts that have been piled on their heads. So I think financial America is—the financial corporations are also vulnerable at this point in time, if we can mobilize the indignation, the outrage of the people who have been screwed.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Piven, a number of your books have dealt with the Great Depression, also the social movements of the 1960s. Can you put Occupy in historical context?
FRANCES FOX PIVEN: Yes. I think that not only in the 1960s and in the Great Depression, but from the beginning of the American Republic, it has been these periodic risings of ordinary people that have humanized American society. And sometimes the reforms that were implemented in response to the outrage, the indignation and the defiance, sometimes they did not last. But something lasted. Something lasted of the Revolutionary-era mobs who demanded radical democracy. Something lasted of the struggle of abolitionists for the freeing of the slaves. And something lasted of the Populist movement. Something lasted of the labor uprisings of the 1930s. And of course a lot lasted of the victories of the civil rights movement.
But without these movements, what happens is that the big corporations of America really flood, overflow democratic processes with propaganda and with their lobbying and with their campaign contributions. Democracy doesn’t work in the absence of protest movements. Protest movements are what give us that part of democracy that we have achieved. And I’m absolutely convinced that Occupy is the beginning of another massive protest movement. Protest movements have a long life—10, 15 years—and they are what we have to rely on to take our country back.
AMY GOODMAN: Ryan Devereaux, you’ve been following the protesters on the ground. How are people organizing? Are they coming together? Are they splitting apart? Is there national organizing going on?
RYAN DEVEREAUX: There’s certainly national organizing going on, and, you know, there always has been communication between the different Occupy groups throughout the country. Here in New York City, they’ve taken it upon themselves to start sort of a spring training program. So every Friday they have people, supporters, meeting together to go over different ways to handle situations, you know, at public demonstrations, situations with police, how to work—
AMY GOODMAN: News has come out around Occupy being infiltrated by police, monitored by police, Occupy protesters being surveilled.
RYAN DEVEREAUX: Yeah. Well, tomorrow—well, tomorrow there’s going to be a rally. There’s going to be a press conference discussing the NYPD’s handling of Occupy Wall Street. There are going to be—Occupy Wall Street protesters are going to be calling on communities that have been affected by the police department, particularly heavily in recent months. We have the Muslim community that is citing these AP reports that indicate that the police have been monitoring the community for years, gathering intelligence and keeping them in some sort of—keeping that intelligence on record, even when there is no indication of wrongdoing. There are these massive numbers of stop-and-frisks that—stop-and-frisks, police stop-and-frisks in low-income communities, communities of color, throughout New York City that have been rising every year, that, many protesters point out, often lead to the sort of violent confrontations police have with citizens that you see at the protests, but they happen every day, you know, away from the cameras in communities that don’t get any attention, and they happen to, you know, young men, young men of color, generally. This is something that’s important to Occupy Wall Street protesters. They see an intersection between the concentration of wealth and power and the way that, you know, the police handle the public. So tomorrow there’s going to be—you know, they’re going to be having a press conference Saturday. They’re going to be calling on all these affected communities to come out for a day of action.
In the longer term, Occupy Wall Street is looking at targeting Bank of America with monthly actions, GE, Wells Fargo. There are a lot of things in the works. You know, what Occupy is really focusing on is having different sort of individual groups working together on—you know, they work on their projects, but these projects all have a purpose. And they work together in individual groups when they’re on the street and in larger campaigns.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Stephen Lerner, there was a very powerful moment a month into the Occupy Wall Street movement, after September 17th, when union presidents and union organizers, members of unions came out, tens of thousands of them, to Foley Square in New York City. They held a rally in support of Occupy, and then they marched to Occupy Wall Street. The issue of co-opting was raised even there, even by the union leaders, saying, "We’re not doing this to lead the movement, but to support the movement." But what about now, the issue of where Occupy stands with unions, that you traditionally work with, with church organizations, with human rights and social justice groups? Do you see some kind of larger integration?
STEPHEN LERNER: You know, I think that’s the moment we’re in that’s so exciting. In California yesterday, a community group, ACCE, and the longshoremen reoccupied the home of a longshoreman that had been evicted from his home. I think we’re at that sweet spot where we don’t need to worry about co-opt—well, we should always worry about co-option—where the issue isn’t co-option, labor or Occupy or community groups. It’s the moment where we can come together and put millions of people in the street. It’s a moment where we can come together and talk about shutting down shareholder meetings where people don’t have a voice. I think there’s never been a more exciting time in my 30 years of organizing to imagine building the kind of movement that can transform the country, that can really talk about redistributing wealth and power. And there’s never a better time to get involved. I think the key thing we have to do is—there’s not one tactic, there’s not one thing folks should do; it’s the combination of many threads of work that will build this up to be the kind of movement that Frances talks about that changes this country for—changes this country in a historic and wonderful way.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us, Stephen Lerner, labor organizer, speaking to us from Washington, D.C.; Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York, author of numerous books; and Ryan Devereaux with The Guardian, following the protesters on the ground.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the contraceptive controversy continues to swirl and build. What about women’s right to choose how they will give birth and the corporate takeover of that? We’ll be joined by pioneering midwife, Ina May Gaskin. Stay with us.

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