#OCCUPYWALLSTREET - America's Real Tea Party

This loosely organized protest has grown day by day to become a serious grassroots rebellion against the financial elite - proof that Americans are not as apathetic as I, for one, have tended to believe.

Here is some of the coverage that is finally making it into the mainstream media. But first, I want to give credit to Adbusters Magazine - this was their idea and their project, and it started back in July.

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET

A shift in revolutionary tactics.

Adbusters , 13 Jul 2011

Alright you 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals out there, A worldwide shift in revolutionary tactics is underway right now that bodes well for the future. The spirit of this fresh tactic, a fusion of Tahrir with the acampadas of Spain, is captured in this quote:

"The antiglobalization movement was the first step on the road. Back then our model was to attack the system like a pack of wolves. There was an alpha male, a wolf who led the pack, and those who followed behind. Now the model has evolved. Today we are one big swarm of people."

— Raimundo Viejo, Pompeu Fabra University
Barcelona, Spain

The beauty of this new formula, and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people's assemblies … we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.

The time has come to deploy this emerging stratagem against the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America.

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.

Tahrir succeeded in large part because the people of Egypt made a straightforward ultimatum – that Mubarak must go – over and over again until they won. Following this model, what is our equally uncomplicated demand?

The most exciting candidate that we've heard so far is one that gets at the core of why the American political establishment is currently unworthy of being called a democracy: we demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY, we're doomed without it.

Read the whole post.

Get Involved

• OCCUPYWALLST.ORG for news and logistics
• OccupyTogether.org join occupations across America
• Reddit Page organizing tool
• Facebook Event Page for facebookers
• Tumblr for clippings and links
• Livestream from the global revolution
• Antibanks for international actions

Here is their update site:

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET is a people powered movement for democracy that began in America on September 17 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City. Inspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas, we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy … join us! We're now in DAY 13.

You can catch come videos of the protests here.

Here is Matt Taibbi's recent article from Rolling Stone.

'Occupy Wall Street': Drawing the Battle Lines

by Matt Taibbi

I was speaking at a conference in Boston yesterday when one of the attendees asked me, "How come the media isn't covering the protests on Wall Street?"

I was about to give a pithy answer about how the press doesn't cover marches unless someone sets a car on fire or someone throws a rock through the window of a Starbucks, when I realized that I myself hadn't even written anything about it.

I don't know a whole lot about Occupy Wall Street, although I'm going to check it out when I return to New York. There are times when one wonders how effective marches are – one of the lessons that the other side learned from the Vietnam era is that you can often ignore even really big protests without consequence – but in this case demonstrations could be very important just in terms of educating people about the fact that there is, in fact, a well-defined conflict out there with two sides to it.

Here is a video from the scene with Scott Spinucci:




In this video clip, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell equates the violent attacks on protesters by a small number of NYPD with the Rodney King protests - his arguments are a little specious to me, but the footage of the police becoming violent with nonviolent citizens exercising their rights to assemble in a public space is disturbing at best - and illegal in essence.

To Watch The Wall Street Protesters- Live Streaming Video and Chat Go To: http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution 

To contact MSNBC reporter Lawrence O'Donnell and give him feedback for this spot on report --please email at thelastword@msnbc.com  

If you feel the NYPD deserves FEEDBACK on this behaviour you can call them at (718) 520 9311