https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9lbbWAgBy7E
The images are visceral and powerful.
In Oakland, California, police in full riot gear move in on occupiers with tear gas, projectiles, batons, and critically injure a 24-year-old Iraq vet who may now need brain surgery. The clueless Oakland mayor’s statement about the incidents in Oakland are those of a politician who should resign. She apparently doesn’t have any idea what’s going on in her city. Other cities are also threatening to shut down the occupiers.
But every time someone sees one of these brutal, violent images of cops moving against weaponless occupiers, the movement burgeons, the numbers multiply, and supporters cheer. What we see in the streets of major cities worldwide is that the 99 percent have had it with indentured servitude and have risen up.
Winter has arrived in some of these cities – like Denver, where the weather went from 83 degrees to the low thirties and snow the next day. There’s speculation – hopeful speculation from the right- that the inclement weather will break up these annoying protests. Don’t count on it. These occupiers aren’t like the Tea Party group, standing around in their silly hats adorned with tea bags, many of them brought in by buses by the financiers of the “movement” – the Koch brothers. These occupiers are the genuine McCoy, the once silent masses who endured illegal wars, rising tuition, bailouts of Wall Street, tax cuts for the super wealthy, foreclosures, bankruptcy, outrageous insurance payments for health care. You name it, they endured it – and then got fed up.
Cold weather doesn’t stop a movement like this. Cops with power issues, clueless politicians, phony policies about permits for pubic parks don’t dismantle this sort of grass roots movement. The tipping point has been reached and it’s probably not going to recede. In some ways, it’s like a wave in quantum physics, the wave of probability. When enough people tap into it, then the wave crashes into physical reality as a particle. Well, here’s your particle. Instead of a few hundred Tea Party folks holdings signs and shouting, you have tens of thousands of the disenfranchised marching through the streets of the world’s largest cities, their dome tents pitched in public parks, on public squares. They are leaderless and they are like a force of nature.
Their demands are multiple and compatible: physicians protesting for true universal heath care, Iraqi vets against the wars, unemployed college graduates drowning in repayment of college loans, middle class people in the midst of foreclosure and bankruptcy, and even the residual hippies who protested against Vietnam in the Sixties. The occupiers represent democracy at its finest, and when you hear otherwise, it’s probably the pundits at Fox News who are spouting the lies. Or the Ayn Rand acolytes.
I have to admit that I loved Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The woman had a particular vision that she translated well into fiction. But her premise is flawed. It was always flawed. Rand believed that capitalism could self-regulate. The idea that any economical system can self-regulate is absurd. The temptation for abuse is just too powerful. But Alan Greenspan, a student of Rand’s, really bought into it and there’s something so sad and pathetic about him now when he’s on TV and tries to explain what happened.
So here we are. The occupiers are US. Use your greatest talent or strength to support them. If you’re in an area where you can join them, do so. If you have supplies they might need – blankets, tents, sleeping bags, hope –then given them that. The paradigm shift is happening and it’s happening where you live, it’s happening because the 99 percent are demanding it.
my point is not the fine upstanding citizens who have homes and bankaccounts my point is 2+2= WHO
You’re talking in code. And the fine upstanding folks with bank accounts are shrinking hourly
guess I am,, but it’s a pretty simple one,,, and if their bank accounts R shrinking hourly (their product quality maybe needs to B examined),, well what was his name,,, A.G. initals of bozo’s employeer through Y2K
? you guys ever here about the FEMA camps,,,,,,,,,
And that relates how? I – (Trish) – was more worried about those FEMA camps when W was prez.
they “probably” haven’t been dismantled……2+2= ?
And your point is…that we’re all going to be sent to FEMA camps? If that’s what you’re talking about, it’s more likely to happen under the repubs than the dems, Whoot.
I do worry about the snow affecting the Occupy movement in the Northeast. I hope the people are committed to the long term occupation, because it is the only way to send a message that this movement is real and it means business. It took more than a year for the Montgomery Bus boycott to change the policy of the public transit back in 1955.
On Friday evening, I finally made it down to the Occupy Portland camp. I was amazed how they transformed two city blocks of park (in front of a federal government building). Every inch was filled with tents of all sizes, and tarps over the tents, giving off the image of tents inside larger tents. It was cool! There were tents for various groups: Military veterans, Jobs With Justice, a hispanic group, etc. There was a tent that gives out free clothing and even another tent that is a library. There was a kitchen with a serving line, in which three meals a day gets served. I saw a real community. A group was sitting around having meaningful conversations, another group was playing drums / guitars. There were all kinds of signs with great messages. One tent had a “Foreclosures of America” sign done in the Bank of America logo. Another sign I saw that I loved said: “Real eyes realize real lies.” The vibe I felt was really good. I had read that the corporate media keeps harping on the fact that there is no leader and the diversity of the protestors makes for an “incoherent message” but this is absurd. Through all the different messages I’ve read on signs, there is a common theme: corporations have too much power and control over our lives and it is killing our country. This movement is a reaction against the bland corporatism that is destroying democracy.
I truly hope that people are committed to this movement long term. It will take a long time to bring about changes, but like you said, we have reached a tipping point. The energy is definitely with this movement. If the corporate media doesn’t understand what its about, then they just need to STFU (pardon my language!). As Gore said in his documentary: “Its difficult to get someone to understand something when their jobs depend upon them not understanding something.”
After I visited the Occupy Portland camp, I felt a renewed hope for our country. Finally…FINALLY…people are waking up to the lies we’ve been fed all our lives and we are standing up like Oliver Twist and demanding more (share of the economic pie). As Tom Petty once sang,, “Don’t Back Down”. We will ultimately win if we keep the pressure on. And it looks like its already having an effect because Bank of America announced a change in their idiotic plan to charge fees to use a debit card. But its too little, too late. Onward we push…
You should’ve taken photos!
a very powerful post – this thing of riot police with peaceful protesters – citizens – is so reminiscent of so many other dark times in this country when constitutional rights have been obliterated with the pull of a trigger – dark and trying times in which the voice of the 99% must continue to be heard –
yeah sure say’s simple simon 5.6
fact is there Mr. and Mrs. if I couldn’t get acknowledgement on the stuff from you guys,,, wellll,,, ya put out a lot of words to the world,, anything “GREAT”????
Whoot – no clue what you’re talking about here!
Occupy Bellingham has begun with all the rain and inclement weather we face — it’s so true, everything you say here, R. (I have begun to tell the difference between R and T, at least I think so). I am hopeful about our country’s direction for the first time in a long while. And thank you for fixing your blog so it loads without delay! Cool!
Yay for occupy bellingham! I wrote this one, DJan – Trish. We should start signing these, I guess. Glad the blog still loads fast!
you guys still don’t get it,, or maybe’s ya just like playing both sides of the fence!!
Get what? And which fence?
And if they force them to leave the parks they will organize in other ways. This is not going to be stopped. It is grassroots, and it is a force to be reckoned with because it is comprised of all of US that are sick and tired of a few making all of the decisions that affect us and our future generations. It is the other 99%.
WHAT????
Horrific – tear gas and the like is hardly a solution. I like how you describe the protestors as being ‘like a force of nature’. This certainly looks like it is going to be a period of worldwide change. Let’s hope this can come about in a peaceful way.