Nearly Half of Americans Below Poverty Line or Low-Income
US Government, are you listening? As a hard working self-employed person that most perceive as smart and successful… I can honestly say, I have many thousands of dollars to go before I make enough to emerge out of the 50% of low-income Americans.
Entertaining and oh so right on!
via: motherjones:
We’re not in the business of making endorsements, but we’d totally vote for this parody Elizabeth Warren impersonator. Two and a half minutes very well-spent!
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy
This poster makes an important statement about what’s going on (credit).
I think there is a lot to be said for this complaint:
We have grievances with a variety of injustices in our society that have not been redressed.
Our first amendment does state:
The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.
The birth of this movement has shed light on some major flaws in how our citizens are treated for peacefully exercising their first amendment rights… for example:
- police brutality against peaceful protestors on a university campus (beating with batons)
- cornering off and then pepper spraying a group of peaceful demonstrators on the sidewalk - including an 84 year old woman
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
Hawaiian singer surprises Obama summit with ‘Occupy’ song | The Raw Story
Makana, you are truly courageous! Thank you.
The song features the refrain, “We’ll occupy the streets, we’ll occupy the courts, we’ll occupy the offices of you, till you do the bidding of the many, not the few.”
He sang it “over and over” for 40 minutes, varying his tempo and delivery to avoid triggering an overt reaction.
Peaceful videographer shot in Oakland with rubber bullet - no warning
We must continue to acknowledge these wrongs until someone moves to correct them. As a videographer and journalist, this is seriously disturbing. In this video, a videographer films a line of what looks to be a hundred or more cops. Suddenly, a police officer draws his weapon and shoots the videographer down with a rubber bullet. As Americans, we have rights! Behavior like this on the part of the police flies in the face of the supposed freedoms we hold dear. And as a peace-loving camera person, WTF? Don’t shoot US!!!!! We are not the bad guys here. We are peaceful journalists!!!
You can hear him audibly asking permission to film before beginning!
Quote from youtube poster (presumably the videographer):
While filming a police line at Occupy Oakland after midnight on Nov. 3 following the Nov. 2 general strike, an officer opens fire and shoots me with a rubber bullet. I was standing well back. There was no violence or confrontations of any kind underway. At 0:31 seconds you can see a tall officer in the front raise his weapon and then fire. This is the full clip of the incident. source
Electoral Reform Act of 2012 - up for #OWS consideration
Popular right now on news sharing site, Reddit, the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 could propel big change in how elections are run and how votes are counted. Honest and open debates that are not limited to two parties? Yes, please.
Bank of America Makes Private Risk Public - $75 TRILLION??? REALLY?
I think I’m gonna be sick …
Bob Ivry, Hugh Son and Christine Harper have written an article that needs to be read by everyone interested in the financial crisis. The article (available here) is entitled: BofA Said to Split Regulators Over Moving Merrill Derivatives to Bank Unit. The thrust of their story is that Bank of America’s holding company, BAC, has directed the transfer of a large number of troubled financial derivatives from its Merrill Lynch subsidiary to the federally insured bank Bank of America (BofA). The story reports that the Federal Reserve supported the transfer and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) opposed it. (DailyBail.com)
Bank of America’s holding company — the parent of both the retail bank and the Merrill Lynch securities unit — held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June (bloomberg.com)
OccupyOakland > Police > Tear Gas > Comas > Marines > General Strikes
What appears in videos to be a brutal police crackdown in occupyOakland sparked some interesting developments, not the least of which is a call for a general strike on November 2 (6 days from now). General Assembly voted in favor of a Nov2 general strike in the City of Oakland … the idea looks to be spreading like wildfire on Twitter (and not just in Sunny California). See for yourself: #Nov2 #generalstrike
How I feel, as a United States Marine, about what occurred in Oakland: An Iraq war Vet, Scott Olsen, is in coma after being shot with a tear gas canister at occupyOakland this past Tuesday October 25, 2011.
Twenty hours ago, a fellow Marine posted this photo on reddit:
Image: http://i.imgur.com/
Injured vet spent day at work, nights at protest: Scott Olsen apparently had a good paying job with a software company. Quote from article:
He felt “you shouldn’t wait until something is affecting you to get out and do something about it,” said friend and roommate Keith Shannon, who served with Olsen in Iraq. (source)
An emotionally charged and powerful post on OccupyMarines.org:
And when the day comes, when OWS hits history books across the world, and we alongside them; that day when someone asks you if you were there Nay-Sayers you are going to say: “No, I was too scared … I did not have the courage to confront the problems eroding America.” (source)
