Richard Eskow - Rebels and Messiahs, Ten Spiritual Ancestors for Occupy Wall Street

Monday 07 November 2011

by: Richard (RJ) Eskow, Campaign for America's Future

http://www.truth-out.org/rebels-and-messiahs-10-spiritual-ancestors-occupy-wall-street/1320761260

We started to make a list of people throughout history who might be considered Occupy Wall Street's spiritual forefathers and mothers, but it got so long it felt like the album cover forSgt. Pepper. Remember all those faces? So with great difficulty the list has been narrowed down to ten. There are rebels, organizers, poets, a conservative icon, and a surprise entry or two.

Each reflects some part of the heart, soul, and spirit of the movement - at least as I understand it. If others feel differently, hopefully they'll create their own list.

1. William Blake

He was pretty obscure in the 18th and 19th centuries, while he was alive. Poet, painter, mystic, troublemaker, what Blake valued couldn't be purchased in the marketplace:

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George Monbiot - The 1% Are the Very Best Destroyers of Wealth the World Has Ever Seen

Published on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers

Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt

by George Monbiot

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

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The Morality of the Wall Street Mindset

In a sneak peek of my upcoming project investigating the plight of poor people in modern America, Jordan Belfort discusses how the elite Wall Street 1% conspires to exploit the other 99%.

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Russ Baker - Corporate Media Stumped on How to Cover the Occupy Movement

Posted By Russ Baker On November 6, 2011 

]http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/11/06/corporate-media-stumped-on-how-to-cover-the-occupy-movement/

Conventional journalism is increasingly irrelevant in a time of crisis. We find abundant proof in a recent column [2] from the New York Times’ so-called “Public Editor,” who is supposed to somehow magically represent the public interest and rarefied ethical values to the rest of the paper.

In this column, he says the media is having difficulty figuring out how to cover Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots.

What are the themes? How should The New York Times cover this movement that resembles no other in memory?

Certainly, media organizations are intrinsically better able to cover snapshot moments like official actions and pronouncements than movements or complex and subtly if rapidly evolving situations—like climate change, or Occupy.

In any case, for answers, the Public Editor turns to colleagues outside The Times, and solicits their wisdom:

Stephen Buckley, dean of faculty, The Poynter Institute; former managing editor, St. Petersburg Times

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OccupyWashingtonDC to hold Occupied Super Committee Hearing for the 99%

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 7, 2011

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
press@october2011.org
Kevin Zeese 301-996-6582
Margaret Flowers 410-591-0892

OccupyWashingtonDC to hold Occupied Super Committee Hearing for the 99%
Wednesday, November 9th at 11:00 AM

OccupyWashingtonDC.org will hold a hearing on the economy for the 99% that will examine how to create a fair economy for all Americans. 

The Occupied Hearing will contrast with hearings on Capitol Hill which are destined to enrich the 1% and protect major donors. 

The Occupied Super Committee Hearing for the 99% will examine critical issues facing the economy and the federal budget.  The hearing will include testimony from people with great understanding of the issues facing the country as well as comments from the 99% who are directly affected by the economy.

One week after the hearing, OccupyWashingtonDC.org will put forward proposals that should be enacted to fairly fix the economy -- these proposals should not be considered our demands as our demands are much more transformative than a short-term fix of the economy and budget.

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Chris Hedges - Finding Freedom in Handcuffs

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/finding_freedom_in_handcuffs_20111107/

Posted on Nov 7, 2011

By Chris Hedges

Editor’s note: Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, an activist, an author and a member of a reporting team that won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize, wrote this article after he was released from custody following his arrest last Thursday. He and about 15 other participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement were detained as they protested outside the global headquarters of Goldman Sachs in lower Manhattan.

Faces appeared to me moments before the New York City police arrested us Thursday in front of Goldman Sachs. They were not the faces of the smug Goldman Sachs employees, who peered at us through the revolving glass doors and lobby windows, a pathetic collection of middle-aged fraternity and sorority members. They were not the faces of the blue-uniformed police with their dangling cords of white and black plastic handcuffs, or the thuggish Goldman Sachs security personnel, whose buzz cuts and dead eyes reminded me of the East German secret police, the Stasi. They were not the faces of the demonstrators around me, the ones with massive student debts and no jobs, the ones whose broken dreams weigh them down like a cross, the ones whose anger and betrayal triggered the street demonstrations and occupations for justice. They were not the faces of the onlookers—the construction workers, who seemed cheered by the march on Goldman Sachs, or the suited businessmen who did not. They were faraway faces. They were the faces of children dying. They were tiny, confused, bewildered faces I had seen in the southern Sudan, Gaza and the slums of Brazzaville, Nairobi, Cairo and Delhi and the wars I covered. They were faces with large, glassy eyes, above bloated bellies. They were the small faces of children convulsed by the ravages of starvation and disease.

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Frances Fox Piven - The War Against the Poor

Posted on November 6, 2011, Printed on November 6, 2011

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175463/

Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Financial Morality 
By Frances Fox Piven

We’ve been at war for decades now -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home.  Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. You wouldn’t often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news.  Devastating as it’s been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed -- until now.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics.  Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.

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Thomas Ferguson - How to Take Back Our Political System From the 1%

By Thomas Ferguson, AlterNet

Posted on November 3, 2011, Printed on November 6, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152960/thomas_ferguson%3A_how_to_take_back_our_political_system_from_the_1

The following has been adapted from a version of a speech delivered to Occupy Boston by Thomas Ferguson, the father of the "Investment Theory of Politics."

I’m honored to speak to you today about money and politics, but it’s not the first time I’ve been here. This is actually the third time I’ve visited your encampment. The first couple of times I walked around and looked at the signs. Many were priceless; the best tutorials I’ve ever seen on the subject of money and politics. My favorite was the one that advised that Congressmen and women should emulate NASCAR drivers and show us their sponsors. Another styled contemporary capitalism “socialism for the 1%.” And many sharply attacked the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which helped throw open the floodgates to the tidal wave of secret money that is now engulfing American elections. 

I’m a social scientist, so I actually counted: about a third of all the signs that day had money and politics as their themes. It was obvious that you here at Occupy Boston and your colleagues in New York, Oakland, Chicago, and other cities have already grasped the heart of the problem of money and politics in America: that we live in a money-driven political system that works pretty well for the 1%, but no one else. 

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Robert Reich - Washington Pre-Occupied

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

Posted on November 4, 2011, Printed on November 6, 2011
http://robertreich.org/post/12303771388

The biggest question in America these days is how to revive the economy.

The biggest question among activists now occupying Wall Street and dozens of other cities is how to strike back against the nation’s almost unprecedented concentration of income, wealth, and political power in the top 1 percent.

The two questions are related. With so much income and wealth concentrated at the top, the vast middle class no longer has the purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing. (People could pretend otherwise as long as they could treat their homes as ATMs, but those days are now gone.) The result is prolonged stagnation and high unemployment as far as the eye can see.

Until we reverse the trend toward inequality, the economy can’t be revived.

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YouTube Video - An Open Message to the 99% (Occupy Wall Street)

Revolutions are dangerous and unpredictable beasts,
and for a population to enter into one without fully understanding what is at stake 
is much like handing a loaded 45 automatic to a toddler.

Watch the shocking video right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myqffx8Mdg4