"Bill McKibben’s" - Speech at Occupy Wall Street

http://www.nationofchange.org/bill-mckibbens-speech-occupy-wall-street-1318175259

Today in the New York Times there was a story that made it completely clear why we have to be here. They uncovered the fact that the company building that tar sands pipeline was allowed to choose another company to conduct the environmental impact statement, and the company that they chose was a company was a company that did lots and lots of work for them. So, in other words, the whole thing was rigged top to bottom and that’s why the environmental impact statement said that this pipeline would cause no trouble, unlike the scientists who said if we build this pipeline it’s “game over” for the climate. We can’t let this pipeline get built.

On November 6, one year before the election, we’re going to be in DC with a huge circle of people around the White House and they’re going to be carrying signs with quotations from Barack Obama from the 2008 campaign. He said, “It’s time to end the tyranny of oil.” He said, “I will have the most transparent government in history.” We have to go to DC to find out where they have locked that guy up. We have to free Obama, because there is some sort of stunt double there now. So on November 6, I hope we can move, just for a day, Occupy Wall Street down to the White House and get them in the fight against corporate power.

The reason that it’s so great that we’re occupying Wall Street is because Wall Street has been occupying the atmosphere. That’s why we can never do anything about global warming. Exxon gets in the way. Goldman Sachs gets in the way. The whole fossil fuel industry gets in the way. The sky does not belong to Exxon. They cannot keep using it as a sewer into which to dump their carbon. If they do, we’ve got no future and nobody else on this planet has a future.

I spend a lot of time in countries around the world organizing demonstrations and rallies in solidarity. In the last three years at 350.org, we’ve had 15,000 rallies in every country except North Korea. Everywhere around the world, poor people and black people and brown people and Asian people and young people are standing up. Most of those places, don’t produce that much carbon. They need us to act with them and for them, because the problem is 20 blocks south of here. That’s where the Empire lives and we’ve got to figure out how to tame it and make it work for this planet or not work at all.

Thank you guys very much.

"Ariel Dorfman" - Salvador Allende Has Words for Barack Obama from the Other Side of Death

Posted on October 9, 2011, Printed on October 9, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175451/

By Ariel Dorfman

The dead were then silent for years, which left me unprepared when Salvador Allende came to me offering advice for Barack Obama. It seemed, at first glance, a strange connection.  Elected president of Chile in 1970 by popular vote, Allende was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup three years later. On that other September 11th, also (coincidentally enough) a Tuesday, terror rained down from the skies as the Chilean air force bombed the Presidential Palace where Allende died, ending an experiment in constructing socialism through peaceful, democratic means, and inaugurating the long dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

For the last decade, I have been haunted by voices from the other side of death. In this way, back in 2003 I transcribed the words of Pablo Picassoafter a tapestry version of his famed painting Guernica at the entrance to the Security Council was covered over at the U.N. just before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was to present the Bush administration case justifying an invasion of Iraq.  From the depths of ancient Mesopotamia, I transcribed the words of Hammurabi, the exalted prince of Babylon, as he reviled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for laying waste to his ancient land. And in that same year I found that Christopher Columbus, too, had words for the new warriors/conquerors of the twenty-first century, while the poets William Blake and Franceso Petrarca asked Laura Bush how she could sleep with the man responsible for so many deaths.

Barack Obama has never, of course, claimed to be a revolutionary like Allende, though he did once upon a short time ago give the impression of being a reformer dedicated to bringing about significant change. And though, like Allende, he has faced ferocious opposition to his plans from similarly conservative forces, there has never been the slightest rumor of a coup d’état in the United States (nor, as it turned out, any need for one) -- though who knows what would have happened had Obama decided to take on the military-industrial/national security behemoth that essentially governs the country.

And yet, I have no doubt that Allende would have sympathized with Obama on his entry into the Oval Office, and that he would have appreciated his urge to search for common ground with his adversaries, as well as the intelligence and sophistication of his mind. And I’m sure he would have greeted young Barack’s election in 2008, as I did, with a certain joy, seeing in it the popular wish for a different sort of politics, a different sort of world.

Evidently, based on what follows, Allende did feel that it was worth sending a message to the American president from the shores of death where so much becomes clearer, where we will all ultimately discover whether we truly kept faith with the lives and dreams of those who, in turn, had faith in us.

Here, then, is his message:

Click to read more ...

"Mark Egan" - Occupy Wall St, The Start of a New Protest Era?

Published on Friday, October 7, 2011 by Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/07/us-wallstreet-protests-history-idUSTRE7964CY20111007

by Mark Egan and Ben Berkowitz

NEW YORK - When Paul Friedman met the rag-tag youth camped out near Wall Street to protest inequality in the American economy, he felt he was witnessing the start of a protest movement not seen in America since the 1960s.

And Friedman should know. The 64-year-old was a student organizer during the anti-Vietnam War movement, protesting from 1964 for 11 years until the war ended. He also joined Civil Rights actions against racial segregation in America.

On Wednesday, as thousands of union workers marched to show solidarity with the movement called Occupy Wall Street, he walked shoulder-to-shoulder with dreadlocked college dropouts, unemployed youth and students, who for three weeks have camped out near Wall Street and who have no plans to leave.

"It felt in my gut very much like what I was a part of in the 1960s," Friedman said. "What people are expressing ... is an experience that their opportunities are shrinking, not growing and their hopes are shrinking, not growing, and that is an unnatural feeling for the young," he said.

The protesters object to the Wall Street bailout in 2008, which they say left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from the federal government.

What the Occupy Wall Street movement has in common with the 1960s, he said, was that the weak economy hits home, just like racism or the chance that you or your boyfriend or brother or your son might be drafted to fight in Vietnam.

Most protests since the 1960s - against U.S. actions in Central America in the 1980s or against free trade in the 1990s or the impending Iraq War in 2003 - were in solidarity with an ideal. This, like Civil Rights and Vietnam, is personal.

That more than anything else is why the Occupy Wall Street movement could spread, Friedman said.

TEA AND SYMPATHY

Click to read more ...

"Caroline Arnold" - Losing Hope in Obama and the Prospect of a Humane World

Published on Sunday, October 9, 2011 by The Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier (Ohio)

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/09

By: Caroline Arnold

Cleaning up my desk this week I found an Obama ‘08 HOPE button. After a moment’s reflection, I threw it in the trash.

Not because Obama lied or betrayed those of us who hope for a more humane world, although he did both.

I recognize that lies and misrepresentations are basic tools of information management in our socially-structured, media-mediated world. We all use them to manage information in pursuit of our interests, and I see no moral utility in categorically condemning lying, disinformation or persuasion. Advertising – commercial lying -- is an accepted, if not altogether honorable, industry in our society. And the effectiveness of our news media and entertainment depend on tweaking what information is used and how it is presented.

However, the political sphere, where scarce resources are allocated, risky and expensive actions like wars or nuclear power plants are undertaken, and where the public good is defined, is another matter. If the use of tools of information management is concealed, if the interests they serve remain undisclosed, or if their use can be bought with money, democracy will be compromised and individual freedom and integrity as well as social cohesion will be threatened. When we lie to one another we betray basic social bonds that make it possible to live together and fairly share risks, resources and rewards.

Click to read more ...

"Les Leopold" - 10 Things to Know About Wall Street's Rapacious Attack on America

By Les Leopold, AlterNet
Posted on October 6, 2011, Printed on October 8, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152629/10_things_to_know_about_wall_street%27s_rapacious_attack_on_america 

When you climb out of the subway at Wall Street, you might wonder why there are no protestors in the cavernous alley by the stock exchange. That’s because since 9/11, Wall Street has been barricaded shut to prevent possible attacks. But up the block at Zuccotti Park between Liberty and Cedar streets, west of Broadway, the party’s on.

There you’ll find a festive group of about 1,000 people, mostly young folks having a good time accompanied by the occasional cluster of old lefties singing songs. People make signs while sitting on the ground then prop them up wherever they can find a space. They gather at tables filled with donated food and browse boxes of donated books. You also can’t miss the swarm of media folks milling around asking questions, taping interviews and taking notes: they’re the ones in dress suits who spend most of their time interviewing each other. My favorite sign held by an occupier is painted on a skateboard: “This is what Freedom Looks Like.” My son would agree.

And my recurring thought is, “It’s about f’ing time.”

What took us so long? How much worse did it have to get before public outrage would finally focus on those who caused the problem and those who are milking us dry? Several of us have been pleading in blog after blog for more than two years to build a broad-based assault on Wall Street. Where was our answer to the Tea Party? Well, here it is.

There’s no telling where this Occupy Wall Street can lead, especially if a virtuous media feedback loop continues: The more protestors, the more coverage, the more protestors. It’s about the only good thing the mainstream media has done in years.

If unions throw into the mix full force, we may have something powerful in the making. It’s far too early to tell, although the October 5 labor march in New York that drew upwards of 25,000 people was certainly a good sign. Will labor come back and do it again each and every week? Will unions mobilize support for the satellite occupiers in city after city? Or will most of their energy go into the Obama/Democratic Party re-election campaigns as if nothing much has happened? (They should listen to protestors, who agree that corporations and the wealthy are destroying our democracy by buying candidates of both parties.)

Already you can hear the chattering classes mumble about the lack of focus, the lack of consensus and the lack of a coherent agenda in this nascent movement. But they have this coherent call: We are the 99 percent, and we demand our fair share. The irrefutable fact is that 99 percent of us really are being screwed by the 1 percent who are looting our country (actually it’s more like the top 1/10 of one percent). So if you still harbor any doubts that Wall Street is the right target, here are 10 reasons to consider:

Click to read more ...

"Melissa Gira Grant" - Sex Work to Pay Off College Loans? How the College Debt Racket Sucks Young People Dry

By Melissa Gira Grant, AlterNet
Posted on October 7, 2011, Printed on October 8, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152657/sex_work_to_pay_off_college_loans_how_the_college_debt_racket_sucks_young_people_dry_--_and_led_many_to_occupy_wall_st.

The young man standing next to the “Jail Sallie Mae, Cancel All Student Loan Debt” sign in Liberty Plaza last night could very well end up in jail himself – not for protesting economic injustice and marching on Wall Street, but for doing sex work to pay off his student loans. "My loans are $1,300 a month," he said. "My rent is $1,300 a month. My salary is $2,600 a month. You can see the problem. So I work as a prostitute for food and utilities."

Though he works a day job in the tech sector, it’s not enough to get by. "But it could be worse," he continued. "I could have to do sex work for all of it." 

With the Department of Education estimating that outstanding US student loan debt will soon exceed $1 trillion and job growth stalled, students face the very real prospect that there’s no way to ever pay back their debts. As of this May, new graduates are leaving college with an average of $22,900 in debt each, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, makes the class of 2011 the most indebted in history. They are members of a generation of students who knew taking out loans to finance a degree – or two – was a gamble on their own futures. As Lindsay Personett, a recent graduate from Oklahoma City University, put it at Wednesday’s solidarity march to support the Wall Street occupiers, “Kids are told to get this expensive degree and you’ll get a job. You end up owing too much and owning nothing.”  

Wednesday also saw solidarity walk-outs to Occupy Wall Street from hundreds of students from the New School, New York University, Columbia University, and several CUNY campuses. According to CBS Local, 150 students walked out at Brooklyn College to join the tens of thousands in Foley Square and Liberty Plaza. The student walk-outs are part of a larger national walk-out action, supported by OccupyColleges.org, which spanned at least 100 campuses across the US. Their demands go beyond calls for “job creation.” They are questioning the convergence of interests in the education and financial systems that require them to take on soaring, unforgivable, high-interest debt in order to get an education. The Huffington Post reports: 

Click to read more ...

"Michael Hudson" - Financial Polarization and Corruption -- Obama’s Politics of Deception

By Prof. Michael Hudson

Global Research, October 7, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26973

The seeds for President Obama’s demagogic press conference on Thursday were planted last summer when he assigned his right-wing Committee of 13 the role of resolving the obvious and inevitable Congressional budget standoff by forging an anti-labor policy that cuts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and uses the savings to bail out banks from even more loans that will go bad as a result of the IMF-style austerity program that Democrats and Republicans alike have agreed to back.

The problem facing Mr. Obama is obvious enough: How can he hold the support of moderates and independents (or as Fox News calls them, socialists and anti-capitalists), students and labor, minorities and others who campaigned so heavily for him in 2008? He has double-crossed them – smoothly, with a gentle smile and patronizing patter talk, but with an iron determination to hand federal monetary and tax policy over to his largest campaign contributors: Wall Street and assorted special interests – the Democratic Party’s Rubinomics and Clintonomics core operators, plus smooth Bush Administration holdovers such as Tim Geithner, not to mention quasi-Cheney factotums in the Justice Department.

Click to read more ...

"Robert Reich" - The Wall Street Occupiers and the Democratic Party

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Wall-Street-Occupiers-by-Robert-Reich-111008-948.html

October 8, 2011 By Robert Reich

Will the Wall Street Occupiers morph into a movement that has as much impact on the Democratic Party as the Tea Party has had on the GOP? Maybe. But there are reasons for doubting it.

Tea Partiers have been a mixed blessing for the GOP establishment -- a source of new ground troops and energy but also a pain in the assets with regard to attracting independent voters. As Rick Perry and Mitt Romney square off, that pain will become more evident.

So far the Wall Street Occupiers have helped the Democratic Party. Their inchoate demand that the rich pay their fair share is tailor-made for the Democrats' new plan for a 5.6 percent tax on millionaires, as well as the President's push to end the Bush tax cut for people with incomes over $250,000 and to limit deductions at the top.

And the Occupiers give the President a potential campaign theme. "These days, a lot of folks who are doing the right thing aren't rewarded and a lot of folks who aren't doing the right thing are rewarded," he said at his news conference this week, predicting that the frustration fueling the Occupiers will "express itself politically in 2012 and beyond until people feel like once again we're getting back to some old-fashioned American values."

But if Occupy Wall Street coalesces into something like a real movement, the Democratic Party may have more difficulty digesting it than the GOP has had with the Tea Party.

After all, a big share of both parties' campaign funds comes from the Street and corporate board rooms. The Street and corporate America also have hordes of public-relations flacks and armies of lobbyists to do their bidding -- not to mention the unfathomably deep pockets of the Koch Brothers and Dick Armey's and Karl Rove's SuperPACs. Even if the Occupiers have access to some union money, it's hardly a match.

Yet the real difficulty lies deeper. A little history is helpful here.

Click to read more ...

"Ari LeVaux" - Thanks to the FDA, You Really Have No Idea What's In Your Food

By Ari LeVaux, AlterNet

Posted on October 7, 2011, Printed on October 8, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152660/thanks_to_the_fda%2C_you_really_have_no_idea_what%27s_in_your_food

For years, polls have shown that about 90 percent of Americans support the labeling of foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMO). That's about as close to a consensus as you're going to get in this country. But amazingly, in this supposed bastion of freedom and democracy we're denied the fundamental right to know what's in our food -- a right that more than 50 other nations, including China and Russia, offer their citizens.

That's China and Russia, as in the big scary authoritarian countries known for communism, corruption and rampant human rights violations. They're at least doing a better job of trying to look like they care about protecting the freedom to choose what people put in their bodies. In the U.S., it's estimated that 60-70 percent of processed food may contain some GMO, but the food is not required to be labeled. This glaring disconnect between America's purported democratic ideals and the reality of how public agencies like the Food and Drug Administration can knowingly fail its citizens might be about to crumble, says Andrew Kimbrell of the Center For Food Safety.

His organization is part of a broad coalition of groups petitioning FDA for mandatory labeling of GMO-containing foods. Hundreds of other organizations have joined the effort, including consumer advocates, farmers, concerned parents, businesses, environmentalists, food and farming organizations, and members of the health care and faith-based communities. The goal of the coalition, called Just Label It, is to collect enough citizen signatures to its petition that the FDA will have to take action. Or force President Obama to make the FDA act.

There are three reasons why Kimbrell believes that now, despite decades of undue influence of the biotech industry on FDA policy, the agency's GMO armor will crack.

"First of all, Obama promised, when he was a candidate, to impose labels," Kimbrell says, referring to a stump speech in 2008, recorded by Food Democracy Now, when the junior senator from Illinois promised to "let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they're buying."

Click to read more ...

"Mitch Potter" - Don’t Mistake Occupy Wall Street for Team Obama

Published on Sunday, October 9, 2011 by the Toronto Star/Canada

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1066942--don-t-mistake-occupy-wall-street-for-team-obama

Occupation Up, Obama Down

by Mitch Potter

NEW YORK—The mushrooming Occupy Wall Street protests, now on the verge of spreading to more than 1,000 cities and towns across the U.S. and beyond, may have come of age this week.

But the second most interesting number (apart from the anger-tracking figures updated at OccupyTogether.org) is 38 per cent — President Barack Obama’s approval rating, according to the latest Gallup survey.

Occupation up, Obama down. It’s an equation the White House is desperate to change, as the Democratic machine grapples with how best to harness the progressive populist uprising to generate electoral energy for November 2012.

The rolling fury that took hold of lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park three weeks ago remains audaciously leaderless. But it is also changing quickly, as new blood arrives to bolster the cause, in ways that are dismaying to Occupy Wall Street’s earliest adopters.

On Wednesday, it was the arrival of Big Labor that seized the headlines, as unionists marched in the thousands through Manhattan’s financial district. But in the encampment that night — and truly, the hardcore actually sleeping on these paving stones comprise 140 characters or less — fear of co-optation was rampant.

The Occupy Wall Street hardcore sees itself as bigger than partisan politics. And the disappointment with Obama — after what they view as a series of business-friendly surrenders on financial regulation, the environment, budgets and even health-care reform — borders on contempt.

But they don’t own Occupy Wall Street anymore. That was evident Thursday morning, when the encampment began to fill with even more arrivals. And some of the new faces showing up in Zuccotti seem more representative of the working-class angst gripping the country.

Click to read more ...