"Demonstrators take to the streets in cities worldwide" by Elizabeth A. Harris and Rachel Donadio New York Times / October 16, 2011
ROME - In dozens of cities around the world yesterday, people took to the streets, clutching placards and chanting slogans as part of a planned day of protests against the financial system.
In Rome, a rally thick with tension spread over several miles. Small groups of violent young people turned a largely peaceful protest into a riot, setting fire to at least one building and a police van and clashing with police officers, who responded with water cannons and tear gas....
Those are what we call AGENT PROVOCATEURS, and mention GLADIO to any Italian and he'll know what you mean.
In other European cities, including Berlin and London, the demonstrations were largely peaceful, with thousands of people marching past ancient monuments and gathering in front of capitalist symbols like the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Elsewhere, the turnout was more modest, but rallies of a few hundred people were held in cities including Sydney, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.
Protests also continued in New York and were held in several other cities in the United States and Canada.
But just as the rallies in New York have represented a variety of messages - signs have been held in opposition to President Obama yards away from signs in support of him - so yesterday’s protests contained a grab bag of messages, opposing nuclear power, political corruption, and the privatization of water.
I'm tired of the media misrepresentation and division.
Despite the difference in language, landscape, and scale, the protests were united in frustration with the widening gap between the rich and the poor.
“I have no problem with capitalism. I have no problem with a market economy. But I find the way the financial system is functioning deeply unethical,’’ Herbert Haberl, 51, said in Berlin. “We shouldn’t bail out the banks. We should bail out the people.’’
In New York, where the occupation of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan was moving into its second month, a large crowd marched north early yesterday afternoon to Washington Square Park, where they were joined by several hundred college students who spoke, among other things, about student debt and unemployment. Another march, to Times Square, was planned for later.
Yesterday’s protests sprang not only from the Occupy Wall Street movement that began last month in New York, but also from demonstrations in Spain in May. This weekend, the global protest effort came as finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 industrialized nations meet in Paris to discuss economic issues, including ways to tackle Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.
In London, where crowds assembled in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the ubiquitous emblems of the movement were in evidence. “Bankers Are the Real Looters’’ and “We Are the 99 Percent,’’ read several placards and flags. One demonstrator, dressed as Jesus Christ, held a sign that said “I Threw the Money Lenders Out for a Reason.’’
Brief clashes were reported in London, where the police were out in force with dozens of riot vans, canine units, and hundreds of officers. But the gathering, attended by people of all ages, was largely peaceful, with a picnic atmosphere and people streaming in and out of a nearby Starbucks.
The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, made an appearance at the cathedral, where he was met by hundreds of cheering fans. He called the protest movement “the culmination of a dream.’’
Stop inserting your controlled-opposition pukes to co-opt the movements!
In Rome, yesterday’s protests were as much about the growing dissatisfaction with the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi - who narrowly survived a vote of confidence on Friday - as they were about global financial inequities.
Tens of thousands of people turned out for what started as peaceful protests and devolved into ugly violence. The windows of shops and bank windows were smashed, a police van was destroyed and some Defense Ministry offices were set alight.
The HALLMARKS of an AGENT PROVOCATEUR!
“We’re upset because we don’t have prospects for the future,’’ Alessia Tridici, 18, said in Rome. “We’ll never see a pension. We’ll have to work until we die.’’
So will I.
--more--"
"Protests, then and now; In Occupy movement, history is made — and also repeated" by Mark Arsenault Globe Staff / October 16, 2011
The Occupy Boston protest, part of a worldwide movement marked by 24/7 camp-ins on conspicuous public spaces, has borrowed themes and tactics from social and political activists of the past, transforming them into a movement both familiar and pioneering.
In its broad critique of wealth inequity and unchecked corporate power, Occupy echoes the hunger marches of the 1930s, and the modern Global Justice movement, which is probably best known in America for a massive street demonstration in 1999 that disrupted the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Seattle.
It its tactics, however, Occupy is reminiscent of the passive sit-ins of the civil rights era, and the ongoing vigil demonstrations at Roman Catholic churches targeted for closure in Greater Boston.
The movement spreads itself through skillful use of social media - techniques battle-tested by the Arab spring uprising in the Middle East.
It is a war paper.
Across Europe and East Asia, similar protests broke out yesterday as demonstrators swarmed the London Stock Exchange and battled police in the streets of Rome, and hundreds gathered in Seoul and Hong Kong.
In Boston, Governor Deval Patrick toured the encampment in Dewey Square, where he said he hoped to get a better understanding of the protest.
How much Occupy America can accomplish is unclear, but the speed at which the movement is multiplying is already affecting political discourse, elevating the issue of economic inequality to prominence for the first time since the 1930s, said Gary Gerstle, a Vanderbilt University historian.
“It has the potential to change the fundamentals of American politics,’’ he said.
We want change to more than politics! We've had enough of that!
Occupy Boston, the half-acre encampment on Dewey Square next to South Station, is entering its third week. Demonstrators say they will not leave, and are steeling themselves to ride out a New England winter. Occupy Wall Street, the movement’s flagship in Manhattan, has been ongoing since mid-September. The leaderless movement has spread to more than 150 cities.
Occupy Boston gained widespread attention after more than 100 demonstrators were arrested in a police crackdown last Tuesday.
Why low-ball it like that? It was over 140.
The protesters spread their accounts of the raid in real time over social media, and within hours had collected thousands of dollars for bail by way of Internet donations.
The ability to raise cash almost instantly over the Web is new, but Occupy shares elements with other Boston-area protests.
The church vigils, dating back to 2004, are ongoing, as parishioner appeals slowly grind through Vatican courts. These quiet demonstrations have continued with the grudging acquiescence of the Archdiocese of Boston, which wants the protesters to go, but would rather settle the vigils without the spectacle of the faithful being dragged out of their beloved churches as trespassers.
In 2001, several dozen Harvard University students took over a school administration building in an unwelcome occupation, over complaints that some university employees were not paid “living wages.’’ A tent-city sprouted up nearby in support of the protesters. The action drew wide attention from media, labor leaders, and politicians, including senators Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry. The 21-day occupation finally ended with a brokered compromise.
That was then, this is now. And if they are involved somehow, I don't trust it.
At Harvard, the protesters were united around an easy-to-understand demand: Pay everyone a living wage. That is a major contrast with Occupy Boston’s more general complaints about economic unfairness and the outsized political influence of the rich.
I'm really getting pissed of at the endless fucking misrepresentation!!!!!!!!
“It’s a critique that can be confusing both to the media trying to cover it and to bystanders trying to understand it,’’ said Sarah Sobieraj, assistant professor of sociology at Tufts University, who studies social activism. “There isn’t a quick solution to our current economic situation, so it’s hard to imagine a concrete demand they might come up with.’’
Well, the CORPORATE and BANKER'S MEDIA sure as heck isn't going to clear up the message!
And here is a CONCRETE DEMAND for you: END the MASS-MURDERING WARS BASED on LIES!!!!!
Harvard was busy with activism in the 1960s, most famously in 1969, when several hundred students occupied an administration building over the issue of the military’s influence on campus. Police cleared the building the next day in a violent raid that resulted in widespread arrests and many injuries.
Yeah, yesterday's protests were so much more pure than today's rabble.
And LOOK how FAR Harvard has fallen, huh?
Boston College history professor Marilynn Johnson said the Occupy movement reminds her of the Hunger Marches organized in times of extreme economic hardship, such as the late 1800s and the throes of the Great Depression. Hunger protesters marched in Boston in 1932.
How SAD IS IT, America, that you have been RETURNED to SUCH SHAPE -- all so BANKERS COULD ROB YOU BLIND and GORGE THEMSELVES!
“Certainly there are elements of that in what we see now,’’ she said. “The fact that there are so many students involved is a new piece of it, much more like the civil rights and new student movements of the second half of the 20th century.’’
Boston was the site of numerous protests in the 1970s over busing to desegregate the public schools, and, more recently, saw widespread protests around two major political events.
In 2004, the city hosted the Democratic National Convention, the first nominating convention after the 9/11 attacks. Protesters were penned in a “free-speech zone’’ that they compared to being in a prison camp. As the convention wound on, protests spilled into the city, resulting in several arrests.
Yeah, remember the fascist "free-speech zones?"
In 2000, a debate between presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore at University of Massachusetts Boston drew thousands of demonstrators competing to be heard.
Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of education and history at New York University, is hesitant to say that anything about the Occupy movement is truly new.
“My students asked me the other day, how did they organize the March on Washington without Facebook?’’ he said. “There was no social media then, and they did organize fine. I’m wary of saying it is qualitatively different now.’’
The anticorporate language of Franklin D. Roosevelt was “every bit as harsh as anything you’ll hear in Zuccotti Park,’’ where Occupy Wall Street protesters are encamped, he said. “The reason I don’t see it succeeding now is the people who would choose to sleep in a park - people I admire - are going to look marginal to most Americans.
“I don’t think the kind of political theater they’re engaged in will resonate, even with those Americans who otherwise would endorse their attack on inequality.’’
This as polls show SUPPORT for the PROTESTERS!!
--more--"
And speaking of political theater:
"Thousands rally in Washington with Sharpton over employment" October 16, 2011
WASHINGTON - Thousands of Americans led by the Rev. Al Sharpton rallied yesterday against the backdrop of the Washington Monument, calling for easier job access and decrying the gulf between rich and poor before marching to the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.
The rally was intended to drum up support for President Obama’s jobs plan, which died Tuesday in the US Senate.
As I remarked yesterday, you are a little late.
But speakers used the platform for varied causes, including condemning state laws requiring voter identification at the polls and protesting the recent execution of Troy Davis, a Georgia man convicted of killing an off-duty police officer. Davis maintained his innocence until his death and attracted thousands of supporters worldwide even though courts repeatedly ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to exonerate him.
Related: Who Remembers Troy Davis?
Chanting for jobs and justice, many demonstrators carried banners for their labor unions and wore pins or T-shirts bearing King’s likeness. Obama is scheduled to speak today at the dedication ceremony for the memorial, the first monument dedicated to a black leader on the National Mall.
Related: King For a Day
Good Night, Irene
I'll be staying up a little later.
Sharpton, the featured speaker at the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice, blasted the Senate for its failure to pass Obama’s $450 billion jobs bill. The measure includes an extension of a payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, as well as money to help local governments keep teachers and other workers on the job. Obama and Senate Democratic leaders plan to try to pass elements of the measure by breaking it into pieces.
“If you can’t get the jobs bill done in the suites, then we will get the jobs bill done in the streets,’’ Sharpton said to cheers and applause.
He told the crowd that King would have supported their cause “because he stood for those who were cast down and cast back.’’ King’s eldest son, Martin Luther King III, was also among the speakers.
“Over 45 years ago, my father talked about a redistribution of wealth. In fact, that is probably why he was killed,’’ King said. “Because he said if America is going to survive responsibly, then it must have a redistribution of wealth.’’
Ever notice the antiwar message is relegated to the back of the war media bus?
