Occupy Wall Street

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by Riot

Here's a new "Occupy" site for aggregating all news.

http://occupyitnews.org

OWS has over $400,000 in their bank account now, from donations. They purchase food daily, provide free medical care, and computer services, sleeping bags & blankets, and have websites. They hold daily general meetings. Have multiple committees working on items of interest to them. Also have downtown storage locker filled with donations.

Night before last, Occupy New York had to defend their medical tent (free health care for all Occupy residents in NY) in the middle of the night, from the police who showed up to try and take it down.

Guess who happened to be there and stand in the way of the cops, joining arms with the protesters? (btw the cops went away and left the tent for now)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1...via=siderecent

Looks like Geraldo Rivera (twice) and Jon Stossel (once), both of GOP-TV Faux News, tried to go to Occupy Wall Street to interview protesters, but all three times they were hounded from the premises with chants of "Fox Lies!". Video all over the internet.

It's amazing how the mainstream media is completely not covering this story, but how much news is going on at Occupy locations nationwide (hundreds of locations) and internationally, that is being covered on YouTube, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Who opened a bank account? Seems counter-intuitive to the cause really. The "protestors" here are now negotiating with local officials for locations where they can be protected from the elements etc. This thing is beginning to trade in the street cred (what little it had) for some comfort.
A bank account? Seriously. While protesting banking.

Love it.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

Who opened a bank account? Seems counter-intuitive to the cause really. The "protestors" here are now negotiating with local officials for locations where they can be protected from the elements etc. This thing is beginning to trade in the street cred (what little it had) for some comfort.
A bank account? Seriously. While protesting banking.

Love it.

They are not "protesting banking". They are not against bank accounts - that's ridiculous.

They have a bank account (at a credit union, actually, not a bank), they have an independent 501C administering it, they have unions that have donated free office space to them.

They have a New York City public approval rating of over 60%, a national rate over 55% (including 2/3 of Republicans).

And, a NYC (correction, not mayor, Governor) that just admitted today he's going against what they demonstrated against Saturday, what 65% of his public think about the NY millionaires tax, and he is going ahead with rescinding it against what his city and state thinks and wants him to do with it (keep it in place)

Occupy Wall Street is gonna be around for a long time with responses to public demonstrations like that. When the people you elect say they won't do what you want them to .... ?

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by Riot

They are not "protesting banking".

They have a bank account, they have an independent 501C administering it, they have unions that have donated free office space to them.

Wall St. is the home of the banking industry though. And while protesting banking is broad brush, it is certainly not false.
Office space and ready cash will lead to leaders emerging from the group, once this happens they will separate themselves from the rest and start their own little version of the big pyramid that is representative of the country and eventually it will fall apart.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

Wall St. is the home of the banking industry though. And while protesting banking is broad brush, it is certainly not false.

Yes, it's entirely false. They are not protesting banking at all. You clearly haven't been paying any attention at all to this protest.

Office space and ready cash will lead to leaders emerging from the group, once this happens they will separate themselves from the rest and start their own little version of the big pyramid that is representative of the country and eventually it will fall apart

Only if they think like you do.

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by Riot

Yes, it's entirely false. They are not protesting banking at all. You clearly haven't been paying any attention at all to this protest.



Only if they think like you do.

"We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." Who are the 1%? I lived and worked in NYC and happen to know they are the people running banks. Believe what you want. 1% = Banking.

"We are growing change in the shadow of the wealth, greed, and thievery that is Wall Street"

Power corrupts, thinking otherwise is foolish.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

"We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." Who are the 1%? I lived and worked in NYC and happen to know they are the people running banks. Believe what you want. 1% = Banking.

"We are growing change in the shadow of the wealth, greed, and thievery that is Wall Street"

Power corrupts, thinking otherwise is foolish.

Yes, that's not being anti-banking. It's being anti-corruption, anti-plutocracy. They want reinstitution of Glass-Steagall, control and regulation over unregulated derivatives markets, they want a tax of 0.1% on all trades (to slow down market volitility) and 0.01% tax on derivatives. They are not "anti-banking".

They are also not anti-government, but want 100% of the corruption and lobbyists out of Washington.

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by Riot

Yes, that's not being anti-banking. It's being anti-corruption, anti-plutocracy.

As long as banks are people (like corporations) they will be evil. Separation of corruption and lending is never going to happen. The acts are intertwined and always have been.

[Riot]

From www.occupywallstreet.com

(other good info with blogs, pictures on Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, etc.)

The Occupy Wall Street movement has galvanized the attention of the world by organizing the largest demonstrations in this country as a response to the Great Recession caused by our financial and political leaders.

Data from a survey of 1,619 respondents from a survey placed on occupywallst.org suggests that there is a huge undercurrent of mainstream dissatisfaction with traditional political party affiliations as well a huge amount of support for radical change in the United States of America.

* 92.5% of respondents either somewhat or strongly supported the protests with most respondents indicating strong support.

* 1/4th of the sample (or 24.2%) participated in the Occupy Wall Street protests as of October 5, 2011.

* 91.8% of the sample thinks that the Occupy Wall Street Protests will continue to grow.

In terms of demographic characteristics of the sample, we found that,

*64.2% of respondents were younger than 34 years of age.

*While the sample is relatively young, one in three respondents is older than 35 and one in five respondents is 45 and older.

* 7.9% of respondents have a high school degree or less.

*92.1% of the sample has some college, a college degree, or a graduate degree.

*27.4% have some college (but no degree), 35% have a college degree, 8.2% have some graduate school (but no degree), and close to 21.5% have a graduate school degree.

*This is a highly educated sample.

*26.7% of respondents were enrolled in school and 73.3% were not enrolled in school.

*50.4% were employed full-time and an additional 20.4% were employed part-time.

*13.1% of the sample are unemployed.

*2.6% of respondents were retired, 1.3% disabled, 2.6% homemakers and 9.7% are full-time students.

*47.5% of the sample earns less than $24,999 dollars a year and another quarter (24%) earn between $25,000 and $49,999 per year.

* 71.5% of the sample earns less than $50,000 per year.

*15.4% of the sample earned between $50,000 and $74,999.

*The remainder 13% of the sample earn over $75,000 with close to 2% earning over $150,000 per year.

*27.3% of respondents considered themselves Democrats, another 2.4% said they were Republican.

*Interestingly, a very large proportion of the sample, close to 70.3%, considered themselves Independents.

*66.4% in the sample agree somewhat or strongly that they regularly use Facebook.

*28.9% in the sample agree somewhat or strongly that they regularly use Twitter.

*73.9% in the sample agree somewhat or strongly that they regularly use YouTube.

*Our data suggest that the 99% movement comes from and looks like the 99%.

Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, Ph.D.