On Fox News, Alan Colmes Calls Out Fox News’ “Double Standard” On Tea Party And Wall Street Protests (via Media Matters for America)
“These are the kinds of people every father with a daughter fears…”
Just call the protesters rapists and then that word vomit will make sense.
United/Continental pilots on Rector and Trinity streets, on their way to a demonstration on Wall Street to protest an ongoing labor dispute. Not related to #occupywallstreet, as they had planned this well in advance. -via Flickr
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Note: #OccupyWallStreet needs to get them in on the cause!!
For the third consecutive year, Hunger Action Month has had to contend with a 1 in 6 hunger rate, the highest percentage since such monitoring began in 1995, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
As 49 million Americans struggle to put food on their plates, pantries around the country are grappling with an unprecedented demand—and diversity in clients—that they often can’t afford to accomodate.
“We are seeing many more seniors, but we’re also seeing many more families with children,” Doreen Wohl, executive director of the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, told the Huffington Post. “People are coming as a last resort. They’ve exhausted all other resources.”
WSCH, the largest food pantry in New York City, has seen a 48 percent increase in clients over the past three years and served more than 88,000 meals in July alone.
Enid Borden, president and CEO of Meals on Wheels, has seen a similar swell in clients.
“In this economic downturn, we have found that those very same seniors who were once our volunteers, are now in need of our services,” Borden told the Huffington Post. “This is the richest nation on the face of the earth, but the people who raised us and fed us and tilled the soil are going hungry.” [read more]
When we first arrived on the scene, protesters were marching along the sidewalk in unison, chanting. There was no sense of chaos. Many held video and audio recording devices, including camera phones.
However, the stream of protesters did disrupt traffic. Pedestrians wove in and out of the mass of protesters, some on their way to do Saturday errands, others who joined in for a block or two, chanting with the masses.
As more people spilled into the street, police started to demand that protesters stay on the sidewalk. But as people seemed to be retreating from harm’s way, police began pushing the protesters. I saw police use large nets to corral people en masse. I watched as police pepper sprayed several young women in the face. (An NYPD spokesperson confirmed the use of pepper spray to MetroFocus.) I saw senior citizens and teenagers get arrested. I saw about 20 or 30 police officers tackle people and prod them roughly with police batons…
When I saw the young women get pepper sprayed, I ran over to interview them. While holding a microphone and wearing a badge identifying myself as an employee of “WNET – New York Public Media,” I found myself suddenly roped into one of the large nets. I was thrown against a wall and handcuffed with hard plastic zip-tie restraints. I sat kneeling on the sidewalk with about 50 others. I yelled over and over “I’m press! I’m with WNET MetroFocus! Please do not arrest me.”
Send a letter to the NYPD expressing your solidarity with the protesters and urging the police to exercise restraint. Also, tell them the world is watching. And thank them for all their hard work.
Imagine what affect it would have if the police got 100,000,000 letters of support for the protesters. Edit. x2 It’d be hard for the media to dismiss all the protesters as wackos and hooligans with that outpouring of public support.
- Heres a link for their address: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/home/contact_information.shtml.
- Here is a link to contact the mayor through an online form: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html
- Here is an Email form for the NYPD police commissioner.
It goes without saying, but don’t be a douche. Don’t send anything offensive or dangerous.
Do it. It takes 5 minutes.
Woohoo! Hitting the big media, finally:
“We need to get government back into the hands of the 99 percent, not the one percent,” Csapo said. “Right now, the law is currently written for the one percent, and we are seeing an incredible amount of wealth being extracted.”
“The aim is getting back to more of a participatory Democracy,” said Csapo.
The Occupy Wall Street website says “We also encourage the use of nonviolence to achieve our ends and maximize the safety of all participants.”
The original call to occupy Wall Street was put out by a group called Adbusters, which describes itself as a “global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the ways corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society.”
The hacker/protest group Anonymous has also reportedly thrown its support behind the Sept. 17 protest.
What do you think: Is it a protest for protest’s sake? A social media experiment? Or a genuine expression of something more profound?
Global protests against Japan dolphin hunt
Activists protested outside of Japan’s embassies around the world on Thursday to urge an end to its killing of dolphins.
Dead shark discarded by fishermen after cutting off its fins.
Hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco pledges support, donates 50 tents to #OCCUPYWALLSTREET participants (info)
After being arrested protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, activist Bill McKibben shares what he learned.
“As I headed to jail as part of the first wave of what is turning into the biggest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement for many years, I had the vague idea that I would write something. Not an epic like King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” but at least, you know, a blog post. Or a tweet.
But frankly, I wasn’t up to it. The police, surprised by how many people turned out on the first day of two weeks of protests at the White House, decided to teach us a lesson. As they told our legal team, they wanted to deter anyone else from coming — and so with our first crew they were… kind of harsh.
We spent three days in D.C.’s Central Cell Block, which is exactly as much fun as it sounds like it might be. You lie on a metal rack with no mattress or bedding and sweat in the high heat; the din is incessant; there’s one baloney sandwich with a cup of water every 12 hours.
I didn’t have a pencil — they wouldn’t even let me keep my wedding ring — but more important, I didn’t have the peace of mind to write something. It’s only now, out 12 hours and with a good night’s sleep under my belt, that I’m able to think straight. And so, as I said, I’ll go to this weekend’s big celebrations for the opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on the Washington Mall with even more respect for his calm power.
Will we do the same to the boreal forests of Canada. As NASA climatologist James Hansen has made all too clear, if we do so it’s “essentially game over for the climate.” That message is getting through. Witness the incredibly strong New York Times editorial opposing the building of the pipeline that I was handed on our release from jail.
…Second, being arrested in front of the White House helped make it clearer that President Obama should be the focus of anti-pipeline activism. For once Congress isn’t in the picture. The situation couldn’t be simpler: the president, and the president alone, has the power either to sign the permit that would take the pipeline through the Midwest and down to Texas (with the usual set of disastrous oil spills to come) or block it.
…Barack Obama has the power to stop it and no one in Congress or elsewhere can prevent him from doing so. That means — and again, it couldn’t be simpler — that the Keystone XL decision is the biggest environmental test for him between now and the next election. If he decides to stand up to the power of big oil, it will send a jolt through his political base, reminding the presently discouraged exactly why they were so enthused in 2008.”
