Occupy Wall Street update

--> Occupy Oakland: Veering around police barricades, anti-Wall Street protesters held a late-night march through Oakland streets, a day after one of their number — an Iraq War veteran — was left in critical condition with a fractured skull following a clash with police.

The show of force in Oakland along with SWAT arrests in Atlanta have sent chills among some anti-Wall Street demonstrators, and protesters elsewhere rallied in support around the injured veteran, Scott Olsen.

Another showdown between police and protesters in Oakland appeared to be averted late Wednesday night as several hundred filed out of a plaza declared off-limits for overnight use and marched through nearby streets. More at the AP.

--> Occupy Wall Street NYC: More than a month into the occupation, protesters have turned a full city block in the heart of Lower Manhattan into a campground. A sea of dozens of blue, red and orange tents dominates Zuccotti Park. Whether in an official policy shift or a simple bow to reality on the ground, the NYPD appears to have quietly acceded to the creation of New York City's newest residential block.

The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There are so many tents in the park, in fact, that the people living there have created miniature streets between them. Someone in the park lives at the corner of Jefferson Street and Trotsky Alley, for example.

But it may be only public opinion -- perhaps the neighborhood's firm desire to avoid a messy end to Occupy Wall Street -- that keeps Trotsky Alley open. The Bloomberg administration has argued that it has the right to enforce the rules and regulations posted by Zuccotti Park's owner, Brookfield Office Properties, which prohibit camping. And while First Amendment case law does suggest that protesters have a right to erect tents in a symbolic manner, it does not imply that they can actually sleep in those tents. More at the HuffPo.

--> Bob Cesca writes about how conservative falsely label the Occupy Wall Street movement as being "anti-corporate":

The movement is opposed to deregulated, free market capitalism. Short of Ron Paul disciples and Ayn Rand cultists, no reasonable American wants a system in which Enron, Goldman Sachs, AIG or BP can commit heinous crimes and not pay the price. According to Gallup, 68 percent of Americans want corporations to have less influence in America. That doesn't mean a supermajority of Americans are anti-corporation, it simply means that a supermajority of Americans agree that corporations have acquired too much power and therefore ought to be reined in. Not banished or banned, just watched more closely.

The OWS movement, like the American people, isn't anti-corporate, it's anti-corporate crime.

Occupy Wall Street protesters aren't necessarily against the corporations that churn out their iPads and coffee products, as the misinformed designer of this photoshopped image insinuates, but, rather, they're against the corporations that corrupt the system, deplete the Treasury and ultimately aren't held accountable for their crimes. The protesters are demanding that the corporate criminals who engaged in the shoddy, Machiavellian investment scams that plunged us into the deepest recession since the Great Depression be held accountable for their actions. To date, not a single instigator of the economic collapse has been prosecuted.

One of the rants I've heard repeatedly on talk radio is how OWS protesters are flagrantly disobeying the law -- how they're not seeking permits and how they're disrespecting authority and law enforcement. Fine, then why shouldn't corporations be held to a similar standard? Why does Hugh Hewitt want protesters locked up for breaking the law, while giving corporate criminals total immunity from investigation, prosecution and regulation? After all, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have all the constitutional rights as people, so let's treat them like any person would be treated if suspected of malfeasance.

More here.

More headlines:

--> OWS protestor Chris Savvinidis gives voice to the 99%:



--> Environmentalist Chip Ward writes a great piece on how Earth is also in the 99%:

What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet’s life-support systems -- its atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere -- goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power, and control by that corrupt and greedy 1% we are hearing about from Zuccotti Park? What if the assault on America’s middle class and the assault on the environment are one and the same?

The fact is: we won’t free ourselves from a dysfunctional and unfair economic order until we begin to see ourselves as communities, not commodities. That is one clear message from Zuccotti Park.

It’s hard to imagine how we’ll address our converging ecological crises without first addressing the way accumulating wealth and power has captured the political system. As long as Washington is dominated and intimidated by giant oil companies, Wall Street speculators, and corporations that can buy influence and even write the rules that make buying influence possible, there’s no meaningful way to deal with our economy’s addiction to fossil fuels and its dire consequences.

Nature’s 99% is an amazingly diverse community of species. They feed and share and recycle within a web of relationships so dynamic and complex that we have yet to fathom how it all fits together. What we have excelled at so far is breaking things down into their parts and then reassembling them; that, after all, is how a barrel of crude oil becomes rocket fuel or a lawn chair.

When it comes to the more chaotic, less linear features of life like climate, ecosystems, immune systems, or fetal development, we are only beginning to understand thresholds and feedback loops, the way the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. But we at least know that the parts matter deeply and that, before we even fully understand them, we’re losing them at an accelerating rate. Forests are dying, fisheries are going, extinction is on steroids.

Degrading the planet’s operating systems to bolster the bottom line is foolish and reckless. It hurts us all. No less important, it’s unfair. The 1% profit, while the rest of us cough and cope.

--> Feeding the movement: How Occupy protesters are eating

Food donations started to trickling in during the first week of Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park in New York City. First came the pies anonymously ordered from Steve’s Pizza, which delivered them from across the street to the hungry protesters. Next, helpful citizens brought their own edible creations to supply the masses, and, as the crowd grew, so did those contributions. Now, they have a high-functioning system called The People’s Kitchen. More and more everyday people are also continuing to share food with others during the protest.