Occupy Wall Street Update

Photo caption: Protesters gather at the Vancouver Art Gallery as thousands participate in the Occupy Vancouver protest on October 15, 2011. (Via Big Picture Blog)

--> Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times explains why OWS is not anti-capitalist:

Whenever I write about Occupy Wall Street, some readers ask me if the protesters really are half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system when they’re not doing drugs or having sex in public.

The answer is no. That alarmist view of the movement is a credit to the (prurient) imagination of its critics, and voyeurs of Occupy Wall Street will be disappointed. More important, while alarmists seem to think that the movement is a “mob” trying to overthrow capitalism, one can make a case that, on the contrary, it highlights the need to restore basic capitalist principles like accountability.

To put it another way, this is a chance to save capitalism from crony capitalists.

In recent years, some financiers have chosen to live in a government-backed featherbed. Their platform seems to be socialism for tycoons and capitalism for the rest of us. They’re not evil at all. But when the system allows you more than your fair share, it’s human to grab. That’s what explains featherbedding by both unions and tycoons, and both are impediments to a well-functioning market economy.

So, yes, we face a threat to our capitalist system. But it’s not coming from half-naked anarchists manning the barricades at Occupy Wall Street protests. Rather, it comes from pinstriped apologists for a financial system that glides along without enough of the discipline of failure and that produces soaring inequality, socialist bank bailouts and unaccountable executives.

It’s time to take the crony out of capitalism, right here at home.

Kristof's whole article can be found here.

--> Occupy Wall Street NYC: Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are scheduled to march on the offices of five major banks and financial-services firms in Manhattan today, a day after a California mayor apologized for a police crackdown against demonstrators that left an Iraq war veteran hospitalized.

New York organizers say thousands of demonstrators will march to the offices of Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase. (Via CNN)

--> In related news: Veteran Scott Olsen, who suffered a skull fracture Tuesday night after allegedly being struck by a tear gas canister, was in fair condition yesterday in the intensive care unit at Highland Hospital, hospital spokesman Curt Olsen said.

The former Marine has become another rallying cry for the Occupy Wall Street protests spreading throughout the country.

"We have started an investigation into the use of force, including tear gas, on Tuesday," Quan said. "I cannot change the past, but I want to work with you to ensure that this remains peaceful moving forward."



--> Cops: Meanwhile, a union representing 5,000 New York City Police Department sergeants blasted Occupy Wall Street protesters yesterday and threatened to sue them should they injure police.

"New York's police officers are working around the clock as the already overburdened economy in New York is being drained by 'occupiers' who intentionally and maliciously instigate needless and violent confrontations with the police," said Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association. Although sergeants are higher in rank than patrol officers, they do not wear the white shirts of some of the more senior officers.

Protesters have at times played confrontational cat-and-mouse games with the police, but incidents of serious violence directed against the NYPD by protesters in New York have been extremely rare.

Mullins vowed to pursue the "harshest possible civil sanctions" against violent individuals. He made particular reference to "recent events in Oakland" as a trigger for his warning, which inflamed a lawyer working on Occupy Wall Street's legal defense team. More at HuffPo.

--> On the lighter side of things: Jimmy Fallon and my dream boat Brain Williams sexplain OWS with a slow jam: