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Archives by Tag 'protests'
On January 25, the host committee for the G8/NATO summit in Chicago in May unveiled a new slogan for the event, “The Global Crossroads.” The mood of the organizers is upbeat and positive. This is a grand opportunity to market Chicago with an eye for the tourist dol...
The slow but inexorable dissolution of feudal society that began centuries ago in England and Western Europe made two historical transformations possible: the rise of capitalism, an economic system based on market relations and private ownership; and the entrance into the...
The question confronting the Occupy Wall Street encampments and their offshoots in scores of cities and towns around the country is quo vadis? Where is it going?
This decentralized, leaderless civic initiative has attracted the persistent attention of the ...
Occupy Oakland won a resounding Oct. 26 victory by mobilizing 3000 people to respond to a police riot. They took down the police fence that exiled them from the plaza in front of city hall, set up tents again, and returned to dancing and receiving massage and acupuncture ...
One of the theories of the practice of psychology encountered in college is “egoism,” the argument that all people at all times act in their own self-interest. The theory is circular in that once the premise is accepted, any argument that runs counter to it is presume...
Oakland.
The first tweet from the Occupy Oakland had gone out just a few minutes before three and we managed to make it to the plaza in about half an hour. When my wife Marcy and I arrived at Frank Ogawa Plaza, now redubbed, “Oscar Grant Plaza, the flims...
Oakland.
In the early morning on Tuesday, starting before 5 am, the police temporarily destroyed Occupy Oakland, sending in a riot squad of over 500 that outnumbered protesters almost 3 to 1. Oscar Grant Plaza (officially Frank Ogawa Plaza) was too geogr...
New York City.
Last Saturday I found myself sitting cross-legged in the middle of Times Square singing peace songs and wondering to what exactly I was committing. Arrest? Pepper spray? Beating? About half an hour earlier I had arrived at what was being ...
The 99% will convene a National Convention in Philadelphia, so that’s the good news. Where America was born, they will try to bring her back to life, save her from this deepening degradation. Their list of demands, to be released in October of 2012, will most likely be ...
I first got wind of the Occupy Wall Street action back in its planning stages. I didn’t give it much thought, but considered it a potentially positive thing, especially if it began with a fair number of people participating or somehow captured the mainstream media...
“As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be strange to meet a Megolosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.”
–Charles Di...
“Conspiracy theories” have a bad press. But sometimes conspiracies are real and sometimes conspiracy theories do account for what they purport to explain. Whether they do or not is an empirical question. Because real world politics is propelled by multiple, hete...
There is an unspoken law in modern electoral politics: Take care of your adversaries; your friends can take care of themselves.
In today’s political universe, progressives have no place to go but Democrat. So it is for minorities, labor advocates, environment...
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about Occupy Wall Street. She said to me “This is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life”. I told her I feel exactly the same way.
The only difference is that she’s in her early twenties, and I’m in ...
St. James Park, Toronto
The whirled-wide occupation brought thousands of protesters to the intersection of Bay and King in Toronto on Saturday. That corner is dominated four-square by pillars of the large bank monopolies in a nation that likes its banks ...
For Bernice King the timing of things must be spiritual. There must have been a reason she says for Hurricane Irene to move in on the August schedule and force a delay to October so that when the monument to her father was officially unveiled Sunday, it would be present...
Alarms went off when it was revealed that the armed forces of the United States were using increasing numbers of private contractors to provide everything from transportation to security in war zones around the globe.
Tho...
Barcelona.
Before the Spanish call-out for a global day of action on October 15, a few critical notes and words of encouragement from the Barcelona neighborhood assemblies…
After the courageous revolts of the Arab Spring, the next phe...
We’re piecing together our bit of the worldwide occupation here in a Toronto brutalized by last summer’s G20. The bravest and best among us are still mired in the courts, where the vast resources of the state are brought to bear against people who are not me...
“[Saudi] authorities depend on bullets and killing and imprisonment. We must depend on the roar of the word, on the words of justice.”
– Fugitive cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr of Awamiyya, speaking on Saudi security services use of live fire against ...
Massive buildings tower over Wall Street, making the sidewalks feel like valleys in an urban mountain range. The incense, drum beats and chants of Occupy Wall Street echo down New York City’s financial district from Liberty Plaza, where thousands of activists have conve...
Occupy Wall Street, the ongoing demonstration-cum-sleep-in that began a month ago not far from the New York Stock Exchange and has since spread like wildfire to cities around the country, may be a game-changer. If so, it couldn’t be more appropriate or more in the Ame...
“Greed is good,” said Gordon Geko played by Michael Douglas in his academy award-winning performance in the Oliver Stone movie Wall Street. “Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”
“Not so!” say ...
It’s becoming a delicate dance, what to call the growing Occupy Wall St. movement? It’s obviously not just about Wall St. anymore. Journalists keep gently reminding us that there are those who believe it is the equivalent of the “Arab Spring”, although I have yet ...
Four weeks into its life, Occupy Wall Street has already confounded both critics and well-wishers. Far from twittering away its energies after an initial burst of enthusiasm as predicted (or feared), it appears to have touched something in average Americans in every corne...