Sovereign of Doom
Posts: 1652
Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2011 1:52 pm
Location: America
Sun Sep 25, 2011 5:00 am
Occupy Wall Street
Scores of protesters were arrested in Manhattan Saturday as a march against social inequality turned violent.
Hundreds of people carrying banners and chanting "shame, shame" walked between Zuccotti Park, near Wall St., and Union Square calling for changes to a financial system they say unjustly benefits the rich and harms the poor.
The National Lawyer's Guild, which is providing legal assistance to the protesters, put the number of arrests at 100.
Witnesses said they saw three stunned women collapse on the ground screaming after they were sprayed in the face.
A video posted on YouTube and NYDailyNews.com shows uniformed officers had corralled the women using orange nets when two supervisors made a beeline for the women, and at least one suddenly sprayed the women before turning and quickly walking away.
Footage of other police altercations also circulated online, but it was unclear what caused the dramatic mood shift in an otherwise peaceful demonstration.
"I saw a girl get slammed on the ground. I turned around and started screaming," said Chelsea Elliott, 25, from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who said she was sprayed. "I turned around and a cop was coming ... we were on the sidewalk and we weren't doing anything illegal."
Police said 80 protesters were arrested or ticketed at multiple locations for disorderly conduct, blocking traffic and failure to obey a lawful order but the number could rise.
Officials said protesters did not have a permit for the march and one demonstrator was charged with assaulting a police officer, causing a shoulder injury. The NYPD was investigating the use of pepper spray.
The protesters, joined together under the banner of an organization called Occupy Wall Street, have been stationed in Zuccotti Park since last weekend, attempting to draw attention to what they believe is a dysfunctional economic system that unfairly benefits corporations and the mega-rich.
As night fell, those detained were hauled out of vans and buses and into police precincts to be processed.
Hundreds more protesters congregated in Zuccotti Park where for a while another clash with police seemed imminent, but as midnight approached tension eased as die-hards prepared to camp out for the night.
Filmmaker Michael Moore visited Keith Olbermann‘s Current TV show to discuss the “Occupy Wall Street” protest currently unfolding in lower Manhattan. The protest, for those unfamiliar with it, was organized as a “leaderless resistance movement” by Adbusters magazine.
The goal, as it currently stands, is to set up camp on and around Wall Street for two whole months and repeat one simple demand… to be decided by those participating. Music and culture website Death and Taxes, bemoaning the lack of mainstream media attention being given to the protests, summarizes its general goals thusly: “The Occupy Wall Street protesters, have ideas and are intent on highlighting the mechanisms at work within the perpetual boom/bust cycle that is the American economy and democracy. One of their main messages would appeal to many hundreds of million of viewers: That the wealthiest 1% of Americans own 40% of this country’s wealth and that the other 99% of fighting for the scraps.”
The movement currently boasts its own website and Facebook page to facilitate other like-minded protests all over the world.
Moore told Olbermann that he has high hopes that more and more people will join in:
This is really the very first, down on Wall Street in the Financial District, the very first attempt since the crash of ’08, to take a real stand and it’s been powerful. And I gotta believe that even though it may number in the hundreds right now, this is gonna grow. Not only on Wall Street, but in communities all over America.
He then encouraged Americans who find themselves far from New York to consider protesting at local bank branches using “possibly even civil disobedience.” He also reserved some harsh words for the big banks themselves:
They think they’re going to get away with this. These people who stole the pension funds of the American public, who stole their money, who stole the future of our kids and grandkids, they think… They’re kleptomaniacs and they think they’re going to get away with it. They have taken our democracy and formed it into a “kleptocracy.”
Moore then quoted New York mayor Michael Bloomberg as saying that there will be “rioting in the street” if things don’t change and more jobs aren’t provided soon.
WALL STREETERS PLANNING TO DOUSE PROTESTERS IN CHAMPAGNE
10:50 am, September 23rd | by Amy Tennery
Remember the “Occupy Wall Street” protest? The one that’s brought dozens hundreds (maybe) of protesters to the Financial District, clogging the sidewalks and generally making life mildly inconvenient for commuters? Well, apparently they’re still there. And what have the finance folks decided to do? Reach across the divide and try to come to some kind of understanding? Haaaa. No. They just decided to play into every horrible stereotype there is about them.
Apparently a group has decided to launch a “Anti Hippy Protester Champagne Toast on Wall Street,” according to a Facebook invitation Gawker found. In the invite, the organizers say they plan to “toast to all the jobless hippies protesting on wall street and the entire financial distric [sic] about god knows what… lets [sic] give them a free shower!”
The “toast” — a.k.a. spraying people with sticky champagne like a bunch of over privileged ass clowns — is set to take place at 4 p.m., which (as Gawker points out) is a great deal before the actual work day ends. Maybe if they host enough of these little mid-day shindigs their bosses will make them “jobless hippies” too!
edit to fix thread by all-is-sun
"It's all in the way you perceive the illusion."
"If a thing loves, it is infinite." - William Blake
"If a thing loves, it is infinite." - William Blake
