Two weeks into Occupy Wall Street protests, movement is at a crossroads

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4gCgNEwsTE

I liked that video the graphics were out of this world.

This one seemed rather interesting.

University of California pays out $1m in Occupy pepper-spray settlement

Settlement reached in lawsuit brought by Occupy protesters who were pepper-sprayed by UC Davis campus police in November 2011.

Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 September 2012 20.27 BST

UC and plaintiffs represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed the preliminary settlement in federal court in Sacramento on Wednesday. The agreement is subject to the approval of a federal judge.

Under the proposal, UC will pay out $30,000 to each of 21 plaintiffs named in the complaint and an additional $250,000 for their attorneys to split.

The settlement also calls for the UC to set aside $100,000 to pay other individuals who can prove they were arrested or pepper-sprayed during the incident on November 18 2011.

The chemical crackdown prompted campus protests and calls for the resignation of Chancellor Linda Katehi after online videos shot by witnesses went viral.

Images of an officer casually spraying orange pepper-spray in the faces of non-violent protesters became a rallying point for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Link here

Thanks Builder that is somewhat good news.

No worries, RL. Just passing info on.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11828-all-charges-from-occupy-chicago-mass-arrests-at-the-horse-dismissed

All Charges From Occupy Chicago Mass Arrests at "The Horse" Dismissed Friday, 28 September 2012 09:31 By Rosa Trakhtensky, Occupied Chicago Tribune | Report

The mass midnight arrests of Occupiers in October at Grant Park were ruled unconstitutional by a Chicago court Thursday. The two nights of actions were part of a spirited attempt to “Take the Horse” (a reference to The Bowman statue) and set up an encampment in Chicago.

In response, the Chicago Police Department alleged that protesters were violating the park’s 11 pm curfew and arrested over 300 people. But today’s ruling found that the curfew restricted free assembly and was unconstitutional when applied to the protesters.

The ruling comes on the heels of the Chicago Teachers Union strike, which many have concluded was a win for progressive forces in the city. Occupy Chicago and its public battles to retain space in the city as well as protest the closings of libraries and mental health clinics also openly challenged Rahm Emanuel and his austerity agenda.

The case in City of Chicago v. Tieg Alexander et. al. argues that the city arbitrarily enforced its curfew because of the content of the protesters' speech.

“Because parks constitute public forums for citizens to assemble and express political views, governments may institute content-neutral time, place or manner restrictions that tightly fit substantial government interests,” says the 37-page opinion by Judge Thomas Donnelly. “The City’s claim that citizen safety, park maintenance, and park preservation constitute the substantial government interests that justifies closing the park seven hours nightly fails because the City routinely closes the park for fewer than seven hours nightly, making ad hoc exceptions to the Curfew for permitted groups.”

“Judge Donnelly made the right decision by declaring the city’s ordinance unconstitutional and by dismissing the remaining cases brought by the city against activists legitimately engaged in free speech,” said National Lawyers Guild attorney Sarah Gelsomino from the People’s Law Office, one of the lawyers representing the charged activists, in a press release. “Hopefully this sends a clear message to the city that they must better respect the First Amendment rights of protesters no matter what their message might be.”

“We were arrested because we were doing something very threatening to the state, we were creating a peaceful social platform where the voices of the lower classes could be heard,” said Danielle Vilarreal, an Occupy Chicago member arrested on October 23.

“The whole city is getting tired of Rahm’s abuse of power,” reckons Andy Manos, another occupier arrested on the same night. “This is what we saw with the immense community support for the teacher’s strike. This what we saw back in January when we were able to mobilize the community against Rahm’s ‘sit down and shut up’ ordinances. And this is what we see now with the charges being dismissed.”

What do you think? Should Julian Assange or Bradley Manning have gotten the Noble Peace prize?

It shows how skewed and false the selection system has become, RL.

Should Assange have received it? He's more a clever marketing man, for mine. It's the people with the integrity and fortitude to hand over the information that Assange releases that deserve the praise.

Bank of England official: Occupy Movement right about global recession

Andrew Haldane said protestors were correct to focus on inequality as the chief reason for 2008 economic crash


Speaking at a debate held by the Occupy Movement in central London, Haldane said regulations limiting credit use would undermine attempts by individuals to accumulate huge property and financial wealth at the expense of other members of society. Allowing banks to lend on a massive scale also drained funding from other industries, adding to the negative impact that unregulated banks had on the economy, he said.

The hard-hitting speech is unlikely to find a warm welcome in the Square Mile, which is keen for bank lending to recover to its heady pre-crisis levels and bring accompanying profits and commissions. Lending to individuals and corporations in the UK has fallen to a fraction of the levels seen in 2007 when few banks checked the income status of individual borrowers or the risks being taken by corporate customers before offering a loan. The Bank of England will impose stricter lending rules on banks next year when it takes over regulation of the industry from the Financial Services Authority.

Haldane said Occupy's voice had been "loud and persuasive" and that "policymakers have listened and are acting in ways which will close those fault-lines" with a "reformation of finance that Occupy has helped stir". He said inequality was fuelled by bank lending for speculation on property and other assets that enriched some in society at the expense of others.

"The asset-rich, in particular the owner-occupying rich, became a lot richer. Meanwhile, the asset-less and indebted fell further behind. In other words, the pre-crisis asset price bubble acted like a regressive tax," he said.

Story here

I can hardly believe somebody thumbed that down Builder.

If ever the TD function proved ridiculous it was that 0.

LOL. Someone thumbed your post down too.

The GFC was a "bubble" in more ways than one. Greed is a huge motivator.

When bankers themselves are calling for more regulation, people really should be taking notice of them.

Feature-length movie about where #ows is after one year.

I'll comment later, just found it.

It's called American Autumn

http://vimeo.com/47690515

Keep up the good work Builder and the great videos.

Was a great documentary, RL.

Some footage I've seen, some I hadn't, but the total package was very intelligently assembled into a very watchable hour of rational argument against corporate takeover of American life.

I had guest tonight so I have not seen the whole video yet but I should be able to complete it before I go to sleep tonight. so far it seems excellent.
I hope that you will consider what I have to say and this is that are problem lies with sociopathic behavior and this behavior is way misunderstood by both me and you and I sure hope that you will become much more informed about it so that you can inform others.
It seems that the sociopaths are in charge for the most part and until we have a better understanding about what sociopathy is we will all be in the dark.


http://able2know.org/topic/199751-4#post-5155826

No it's not. The problem lies with people being selfish and greedy. Being selfish and greedy doesn't necessarily make one a sociopath.

Definition of GREED
: a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed

Definition of SELFISH
1
: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others
2
: arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others <a selfish act>

I am not exactly sure if I would say that these are the acts of an empathic person who has a conscience that leads him or her to consider the well being of others.

I think sociopathy is a very grey area but I do realize that most people see it in absolute terms.

I see it similarly to the way I see a concept of vision. We have people on one end of the spectrum who have 20/20 vision and at the other end we have people who are blind and in the middle we have people who have all kinds of vision problems such as nearsighted farsighted color blind and many other vision problems and different levels of this. even a person who has good vision can see things incorrectly at times because the sun can be in their eyes or not enough light or other reasons. We can turn off the light and a person can not see but yet we do not define him as actually being blind only that he is temporally blinded because he has no light but the act of being selfish is not seen as temporally being sociopathic and I wonder why.
People can get a prescription for glasses to help them deal with some of these issues but as of yet I not sure that we can cure sociopathy.

Greed and selfishness are evolved characteristics rl. There is only one remedy and that is religious askesis to which I am sure you are very unsympathetic.

From the number of fatties in Builder's movie it is easy to see that religious askesis is in free fall.

The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind.

Read Veblen's Absentee Ownership, grounded in Darwinianism, and get your ass in gear.

I think you would have some difficulty demonstrating that neurological abnormalities in the frontal lobe of the brain are more prevalent in the corporate classes and their remote outliers than they are in the demonstrators unless you claim that being in the corporate classes is proof of the abnormalities which you speak of so carelessly and gratuitously. I just take your definition as you flagging up that you are not a sociopath which might well be sociopathic behaviour.

I would call the movie The Power of Platitude.

Nobody, including you, is to be caught making any suggestions such as shutting down TV.

As Thackery once nearly said--and then they all went home for their dinner.

Many millions have no dinner.