CIO HEROES!!
OCCUPY Wall Street!
OCCUPY Together!
OCCUPY ALL OVER THE WORLD!
Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% who will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OCCUPY Wall Street!
OCCUPY Wall Street (Adbusters)
OCCUPY Together
OCCUPY SF
Corporations Are Not People
This week marks the second anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC. In a nutshell, Citizens United declared that corporations are people, and money is speech. This opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate cash in U.S. elections. You can read more about the disastrous effects we’ve already seen from this HERE and HERE.
Corporations can contribute unlimited funds to independent campaign expenditure groups as the law stands now, and still, the RNC is unhappy with anything short of being able to sell votes directly. According to the New York Times, they want a return to the days of the robber barons.
What’s at stake here is the American democracy as we know it, and the way to take it back is through a constitutional amendment reversing Citizens United. There are already nine amendments floating around Congress and a groundswell of public activism spearheaded by a coalition of organizations including MoveOn, Move to Amend, Common Cause, Public Citizen, the Other 98%, and many others.
Also, a number of states and local governments have passed resolutions in support of an end to corporate personhood.
A week of cognitive dissonance and direct action
Food Bank of America
What do we do when the government shockingly proves it already has the power to do one day what we were opposing the prior day? It is more than disquieting to see the government brutally illustrating the fact that the U.S. is a society that simply does not any longer believe in due process. Glenn Greenwald reports on the cognitive dissonance produced by the SOPA/PIPA opposition, victory, and subsequent seizure of Megaupload.
And what does it mean when the only “anti-war, pro-due-process, pro-transparency, anti-Fed, anti-Wall-Street-bailout, anti-Drug-War” advocating presidential candidate is Ron Paul? Greenwald, again, makes the case for avoiding mindless partisanship and for allowing space for a real public debate, in part by countering our “inability and/or refusal to recognize that a political discussion might exist independent of the Red v. Blue Cage Match.” Read Greenwald’s nuanced analysis in “Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies”.
The answer from OccupySF has been to get down to business, by focusing on the financial district using direct action planned by a diverse horizontal hierarchy of community and affinity groups. OccupySF refused to limit the scope of specific injustices to highlight with a day long schedule of multi-faceted actions that drew global press as reporters and photographers attempted to cover and capture the variety of challenges to financial institutions and the mainstream narrative that were brought to bear publicly on Friday.
The Black Blob
Dialectical-materialist philosopher Slavoj Žižek notes the ironic fact that today the chance to be exploited in a long-term job is now experienced as a privilege. Read his analysis of the Occupy movement and of the signs we are all seeing that the capitalist system is no longer capable of self-regulated stability; as he says, it is a system that is threatening to run out of control.
Posted in ARTISTS/ACTIONS, CAPITALISM, OCCUPY SF, OCCUPY WALL ST WEST, PROTESTS, WE ARE THE 99%
Tagged #occupySF, BANKS, CAPITAL, capitalism, corporate capitalism, finacial district, financial institutions, Food Bank of America, Glenn Greenwald, government, obscene pentagon budget, occupy wall st west, Slavoj Žižek, The Black Blob, The Corporate State
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OCCUPY WALL STREET WEST!
TODAY! Check HERE for schedule of actions.
Posted in art, ARTISTS/ACTIONS, OCCUPY SF, OCCUPY!, SOLUTIONS
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Capitalism and Loneliness: Why Pornography Is a Multibillion-Dollar Industry
By: Harriet Fraad and Tess Fraad Wolff
Re-posted from Truthout | Op-Ed
Massive social changes in the US labor force and in commerce have transformed the economy and powerfully affected personal relationships. Since 1970, we have changed from being a society of people connected in groups of every kind to a society of people who are too often disconnected, detached and alienated from one another.
One is the loneliest number, and in their personal lives, Americans are increasingly alone.
What Has Happened to Us?
In the 1970s, the American dream of 150 years duration ground to a halt. From 1820 to 1970, every US generation did better than the one that preceded it. In the 1970s, computers began to replace millions of US jobs. International communication systems became so sophisticated that factories could be moved overseas, allowing the livelihoods of more millions of Americans to be outsourced. Civil rights and feminist gains had given women and minorities access to a depleted job market. Militant left trade union movements or political parties were not there to protest. Wages flattened. Profits rose with productivity and the share distributed to the top rose, rather than being distributed in wages. Wealthy banks issued credit cards with high interest rates that allowed them to make even more money on funds formerly paid out as salaries.
Men were no longer paid a family wage. Families suffered. Women poured into the labor force to make up for lost male wages. Until this point, most women’s work was primarily labor in the home: creating domestic order and cleanliness, performing childcare, and providing social and emotional services for the family. After the 1970s, the majority of women worked outside of the home as well as within it. Now, practically all women work outside the home, currently constituting almost half of the labor force.
Before the movements for racial and gender equality, the best jobs were reserved for white males who were an overwhelming majority. Within our racist and sexist labor force, white men had what ultimately amounted to two wage bonuses: one for being white and another for being male. Beginning in the 1970s, it was no longer necessary to give financial bonuses to white men. Indeed, it was not necessary to pay higher wages to any workers in the US labor force. Workers’ salaries flattened even as they increased their efficiency. This meant that ever more profit was made and accumulated at the top.
American white men lost a good deal of the male hegemony that accompanied steady jobs and wages that could support a family. When millions of manufacturing jobs were outsourced, our economy became a service economy. Neither the greater physical strength nor the higher levels of aggression associated with males are particularly welcome in a service economy. Heterosexual personal relationships that had developed on the basis of a male provider income could not hold. Those gendered roles were sexist and limiting. However, they could have been transformed politically without economically and psychologically traumatizing the American people.
Photo: Dave 77459 / Flickr
Posted in AUSTERITY, CAPITALISM, OCCUPY WALL STREET, OCCUPY!, THE 99%, UNEMPLOYMENT, Women's Rights
Tagged CAPITAL, capitalism, loneliness, pornography
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Martin Luther King Jr. on Capitalism, etc
“What I’m saying to you this morning is that communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.”
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference Presidential Address By Reverand Martin Luther King, Jr., 16 August 1967
Posted in CAPITALISM
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Occupy Telephone
Posted in ARTISTS/ACTIONS, BANK TRANSFER DAY!, DEMOCRACY, OCCUPY SF, OCCUPY!, PROTESTS, SOLUTIONS, THE 99%
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300 Chinese Workers at Apple/ Sony / Microsoft Global Partner Foxconn ‘Threaten Mass Suicide’ At XBox Plant
By Michael Rundle
HUFFINGTON POST
Around 300 Chinese workers who manufacture XBox consoles took to a factory roof and threatened bosses with mass suicide over a dispute about pay, unconfirmed reports have claimed.
The workers were employed at the Foxconn Technology Park in Wuhan in Hubei province. Foxconn is an independent, global manufacturing partner to companies including Apple, Microsoft and Sony.
Microsoft said on Wednesday that it is investigating the incident.
According to unverified reports emerging from anti-government Chinese news websites, about 300 workers took to the roof of the Taiwanese-owned factory on 2 January to protest against their employers.
Those reports have sinced been repeated by websites including Kotaku, but neither Foxconn or Microsoft has yet confirmed the incident took place.
According to the reports the employees had asked bosses for a raise but in response were told to either quit with compensation or keep their jobs at their usual salary.
Most workers apparently decided to leave, but the company did not hand over the money as promised.
According to the China Jasmine Revolution website, the workers were only dissuaded a day later when the mayor of Wuhan talked them out of committing suicide.
Foxconn factories in China have been the scene of several suicides by workers in the past, including 14 in 2010 alone at its Shenzhen plant, after complaints of low pay and poor conditions.
Wall Street Whines for Bonuses
By Jillian Berman
HUFFINGTON POST
For some on Wall Street, a less-than-stellar bonus is simply too much to bear.
Brokerage executives at one Wall Street firm, Jefferies Group, have threatened to leave the company if their bonuses aren’t up to par with other firms, the New York Post reports. Though some particularly stellar employees may be able to eventually convince their bosses to give them a bigger share of the bonus pie, nervousness surrounding dismal job prospects on Wall Street will likely keep most bankers quiet.
“It’s a terrible time to be an employee,” Robert Ottinger, a New York-based compensation lawyer told the NYP. “Employers know they have all of the power.”
Any Jefferies Group employees that decide to walk will likely have to put their money where their mouth is. As Business Insider notes, company CEO Richard Handler recently said the decision to quit won’t be without any financial penalty.
Nervousness about the global economy, new regulations, slow dealmaking and public anger at banks will likely push banks to slash this year’s bonus pool so much that it will be the smallest since the heigh of the financial crisis in 2008, the Wall Street Journal reports. At Morgan Stanley, some investment bankers may see their bonuses cut by 30 to 40 percent. And at Goldman Sachs, many of the firm’s partners’ compensation could be halved.
Estimates of this year’s Wall Street bonuses have varied widely, but usually see a drop from last year. According to a November survey from consulting firm Johnson Associates Inc., for example, bonuses should fall 20 to 30 percent on average this year. Other surveys predict an average drop of 35 to 40 percent.
Still, the Wall Street workers themselves haven’t cut their expectations, with 62 percent saying they expect a bonus that’s in line or bigger than last year’s, according to an October survey from eFinancialCareers.com.
And for certain types of employees, bonus prospects may be getting brighter. Wall Street firms boosted their use of one-year “guaranteed bonuses” — the practice of promising a generous bonus to a new hire before they’ve ever made a trade — in 2010, according The Institute for International Finance, an industry advocacy group. Banks often use guaranteed bonuses to lure potential employees and the industry faced “senior staff hiring pressures” in 2010, the report found.
Though bonuses may be down overall, total compensation, which includes salaries, benefits and bonuses, is on track to exceed 2010 levels at seven big banks, according to an analysis of compensation data from the first three quarters of 2011 by the Public Accountability Initiative. The December report found that compensation will likely hit a record $156 billion — a 3.7 percent boost from 2010.
But as that compensation is on track to rise, another more ominous metric is going up as well. At least 10,000 more Wall Street workers will likely lose their jobs by the end of 2012, according to an estimate from the New York State comptroller cited by the New York Times.
Conspiracy Theory Rock By Robert Smigel
A Banned Segment from Saturday Night Live
The 1998 Robert Smigel animated short film “Conspiracy Theory Rock”, part of a March 1998 “TV Funhouse” segment, has been removed from all subsequent airings of the Saturday Night Live episode where it originally appeared. Michaels claimed the edit was done because it “wasn’t funny”. The film is a scathing critique of corporate media ownership, including NBC’s ownership by General Electric/Westinghouse.
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Law of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment,news reporting, teaching, scholarship,and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
Occupying a New Reality
One of the things I’ve loved the most about the Occupy movement is the position that we just don’t give a fuck what political analysts, pundits, and “experts” think or project about the “strategies” and tactics that this global revolution is taking. I cringe when I hear politicos offer critiques that Occupy should develop a solid platform, present a list of demands, and/or market the campaign in this way or that for maximum appeal. WORD: we don’t care what advice these members of the old guard have – we, the “99%”, are OCCUPYING A NEW REALITY. We are clear on the roots of the inequities and injustices and the forces behind them and we will move ahead to dismantle the current system in all forms and approaches necessary.
However, it’s also been challenging and disappointing to encounter many folks with the same vision for social, economic, and environmental justice who are still so beholden to Obama. They truly believe he is doing his best to work towards those goals and that Congress is the impediment or as Glen Greenwald so articulately spelled out in his article Obama’s “bad negotiating” is actually shrewd negotiating “Their assumption is that Obama loathes these outcomes (tax cuts for the rich, cuts in government spending that do away with social programs and progressive regulatory measures, and entitlement “reform”) but is the victim of his own weak negotiating strategy.”
In addition to signing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Obama’s latest policy measures include a “turn from the Middle East towards the vast potential of the Asia-Pacific region.”
PLAYING WITH FIRE: OBAMA’S THREAT TO CHINA
By Michael Klare
Al Jazeera
When it comes to China policy, is the Obama administration leaping from the frying pan directly into the fire? In an attempt to turn the page on two disastrous wars in the greater Middle East, it may have just launched a new Cold War in Asia – once again, viewing oil as the key to global supremacy.
The new policy was signalled by President Obama himself on November 17 in an address to the Australian Parliament in which he laid out an audacious – and extremely dangerous – geopolitical vision. Instead of focusing on the greater Middle East, as has been the case for the last decade, the United States will now concentrate its power in Asia and the Pacific.
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Can Gift Exchange Fix the Problems of Capitalism and Rebuild our Lost Community?
The reclamation of the gift-based commonwealth not only hastens the collapse of a growth-dependent money system, it also mitigates its severity.
Re-posted from AlterNet, January 1, 2012
Wherever I go and ask people what is missing from their lives, the most common answer (if they are not impoverished or seriously ill) is “community.” What happened to community, and why don’t we have it any more? There are many reasons – the layout of suburbia, the disappearance of public space, the automobile and the television, the high mobility of people and jobs – and, if you trace the “why’s” a few levels down, they all implicate the money system.
More directly posed: community is nearly impossible in a highly monetized society like our own. That is because community is woven from gifts, which is ultimately why poor people often have stronger communities than rich people. If you are financially independent, then you really don’t depend on your neighbors – or indeed on any specific person – for anything. You can just pay someone to do it, or pay someone else to do it.
In former times, people depended for all of life’s necessities and pleasures on people they knew personally. If you alienated the local blacksmith, brewer, or doctor, there was no replacement. Your quality of life would be much lower. If you alienated your neighbors then you might not have help if you sprained your ankle during harvest season, or if your barn burnt down. Community was not an add-on to life, it was a way of life. Today, with only slight exaggeration, we could say we don’t need anyone. I don’t need the farmer who grew my food – I can pay someone else to do it. I don’t need the mechanic who fixed my car. I don’t need the trucker who brought my shoes to the store. I don’t need any of the people who produced any of the things I use. I need someone to do their jobs, but not the unique individual people. They are replaceable and, by the same token, so am I.
That is one reason for the universally recognized superficiality of most social gatherings. How authentic can it be, when the unconscious knowledge, “I don’t need you,” lurks under the surface? When we get together to consume – food, drink, or entertainment – do we really draw on the gifts of anyone present? Anyone can consume. Intimacy comes from co-creation, not co-consumption, as anyone in a band can tell you, and it is different from liking or disliking someone. But in a monetized society, our creativity happens in specialized domains, for money.
image: AlterNet
Posted in AUSTERITY, CAPITAL, CAPITALISM
Tagged "another world is possible", CAPITAL, capitalism, community, consumerism, gift economy, gift exchange, health, lost community, rebuild
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HAPPY NEW YEAR’s
will 2012 prove to be significant for the anti-capitalists? I believe this time next year we’ll know, though based on the choices – I’m afraid it’ll be mighty grim. at any rate it seems to me 2012 will be an auspiscious year for ALL of us.
by the way – have you truly ‘moved your money yet?!’
nice Santa Barbara OCCUPY mural!!
Posted in ARTISTS/ACTIONS, OCCUPY!, political
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Winning Moments for the 99% in 2011
Re-posted from AlterNet / By Sarah Jaffe / December 26, 2011
This year saw working people around the world begin to stand up and fight back. Ten organizers share their most inspiring moments from the U.S.’s year of action.
2011 will be remembered as the year the world woke up and began to fight back against a tiny minority that had held on to control—of money, of political power—for far too long.
Time Magazine named “The Protester” its person of the year, but the story is much deeper than that. Here in the US, the year began with despondency—a new class of Tea Party-supported legislators and governors were taking office around the country, and taking immediate steps to impose their anti-worker austerity agenda.
But the austerity class met resistance—first in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker moved to take away workers’ right to collective bargaining. The people in Wisconsin responded by occupying their Capitol building, kicking off a movement which spread through Ohio and Indiana, then seemed to subside before erupting in the fall with Occupy Wall Street.
But throughout the year, organizers were working around the country, fighting the power of Wall Street, big business, and the right-wing governors who do their bidding. We asked ten of them to talk about the moments that stood out for them this year, the moments that gave them hope. Some are moments you’ve heard of, some might have slipped past you. But all of them were signs of long-overdue change.
1. Melissa Ryan, New Media Director at New Organizing Institute – Wisconsin Leads the Fight Back
“For Wisconsin I think the big moment was when the 14 Democratic State Senators left the state [to avoid a vote on Walker's collective bargaining bill]. I really think that’s what triggered the energy around the recall of the Senators, really triggered the energy around the recall of Walker. It changed from people taking to the streets because they didn’t know what to do to really having the energy to change something.
All these years when we’ve been begging Democrats to stand up, and here were 14 people who not only not caved but who put everything on the line to defend worker’s rights. It’s been a year of moments, really in Wisconsin, but that’s something that still inspires me a year later.
To me that was the lightning rod for everything.”
2. Nelini Stamp, Working Families Party/Occupy Wall Street
“On September 16th I was in a meeting for a couple of hours about how the progressive left can change the narrative from cuts to economic inequality. The next day, little did I realize while I was sleeping on cardboard at Liberty Plaza, the national narrative would change. Occupy Wall Street has changed the narrative for the millions all over the country who have been suffering for a very long time.”
Posted in AUSTERITY, CAPITAL, CAPITALISM, CIVIL LIBERTIES, CORPORATE BRUTALITY, OCCUPY WALL STREET, OCCUPY!, RESOURCES, UNEMPLOYMENT, Unions, US Military expansioin, Wall Street, WE ARE THE 99%
Tagged austerity, CAPITAL, capitalism, corporate capitalism, DEMOCRACY, health, occupy wall street, permanent underclass, privatization, sit/lie law, The Corporate State
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Economic Hit Man Speaking Freely: John Perkins (1 of 4)
This is one of the best analyses of corporatocracy I’ve heard – I highly recommend!
For many years John Perkins was an “economic hit man” in the world of international finance; a function he performed by persuading Third World countries to take on large -scale public works projects. Today, we recognize that these types of projects, financed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), have served to enrich U.S. corporations while creating crippling debt for these countries, effectively turning them into American client states. Experiencing a change of heart, Perkins resigned from the business in 1981. After running a utility company, he founded the nonprofit organization, Dream Change Coalition, which works closely with Amazonian and other indigenous people to help preserve their environments and cultures.