Occupation Wall Street is back

Occupy Wall Street Plans May 1 Global Disruption of Status Quo

Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, whose anti-greed message spread worldwide during an eight-week encampment in Lower Manhattan last year, plan marches across the globe today calling attention to what they say are abuses of power and wealth.

Bloomberg,

1 May, 2012

Organizers say they hope the coordinated events will mark a spring resurgence of the movement after a quiet winter. Calls for a general strike with no work, no school, no banking and no shopping have sprung up on websites in Toronto, Barcelona, London, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, among hundreds of cities in North America, Europe and Asia.

In New York, Occupy Wall Street will join scores of labor organizations observing May 1, traditionally recognized as International Workers’ Day. They plan marches from Union Square to Lower Manhattan and a “pop-up occupation” of Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, across the street from Bank of America’s Corp.’s 55-story tower.

“We call upon people to refrain from shopping, walk out of class, take the day off of work and other creative forms of resistance disrupting the status quo,” organizers said in an April 26 e-mail.

Occupy groups across the U.S. have protested economic disparity, decrying high foreclosure and unemployment rates that hurt average Americans while bankers and financial executives received bonuses and taxpayer-funded bailouts. In the past six months, similar groups, using social media and other tools, have sprung up in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Pooling Resources

The Occupy movement in New York has relied on demonstrations and marches around the city since Nov. 15, when police ousted hundreds of protesters from their headquarters in Zuccotti Park near Wall Street, where they had camped since Sept. 17.

Banks have pooled resources and cooperated to gather intelligence after learning of plans to picket 99 institutions and companies, followed by what organizers have described as an 8 p.m. “radical after-party” in an undetermined Financial District location.

“If the banks anticipate outrage from everyday citizens, it’s revealing of their own guilt,” said Shane Patrick, a member of the Occupy Wall Street press team. “If they hadn’t been participating in maneuvers that sent the economy into the ditch, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

Police Prepared

New York police can handle picketers, according to Paul Browne, the department’s chief spokesman.

“We’re experienced at accommodating lawful protests and responding appropriately to anyone who engages in unlawful activity, and we’re prepared to do both,” he said in an interview.

About 2,100 Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York have been arrested since the demonstrations began, said Bill Dobbs, a member of the group’s media-relations team.

In U.S. District Court in Manhattan yesterday, four City Council members accused JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Brookfield Office Properties Inc., Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, of suppressing free speech and using excessive force against protesters. The mayor is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Organizers describe the May Day events as a coming together of the Occupy movement, with activists also calling for more open immigration laws, expanded labor rights and cheaper financing for higher education. Financial institutions remain a primary target of the protests.

Bigger Banks

“Four years after the financial crisis, not a single of the too-big-to-fail banks is smaller; in fact, they all continue to grow in size and risk,” the group’s press office said in an April 26 e-mail.

Five banks -- JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc. (C), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) together held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, compared with 43 percent in 2006, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve.

Occupy Wall Street began planning for May Day in January, meeting in churches and union halls with a decision-making system that avoids a single leader. Instead, participants rely on group “break-out” sessions in which clusters discuss such tasks as crowd-building, logistics and communications.

About 150 attended an April 25 meeting at the Greenwich Village headquarters of the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union, making last-minute preparations for how to deploy legal and medical help; site selection for picketing; purchasing, production and distribution of protest signs; and how to talk to reporters.

Blockades Planned

The meeting convened inside the union hall basement, where attendees arranged chairs in a circle as three facilitators asked each of the assembled to identify themselves by first name and gender -- he, she or they. Most appeared under age 30, though gray-haired baby boomers also participated. One of the older attendees pulled a ski mask over his head to protest the presence of a photographer from Tokyo.

Today, beginning at 8 a.m. in Bryant Park, scheduled events include teach-ins, art performances and a staging area for “direct action and civil disobedience,” such as bank blockades.

Tom Morello of the Grammy Award-winning rock band Rage Against the Machine along with 1,000 other guitar-playing musicians will accompany a march to Union Square at 2 p.m., according to the maydaynyc.org website. That will be followed by a “unity rally” at Union Square at 4 p.m.; a march from there to Wall Street at 5:30 p.m.; and a walk to a staging area for “evening actions,” which organizers at the April 25 meeting said would be the so-called after-party.

Golden Gate

Occupy-related events are planned in 115 cities throughout the U.S., from college towns such as Amherst, Massachusetts, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Philadelphia.

In San Francisco, a group calling itself the Golden Gate Bridge Labor Coalition abandoned a plan to close the span while carrying on with a day of picketing to support bridge, ferry and bus workers seeking reduced health-care benefit costs, according to its website. Protesters still plan a rally at 7 a.m. at the toll plaza, without blocking the bridge, the group said in a statement.

Across the bay in Oakland, protesters said they intend morning marches on banks and the Chamber of Commerce, followed by an afternoon rally and a march downtown.

“We’re looking forward to vigorously asserting our constitutional right to protest and giving a loud outcry about Wall Street and greed,” Dobbs said. “We’re hoping this will make a splash. We hope it will bring a lot of more people into the Occupy movement.”

Occupation Wall Street - a history

Part one of an al-Jazeera history of Occupation Wall Street

Fault Lines - History of an occupation

al-Jazeera

Fault Lines tells the definitive history of Occupy Wall Street from its early days through the movement's rapid spread up to the brutal crackdown by state authorities.

The American Myth

This is an excellent, excellent short film. But I would add one caveat. I would not label "Predatory Capitalism" as the evil. As I said in "Collapse", "Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism are all old and archaic constructs because all of them assume infinite resources." Predatory Capitalism -- in the age of plentiful resources -- was merely the most-effective means to loot, control, and maximize profits.

Replace "predatory capitalism" with "infinite growth" and this film paints a picture that only honorable men and women can see completely. For it is only from a place of honor, obligated to see the whole truth, that one can appreciate the full horror of what human industrial civilization has accomplished. -- MCR

Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine

A brief and crucial history of the United States

Violent dispersal of Occupy DC

Riot police violently disperse Occupy DC with batons

RT

4 Febraury, 2012

National Park Service police began slowly dismantling the Occupy DC encampment at McPherson Square on K Street early Saturday morning. 

Over the course of several hours, cops asked protesters to leave while authorities in hazmat suits combed the park and removed tents. 

Despite protesters insisting that the temporary structures were in compliance with the latest regulations imposed on the demonstrators, the cops continued to clear out the park throughout the course of the day. 

With only a small section of McPherson still spared by late afternoon, authorities eventually moved in and used force to clear the rest of the park. 

Protesters, passersby and journalists alike were assaulted as cops clad in riot gear stormed into the crowd and attacked anyone on the scene. 

Here cops are showing forcing a group of people out of the park with plastic shields and batons, only for them to fall into the mud and be crammed into a fence that prevented them from easily vacating the premises. 

Several arrests were reported, including one photojournalist, and many others were injured in the raid, including one RT cameraman.

More Occupy evictions - this time Miami

Riot police forcibly evict Occupy Miami

On Tuesday local Law enforcement showed up in full riot gear determined to evict the Occupy Miami movement from the Stephen P. Clark county building. Many of the protesters chose to leave, but six remaining protesters decided to stand their ground.

Occupy DC

Defying Camping Ban, Occupy D.C. Protesters Remain In Place

NPR, 

31 January, 2012

The Occupy D.C. encampment received notice that as of noon yesterday, camping would not be allowed at McPherson Square, the downtown Washington, D.C. park they've occupied for months now.

But that deadline came and went and instead of heeding the warning from the National Park Service, the protesters erected an even bigger tent. The protesters draped a huge blue tarp emblazoned with the words "Tent of Dreams" over the statue of Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson in the middle of the park.

As NPR member station WAMU reports, the protesters slept under that tent this morning, saying they will stay there until police forcibly remove them.

WAMU adds:

"The protesters are also going to court again today to argue against the no-camping ban.

"'From my understanding what they're going to be arguing is that under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the police don't have the right to seize our property and they do not have the right to arrest us for being in a public space and not committing any real crimes,' says Sam Jeweler, one of the Occupy DC participants."

Over the past few days, the Occupy movement has remerged from a winter break. Violence broke out over the weekend in Oakland where some 400 Occupy Oakland members were arrested and that put the spotlight on the D.C. off-shoot, yesterday.

The National Park Service had left the encampment alone, until this week, shortly after it was pressured by congress to take action.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that U.S. Park Police said they would enforce the no-camping rule but they would do it incrementally. The paper reports:

"... Sgt. David Schlosser, a Park Police spokesman, said officers were trying to take an 'incremental and measured' approach by reminding demonstrators of the deadline and urging them to respect the camping ban.

"He said some of the few dozen remaining demonstrators had already followed the order, though he did not know how many. He declined to discuss a timeline for eviction, though he said the camping ban pertained not only to sleeping on the grounds but also to possessing bedding materials such as blanket and pillows."

End of First Amendment rights for the press?

When I first saw the video of the young RT correspondent being arrested at Fort Benning I did not think too much about it - after all the US seems to regularly arrest journalists these days.

However, when I heard her account of the incident my reaction changed.

She was there as an accredited journalist to cover a peaceful demonstration that has taken place for the past few years; as such she enjoys First Amerndment rights.

She was arrested for unlawful assembly although not part of the demonstrations (you can see her press card in the video) and although she obeyed the orders of the police.

It seems also that habeas corpus does not apply in the state of Georgia any more as she was not allowed to hear the charges against her or to answer them.

If anything LIKE this happened to an American journalist somwhere else, say in Russia, can you imagine the furore.

That is unlikely because the USSR (like all the communist states)  respected foreign journalists.  They have made life difficult for them and occasionally expelled them - but they were never arrested adnd charged under Soviet laws.

Only the US has granted themselves this freedom, as can be seen in the targeted killing of an al Jazeera journalist in the Iraq war  and the murder of a Reuters cameraman from a helicopter gunship (immortalized by Wikileaks).

We  will know when the first person disappears into “indefinite detention” that the darkness of tyranny has finally descended on the Land of the Free,

RT America's correspondent arrested -- Raw Video

Check out this raw footage of RT correspondent Kaelyn Forde being brutally arrested by police while covering a demonstration at Fort Benning.

:

This next video relates to the same events

Arrested RT correspondent talks about police brutality at Fort Benning

RT

Released RT correspondent Kaelyn Forde talking about her arrest at Fort Benning where the RT crew covered an annual demonstration against human rights violations committed by the SOA and WHINSEC. She says even though they presented their press credentials they still were arrested.

Canada in decay; global corporate power

We could just as well be talking about New Zealand - or any other country in the world.

What Happened to Canada?

What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

by Chris Hedges, Truthdig

Truth-out,

30 January, 2012

But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.

“I want to tell you that I was arrested because I am seen as a threat,” Canadian activist Leah Henderson wrote to fellow dissidents before being sent to Vanier prison in Milton, Ontario, to serve a 10-month sentence. “I want to tell you that you might be too. I want to tell you that this is something we need to prepare for. I want to tell you that the risk of incarceration alone should not determine our organizing.”

“My skills and experience—as a facilitator, as a trainer, as a legal professional and as someone linking different communities and movements—were all targeted in this case, with the state trying to depict me as a ‘brainwasher’ and as a mastermind of mayhem, violence and destruction,” she went on. “During the week of the G8 & G20 summits, the police targeted legal observers, street medics and independent media. It is clear that the skills that make us strong, the alternatives that reduce our reliance on their systems and prefigure a new world, are the very things that they are most afraid of.”

The decay of Canada illustrates two things. Corporate power is global, and resistance to it cannot be restricted by national boundaries. Corporations have no regard for nation-states. They assert their power to exploit the land and the people everywhere. They play worker off of worker and nation off of nation. They control the political elites in Ottawa as they do in London, Paris and Washington. This, I suspect, is why the tactics to crush the Occupy movement around the globe have an eerie similarity—infiltrations, surveillance, the denial of public assembly, physical attempts to eradicate encampments, the use of propaganda and the press to demonize the movement, new draconian laws stripping citizens of basic rights, and increasingly harsh terms of incarceration.

Our solidarity should be with activists who march on Tahrir Square in Cairo or set up encampamentos in Madrid. These are our true compatriots. The more we shed ourselves of national identity in this fight, the more we grasp that our true allies may not speak our language or embrace our religious and cultural traditions, the more powerful we will become.

Those who seek to discredit this movement employ the language of nationalism and attempt to make us fearful of the other. Wave the flag. Sing the national anthem. Swell with national hubris. Be vigilant of the hidden terrorist. Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver, responding to the growing opposition to the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipelines, wrote in an open letter that “environmental and other radical groups” were trying to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.” He accused pipeline opponents of receiving funding from foreign special interest groups and said that “if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.”

No matter that in both Canada and the United States suing the government to seek redress is the right of every citizen. No matter that the opposition to the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines has its roots in Canada. No matter that the effort by citizens in the U.S. and in Canada to fight climate change is about self-preservation. The minister, in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry like the energy czars in most of the other industrialized nations, seeks to pit “loyal” Canadians against “disloyal” Canadians. Those with whom we will build this movement of resistance will not in some cases be our own. They may speak Arabic, pray five times a day toward Mecca and be holding off the police thugs in the center of Cairo. Or they may be generously pierced and tattooed and speak Danish or they may be Mandarin-speaking workers battling China’s totalitarian capitalism. These are differences that make no difference.

“My country right or wrong,” G.K. Chesterton once wrote, is on the same level as “My mother, drunk or sober.”

Our most dangerous opponents, in fact, look and speak like us. They hijack familiar and comforting iconography and slogans to paint themselves as true patriots. They claim to love Jesus. But they cynically serve the function a native bureaucracy serves for any foreign colonizer. The British and the French, and earlier the Romans, were masters of this game. They recruited local quislings to carry out policies and repression that were determined in London or Paris or Rome. Popular anger was vented against these personages, and native group vied with native group in battles for scraps of influence. And when one native ruler was overthrown or, more rarely, voted out of power, these imperial machines recruited a new face. The actual centers of power did not change. The pillage continued. Global financiers are the new colonizers. They make the rules. They pull the strings. They offer the illusion of choice in our carnivals of political theater. But corporate power remains constant and unimpeded. Barack Obama serves the same role Herod did in imperial Rome

.

This is why the Occupy Wall Street movement is important. It targets the center of power—global financial institutions. It deflects attention from the empty posturing in the legislative and executive offices in Washington or London or Paris. The Occupy movement reminds us that until the corporate superstructure is dismantled it does not matter which member of the native elite is elected or anointed to rule. The Canadian prime minister is as much a servant of corporate power as the American president. And replacing either will not alter corporate domination. As the corporate mechanisms of control become apparent to wider segments of the population, discontent will grow further. So will the force employed by our corporate overlords. It will be a long road for us. But we are not alone. There are struggles and brush fires everywhere. Leah Henderson is not only right. She is my compatriot

Occupy the Courts

An intelligent discussion of where the Occupy movement is at this stage.


From Press TV.
US Occupy Movement: "Occupy Capitol Hill"

Press TV,

19 January, 2012

"We are here because they don't represent us": This is how US lawmakers returning from a three-week winter break were greeted by protesters from the "Occupy" movement, who gathered outside the US Capitol building to decry the corrupting influence of money in politics.

Just earlier in the week, a new opinion poll showed a record 84% of Americans disapproved the job Congress was doing. The "Occupy Movement" is also planning to occupy Federal courthouses across the country on Friday January 20th to show their frustration with the judicial system. 

This edition of News Analysis asks: How badly is the American system "broken", to use the word of the occupiers?

In the interview the movement to amend the US constitution to specifically exclude corporations was mentioned.


Here is the introduction to the website

We the People, Not We the Corporations

On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions.

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule. We Move to Amend.

Read our proposed amendment.

Occupy the Courts January 20, 201

National Day of Protest - January 20, 2012

This is the website for "Occupy the Courts"


and the latest...

‘Occupy’ Group Sues Over Planned Rally at New York Courthouse

Businessweek,

19 January, 2012

 “Occupy the Courts,” a group planning to rally outside a Manhattan federal courthouse, sued after the U.S. denied it a permit.

Change of focus for OWS

OWS occupies Congress

On Tuesday hundreds gathered outside the US capital in Washington, DC. Occupy Wall Street demonstrators obtained a permit to protest Congress favoring big corporations' interests over the American people's interest. Recently the Supreme Court's decided to allow corporations to contribute as much money as they wish into candidates' political campaigns, which doesn't resonate with the protesters

MSNBC documentary on OWS and Tea Party

Occupy and Tea Party Talk

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

US storms OWS encampments

A good backgrounder on Occupation Wall Street from Press TV

Press TV

US police have arrested several Occupy Wall Street protesters in the state of Iowa and charged them with trespassing. 

Interview with Connie Everett, organizer of Occupy Columbus

#Occupation Houston

Occupy protesters indicted on felony charges in Houston

Seven Occupy protesters were indicted on felony charges by a grand jury in Houston on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office says, in connection with their demonstration at the local port as part of a national day of action by the movement.

The decision comes nearly a week after a judge initially dismissed the charges, saying the protesters could not be charged with possessing or using a "criminal instrument" – a felony in Texas – for their use of PVC pipe.

The protesters -- three from Austin, four from Houston -- put their arms through the pipe and used latches on it to connect together, making their arrest more difficult but not preventing it, said one of their attorneys, Daphne Silverman, of the National Lawyer's Guild in Houston. Donna Hawkins, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney's Office, confirmed the indictment.

Houston DA turns up the heat on Occupy activists

"They are feeling, 'wow,' is the word. ... They're in a lot of shock. They were very happy with the justice's decision last week, they believed in her, they believed in the justice system," Silverman said. "These people ... are not criminals. These folks are out there attempting to make the country better for all of us."

Silverman, who noted that she believed the law had been wrongly applied by the prosecutor, said it's likely the protesters will be back in court in January to talk about the next step, such as negotiations or to go to trial. If convicted, they face up to two years in jail.

Arrests as Occupy Wall Street makes bid for new camp

Protester Dustin Phipps -- who is not one of the seven charged -- said it was a "strategic move" by local police to discourage others from participating in civil disobedience.

"We definitely plan on fighting it," said Phipps, 28, a pre-medical student at the University of Houston. "We're going to move forward ... with faith and determination because we understand we have the rights and the upper hand, and we're going to make sure justice is served."

The protesters had joined with other Occupy outfits across the country that were conducting port shutdowns on Dec. 12 to economically disrupt what they called "Wall Street on the waterfront.”

Arrests on felony arrests were occurring in other cities, such as Denver and New York. Civil rights lawyers have suggested the use of felony charges was another form of crackdown on the movement.

The Houston Police Department has used the "criminal instrument" against protesters on previous occasions, according to Attorney Randall Kallinen, who is representing one of the seven protesters. The charge usually does not hold up in court in such cases, but because it is a felony charge it has a chilling effect on would-be activists, he said.

"We’ve been seeing more of them (felony arrests), especially beginning of November," said Gideon Oliver of the lawyers guild in New York. The police and the district attorney’s office have discretion in determining the charges, "and so there are two sort of steps in the process where ... the police or the DA, if they conducted a reasonable investigation, I think, in a lot of these cases would realize that they’re overcharging."

Occupy Our Homes: protesters bid to move families into foreclosed houses

Occupy activists descend on Brooklyn on first day of campaign to move homeless people into buildings foreclosed by US banks

the Guardian,

7 December, 2011

On Tuesday afternoon, Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York – along with a coalition of activist groups and members of a Brooklyn community – opened a foreclosed home to a struggling family of four.

For Doyle Coleman, the action was a welcome relief. The 57 year-old lives two doors down from the newly-occupied property in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of East New York. Sitting on his front porch on Tuesday evening, Coleman pointed to the property, calling it by its address. "702, where they're putting this family in – it's been empty for three years. If not more."

The property was allegedly foreclosed by Bank of America. On Tuesday it became the home of a young New York family that includes an autistic nine-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy.

Coleman – who's lived in the neighbourhood for over two decades – says he's watched the property steadily deteriorate over the years. Like many foreclosed homes in the neighbourhood, he says the building has become a magnet for East New York's endemic problems of drugs and crime.

It's also been treated as dump, Coleman claims. He says demolition contractors from other neighbourhoods have repeatedly used the front yard of the home to empty truckloads of debris.

"They would bring it over here, 2 in the morning, and dump it. So when we would wake up in the morning we'd have a yard full of debris. Smashed toilets, smashed sinks, bathtubs, tile. I mean, you name it," he says.

"I would clean those yards," he adds. For Coleman, the motivation to do the work was simple: "We care about our block."

Coleman said that the hundreds of protesters gathered in his neighbourhood on Tuesday also cared. Inspired by their efforts to move a family into the neglected house, Coleman and his wife opened their home to activists needing a space to work or to use the restroom.

"We applaud it," he said.

Tuesday's move was part of a national day of action targeting the issue of foreclosures and marking the beginning of Occupy Wall Street's Occupy Our Homes campaign. Various demonstrations were carried out in over 25 cities, including Seattle, Washington, Atlanta, Georgia and Riverside, California.

New York City's action kicked off with a brief tour of East New York, which last year had the highest foreclosure rate of all the neighbourhoods in the city. Nationwide, an estimated 4m homes have been seized by banks since 2006, according to RealtyTrac, a California-based real estate data firm. Roughly 300 marchers made stops at several foreclosed homes along the route. Filling the stoops of dilapidated Brooklyn houses, members of the community joined with local lawmakers and religious figures to denounce widespread foreclosures.

The march ended at two-storey house with a large yellow sign mounted above the front door. In all capital letters it read: 

"FORECLOSE ON BANKS NOT ON PEOPLE."

With media anxiously crowded at the gates to the property, city council member Charles Barron opened the front door to reveal a young man and a little boy. The man was 26 year-old Alfredo Carrasquillo and the boy was his five year-old son, Alfredo Jr. The two were then joined by Junior's mother, 30-year-old Tasha Glasgow. Tasha's nine-year-old autistic daughter, Tanisha, made an appearance soon after.

Occupy Wall Street press representatives said the family had been living off and on in New York City homeless shelters for the past 10 years. Glasgow was reportedly rendered homeless most recently after her housing voucher was revoked, shortly before she was scheduled to move into a permanent space. Occupy Wall Street organisers say austerity measures imposed by Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor, caused Glasgow to lose the home she planned to have.

Glasgow and her two children have not yet moved into their new house, but plan to after volunteer renovation teams make a series of improvements to the space. In the meantime, crews of demonstrators are working in shifts to keep the location guarded around the clock.

Tuesday's action was the result of weeks of preparation and co-ordination between Occupy Wall Street and local activist organisations. According to Occupy Wall Street organiser Nelini Stamp, activists began scouting locations roughly a month and a half ago. After being barred from at least two promising properties due to construction, the activists found what they were looking for in East New York. According to Stamp, a receptive response from the community and easy access to the space, made the home the ideal site for an action. Stamp says organisers first set foot in the home on Sunday. The following day the family was shown the space for the first time.

With encampments across the country being cleared out, many viewed yesterday's action as a strategic shift in the Occupy movement; one that could be replicated nationwide. Stamp was enthused by the co-operation of various actors in pulling off the operation.

"I think this is a really great model for the future," Stamp said.

Tuesday's march featured a minimal police presence, though an apparently bloody encounter with the police took place several blocks from the planned demonstration. Prior to the conclusion of the march, a young man told the crowd he expected to be foreclosed upon that day. This prompted approximately 100 protesters to gather at his nearby home.

According to Occupy Wall Street organizer Lorenzo Serna, who witnessed the incident, a protester suffered a bleeding head injury when police kicked a door open to enter the home. According to Serna, the protester – who reportedly declined a ride to the hospital – was the only person arrested in the altercation.

Occupation Washington DC

Standoff ends between police, Occupy DC protesters

CNN,

5 December, 2011

"Washington -- An hours-long standoff between police and Occupy DC protesters ended Sunday night after officers forcibly removed several people clinging to a wood structure erected earlier in the district's McPherson Square.

A total of 31 people were arrested over the course of the day, according to U.S. Park Police spokesman Sgt. David Schlosser.

The standoff started shortly before 11 a.m. as park police surrounded the structure built overnight as a place where protesters could stay warm in the winter and hold their daily general assembly meetings, according to Wade Simmons, one of the Occupy demonstrators.

Police ordered the structure taken down around noon Sunday, a post on the Occupy DC website reported, but some people remained perched on top of or inside the building, which was donated by a father-son architect team. As many as 200 people gathered at the park to watch the standoff.

For article GO HERE

Mike Ruppert on the Lifeboat Hour

I can recommend listening to the update Mike Ruppert gave on yesterday's Lifeboat Hour show.

The Lifeboat Hour 11/27/11

Mike discusses the crackdown on Occupy and warns listeners that the upcoming week could fundamentally change life as we know it.  With the economic collapse in Europe coming to a head while tensions heighten in the Middle East, it is apparent that systemic breakdown is upon us.  Listener emails and calls filled the remainder of the show with great dialogue on a number of pressing issues.

To listen GO HERE