Solidarity with #OccupyWallStreet
Naturally this is not an blanket endorsement of any one demonstrator's ideas even, or especially, if they claim to be a spokesperson for the leaderless demonstration. I support #OccupyWallStreet only to the extent that is a demonstration of frustration with an unfair economic system.
I certainly don't identify with anyone calling for a "revolution" in any violent sense, but I do believe in revolutions of the mind. I have a lot of faith in our Constitution, Bill of Rights, our representative democracy, and human beings. But our rights do get corroded if we aren't willing to exercise them, so I'm happy to see them being exercised. I tried to be in New York City today, but I couldn't, and wanted to use this space to express my solidarity with the demonstration and those camping in the rain and the (very few, thankfully) being pepper sprayed and arrested.
I don't know what the answers are, and some have faulted the #OccupyWallStreet demonstrators for that. That's idiotic. It's a perfectly legitimate, and quite encouraging, "end goal" to assemble simply to express frustration. Snark is lame, don't be a hater.
From "Timequake" by Kurt Vonnegut:
"I remember labor history, too, because the first effective strikes by American working people for better pay, and more respect, and safer working conditions, were called against the railroads. And then against the owners of coal mines and steel mills and textile mills, and on and on. Much blood was shed in what appeared to most members of my generation of American writers to be battles as worth fighting as any against a foreign enemy.
The optimism that infused so much of our writing was based on our belief that after the Magna Carta, and then the Declaration of Independence, and then the Bill of Rights, and then the Emancipation Proclamation, and then Article XIX of the Constitution, which in 1920 entitled women to vote, some scheme for economic justice could also be devised. That was the next logical step.
And even in 1996, I in speeches propose the following amendments to the Constitution:
Article XXVIII: Every newborn shall be sincerely welcomed and cared for until maturity.
Article XXIX: Every adult who needs it shall be given meaningful work to do, at a living wage.
What we have created instead, as customers and employees and investors, is mountains of paper wealth so enormous that a handful of people in charge of them can take millions and billions for themselves without hurting anyone. Apparently.
Many members of my generation are disappointed."
Quotations are such a dreadful, lazy practice that don't do the work justice. For full context, read it.
Throwing up some links sporadically.
@Twitter links
#OccupyWallStreet
@OccupyWallSt
@MMFlint (Michael Moore)
@DemocracyNow (TV/Radio show)
Links
• Transit Workers Union votes to support #OccupyWallStreet demonstrators (Village Voice)
• Democracy Now! TV/Radio news show (that I hear on WBAI 99.5 FM New York) has been covering the demonstrations and Michael Moore was on the show Thursday morning, Sept. 28.
• The senior NYPD officer who pepper sprayed demonstrators is being investigated, and was named in a case against
• Airline pilots have jointed the demonstration. (Forbes)
• Michael Moore is standing with the #OccupyWallStreet demonstrators, bringing publicity and donating book proceeds to feed them.
• Rational Irrationality, article in The New Yorker about how an NYPD officer pepper spraying a protestor might have been the biggest PR boost the demonstration's had so far:
"Thanks to the N.Y.P.D.’s heavy-handed response, what began as a small-scale and relatively innocuous demonstration has turned into a riveting piece of political theatre that now has the eyes of the mainstream media upon it."
• Kickstarter fundraising page set up to raise thousands of dollars for the silly goal of printing a four-page broadsheet. At best, this is a bad idea, and at worst it's an ironically greedy scam. Take this from a newspaper reporter — print media is dying and it's being killed by the new media that made this demonstration possible in the first place. I recommend against giving these people any money.
• occupywallst.org "unofficial de facto" site for news about the demonstration.