Todd Suomela's Library tagged wall-street →  View Popular, Search in Google

economics wall-street banking crisis the-fed money loan recession same-old-story bailout

"Editor’s Note: We have closely followed the Occupy movement and welcome both the attention it has drawn to societal problems and its potential to re-democratize American politics. As part of our continuing engagement with the protests, we are publishing a series of opinion essays by Stanford University professors exploring key issues raised by Occupy. The following statement from the group introduces the series."

wall-street occupations protests activism politics economics ideology

It only makes sense then that the World Revolution of 2011 should have begun as a rebellion against US client states, in much the same way as the rebellions that brought down Soviet power began in places like Poland and Czechoslovakia. The wave of rebellion soon spread across the Mediterranean from North Africa to Southern Europe, and then, much more uncertainly at first, across the Atlantic to New York. But once it had, in a matter of weeks it had exploded everywhere. At this point it’s extremely difficult to predict how far all this will ultimately go. Truly historical events, after all, consist of precisely those moments that could not have been predicted beforehand. Could we be in the presence of a fundamental shift like 1789 – a shift not only in global power relations but in our elementary political common sense? It’s impossible to say, but there are reasons to be optimistic.

wall-street protests activism anarchism revolution history optimism

"Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa handled the eviction of Occupy LA with one thousand police officers. One thousand! There might have been less violence Tuesday night, but Occupy's message (which was also Villaraigosa's) still got sent: overwhelming force will be brought against political dissent.

So, why occupy? The point is not to hold a city park. The point is to dramatize the struggle of weak against strong, which is also the struggle of poor against rich. If the dominant theme of the occupations is, as Jay Rosen succinctly put it, "public policy favors the rich," then having the public police arrest the weak becomes a powerful metaphor for the message of the movement."

wall-street protests activism occupations power demonstration

wall-street protests activism art poster

wall-street protests violence activism police school power order chaos

wall-street protests activism violence police school

Last week, a federal judge in Mississippi sentenced a mother of two named Anita McLemore to three years in federal prison for lying on a government application in order to obtain food stamps.

justice food poverty wall-street protest activism

How strong can anyone defending those causes be? These people are weak and pathetic, and they’re getting weaker. And boy, are they showing it. Way to gear up with combat helmets and the submachine guns, fellas, to take on a bunch of co-eds sitting Indian-style. Maybe after work you can go break up a game of Duck-Duck-Goose at the local Chuck E Cheese. I’d bring the APC for that one.

Bravo to those kids who hung in there and took it. And bravo for standing up and showing everyone what real strength is. There is no strength without principle. You have it. They lost it. It’s as simple as that.

wall-street protests activism violence police power government

As for me, the grounds of my hope have always been that history is wilder than our imagination of it and that the unexpected shows up far more regularly than we ever dream. A year ago, no one imagined an Arab Spring, and no one imagined this American Fall -- even the people who began planning for it this summer. We don’t know what’s coming next, and that’s the good news. My advice is just of the most general sort: Dream big. Occupy your hopes. Talk to strangers. Live in public. Don’t stop now.

I’m sure of one thing: there are a lot more flowers coming.

politics wall-street protests activism civil-society government

wall-street protests activism consensus decision-making experience personal

social-media business marketing wall-street protests

" Consider that we trust military and homeland security personnel with our lives, yet we don’t give them lavish bonuses. They get promotions and the honor of a job well done if they succeed, and the severe disincentive of shame if they fail. For bankers, it is the opposite: a bonus if they make short-term profits and a bailout if they go bust. The question of talent is a red herring: Having worked with both groups, I can tell you that military and security people are not only more careful about safety, but also have far greater technical skill, than bankers. "

wall-street banking financial-services bonus income reform

wall-street activism protests libraries books change education open-access open-education

"They are numerous and they are gaining confidence and pace. These are;

Social Innovation incubators
Movements for a specific solution"

social-movement innovation wall-street activism protests solutions

"The public should realize that "generational warfare" is an agenda that was deliberately designed by the 1 percent to distract the rest of us from the class war that they have been successfully waging over the last three decades. Rather than have a public debate on the policies that have redistributed so much income upward, the 1 percent want to pit children against their parents and grandparents, forcing them to fight over crumbs. "

wall-street protests activism social-security propaganda generation one-percent

"Architecture is capable of mounting a profound critique of the status quo. In doing so, it can also model partial worlds and offer up these models for public discussion and disputation. Not perfect worlds, but possible ones. With respect to housing, then, is it not time to take up again the question of housing publics with renewed vigor, and with attention to the integral relation between housing models and structural, societal change? Is it not time, also, to refuse the so-called common sense of privatization and financialization, and to construct new processes, strategies or institutions — rather than ever more refined forms of indenture — dedicated to the common provision of shelter? Rather than be content with emergency measures, the field of architecture can take inspiration from the steadfast refusal to leave signaled by the Occupy movement, by refusing to play by the rules as written by developers and banks. And architectural thinking can contribute something invaluable to this extraordinary process by offering tangible models of possible worlds, possible forms of shelter, and possible ways of living together, to be debated in general assemblies both real and virtual. "

architecture wall-street protests activism housing building pattern

"There are times in history when right and wrong are sufficiently divergent that no ambiguity remains between them. This is such a moment. Recent decades have witnessed a de facto coup against the democratic structures of the world, and the wholesale capture and sabotage of the entire public regulatory apparatus. "

declaration wall-street protest activism principles justice markets sustainability government

"One second thought, it probably can't be called that, the 99% is a way of thinking class, without thinking class, of addressing inequality without thinking about exploitation. It is inclusive to a fault, rather than deal with the antagonism of class it presents a society against a 1% seen as the epitome of greed and wealth."

wall-street protest activism economics income perception

"But, as they say, that was then. This is now. The call to “improvise” comes in an entirely different context than its predecessors of ’68 and the late 90s. The sustained civic engagement; the focus on economic rights; the olive branches extended to labor; the resurrection of the general strike; hell, just the phrase “we are the 99%,” all work in concord to dispel many of the problems exhibited by the anarcho-liberal. That having been said, there are obviously profound similarities in OWS’s refusal to make demands and the character of “post-territorial” or symbolic politics. Does this matter? Probably. One hopes that it foments significant discussion, disagreement, dialogue and reckonings with past mistakes. But these concerns — i.e., worry that engaging the question of “what next?” will be forestalled by placing organizational regard over the articulation of a platform — are not a call for a return to traditional forms of political engagement. "

wall-street protest activism culture-jamming tactics media anarchism liberalism political-science social-movement causation scale objects social-objects