This is the video for the song ‘Occupy Wall Street’ written and performed by Spencer Livingston. Produced and engineered by Peter Malick.
‘Occupy Wall Street’ is available on itunes, amazon, and rhapsody.
All Proceeds from the sale of this song will be used to support the current ‘Occupy’ movement.
January 5th, 2012
Performing Artist:
John L. Samuels Jr.-Esco (theescoexperience@gmail.com)
December 23rd, 2011
This is Dedicated to the thousands of people who are standing up for what they believe in.
Miley Cyrus
December 15th, 2011
Boston’s Mayor Menino is proud of his police’s ability to use overwhelming force to crush nonviolent protesters at Occupy Boston. He crows about the ease with which they arrested 46, as if ease in crushing dissent is what matters.
After crushing the demonstrators, Menino criticized their “leadership”:
He said that the protesters who had camped out in Dewey Square since late September had the “wrong leadership.”
“The leadership changed every hour and twice on Sunday,” he said.
Presumably he, like most leaders, is completely unable to understand people’s self-organization.
Menino has returned Dewey Square to the use of the people, so that it can remain empty and largely unused as before.
One of the persistent criticisms of the Greenway is that people just don’t use it enough. Of course now the Occupiers may have used it too much.
Better to be unused than to be used by hundreds, when the hundreds oppose the powerful. Silence is preferable to free speech, as Mayors around the country have clarified.
Menino revealed the iron fist as he pledged to crush any future occupations:
Menino said that protesters, who have scheduled another general assembly at 7 p.m. this evening on the Boston Common to discuss next steps, will not be allowed to take over any city parks.
“They’re trespassing. Any park they go into now is trespassing. The Parks Department has strict rules and regulations about sleeping in the parks,” he said.
“It’s over,” he said. “We have got to figure out how to channel their energies to be positive … I feel like they have an opportunity.”
Occupy Boston was the most important thing to happen to Boston in decades. Mayor Menino has now crushed it. The city of Boston should be ashamed of its Mayor today, just at it should be proud of the occupiers who stood up for the 1%.
The Occupiers have issued a statement:
You cannot evict an idea whose time has come. Boston’s Occupiers will persist in rejecting a world created by and for the 1%. We might have been evicted, but we shall not be moved. We remain invested in the future of our movement. We will continue to challenge Wall Street’s occupation of our government.
The crushing of occupations around the country, often by “liberal” mayors shows once again that liberal politicians, with all too few exceptions, are agents of the powerful 1% as are their “conservative” opponents. Their liberalism means they will be liberal in their use of police power to crush dissent, from Oakland to Boston, from Portland and UC Davis to DC. Phil Ochs understood liberalism decades ago.
December 10th, 2011
Laurie Penny came to the US to cover Occupy Wall Street. Instead she got spider bights and a first-class lesson in what it means to be among the 99% in America, worrying how you’re going to pay for that unexpected medical bill:
A New York spider gave me an insight into US private healthcare
Occupy Wall Street is right – a rash of bites showed me how private healthcare keeps Americans cowed and compliantBy Laurie Penny
It started with a spider. Someone with a taste for narrative justice might call it retribution, but there’s really no moral correlation between the wisdom of absconding with a relative stranger after a party and waking up the next morning in Brooklyn with a rash of poisonous bites on your arm. When the angels of sexual continence want to punish you, they send crabs not spiders.
I assumed, at first, that the maddeningly itchy marks were the work of common-or-flophouse New York bedbugs, but 12 hours later, with my right arm swollen to the width and purplish colour of a prize turnip, my friend identified the hallmarks of the brown recluse spider, and uttered words I had hoped never to hear on this side of the Atlantic: “You should really get that checked out by a doctor.”
I first came to New York to write about the emerging social justice movements associated with Occupy Wall Street. Through my conversations with the protesters in Zucotti Park, I began to understand how profoundly the stranglehold of American private healthcare keeps ordinary people cowed and compliant in the land of the notionally free.
It’s not just the 59 million Americans living without health insurance and unable to access treatment for everyday maladies without crippling expense. It’s the millions more who dare not risk a dispute with their boss for fear of losing their medical cover, who expect to remortgage their homes in old age to meet the costs of failing health, or who live in fear of bankruptcy should they develop a chronic condition or have an accident.
The notion of a society that sanctions companies to profit from sickness feels barbaric enough, without then forcing ordinary people to choose between medical treatment and the financial future of their families. President Obama’s attempt to reform the system in 2009 roundly failed to remove healthcare as a source of perennial anxiety for most American citizens, or to lighten the dead hand of the market on medical provision in the US.
Socialised healthcare is in my blood but, unfortunately last Wednesday, so was a hefty dose of spider venom and several billion extra bacteria – the unfriendly sort that make an infected limb sweat and swell like a rotten root vegetable. I had travel insurance, but no idea if it stretched to the snacking habits of urban arachnids. So I uttered the words familiar to any uninsured or precariously insured American: “I’ll just wait for a little bit and see if it gets better.”
Had I waited another 24 hours, I might have lost my arm. By the time I was persuaded to go to the emergency response unit at Beth Israel hospital I could no longer move the limb, which was developing worrying purple track-marks. The triage nurse sent me straight through to ER, where I was given a bunk next to a groaning man in his mid-30s who, like me, had been so worried about the cost of treatment that he had allowed an infection to spread, in this case from a rotten tooth. He was already missing several teeth. He told me he was a postal worker with no health insurance, and that he wouldn’t have come for treatment had his girlfriend not driven him to hospital when he collapsed with a fever.
Compared to the accident and emergency unit at my local London hospital, the waiting period was civilised; it was a mere hour before a stern-looking registrar arrived to take my money. He explained the covering clauses of my travel insurance and showed me where to sign on several complicated forms. When I explained I was unable to do so because my arm wasn’t working, he gave me a look that suggested I’d have had to find a way to sign even if I’d come in with all four limbs off. I signed with my left hand.
After that, the service was exceptional. I was whisked off to intensive care for intravenous antibiotics. I was put in a quiet bed near a window, with no cracks or mildew in the walls, and brought cool water and a clean towel. And when, in the middle of the night, I went into near-fatal anaphylactic shock, the staff’s reaction was swift and efficient. I felt, in other words like a valued customer. But it also meant that, at 2am and thousands of miles from home, I was already wondering how I would afford the prescription for all the antibiotics I needed.
This is the difference that social medicine makes to the fabric and quality of life in a civilised country. When I finally wobbled out of the shiny lobby of the Beth Israel, clutching a bag of drugs, follow-up advice and complimentary hospital toiletries, I understood what it really means to be without means in America. Those who are wealthy enough to afford decent healthcare have their needs met in relative luxury, while those who are poor live in fear of getting ill, worrying that one misadventure might leave you with yet more debts to pay off.
No amount of fresh towels and edible breakfasts can make up for the feeling that your health is less important than the capacity of your chequebook. Which is why children and pensioners are still standing in Manhattan’s financial district with placards telling the world they cannot afford healthcare, as police patrol the perimeter. And why, when I got out of hospital, I went straight back down to Liberty Plaza to stand with them.
December 5th, 2011
Lyrics:
“I’ll Occupy”
I first was pepper sprayed
Just standing on the side
But it took me being blinded
to open up up my eyes
Cause I’d read the daily news,
and not responded actively
and I realized then and there
this revolution needed me
So here I am,
camped in a tent
Which is really so convenient
cause I can’t afford my rent
But they came with shields and mace
In the night while it was dark
A NYPD army
Sent to clear Zuccotti ParkWe’ll protest on, with catchy phases
We’re going global
From London to Uc Davis
If you think that your batons are going to get us to go home
GO on and hit me, I’ll just upload it from my phone.Until I die,
I’ll occupy
As long I know how to sit
And hold this heavy sign
cause the 99 is pissed
and we will not BE dismissed
I’ll occupy
I’ll occupy
hell yeahCall us “hippies” call us “homeless,”
yeah we’re fed it.
And we “don’t know what we want,”
to our discredit.
But if you’re reading all the news, funded by the corporations
Its no mystery
How you’ve missed our declarationWe’re armed too
Yeah, we’ve got twitter
We’re a techno savvy nation
And we’re bitter
There’s no Marie Antoinette
We’re dragging to the Guillotine
Got non-violence, you bet!
Cause we aim to keep this cleanWe will not go! Bring on the snow!
Got your faceless cooperate body
One peaceful badass foe
We’re awake, we saw Wall-e, and you know we’re organized
Did you think we’d crumble?
Did you think we’d lay down and not try?Until I die,
I’ll occupy
As long I know how to sit
And hold this heavy sign
cause the 99 is pissed
and we will not be dismissed
I’ll occupy
I’ll occupy
HELL yeah
HELL yeah!We’re off our Meds, we’re watching Ted
And we’re into Zombie culture,
But we’re not the walking dead
If you want to fight for justice join the masses, we are strong
And it wouldn’t hurt to take a
minute to repost this song!Until we die,
We’ll occupy
As long we know how to sit
And hold these heavy sign
cause the 99 is pissed
and we will not be dismissed
We’ll occupy
We’ll occupy
HELL yeah
1 comment December 4th, 2011
Video has emerged of the brutal beating of three-term American veteran Kayvan Sabehgi by Oakland police, which ruptured his spleen.
November 20th, 2011
A group of folks from Occupy Boston have started a new paper, The Boston Occupier, with coverage of the local, national, and international movement and related issues. From their opening editorial:
The Boston Occupier is an independent news source furthering the political and economic discourse initiated by the Occupy movement. Staffed entirely by volunteers, it will operate in three forms: a website, a broadsheet and a daily update distributed solely at Dewey Square.
In addition to covering the Boston’s occupation and larger movement itself, the Occupier will report on unemployment, campaign finance, corporate personhood, social justice, transparency, accountability, and the other issues raised by the protesters.
We seek to facilitate respectful debate. Following the cue of other publications, the op-eds selected for publication will generally be those which offer a perspective different from those of the editorial section. All ideas are welcome, so long as the discussion surrounding them is carried out in a coherent and thoughtful manner.
If the encampment at Dewey Square comes to an end, this publication will be a way for the dialogue it has inspired to persist. Independent of the group’s physical presence in the heart of the financial district, The Boston Occupier hopes to provide a space for respectful, insightful dialogue on the political and economic troubles of our day. We have a closer vantage point than others, but that doesn’t mean that our aspirations to high journalistic standards of informed objectivity are less valid.”
November 19th, 2011
Have just returned from the demonstration in Boston, one of hundreds planned nationwide. On the theme of Jobs not Cuts, the organizers called for public spending to fix America’s decaying infrastructure. The rally was supported by Occupy Boston, Move On, Defend the American Dream, and numerous unions and community organizations.
The rally began with a cold drizzle which did little to dampen the crowds or their enthusiasm. What was most striking was the diversity of the crowd. The usual students, young white unemployed and long-time activists were joined by many unionists and numerous individuals and groups from Boston’s diverse neighborhoods. There was even a sizeable contingent from the Chinatown Neighborhood Association, a first that I’ve ever seen. If this diversity is starting to build in other cities, I understand the intensity and desperation with which the state, coordinated by the Homeland Security and (In)Justice Departments have acted to displace, intimidate, and destroy the movement. They may sense the beginning of something uniting enough people to seriously threaten the powers that be.
The march and rally were energetic. It was fascinating to see the creative tension between the union leaders who wanted to impose structure, such as approved slogans and the Occupy Boston affiliated folks who are not used to letting leaders tell them what they can think or do. In this case, the union leaders largely gave in. At the rally, the union speakers could not be heard. Thus they good naturedly turned to the people’s mike to get the words across. Unfortunately, speaker after speaker said few the exact same things, sticking tightly to their script, so that much of the crowd, me included, decided to leave in boredom. Still, it was quite an experience to see so many people from such diverse backgrounds marching together to say “NO!” to the status quo.
November 17th, 2011
James Downie at the Washington Post writes of last night’s attack on Occupy Wall Street. Note especially his last paragraph:
Bloomberg’s disgraceful eviction of Occupy Wall Street
By James Downie
Early Wednesday morning, New York police raided and evicted the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zucotti Park in southern Manhattan. The behavior of the NYPD and the mayor’s office, in ordering this brazen action while blocking the press and the public from reporting on the eviction, is a disgraceful display of unnecessary force on a protest that for the most part has behaved lawfully and respectfully throughout its two-month existence.
The last time the police planned to clear the park, they had announced the eviction ahead of time and gave people and press time to flood in. This time, the NYPD, clearly intent on avoiding as much scrutiny as possible, made no such “mistake.” According to reporter accounts on news Web sites and on Twitter, at around 1:00 a.m., police moved swiftly to isolate Zucotti from the outside world. The NYPD closed subway stops and streets around the park, and set up barricades to prevent people from joining the protest. Once inside the park, the police tore up the tents, and apparently ruined the belongings of the protesters who had turned the park into a makeshift city over the last two months. (Among other ruined items were 5000 books from the park’s library, the protesters’ Twitter feed points out.) Those who resisted were met with batons and pepper spray, reports Mother Jones’s Josh Harkinson; among others, New York City Council member Ydanis Rodriguez was arrested and bleeding from the head, according to another council member. Protesters were to be allowed back into the park, but the NYPD insisted they’d have to make do without tents, tarps or any other equipment essential to the occupation.
Bloomberg’s brazenness has only increased during the morning. At 6:30 a.m., Judge Lucy Billings issued an injunction “requiring the protesters to be readmitted to Zuccotti Park with their tents,” but Bloomberg has ignored the court order and kept the park closed. Protesters have marched to Zucotti Park, but are being barred from entrance despite displaying that court order to the police on site. At this time, the mayor’s office has not explained why it is ignoring the court order.
Most disturbingly, the NYPD sought to block any and all press from covering this eviction. On the ground, reporters were stopped at the barricades and refused entrance. Numerous journalists reported thatcops refused to let them in, even pushing reporters away; reporters even Tweeted about getting arrested. In the air, NYPD helicopters refused to allow CBS News helicopters to film the eviction from above. As for the camera already in the park-OWS’s livestream-the police simply blocked it with a pile of torn-up tents.
The offered reasoning for the eviction? The same canard as the last time Bloomberg wanted to sweep away protesters: “public health and safety.” Never mind that Occupy Wall Street has continually cleaned the park itself, or that health experts who have visited the park have pronounced it sanitary, or that even Bloomberg could cite only one incident that threatened public safety in his statement about the eviction. No, such “facts” were turned away, just as the police sought to turn the media’s cameras elsewhere. All this while, as Matt Taibbi put it last week, “in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes.” Nobody arrested the bankers for pushing fraudulent loans andsubprime mortgage investments, or the ratings agencies and government regulators that neglected their duties and helped Wall Street crash the global economy. But putting tents in a public park? Time to bring out the batons and pepper spray.
As hard as the NYPD and New York City’s government might try to obscure the truth though, one truth remains: At 1 a.m. this morning, in the heart of New York City, protesters exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly were swept away by the state, while that state also did all it could to preventmedia coverage. No matter what one may think of the occupiers or their cause, nothing they’ve done justifies blockading the press or ignoring court orders. Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and other New York leaders who ordered the eviction should take a long, hard look at their handling of the occupation. This morning’s action may not be what a police state looks like, but it’s certainly how one begins.
November 15th, 2011
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