The People's Uprisings seen around the world have spread to the United States in a non-violent, mass movement against corporate dominance. While the main-stream media ignores the protests, Reader Supported News will continue to report on the latest developments.
(art: Michael Thompson/flickr)
Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Together, Occupy D.C., Occupy Oakland, Occupy Chicago, Occupy Boston, Occupy San Francisco , Occupy Los Angeles, Occupy Live Streams
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25 October 11
25 October 11
Hundreds of arrests have already taken place, most of them coming in September when protesters blocked the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Police cleared smaller camps in San Francisco, San Diego, and Cincinnati this weekend. Chicago police arrested 130 people as they cleared Grant Park on Sunday, though protesters say they would not be deterred. "We're not going anywhere," Occupy spokesman Joshua Kaunert told the Associated Press. READ MORE
25 October 11
After this morning's temporary disembowelment of Occupy Oakland by the city of Oakland, the group sent out a strongly worded message in which they claim a) "it's not finished" and b) that they will regroup this afternoon to plan their next move. At the request of city officials, police moved in on Frank Ogawa Plaza - shortsightedly renamed Oscar Grant Plaza by a few unfocused activists - between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. today to clear out the area. READ MORE
25 October 11
Catholic social teaching and the Occupy Wall Street movement agree that the economy should be at the service of the human person and that strong action must be taken to reduce the growing gap between rich and poor, Vatican officials said.
"The basic sentiment" behind the protests is in line with Catholic social teaching and the new document on global finance issued October 24 by Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said Cardinal Peter Turkson, council president. READ MORE
25 October 11
Oakland police arrested dozens of people at a plaza outside City Hall and at a second, smaller camp nearby, two weeks after the protesters launched their efforts as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement against corporate greed and economic inequality.
At about 4:57 a.m., officers began making arrests and removing tents and makeshift shelters at the Occupy Oakland protest at Frank Ogawa Plaza near 14th Street and Broadway. By 5:05 a.m., the bulk of the arrests had been completed, and arrestees were led away in plastic handcuffs. READ MORE
24 October 11
As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems. Large numbers of people must be fed and kept reasonably warm and dry. Trash has to be removed; medical care and rudimentary security provided - to which ends a dozen or more committees may toil night and day. But for the individual occupier, one problem often overshadows everything else, including job loss, the destruction of the middle class, and the reign of the 1%. And that is the single question: Where am I going to pee?
24 October 11
Riot police broke up week-long anti-capitalism protests in Sydney on Sunday, with demonstrators claiming they were forcibly evicted from their city campsite in violent dawn raids. Police said 40 people were arrested after resisting orders to pack up their shelters outside the Reserve Bank of Australia, where they have been holding peaceful protests since last Saturday as part of the global "Occupy" movement.
They had been repeatedly told to move on because they were in breach of the city's camping regulations and the 5:00 am raid was taken to minimise disruption to the public, Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch told reporters.
"We tried to work with them every step of the way for the last eight days," Murdoch said. "They certainly can't say they weren't warned." READ MORE
24 October 11
Oakland police began cracking down Saturday on parking and traffic laws around the Occupy Oakland encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza.
Police have been issuing tickets to motorists on 14th Street, according to Brian Glasscock, a 20-year-old Oakland resident who has been participating in the protest since the beginning.
The area has been used as a place for protesters to collect donations from passing motorists, but police are now ticketing anyone who tries to stop for illegal parking, Glasscock said. READ MORE
24 October 11
Portland police are looking for the person who threw a chemical bomb at the Occupy Maine encampment in Portland during the early morning hours today.
Sgt. Glen McGary said police responded around 4 a.m. today to an explosion in Lincoln Park at Congress and Pearl streets.
Though no one was injured, McGary said the homemade bomb, which consisted of chemicals poured into a plastic Gatorade container could have caused serious injury. READ MORE
24 October 11
The occupation movement's greatest challenge will be overcoming the deep distrust of white liberals by the poor and the working class, especially people of color. Marginalized people of color have been organizing, protesting and suffering for years with little help or even acknowledgment from the white liberal class. With some justification, those who live in these marginalized communities often view this movement as one dominated by white sons and daughters of the middle class who began to decry police abuse and the lack of economic opportunities only after they and their families were affected.
22 October 11
Under normal circumstances, Rupert Murdoch doesn't have much patience for the annual shareholders' meetings that are required by law of American public companies. He regards them as a farce, because they cannot change the outcome in a company where a voting majority is secure, and as an exercise in liberal corporate law designed to put him personally on the spot.
Still, his handlers, whose job is, in part, to protect him from himself, have long made him train for these meetings as though he's going into a presidential debate. Without rigorous practice, he is quite liable to not pay attention and appear quite bewildered, or pay too much attention and explode in fury, or worse, truthful exasperation. READ MORE
22 October 11
Officer Michael Daragjati had no idea that the FBI was listening to his phone calls. Otherwise he would probably not have described his arrest and detention of an innocent black New Yorker in the manner he did.
Daragjati boasted to a woman friend that, while on patrol in Staten Island, he had "fried another nigger". It was "no big deal", he added. The FBI, which had been investigating another matter, then tried to work out what had happened. READ MORE
22 October 11
Mayor Bloomberg is planning Draconian new measures to crack down on what he calls the "disruption" caused by the protesters at Zuccotti Park, and he is citing neighbors' complaints about noise and mess. This set of talking points, and this strategy, is being geared up as well by administrations of municipalities around the nation in response to the endurance and growing influence of the Occupation protest sites. But the idea that any administration has the unmediated option of "striking a balance," in Bloomberg's words, that it likes, and closing down peaceful and lawful disruption of business as usual as it sees fit is a grave misunderstanding - or, more likely, deliberate misrepresentation - of our legal social contract as American citizens. READ MORE
22 October 11
Anti-Wall Street demonstrators of the Occupy Chicago movement stood their ground in a downtown park in noisy but peaceful defiance of police orders to clear out, prompting 130 arrests early Sunday, authorities said.
Occupy Chicago spokesman Joshua Kaunert vowed after the arrests that protests would continue in the Midwest city. "We're not going anywhere. There are still plenty of us," Kaunert told The Associated Press after the arrests, which took police more than an hour to complete.
Elsewhere in the nation, police reported 11 arrests overnight in the Occupy Cincinnati protests. Police said those arrested had stayed in that city's Fountain Square after Sunday's 3 a.m. closing time and each was charged with criminal trespass. READ MORE
22 October 11
United States Marine Corps. Sergeant Shamar Thomas in a spectacular moment defended the protesters of Occupy Wall Street while staring into the faces of thirty NYPD officers, and now countless other Marines have organized in an amazing show of solidarity.
Sgt. Thomas' gallant actions in standing up for American citizens being brutalized by the police were shown in a video which has gone viral with almost 2 million views. Marines have joined forces with #OccupyMarines in solidarity with the movement not just in New York, but nationwide:
"OccupyMARINES Are Currently Assessing The Current Situation To Ascertain What Is Currently Needed To Support OWS America. We Are Humbled At The Substantial Support OWS America Has Provided And Ask That Everyone Continue As You All Do While We Implement Organization Nationwide. As We All Know, 'Occupy' Groups Are Being Established Even Now And Would Like To See This Trend Continue." READ MORE
22 October 11
They ate Friday night, most of the estimated 300 to 400 people living in Frank Ogawa Plaza, many of whom have set up tents, appeared determined not to leave. Several organizers said they were concerned that there was a tiny number of potential troublemakers in the crowd, but most protesters said they were committed to nonviolence if a police confrontation were to occur.
Shortly after the 10 p.m. deadline set by the city to evacuate the camp, there was virtually no police presence around the plaza. Campers calmly milled about, talking and laughing as Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up" played softly from a set of speakers.READ MORE
20 October 11
In an action that resulted in seven arrests, Occupy Wall Street protesters in Minneapolis Thursday took their almost two-week long protest to U.S. Bank, a frequent target of protesters’ criticism that corporations and banks dominate the political system.
Their arrests occurred after about 100 protesters took control of 2nd Avenue South and 6th Street South in downtown Minneapolis after rallying at the U.S. Bank building for more than an hour. READ MORE
21 October 11
Police arrested about five Occupy Cleveland protesters on Public Square Friday night after the group had grown to more than 200. The arrests were made without incident. Police dragged one protester to an awaiting van. But the others did not struggle or fight.
By 11:30, the crowd had dispersed as many marched toward the Justice Center about a block away where the police had taken the arrested protesters. Police started to show up after 10 p.m., when the city's public park curfew begins. More than a dozen cruisers, five police vans and an EMS vehicle were near the Square. Cruisers blocked off several streets. READ MORE
21 October 11
With the threat of eviction looming, Occupy Oakland campers in the downtown Frank Ogawa Plaza said today that they would stand their ground, hopeful that a scheduled march this weekend and an influx of participants will bolster their encampment.
City officials posted a notice late Thursday ordering that the 300 to 400 people living in the shadow of City Hall stay out of the plaza between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and that they take down their tents. READ MORE
21 October 11
ouse Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) abruptly canceled a planned economic address Friday at the University of Pennsylvania after learning the event could be flooded with protesters aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Cantor was to deliver a speech titled, "A Fair Shot at the American Dream and Economic Growth" at the university's elite Wharton School of Business, but the school announced the event was off about three-and-a-half hours before Cantor's scheduled 4:30 p.m. start time.
The majority leader planned to address the issue of income equality at a time when activists in New York, Washington, Philadelphia and other cities have been rallying against the rising gap between the rich and the poor.READ MORE
20 October 11
As protests against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.READ MORE
19 October 11
Occupy protests have sprouted up in countless cities across the U.S. South, including Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia; Columbia, South Carolina; Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Miami, Florida; and New Orleans, Louisiana, to name just a few.
In Atlanta, Georgia, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, the city government has struggled with the question of how to respond to the Occupy protesters who have literally taken over downtown's Woodruff Park with tents and an encampment that has no end in sight. READ MORE
19 October 11
"As the local manifestation of the global occupation movement—see Occupy Together—sparked on Wall Street, Occupy Chicago has been at it almost just as long. Monday, October 17 marked Day 25 of an ongoing presence in front of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank at Lasalle and Jackson in Chicago’s financial district. Over the weekend, after having been told it could not keep a permanent camp at the bank, the GA agreed to relocate its occupation—while maintaining a regular presence at the bank—to Grant Park. At the corner of the park known as Congress Plaza (Michigan and Congress), nearly 2,300 Occupy Chicago supporters rallied in support of the movement. The Chicago Tribune, recounting the events of the evening, reported that 175 people were arrested on a municipal ordinance violation that states Chicago Parks close at 11 p.m." READ MORE
18 October 11
Hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, both University of California-Berkeley grads, were jailed for 26 months in a Tehran prison and released last month on a $1 million bail deal. Sarah Shourd, 33, an Oakland resident, was freed last fall on $500,000 bail after spending a year in the same prison.
Shourd told the Occupy Oakland crowd that the trio connects with the suffering of millions "who don't have enough to eat, who don't have enough money or jobs and don't enjoy the liberties which they deserve."
"Once that is taken from you ... you never forget it again," she told the crowd of about 300 people gathered at the 100-tent encampment in Frank Ogawa Plaza. The appearance by Bauer, Fattal and Shourd was the second infusion of star power to the loose-knit Oakland group. On Saturday, activist-actor Danny Glover joined a march to City Hall calling for economic justice. READ MORE
18 October 11
Officers reportedly pepper-sprayed and arrested several protesters Saturday after some of the movement's 2,000 demonstrators blocked Broadway and ignored instructions not to pitch kitchen tents.
But tensions had eased by Sunday morning. As the group of protesters in Civic Center slowly grew to about 300, neither side reported any confrontations.
Jason Roth handles communications for Occupy Denver and said that prior to the clashes, protesters were trained on how to assert their rights in a nonaggressive way when placed under arrest. "This movement is about being peaceful," Roth said. READ MORE
18 October 11
The nascent movement known as Occupy Wall Street had its largest single day of protests on Saturday. And a funny thing happened: most of the action was far from Wall Street itself.
No, I don't mean at Zuccotti Park - which is not, technically, on Wall Street. Nor do I mean Times Square - all of 19 minutes away from Wall Street on the 'C' train - where large crowds of protesters gathered on Saturday.
Instead I mean Europe, where crowds in cities like Rome, Barcelona and Madrid were estimated at 200,000 to 500,000 per city (more, probably, than the protests in the United States combined). And I mean California and other parts of the western United States, where crowds were proportionately much larger than in the Northeast or elsewhere in the country. READ MORE
18 October 11
The Greensboro, NC, version of the Wall Street protest movement, which attracted 600 demonstrators on Sunday, will get a chance to showcase its strength in front of President Obama on Monday.
According to a report in the News & Record of Greensboro, about 200 protesters agreed unanimously to intensify the group's efforts and consider picketing The Proximity Hotel there, where the president is expected to stay on Monday night. READ MORE
17 October 11
Speaking at the dedication ceremony for a new monument to her father, the Rev. Bernice King said Martin Luther King Jr. would have been heartened by the Occupy Wall Street protests and larger 99 Percent Movement. "I hear my father saying what we are seeing now all across the streets of America and the world is a freedom explosion," she said, adding that we should move beyond or conception of King's work as just about "racial justice" to include "economic justice." READ MORE
16 October 11
Chicago police arrested about 175 Occupy Chicago protestors in Congress Plaza just after 1 a.m. Sunday, about 90 minutes after police issued their first warning that the group was violating municipal code. Police completed the last arrests and cleared the plaza of protesters at 3:30 am, more than two hours after arrests began.
"I'd like to ask why (New York Mayor Michael) Bloomberg let the people stay in the park peacefully and clean up their own mess, and Rahm Emanuel won't let us do the same," said Joseph Eichler, 23, of Logan Square. When a group of protesters sat defiantly in their tent and refused to leave, the officers dismantled the tent with the people still in it. "I'm going down with the ship!" one man shouted, right before the group was arrested. READ MORE
16 October 11
On October 15th over 1,000 gathered at the Torch of Friendship in Bayside Park in Miami, Florida. The call was for a rally, to be followed by the third General Assembly in Southern Florida. During the first General Assembly on October 1st plans were made for an occupation of Miami’s Government Center. During that meeting attended by 100 South Floridians, small groups were formed to discuss the issues that Occupy Miami should focus on. One of the report backs was by a young immigrant named Juan. READ MORE
14 October 11
After 23 people were arrested at the Occupy Denver camp in front of the Colorado Capitol this morning, things were much calmer along Broadway through lunch.
Fewer than 30 people stood holding signs on the east side of Broadway, encouraging drivers to honk in support. "Join Us," one sign said.
About a dozen state trooper monitored the protesters.
READ MORE
14 October 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNOb-LF-HMg
13 October 11
On Wednesday, 11 demonstrators in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested when they blocked entrances to Wells Fargo Bank headquarters in San Francisco's financial district. They were cited, given an order to appear in court and released. Then they immediately rejoined fellow demonstrators in front of the bank. The protest ended by 12:30 p.m., and at its height involved more than 200 people.
Their "hold banks accountable" message resonated with one woman, a Wells Fargo employee who did not want to be named. She said it is terrible that a Wells Fargo corporate executive can make millions while so many workers are being laid off or are unemployed
"If I didn't have to go to work, I would be out there," she said as protesters chanted, sang and marched in front of the bank's two main entrances on Montgomery and California streets. READ MORE
Tom Morello (The Nightwatchman, Rage Against the Machine) surprised the occupiers at City Hall Saturday with a rampaging acoustic set.
12 October 11
Occupy Wall Street protests have now spread to some 800 cities. It's spreading like a fire on a strong wind over a dry field. The heat is likely to keep on building.
Conservatives have fallen over themselves rushing to side with the top one percent against the rest. Eric Cantor, House majority leader, denounces "mobs" and "the pitting of Americans against Americans." Herman Cain dismisses the demonstrators as "anti-American." Mitt Romney accuses them of waging "class warfare."
But class warfare is the reason Occupy Wall Street has sounded such a chord. Sure there's class warfare, one of America's richest men, Warren Buffett, concluded, "and my class is winning." READ MORE
11 October 11
Tensions boiled over in the early hours of Tuesday in downtown Boston, where police arrested about 100 protesters after the Occupy Boston group expanded its footprint and was told by authorities to backtrack.
Protesters said late on Monday that police had given participants an ultimatum to return to their small original encampment by nightfall or be moved along.
But it was not until after 1 a.m. ET Tuesday when hundreds of Boston and Transit police officers, some in riot gear, moved in on the group, handcuffing protesters and tearing down tents. READ MORE
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