Progressive Calendar 11.17.11 /2 | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: David Shove (shove001umn.edu) | |
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:48:53 -0800 (PST) |
P R O G R E S S I V E C A L E N D A R 11.17.11 1. Day of action 11.17 3/4/5/5:30pm 2. Libya 11.17 7pm 3. Juan Cole - Police crackdowns on OWS coordinated among mayors, FBI, DHS DHS= *D*epartment of *H*omeland *S*ecurity turned vs the people 4. Glen Ford - Bloomberg personifies what the Occupation opposes 5. Ted Rall - Our f— you system of government 6. Phil Rockstroh - The police state makes iIts move 7. ed - What would God do? (nonnet and comment) --------1 of 7-------- From: kim defranco <kimdefranco [at] yahoo.com> Day of action 11.17 3/4/5/5:30pm STOP POLICE REPRESSION of OUR MOVEMENT! We, the 99%, have the right to PEACEABLY ASSEMBLE! We, the 99%, have the right to DEMAND JOBS and EDUCATION! We, the 99%, have the right to OPPOSE BUDGET CUTS! We, the 99%, have the right to make WALL STREET PAY FOR THEIR CRISIS! *** A Day of Action is Planned that will culminate in a... Thursday, 5:30pm RALLY on the PEOPLE'S PLAZA ---- SCHEDULE for THURSDAY, NOV. 17 ---- 3:00pm Student Rally @ Northrop Plaza (U of M East Bank) to demand funding for schools, not tax breaks for the rich, and an end to the student debt trap. We will march from Northrop at 3:30 to join union and community activists for the 10th Ave Bridge action. Student rallies will take place at Macalester College and elsewhere. 4:00pm March onto the 10th Ave Bridge to “Bridge the Gap on Jobs and Racial Equity.”With unemployment for African Americans three times that of whites, we demand a federal jobs program for all funded by taxes on corporations and the rich who sit on trillions in reserves. The 4pm Rally is organized by Minnesotans for a Fair Economy. At 5pm we will march from the 10th Ave Bridge to the People's Plaza for: 5:30pm Rally on the Peoples’ Plaza (Government Plaza) to oppose police repression of our movement. We will also highlight opposition to the looming congressional Super Committee's plan for trillions in budget cuts to vital social safety net programs, education, environmental protection, and more. Make Wall Street pay, not working people! We are uniting to say: * No to police repression of the Occupy movement! * No to the congressional Super Committee's plans to cut trillions for education, public sector jobs, and vital social programs! * We need more funding for education and jobs to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure! * Wall Street and rich should pay for the crisis they created, not working people! Organized locally by OccupyMN Events Committee, in coalition with Minnesotans for a Fair Economy who is organizing the 4pm action. OccupyMN is calling these actions in solidarity with the "Jobs Not Cuts Week of Action" (jobsnotcutsprotest.org) endorsed locally by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 and United Auto Workers Local 879. For more information contact OccupyMN Events Committee Ty @ 612-760-1980 or Deb @ 612-816-4321 --------2 of 7-------- From: Joe Schwartzberg Libya 11.17 7pm THIRD THURSDAY GLOBAL ISSUES FORUM Free and open to the public. Come and bring a friend. Where? Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, 511 Groveland Avenue, Minneapolis (at Lyndale and Hennepin). Park in church lot. November 17, 7:00-9:00 p.m. LIBYA. Given its small population, Libya has a curious modern history as a prototype for “something or other.” But what that “something” might be changes from era to era. This talk will look at the question in relation to the contemporary situation, examine what is currently happening in Libya and explore ways of thinking about what lies ahead for the country and its people. Presenter: Professor MARTIN SAMPSON. Decades ago, Martin Sampson, then a Peace Corps volunteer, taught seventh grade English in a southern Libyan oasis village and spent a third year in Tripoli as an Associate Director of Peace Corps / Libya. His 1994 article, “Exploring the Seams: External Structures and Libyan Foreign Policy,” reflects two academic interests, development under conditions of affluence and, second, weaker actors exploring seams in structures established by the strong. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and has won the U. of M. Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award and the U. of M.’s President’s Award for Outstanding Service. --------3 of 7--------- Police Crackdowns on OWS Coordinated among Mayors, FBI, DHS by Juan Cole Published on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 by Juan Cole Common Dreams [This has to mean that Obama is fully in on it. -ed] Oakland Mayor Jean Quan let slip in an interview with the BBC that she had been on a conference call with the mayors of 18 cities about how to deal with the Occupy Wall Street movement. That is, municipal authorities appear to have been conspiring to deprive Americans of their first amendment rights to freedom of assembly and freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances. Likewise, A Homeland Security official let it slip in a phone interview that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security had been strategizing with cities on how to shut down OWS protests. The FBI is said to have advised using zoning ordinances and curfew regulations, and to stage the crackdown with massive police force at a time when the press was not around to cover the crackdown. Wonkette suggests that the PATRIOT Act is implicated here, but I’m not sure how that works. Actually the techniques discussed are standard for US police forces in dealing with peaceful protests (the only routine technique missing is that of putting saboteurs among the protesters who cause destruction and create an image of them as violent. What these two reports show is a high-level conspiracy to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to protest peacefully. When will we see Occupy Wall Street protesters hooded, dressed in orange jump suits, and sent to Guantanamo for military trials? When you let the government act without regard for the rule of law toward foreigners suspected of terrorism, you open yourself to be treated the same way if the rich decide to sic their police on you (it is mostly their police). This is why a rule of law has to be maintained. Anything less ratchets toward tyranny. © 2011 Juan Cole Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan. He is also the author of Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment. --------4 of 7-------- Bloomberg Personifies What the Occupation Opposes by Glen Ford Published on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 by The Black Agenda Report New York’s mayor Michael Bloomberg justified clearing the tents and other materials of Occupation from Zuccotti Park, saying the protesters will now “have to occupy the space with the power of their arguments.” This is a strange kind of logic from the 12th richest man in America, who occupies City Hall for one reason only – because he has bought the office three times since 2001. Mr. Bloomberg’s $20 billion fortune maintains him in the Executive Mansion, not the power of his arguments. Bloomberg was a lifelong Democrat until he found it more convenient to run as a Republican, and then as an independent – thus proving that money, not party, is what counts in New York, as in all American politics. Everything else is a diversion, and a lie. Bloomberg has used the mayor’s office to make the city more hospitable to his fellow economic one-percenters from all around the planet. But, in that sense, he is no different than the mayors of other American cities – including most of the Black ones – who collaborate in every rich man’s scheme to expel the poor in favor of wealthier populations. They’ve all got a lot of Bloomberg in them; they are operatives for whoever has the money. When Bloomberg moved to end the 24-7 physical occupation of Zuccotti Park, it was not on the strength of his argument – which was full of lies and wholly unconvincing – but with the raw power of his police force and its monopoly on violence. So Mayor Bloomberg, like all the rich man’s mayors in all the U.S. cities that are determined to end their local Occupations, pays his hypocritical respects to democracy and reason, when in fact his authority is nothing but an extension of the rule of capital. Bloomberg, the personification of Wall Street, made his vast fortune selling a machine called the Market Master. Having mastered the market, the logic of money was all that was required for Bloomberg to become master of politics in the nation’s most important city. Bloomberg’s career is the story of today's America, a place where people who market machines and schemes so that money can produce more money for themselves and their fellow Lords of Capital, can then purchase governments and write their own laws in order to maintain their power in perpetuity. If the Occupy Wall Street movement has been about anything, it is the absolute necessity to rid the nation – and the world – of the collective tyranny of the Bloombergs, the dictatorship of the moneyed classes. If there is to be any lesson in this two-month-long Occupation that is actually useful to people, it is that people's power cannot long coexist with the power of massed capital. Capital will ultimately shut the people down. The people must, therefore, have at least the goal of shutting down the infernal machines of capital. © 2011 The Black Agenda Report Back Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford [at] BlackAgendaReport.com. --------5 of 7-------- Our F— You System of Government Anti-Occupy Crackdowns Highlight Lack of Services by Ted Rall Published on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 by Ted Rall Governments are supposed to fulfill the basic needs of their citizens. Ours doesn’t pretend to try. Sick? Too bad. Can’t find a job? Tough. Broke? Can’t afford rent? We don’t give a crap. Forget “e pluribus unum.” We need a more accurate motto. We live under a f— you system. Got a problem? The U.S. government has an all-purpose response to whatever ails you: f— you. During the ’80s I drove a yellow taxi in New York. Then, as now, there were no public restrooms in the city. At 4 in the morning, with few restaurants or bars open, the coffee I drank to stay awake posed a significant challenge. It was—it is—insane. People pee. People poop. As basic needs go, toilets are as basic as it gets. Yet the City of New York, with the biggest tax base of any municipality in the United States, didn’t provide any. So I did what all taxi drivers did. What they still do. I found a side street and a spot between two parked cars. It went OK until a cop caught me peeing under the old elevated West Side Highway, which later collapsed due to lack of maintenance. Perhaps decades of taxi driver urine corroded the support beams. “You can’t do that here,” said the policeman. “Where am I supposed to go?” I asked him. “There’s aren’t any restrooms anywhere in town.” “I know,” he replied before going to get his summons book from his cruiser. The old “f— you.” We create the problem, then blame you for the results. I ran away. In recent days American mayors have been ordering heavily armed riot police to attack and rob peaceful members of encampments allied with Occupy Wall Street. Like NYC, which won’t provide public restrooms but arrests public urinators, government officials and their media allies use their own refusal to provide basic public services to justify raids against Occupations. In the middle of the night on November 15th NYPD goons stormed into Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. They beat and pepper-sprayed members of Occupy Wall Street and destroyed the books in their library. Citing “unsanitary conditions,” New York’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, then told reporters: “I have become increasingly concerned…that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protesters and to the surrounding community.” Four days before the police attack The New York Times had quoted a city health department statement worrying about the possible spread of norovirus, vomiting, diarrhea and tuberculosis: “It should go without saying that lots of people sleeping outside in a park as we head toward winter is not an ideal situation for anyone’s health.” So why don’t they give the homeless some of the thousands of abandoned apartment units in New York? Anyway, according to the Times: “Damp laundry and cardboard signs, left in the rain, have provided fertile ground for mold. Some protesters urinate in bottles, or occasionally a water-cooler jug, to avoid the lines at [the few] public restrooms.” Of course, there’s an obvious solution: provide adequate bathroom facilities—not just for Occupy but for all New Yorkers. But that’s off the table under New York’s f— you system of government. Doctors noted a new phenomenon called “Zuccotti cough.” Symptoms are similar to those of “Ground Zero cough” suffered by 9/11 first responders. Zuccotti is 450 feet away from Ground Zero. Which brings to mind the fact that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers released 400 tons of asbestos into the air. It was never cleaned up properly. Could Occupiers be suffering the results of sleeping in a should-have-been-Superfund site for two months? We’ll never know. As under Bush, Obama’s EPA still won’t conduct a 9/11 environmental impact study. Sick? Wanna know why? F— you. One of the authorities’ most ironic complaints about the Occupations is that they attract the mentally ill, drug users and habitually homeless. To listen to the mayors of Portland, Denver and New York, you’d think the Occupiers beamed in bums and nutcases from outer space. When mentally disabled people seek help from their government, they get the usual answer: f— you. When people addicted to drugs—drugs imported into the U.S. under the watchful eyes of corrupt border enforcement officers—ask their government for help, they are turned away. F— you again. When people who lost their homes because their government said “f— you” to them rather than help turn to the same government to look for safe shelter, again they are told: “f— you.” And then, after days and years and decades of shirking their responsibility to provide us with such staples of human survival as places to urinate and defecate and sleep, and food, and medical care, our “f— you” government has the amazing audacity to blame us, victims of their negligence and corruption and violence, for messing things up. Which is why we are finally, at long last, starting to say “f— you” to them. © 2011 Ted Rall Ted Rall is the author of the new books "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," and "The Anti-American Manifesto" . His website is tedrall.com. --------6 of 7-------- The Police State Makes Its Move by Phil Rockstroh November 15th, 2011 DissidentVoice For days now, we have endured demonstrably false propaganda that the fallen soldiers of U.S. wars sacrificed their lives for “our freedoms.” Yet, as that noxious nonsense still lingers in the air, militarized police have invaded OWS sites in numerous cities, including Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, and, in the boilerplate description of the witless courtesans of the corporate media, with the mission to “evict the occupiers”. U.S soldiers died protecting what and who again? These actions should make this much clear: The U.S. military and the police exist to protect the 1%. At this point, the ideal of freedom will be carried by those willing to resist cops and soldiers. There have been many who have struggled and often died for freedom–but scant few were clad in uniforms issued by governments. Freedom rises despite cops and soldiers not because of them. And that is exactly why those who despise freedom propagate military hagiography and fetishize those wearing uniforms–so they can give the idea of liberty lip service as all the while they order it crushed. When anyone tells you that dead soldiers and veterans died for your freedom, it is your duty to occupy reality and inform them of just how mistaken they are. And if you truly cherish the concepts of freedom and liberty, you just might be called on to face mindless arrays of fascist cops and lose your freedom, for a time, going to jail, so others might, at some point, gain their freedom. I was born in Birmingham Alabama, at slightly past the mid-point of the decade of the 1950s. Many of my earliest memories involve the struggle for civil rights that was transpiring on the streets of my hometown. My father was employed at a scrap metal yard but also worked as a freelance photojournalist who hawked his work to media photo syndicates such as Black Star who then sold his wares to the major newsmagazines of the day. A number of the iconic photographs of the era were captured by his Nikon camera e.g., of vicious police dogs unleashed on peaceful demonstrators; of demonstrators cartwheeled down city streets by the force of fire hoses; of Dr. King and other civil rights marchers kneeled in prayer before arrays of Police Chief Bull Connor’s thuggish ranks of racist cops. In Birmingham, racist laws and racial and economic inequality were the progenitors of acts of official viciousness. The social structure in place was indefensible. Reason and common decency held no dominion in the justifications for the established order that was posited by the system’s apologists and enforcers; therefore, brutality filled the void created by the absence of their humanity. And the same situation is extant in the growing suppression of the OWS movement in various cities, nationwide, including Liberty Park in Lower Manhattan. The 1% and their paid operatives–local city officials–are striving to protect an unjust, inherently dishonest status quo. Lacking a moral mandate, they are prone to the use of police state forms of repression. Dr. King et al faced their oppressors on the streets of my hometown. Civil Rights activists knew that they had to hold their ground to retain their dignity…that it was imperative to sit down in those Jim Crow-tyrannized streets when necessary in order to stand up against the forces of oppression. At present, we have arrived at a similar moment. If justice is to prevail, it seems, the air of U.S. cities will hold the acrid sting of tear gas, the jails will again be filled, the brave will endure brutality–yet the corrupt system will crumble. Because the system’s protectors themselves will bring it down by revealing its empty nature, and the corrupt structure will collapse from within. Yet, when riot police attack unarmed, peacefully resisting protesters, the mainstream media often describes the events with standard boilerplate such as “police clash with demonstrators.” This is inaccurate (at best) reportage. It suggest that both parties are equal aggressors in the situation, and the motive of the police is to restore order and maintain the peace, as opposed to, inflicting pain and creating an aura of intimidation. This is analogous to describing a mugging as simply: two parties engaging in a financial transaction. Although mainstream media demurred from limning the upwelling of mob violence at Penn. State as involving any criteria deeper than the mindless rage of a few football-besotted students unloosed by the dismissal of beloved sport figure. Yet there exists an element that the Penn. State belligerents and OWS activists have in common: a sense of alienation. Penn State students rioted because life in the corporate state is so devoid of meaning that identification with a sports team gives an empty existence said meaning…These are young people, coming of age in a time of debt-slavery and diminished job prospects, who were born and raised in, and know of no existence other than, life as lived in U.S. nothingvilles i.e., a public realm devoid of just that–a public realm–an atomizing center-bereft culture of strip malls, office parks, fast food eateries and the electronic ghosts wafting the air of social media. Contrived sport spectacles provisionally give an empty life meaning…Take that away, and a mindless rampage might ensue…Anything but face the emptiness and acknowledge one’s complicity therein, and then direct one’s fury at the creators of the stultified conditions of this culture. It is a given, the cameras of corporate media swivel towards reckless actions not mindful commitment…are attuned to verbal contretemps not thoughtful conviction–and then move on. And we will click our TV remotes and scan the Internet–restless, hollowed out,eating empty memes–skimming the surface of the electronic sheen. These are the areas we are induced to direct our attention–as the oceans of the earth are dying…these massive life-sustaining bodies of water have less then 50 years before they will be dead. This fact alone should knock us to our knees in lamentation…should sent us reeling into the streets in displays of public grief… Accordingly, we should not only occupy–but inhabit our rage. No more tittering at celebrity/political class contretemps–it is time for focused fury. The machinery of the corporate/police state must be dismantled. If the corporate boardrooms have to be emptied–for the oceans to be replenished with abundant life–then so be it. If one must go to jail for committing acts of civil disobedience to free one’s heart–then it must be done. Yet why does the act of challenging the degraded status quo provoke such a high decree of misapprehension, anxiety, and outright hostility from many, both in positions of authority and among so many of the exploited and dispossessed of the corporate/consumer state. For example, why did the fatal shooting incident in Oakland, California, Nov. 1, that occurred near the Occupy Oakland Encampment–but, apparently, was wholly unrelated to OWS activity cause a firestorm of reckless speculation and false associations. Because any exercise in freedom makes people in our habitually authoritarian nation damn uneasy…a sense of uncertainty brings on dread–the feeling that something terrible is to come from challenging a prevailing order, even as degraded as it is. Tyrants always promise safety; their apologist warn of chaos if and when the soul-numbing order is challenged. Granted, it is a given that there exists a sense of certainty in a prison routine: high walls and guards and gun mounts ensure continuity; an uncertainty-banishing schedule is enforced. Moreover, solitary confinement offers an even more orderly situation…uncertainty is circumscribed as freedom is banished. The corporate/national security state, by its very nature is anti-liberty and anti-freedom. Of course, its defenders give lip service to the concept of freedom…much in the manner a pick-pocket working a subway train is very much in favor of the virtues of public transportation. A heavy police presence has ringed Zuccotti Park from the get-go, and whose ranks have now staged a military style raid upon it, a defacto search and destroy mission–because the ruling elite want to suppress the very impulse of freedom. These authoritarian bullies don’t want the concept to escape the collective prison of the mind erected and maintained by the corrupt jailers comprising the 1% who claim they offer us protection as, all the while, they hold our chains…all for our own good, they insist…for our safety and the safety of others. Although, from studying on these prison walls, the thought occurs to me…that what we might need is protection from all this safety. Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil [at] philrockstroh.com. Read other articles by Phil, or visit Phil's website. This article was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Activism, Police. --------7 of 7-------- What would God do? God says "I’m voting for the lesser evil in Twenty Twelve. I’m not a corporation; what else can I do?" Indeed. Some say that if He doesn't do as He's told (by You Know Who) , He'll be killed just like the Kennedys and King and Wellstone. If The Son can be killed, so can The Father. If God has to sell His soul for His life, why, so does Obama, and so do we all. But we still have to chant that we're free and democratic, and have boundless hope. -ed [A nonnet (rhymes with sonnet) is a poetic form with 3 6 9 6 3 syllables, invented by a clove-rhyming-editor with nothing worse to do.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shove Clove
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