Filipino-Americans in New York City Join Occupy Wall Street, March for Jobs and Justice Oct. 1, 2011

Filipino-Americans in New York City Join Occupy Wall Street,

March for Jobs and Justice

■ Declaration of the Occupy Wall Street

■ Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination

October 1, 2011

Photos courtesy of Jonna Baldres and Kathleen Dy as indicated by the filenames





x News Release October 1, 2011 Reference: Jackelyn Mariano, BAYAN USA Northeast Regional Coordinator, email: bayanusa.ne@gmail.com Filipino-Americans in New York City Join Occupy Wall Street, March for Jobs and Justice NEW YORK, NY-- Approximately 20 Filipino-Americans under the banner of BAYAN USA joined yesterday's massive march and rally from the Occupy Wall Street site in Manhattan's financial district to the nearby headquarters of the New York Police Department (NYPD). They converged at the packed occupation site, now in its 3rd week, carrying bright yellow signs reading "Jobs and Justice! Food and Freedom!" and "End Imperialist Wars of Aggression! Dismantle the US Military-Industrial Complex!" BAYAN USA joined forces with the local citywide anti-budget cuts network known as the Bail-Out the People Movement (BOPM), which helmed the march and rally in response to the mass arrests and police brutality against the otherwise peaceful and non-violent occupiers last Saturday. They were also joined by the People's Justice Coalition for Community Control and Police Accountability, a grassroots network of low-income immigrant and people of color groups against police brutality. Instances of excessive violence and pepper-spraying from the NYPD caught on videotape has since sparked a massive outcry from the international community and drawn support for Occupy Wall Street from high-profile personalities such as filmmaker Michael Moore, actress Susan Sarandon, and academic Dr. Cornell West. The messages carried by BAYAN USA, joined by the flags of GABRIELA USA and the International League of Peoples Struggle (ILPS), projected issues of US foreign policy in poor countries such as the Philippines, and sought to relate the occupiers' initial message against corporate greed with the international context of neoliberalism and war, and the situation of forced migration to the US. It was also the first time since the beginning of the occupation that an organized contingent of mainly immigrants and people of color with clear anti-imperialist messages joined the protests. "We are here as immigrants and children of immigrants," stated BAYAN USA Chairperson Berna Ellorin, addressing a crowd thousands from a makeshift stage in front of the police headquarters at the end of the march. "We are in this country for the same reason you are occupying Wall Street-- because our governments could not provide us with jobs. Imperialism destroyed our countries...What we are doing here today is not just for us, it is for every person in this world fighting imperialism." Due to the absence of a sound permit, the lack of a sound system did not deter the demonstrators from practicing a so-called "peoples mic", a practice in which the crowd repeats what the speaker says. With such a sizable crowd yesterday, Ellorin had to wait as her words traveled some 4-5 times to reach everyone. "We will continue to monitor and participate in this historic occupation," stated BAYAN USA Northeast Regional Coordinator Yves Nibungco. "As the fastest growing immigrant community in the US from a home country controlled economically and politically by US interests, Filipinos in the US must also involve themselves in raising the level of class struggle in this country." As of the first quarter of 2011, the unemployment rate in the US jumped considerably to 10.2%. Following the momentum of the historic public employees labor strike in Wisconsin, which many compared to the so-called "Arab Spring" revolutions prior, social discontent in response to the lack of a viable jobs program and massive budget cuts in the country has risen. Occupy Wall Street has spurred similar actions in other US cities. The following day, BAYAN USA organizations participated in solidarity protests along the West Coast. ###





https://occupywallst.org/forum/first-official-release-from-occupy-wall-street/ Declaration of the Occupation of New York City As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known. They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage. They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses. They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization. They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices. They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions. They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right. They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay. They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility. They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.			They have sold our privacy as a commodity. They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit. They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce. They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them. They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil. They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit. They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit. They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media. They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt. They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas. They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. * To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power. Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone. To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal. Join us and make your voices heard! *These grievances are not all-inclusive. --------edit------- Also here is the Working list of goals: https://occupywallst.org/forum/proposed-list-of-demands-please-help-editadd-so-th/





Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination David Graeber guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 September 2011 18.43 BST Article history The young people protesting in Wall Street and beyond reject this vain economic order. They have come to reclaim the future Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation – despite the latest police crackdown – sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago, OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA? There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates. Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future? Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down. But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible. Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it. Even the Economist was running headlines like "Capitalism: Was it a Good Idea?" It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an "economy" is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before.			Perhaps, it's not surprising. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we're all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart. What we've learned now is that the economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was fobbed off by cheap credit at home and massive plunder abroad – the latter, in the name of the "third world debt crisis". But the global south fought back. The "alter-globalisation movement", was in the end, successful: the IMF has been driven out of East Asia and Latin America, just as it is now being driven from the Middle East. As a result, the debt crisis has come home to Europe and North America, replete with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of "austerity". The form of resistance that has emerged looks remarkably similar to the old global justice movement, too: we see the rejection of old-fashioned party politics, the same embrace of radical diversity, the same emphasis on inventing new forms of democracy from below. What's different is largely the target: where in 2000, it was directed at the power of unprecedented new planetary bureaucracies (the WTO, IMF, World Bank, Nafta), institutions with no democratic accountability, which existed only to serve the interests of transnational capital; now, it is at the entire political classes of countries like Greece, Spain and, now, the US – for exactly the same reason. This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged. When the history is finally written, though, it's likely all of this tumult – beginning with the Arab Spring – will be remembered as the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire. Thirty years of relentless prioritising of propaganda over substance, and snuffing out anything that might look like a political basis for opposition, might make the prospects for the young protesters look bleak; and it's clear that the rich are determined to seize as large a share of the spoils as remain, tossing a whole generation of young people to the wolves in order to do so. But history is not on their side. We might do well to consider the collapse of the European colonial empires. It certainly did not lead to the rich successfully grabbing all the cookies, but to the creation of the modern welfare state. We don't know precisely what will come out of this round. But if the occupiers finally manage to break the 30-year stranglehold that has been placed on the human imagination, as in those first weeks after September 2008, everything will once again be on the table – and the occupiers of Wall Street and other cities around the US will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can.

			x Posted at 02:45 PM ET, 09/26/2011 Why ‘Occupy Wall Street’? By James Downie The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/why-occupy-wall-street/2011/09/26/gIQAWq5czK_blog.html You may have heard about the Occupy Wall Street protests, now entering their 10th day in New York. Several hundred activists have taken over Zuccotti Park near Wall Street since Sept. 17, and this past Saturday they were joined by over a thousand more. The NYPD, displaying their famously light touch, has arrested dozens of activists, including members of the protest’s media team, and even maced innocent protesters. (The occupation’s Twitter hashtag, #occupywallstreet, and its livestream have plenty more details.) Despite this pressure, the protesters have vowed to stay in the park for the foreseeable future. Then again, you can’t walk around New York without bumping into some demonstration, so does this protest deserve attention? It’s easy to say that these are just (mostly) college kids with nothing better to do; or to make fun of their demands, which range from ending wealth inequality to ending war; or to use more extreme protesters to dismiss the rest. And it’s easy to believe that the protesters’ cause will be forgotten as soon as the demonstration ends. It’s easy to react this way, because that’s how many protest “movements” have panned out in the past. But this movement is different because of the bleak situation facing the country, especially its youth. Demonstrations are stronger when protesters are denouncing a target that directly affects them. In 1971, President Nixon’s decision to end student deferments sparked a new wave of antiwar protests on campuses around the country. Many believe the lack of a draft severely weakened protests against the Iraq war. In 1932, the Bonus Army was able to gather thousands of veterans to Washington because their cause was not someone else’s poverty but their own. Similarly, these demonstrators are protesting not only for a cause but for themselves. Just as many young people in the ’60s and ’70s feared becoming cannon fodder in Southeast Asia, so, too, do many today fear for their futures. The figures are astounding. Three years after Wall Street crashed the economy, youth unemployment stands at 18 percent, double the national rate, while youth employment is at its lowest level since the end of World War II. And because the graduate who spends a year unemployed will still make 23 percent less than a similar classmate a decade later, the young unemployed will feel these effects for years. The average college graduate now carries over $27,000 in debt at graduation; not surprisingly, then, more than 85 percent of the Class of 2011 moved back into their parents’ homes, the highest number on record. Not to mention, when this long recession is finally over, the young get to face reduced Social Security, Medicare and other benefits, largely (though not entirely, of course) because their parents and grandparents decided to let their descendants pay for their tax cuts, their wars and their bailouts. In short, as Republican candidates have demanded, the youth have skin in this game. So this isn’t genocide or Palestine or globalization or another geographically or politically distant cause that rarely has staying power beyond a committed activist core. The Wall Street protests are at least in part fueled by the knowledge that, for the first time in almost a century, “you never had it so good” no longer applies to the next generation. The victims of this collapse are not on the other side of the world; they’re the protesters themselves, their friends and classmates, sons and daughters. That’s a personal connection to, and motivation for, their cause that cannot grow artificially. Will this specific protest, then, last “until our demands are met”? Perhaps, perhaps not. But as long as the sluggish economy continues to hit Americans — and especially young Americans — hard, expect more and bigger demonstrations like “Occupy Wall Street” — unfocused, sometimes excessive, but fundamentally justifiable.









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x Occupy Wall Street: the protesters speak The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/sep/21/occupy-wall-street-protests The anti-capitalist protesters who have set up camp in lower Manhattan are becoming a fixture of the area Casey O'Neill had no regrets. He had travelled thousands of miles across the country – and gave up a well-paying job as a data manager in California – to sleep rough in a downtown Manhattan public square, enduring rain and increasingly chilly nights. Police keep a close eye on him every day. But O'Neill was happy to be part of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests that have transformed New York's Zuccotti Park from a spot where Wall Streeters grab a lunchtime sandwich into an informal camp of revolutionaries, socialists, anarchists and quite a lot of the just-plain-annoyed. "Regrets? No. God, no," said O'Neill, 34. "It is a little scary for sure. Somebody had to make a stand to do this. It is kind of amazing right now." O'Neill is even happy to sleep on the park's concrete benches. "It's OK, actually," he said. O'Neill is part of an encampment in the square that looks ramshackle but in fact is highly organised, and looks rapidly on the way to becoming a fixture of downtown Manhattan life – if the police let the protesters stay there. That looked unlikely on Tuesday when several protesters were forcibly arrested and taken away, including one woman who ended up in hospital. But for now the protest continues after beginning last weekend with a march on Wall Street. The protest has morphed into a wide-ranging anti-capitalist demonstration that has attracted attention – and support – from around the world. Bemused bankers, construction workers and other downtown workers pass by every day, stopping to gawp and take pictures. Sometimes there is a lot to look at. Today, for example, Zuni Tikka, 37, was engaged in a topless protest along with several friends. Standing bare-breasted behind a poster that proclaimed "Capitalism Isn't Working", she happily posed for interested bystanders. The lack of clothing, she explained, was a metaphor. "I can't afford a shirt. Wall Street has stolen the shirts from our backs," she said. That carnival atmosphere is typical of the protest. Anyone hoping (or fearing) for a violent assault on the bastions of American capitalism will be sorely disappointed. Instead, several hundred protesters each morning and evening set off to march by the New York stock exchange. They blow trumpets, bang drums and chant slogans while holding placards that read "Free Market My Ass" and "Too Big Has Failed". They go back and forth down Wall Street, behind barricades lined with police, and then return to the camp in Zuccotti Park. They then spend the day holding workshops, informal concerts and various protest stunts (such as the nude demonstration). They welcome visitors and tourists and try to obey the demands made by the police. Each day a "general assembly" is held where topics and events are discussed in a free-for-all of debate and discussion. "It is a leaderless situation," said Thorin Caristo, 37, who nonetheless is part of a small core group of people who try to keep things organised. The protest has attracted wide support and has a sophisticated social media operation. There is a live feed onto the internet and a huge presence on Twitter. Supporters around the world have even been sending in orders to a local pizza shop to keep the protesters fed. So much so, in fact, that some organisers have asked them to stop ordering pizza as they had more than they could eat. Now most help comes in the form of money or – most importantly – more people coming. "People are donating from all over the world. There are car pools of people arriving from Wisconsin, California and Florida. They told us: 'Hang on, we're coming!' One woman who has travelled a long way is Becky Wartell, 24, a massage therapist from Maine. "I am a small business owner!" she laughed. She had just returned from the latest march down Wall Street. "What everybody's here protesting is that fact that 1% of the population controls so much wealth. We are the rest of society. We are the 99%," she said. There is a broad range of opinion on display. Some are travellers who have made protesting into a lifestyle. Some are students. Others are working people, like O'Neill and Wartell, who have taken time off to join in. No one knows how long they are going to be in Zuccotti Park. As with much of the protest, things appear likely to just evolve as they go along. The same goes for the protesters' aims too. "We don't have a precise goal. We want to stay a month. That's a loose goal. Or maybe longer. We want to be here until we have entered a worldwide dialogue about transparency and accountability in the financial system," said Caristo. One thing many of the protesters do know is their facts and figures. For every hippy talking about world peace or traveller wanting to heal the world, another will mention the exact tax rates that rich Americans pay, or that 20% of the US population now control 84% of the wealth. Or that the richest 400 families have the same net worth as the bottom 50% of the entire nation. Even Tikka, as she posed topless before a gaggle of fascinated construction workers, was protesting deliberately next to a sign that read: "I didn't say look, I said listen."











			x Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on Brooklyn Bridge Hundreds held by NYPD – including New York Times journalist – after attempted march across bridge ends in chaos Paul Harris in New York guardian.co.uk, Sunday 2 October 2011 00.58 BST http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/02/occupy-wall-street-protesters-brooklyn-bridge More than 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening during a march by anti-Wall Street protesters who have been occupying a downtown Manhattan square for two weeks. The group, called Occupy Wall Street, has been protesting against the finance industry and other perceived social ills by camping out in Zuccotti park in New York. During the afternoon a long line of protesters numbering several thousand snaked through the streets towards the landmark bridge across the East River with the aim of ending at a Brooklyn park. However, during the march across the bridge groups of protesters sat down or strayed into the road from the pedestrian pathway. They were then arrested in large numbers by officers who were part of a heavy police presence shepherding the march along its path. At one stage 500 protesters were blocked off by police on the bridge. At least one journalist, freelancer Natasha Lennard for the New York Times, was among those arrested. "About half way across the group of people who wanted to occupy the bridge launched their action and stepped into the road. They wanted to get arrested. It was sort of the idea," said Yaier Heber, one of the marchers. But others said the sit-down protest appeared to happen only after the protesters were deliberately blocked off by police after actually being allowed onto the roadway. "They met the police line and ended up being arrested one by one," said Damon Eris, another protester. The march ended in chaotic scenes with police buses driving up the bridge to be filled with arrested marchers. The packed buses then drove off to central booking. Meanwhile, other marchers waited at the bottom of the bridge's Manhattan side and cheered as some released protesters, or those who had escaped being blocked off, came back down. "Let them go! Let them go!" was a frequent chant. It was a different scene from the night before when an equally large march had ended up at the city's police headquarters. That demonstration had been against the brutal treatment meted out by some police on protesters on a march the weekend before. Video of one senior police officer spraying pepper spray on female protesters went viral on the internet and drew widespread condemnation. But the incident did help put the Occupy Wall Street movement into American newspapers and TV shows that had hitherto paid it little attention. The group, drawn from a wide range of backgrounds, say they are inspired by social movements in Spain and the Arab spring. Last week the protesters attracted numerous celebrity visits, including actor Susan Sarandon and film-maker Michael Moore. This week they are expected to get an injection of support from local labour unions. The movement has also started to spread in significant numbers to several other major cities. On Saturday in Los Angeles hundreds of protesters marched on the city hall with the intention of starting a similar encampment. In Boston protesters have already started camping out in Dewey square, near the city's financial district. Unlike in New York, where protesters are not allowed to create shelter in Zuccotti park, Occupy Boston has been able to set up rows of tents.












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