Like many of you, I’ve been watching the Occupy Wall Street (and local OccupySTL) protests with fascination. While I know the mainstream media hasn’t gotten too creative in its reporting (once it started reporting), the little bit of digging I’ve done on “on-the-ground” reporting has turned up more than just angry kids, but an ongoing experiment with political participation and governance itself.
Sure, unemployment, income disparity, and the American dream have been at the forefront of the movement… but I wondered early on if environmental sustainability was getting a “place at the table” as this movement forms and grows.
The answer: yes (as I suspected). This morning, I received email from the OWS Sustainability Working Group and Seismologik Media about a short film the latter had produced in partnership with One Pack Productions (unfortunately, embedding Vimeo wasn’t working for me today, so you’ll have to click through). Of course, I’m happy to see permaculture on display at Occupy Wall Street; I’m even happier to see that there’s more than protest going on there, but also experimentation with alternative, sustainable ways to meeting needs (which, of course, is its own form of protest).
Take a look at the film (it’s just under five minutes long), and let us know what you think. What other kids of sustainability experimentation could be going on in the midst of this activism?
There was no trouble because the police kept away, though I saw dozens of banks and the stock exchange being
heavily ‘redecorated’. The mainstream paper ‘El Periodico’ estimated 350,ooo participants, an enormous turnout
of every imaginable sector in festival mood and yelling anti Capitalist slogans.
Dozens of other Iberian cities were equally swamped with demonstrators. In Madrid a large empty hotel was occupied to accomodate families evicted for failing to pay impossible mortgages .
El grupo de indignados que ha ocupado esta madrugada el hotel Madrid, en la calle Carretas, tiene intención de “resistir pacíficamente” en el edificio y “cederlo” a la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca.
Participant numbers. Cifras de asistencia en diferentes ciudades, según van contando las agencias: en Vigo, 10.000 manifestantes; Barcelona: 400.000 según la organización (la Guardia Urbana los cifra en 60.000); Alicante: 10.000; Elche: 2.000; Baleares, 5.000; Vitoria, 3.000.
11.56
Las protestas han comenzado ya en Asia y Oceanía. Seúl, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila, Melbourne, Sydney y Auckland ya han tenido sus concentraciones de protesta. El simpatizante de Annonymous de la foto es uno de los manifestantes que han salido a la calle en Sydney
ROME 17.02… 70 injured, 3 seriously as the street battle between Occupiers and fascist police develops in Rome
La Policía italiana emplea cañones de agua contra los agitadores de Roma. Lanzaron piedras y petardos a los agentes, convirtiendo en batalla campal lo que era una marcha pacífica y multititudinaria.
En Bruselas, 6.000 manifestantes han arrojado zapatos contra la fachada del edificio de la Bolsa. Los activistas han gritado en castellano «¡culpable!»
Berlin En Alemania ha habido manifestaciones en diferentes ciudades. Las más concurridas han tenido lugar en Berlín y Francfort. En la capital, un grupo de activistas ha intentado sin éxito adentrarse en el Bundestag, el Parlamento alemán. La foto es de AP.
New YorkUnas 2.000 personas del movimiento Ocupa Wall Street han marchado este sábado por el distrito financiero de Neuva York secundando la convocatoria global de protesta de este 15 de
15 Oct Rome. A more typical image than the burning cars.
octubre. Esta es la primera gran marcha del día, que culminará con una concentración en Times Square.
….Al menos 71 arrestados y cerca de 5.000 personas han secundado este sábado en Nueva York la manifestación celebrada en el marco de las marchas a nivel global con motivo del día 15-O que se han extendido a más de 80 países, según ha confirmado el Departamento de la Policía neoyorquina.
London La Policía Metropolitana que hay un solo detenido en las protestas de Londres, informa The Guardian. AHy discrepancias sobre las cifras de participación, la Policía habla de unos mil asistentes y la BBC estima que hay entre 3.000 y 4.ooo manifestantes. La protesta está dividida entre la «zona cero» de la jornada, en torno al edificio de la Bolsa, con quienes logran pasar el cordón policial, y varios cientos que se han quedado fuera, más diluidos, y no siempre bien recibidos por los residentes del barrio
An occupation guide out of Santa Cruz and Baltimore that provides an introduction to consensus decision-making, know your rights info, and contextualizes US occupation in the context of recent international uprisings.
The ultra-rich have us by the throats and they’ve had us by the throats for a long, long time.
While the rest of us suffer through a worldwide economic crisis, the people at the top are just getting richer. In a 2011 study, the richest 20% of the country had 85% of the privately held wealth. For the rest of us, nothing’s getting better: the state is closing schools and libraries, rolling back social services, shutting down bus lines and state parks.
But an international movement has sprung up to challenge the foundations of our global system of corporatism and greed. It’s a protest movement qualitatively different from any that has come before, a uniquely 21st century form. It’s a movement without party politics. It’s a movement inspired by the advances of communication that have allowed us to function without authority, allowing every voice to at last be weighed truly as equal. It’s a movement that doesn’t bring a list of demands to the powers that be but instead suggests that we can build a different society.
The wealth that it takes to get us out of this mess is right in front of us—we know because we are the ones who created it. We designed and built the cities. We # y the planes, crunch the numbers, grow the food, write the software, and do everything it takes to keep this society running. All the wealthiest do is sit there and watch their money make more money.
The wealth is right in front of us and yet they tell us there isn’t enough to feed us, to educate us. They’re lying. Maybe they’re lying to themselves, maybe they’re lying to us—it doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. We don’t need them.
We are the 99% and we are more powerful than they’ll ever be.
All proclaim their opposition to the capitalist status quo – with its obscene riches at one pole and sickening poverty at the other. All of this has been organised online, completely outside the clutches of the decaying trade union bureaucracies, for whom ‘international solidarity’ is just some words they used to say a few decades back. The old organisations of timid protest seek influence on the margins, but they are ignored and seen to be as irrelevant as they actually are. It is highly appropriate that this moment has been crowned by the apparently successful resisting of the attempt by New York’s mayor and second richest man to retake Liberty Park. There is a sense that the powers that be are losing control by the hour, if not the second if you follow it all on Twitter.
If you are can't occupy from tomorrow, you can follow the action on the #occupy Twitter hashtag, your local Indymedia site, and maybe even your local corporate media, if you've got the stomach for it.
Read much MORE http://infantile-disorder.blogspot.com/2011/10/15th-october-2011-birth-of-global-anti.html
Scuffles, arrests overnight at Occupy Wall Street
Although a massive march and rally in Lower Manhattan by Occupy Wall Streeters and their union supporters went off without a hitch Wednesday afternoon, the scene turned ugly again overnight when some protesters rushed police barricades where they were met with nightsticks, pepper spray and handcuffs.
For nearly 100 years we have been forced to use petroleum, causing environmental devast
at
ion, runaway climate change and the agonizing deaths of countless millions of us through air pollution.
Now at last, with Climate Chaos becoming a daily reality, people are starting to ‘discover’ that a CO2, NOx and SOx FREE alternative has existed all along.
We are doing a micro campaign on this blog in favour of this CO2-free fuel. It’s a reformist solution, but one that’s available NOW
The criminal oil industry wants to close blogs like this, afraid prices would collapse if we started making NH3 car fuel.. locally with just wind, air and water
Please can you help? We need lots of free publicity and to persuade ‘respectable’ blogs, magazines, etc to write about it.
They say Capitalism is about to collapse. Lets give it a push! Time to jump in! Only if we all jump together can we change the lunatic system we live under.
For an end to debt and money… No leaders , No parties, just us.. For a co-op world!
The map now marks 648 Occupations and demos, with 4 days to go!
Destroying the Banks in favour of a phased in Money-Free system. Banning Hierarchical, sexist and homophobic organizations. A minimum world wage, or free rations of basic goods. Abolishing armies and war. Community Co-operatives instead of companies. Phasing out of the Oil Economy in favour of renewables and NH3 fuel. Banning GMO’s. Collectivising excess private property. Abolition of the Prisons and police system….
El 15 de Octubre del 2011 va a ser una fecha inolvidable para la raza humana. Este sera el primer encuentro UNIVERSAL de ciudadanos por un mundo mejor.
NO es un tema de ideas políticas, religión o filosofía.
El asunto es sobre cuanto nos importa nuestro futuro y el futuro de la Tierra
Radiation hotspot detected in Tokyo: As the nightmare scenario of evacuating the 13 million from the Tokyo Metropole came a step closer, the British Government announced there is NO PROBLEM and it has identified eight potential sites in England and Wales for new nuclear power stations by 2025.
TOKYO — […] Japanese media said researchers found radiation levels of 3.35 microsieverts per hour along a street in the west of [Tokyo] — 220 kilometres (136 miles) from Fukushima — much higher than previously reported levels. […]
[…] Radiation levels in the area have not fallen since [Setagaya] ward’s efforts to decontaminate it on October 6, and authorities are instructing children to avoid the walkway as they go to school.
Setagaya Mayor Nobuto Hosaka told TBS: “I thought the reading must be a mistake when I first heard” […]
Later reports claimed the radioactivity is coming from ’empty bottles in an abandoned basement’ and is ‘unconnected with Fukushima’.
Like many of you, I’ve been watching the Occupy Wall Street (and local OccupySTL) protests with fascination. While I know the mainstream media hasn’t gotten too creative in its reporting (once it started reporting), the little bit of digging I’ve done on “on-the-ground” reporting has turned up more than just angry kids, but an ongoing experiment with political participation and governance itself.
The Free 
