OccupyWallSt: Cops arrest 700 / Big Unions joining in

OccWallSt. on bridge — 700 arrested marching over Brooklyn Bridge

More than 700 people from the Occupy Wall Street protest movement have been briefly arrested for marchimng on New York’s City’s Brooklyn Bridge, police say.

They were part of a larger group crossing the bridge from Manhattan, where they have been camped out near Wall Street for two weeks.

“We are unions, students, teachers, veterans, first responders, families, the unemployed and underemployed. We are all races, sexes and creeds. We are the majority. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.” read more at Occupy Wall Street website and occupytogether.org.

NYPD Mass Arrests of Occupy Wall Street Protesters

UPDATE, 6:07 pm Kristen reports via text: ”Now it’s raining. There are still hundreds of us, people are putting backpacks on their fronts, so cops don’t take them when we’re arrested.”

She says that rumors in the crowd include the suggestion that the Lawyers Guild is working on bail money for the arrested protesters and negotiations with the cops. She says, “a friend told me there’s a rumor this is over. It’s not over.”

As for morale? The remaining protesters are huddled together under umbrellas singing “this little light of mine.”

A Massive Union Just Voted To Side With Protesters

According to Daily Kos, The New York Transit Workers Union (TWU) voted to support the Wall Street Protestors at their meeting last night. A member of TWU Local 100 told a reporter that they would join the protest Friday at 4PM.

Here’s more about them from their website: The TWU has four main divisions: Railroad; Gaming; Airline; Transit; and Utility, University and Service. The Union has 114 autonomous locals representing over 200,000 members and retirees in 22 states around the country.

Occupy Wall Street has been picking up some decent support from unions in the past few days. Yesterday we reported that the Teamsters Union declared their support for protestors, and we also found out that the United Pilots Union had members at the protest demonstrating in uniform.

Today we learned the Industrial Workers of the World put a message of support on their website as well.

UPDATE: Verizon union workers have joined the protestors in NYC.

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20111001135826694

Click here to see the protestor’s list of demands >

Occupy Wall St: 1000s defy brutal police

Several thousand anti-Wall Street protesters marched through downtown Manhattan on Friday night to protest against incidents of police brutality at a previous demonstration.

The group was part of the Occupy Wall Street movement which has camped for almost two weeks in a New York square to protest against the finance industry, among other grievances.

The group had attempted a march last weekend which ended in scores of arrests. Numerous incidents of police roughing up protesters were caught on film including one senior officer spraying mace at several female demonstrators being kept behind a police barrier.

Video of that attack went viral on the internet prompted mainstream media – which had mostly ignored the protests – to give them sympathetic attention. Computer hackers also released the name and address of the officer caught on film. Since then the occupation has garnered many new supporters and global press attention.

It has attracted celebrity visits from liberal figures such as filmmaker Michael Moore and actor Susan Sarandon. On Friday an apparently false rumour that the band Radiohead were to play an impromptu gig at the square caused a temporary Twitter storm.

But Friday night’s march was aimed at highlighting the police violence at the previous protest. A long line of placard-carrying demonstrators wound the short distance from Zuccotti Park where the protesters are camped near Wall Street to Police Plaza, where the New York Police Department has its headquarters.

The march was led by a group of elderly grandmothers wearing yellows bibs emblazoned with the words: “Grannies for peace”. That seemed to symbolise the protest’s good-natured mood which appeared to be matched by the police’s willingness to give the group the freedom to demonstrate.

Michele Moore, a former bank worker from Georgia, said she had been on the previous week’s march that had ended in violence. “The videos of those events were completely accurate,” she said. But she added that Friday’s protest had felt completely different. “Everything I saw today was peaceful and positive. It was delightful,” Moore said.

The protest was filled with the usual mix of Occupy Wall Street supporters. But there was also a smattering of people wearing T-shirts with trade union logos as well as ordinary working New Yorkers

Catholics like Gays, despite homophobic Pope

Catholics Support Gay Rights

Despite being in a hierarchical, antigay religions ,the vast majority of U.S. Catholics support gay rights, believe gay identity cannot be altered, favor gays adopting kids, believe in either gay civil unions or marriage and believe that sexual relationships between two people of the same sex is quite alright, according to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute, .

Not only do a vast majority of Catholics in the United States have a gay rights framework, their views are more friendly to our community that the general public, white evangelicals, and white mainline protestants. In other words, we might find more support at the local Catholic Church than the neighborhood hetero bar.

Unfortunately, the leadership of the Catholic Church maintains a hateful attitude towards gay people, which is not surprising since the Pope was a former Nazi. With the hierarchy of the Catholic Church being usurped by the progressive views of its members, perhaps we can look forward to change in the future.

In the meantime, it is up to us to challenge the homophobia and transphobia of dominant religions and fight for the rights of all. It’s hard to imagine living in a world where mainstream religious organizations would not be organizing centers for homophobia and bigotry; however, with the support of many Catholics, a vision of such a world is viable.

http://queerradical.com/?p=1695

Smash Prisons: 6000 on Hunger Strike

6,000 Prisoners Resume Hunger Strike in California

Infoshop News (September 28, 2011) – People being imprisoned in California prisons have resumed a hunger strike which initially happened last July. The expansion of draconian state measures against Californians has led to overcrowding and other terrible conditions in California’s incarceration facilities.

Round 2, Day 3: Strike Spreads Rapidly, At least 6,000 prisoners resume strike

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity – Today (9/28/11) lawyers & mediators of Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity’s mediation team confirm that at least 6,000 prisoners throughout CA are resuming the hunger strike that originally began in July. The CDCR refuses to release where prisoners are striking exactly, and how many prisoners are striking at each prison. We know that hundreds of prisoners in the General Population at Calipatria are joining the hunger strike for one week in solidarity with 200 hunger strikers in Calipatria’s two Administrative Segregation Units (Ad-Seg & ASU), bringing Calipatria’s numbers up to 500-1,000 hunger strikers.

California Prisoners Resume Hunger Strik
Inmates say a new strike is under way
California’s Prison Hunger Strike is Back On
California state prisoners to resume hunger strike

Occupy Wall St spreading Day 11.

A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Eleven)

Posted Sept. 28, 2011, 9:53 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

This is the eleventh communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street. We will not be moved.

On September 27th, 2011, many friends participated in our democratic process.

General Assemblies are forming country-wide, worldwide. We are everywhere.

#occupyboston (Click Here for the flyer)

On September 27th, 2011, we marched on the Financial District’s Luxury Night Out, where couples wore outfits that cost more than

we will ever make in a month and looked at cars that cost more than we will ever make in a year, afterward, they went back to one of their many houses that cost more than we will make in our lifetime.

Occupied Boston doesn’t need a bullhorn to have their voices heard. They have the people’s microphone.

So does Michael Moore, who addressed us tonight.

Occupied San Francisco grows larger every day.

Occupied Chicago was dispersed but not defeated. They will regroup and reoccupy.

So far at least 52 cities in America are occupied or organizing. We span at least three continents.

Add your home. Make your voice heard.

We are growing. Block by block – city by city. We will see change in this country, in this world.

It will happen sooner than you can imagine.

Noam Chomsky Announces Solidarity With #occupywallstreet

Posted Sept. 26, 2011, 6:57 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

stop wall st — a few prosper..billions suffer

Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street — financial institutions generally — has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world)

. And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power. That has set in motion a vicious cycle that has concentrated immense wealth, and with it political power, in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1%, while the rest increasingly become what is sometimes called “a precariat” — seeking to survive in a precarious existence. They also carry out these ugly activities with almost complete impunity — not only too big to fail, but also “too big to jail.”

The courageous and honorable protests underway in Wall Street should serve to bring this calamity to public attention, and to lead to dedicated efforts to overcome it and set the society on a more healthy course.

Noam Chomsky