Tuesday, October 4, 2011
HUFF POST - George Carlin on Wall Street
If you can believe it, the world has been without George Carlin for over three years. But his influential stand-up comedy continues to resonate with themes in our society that will never go out of style: inequality, social mores, hypocrisy and disenfranchisement, to name a few. And based on this clip from his 2005 special "Life is Worth Losing," Carlin would likely be marching with protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement, or at least supporting them from afar.
Even after spending the majority of his life's work writing and performing stand-up comedy intended to expose inherent absurdities in our modern world, Carlin continued to do more new material than the most prolific of today's stand-ups, with the exception of Louis C.K., who heeded that lesson from Carlin.
In this clip, from 2005's "Life is Worth Losing," Carlin approaches themes that could very well serve as the Occupy Wall Street Manifesto in 2011. While not as tight as the Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television -- the comedy bit that got him arrested for indecency -- his diatribe against shadowy elites in politics and finance are just as relevant as any routine from Carlin's heyday.
You know something? [Wall Street] will get it. They'll get it all from you sooner or later, 'cause they own this f***in' place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. ... The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good, honest hard working people ... continue to elect these rich c***suckers who don't give a f*** about them.
Carlin died only a few months before President Obama was elected. We wonder what wisdom old George would have spoken were he alive today.
WATCH:
(via Dangerous Minds)
Been to Occupy Wall Street Events?
Show us your photos, tell your story
If you've been to an Occupy Wall Street event anywhere in the country, we'd like to hear from you. Send OfftheBus your photos, links to videos or first-hand accounts of what you've seen for possible inclusion in The Huffington Posts's coverage.
FOLLOW HUFFPOST COMEDY ON
Facebook:
Like
85K
Twitter:
GET ALERTS
CONTRIBUTE TO THIS STORY
Send Corrections
Send us a Link
Contact us
Send a Tip
Send Photos/Videos
Comment
Even after spending the majority of his life's work writing and performing stand-up comedy intended to expose inherent absurdities in our modern world, Carlin continued to do more new material than the most prolific of today's stand-ups, with the exception of Louis C.K., who heeded that lesson from Carlin.
In this clip, from 2005's "Life is Worth Losing," Carlin approaches themes that could very well serve as the Occupy Wall Street Manifesto in 2011. While not as tight as the Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television -- the comedy bit that got him arrested for indecency -- his diatribe against shadowy elites in politics and finance are just as relevant as any routine from Carlin's heyday.
You know something? [Wall Street] will get it. They'll get it all from you sooner or later, 'cause they own this f***in' place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. ... The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. Good, honest hard working people ... continue to elect these rich c***suckers who don't give a f*** about them.
Carlin died only a few months before President Obama was elected. We wonder what wisdom old George would have spoken were he alive today.
WATCH:
(via Dangerous Minds)
Been to Occupy Wall Street Events?
Show us your photos, tell your story
If you've been to an Occupy Wall Street event anywhere in the country, we'd like to hear from you. Send OfftheBus your photos, links to videos or first-hand accounts of what you've seen for possible inclusion in The Huffington Posts's coverage.
FOLLOW HUFFPOST COMEDY ON
Facebook:
Like
85K
Twitter:
GET ALERTS
CONTRIBUTE TO THIS STORY
Send Corrections
Send us a Link
Contact us
Send a Tip
Send Photos/Videos
Comment
Monday, October 3, 2011
Fight the Power
Occupy L.A. : Signs That The Times Are A-Changing
The First Two Days of Occupy Los Angeles
FIGHT THE POWER || BY ED RAMPELL || OCT 03, 2011
Editor’s Note: The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has spread within the past week to over 100 American cities. Though to many the goals of the national protest seem unfocused, with no apparent long-term strategy, there is no doubt that this movement has energized a good many in this country.
Back Page Magazine sent reporter Ed Rampell into downtown L.A. for the first two days of “Occupy L.A.” to get a read on this citizens’ movement.
“Look what’s happening out in the streets
Got a revolution Got to revolution
Hey I’m dancing down the streets
Got a revolution Got to revolution…
We are volunteers of America
We are volunteers of America”
– Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane
“Not since the late 1960s has there been anything like this!” declared Ron Kovic, the Vietnam vet Tom Cruise portrayed in the 1989 movie Born on the Fourth of July. “This is the beginning of a revolution in the spirit of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela,” the longtime peace organizer told a throng of supporters outside of Los Angeles’ City Hall.
Photo by Ed Rampell
The hundreds of demonstrators who marched on Oct. 1 from Downtown L.A.’s Pershing Square to City Hall – where some planned to camp out as part of a nationwide “occupation” movement — were, like ’60s activists, mostly young. But unlike members of Kovic’s generation, for whom the Indochina war was the paramount issue, today’s campaigners are primarily preoccupied with the economy, in particular with America’s growing income inequality.
The so-called “Occupy Los Angeles” movement belongs to a national “leaderless resistance” using social media, and is acting in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, where protesters have been rallying and camping out at Lower Manhattan’s Financial District to condemn bankers, corporations and other plutocrats they contend are looting and pillaging the U.S. and world economies.
Mario Brito, Occupy L.A.’s city liaison, summed up the occupation cause’s raison d’etre as “economic justice,” and told Back Page Magazine: “This is an international movement – it’s not only happening in Wall Street, it’s happening in 170 cities in the U.S., and cities in Europe and Latin America.” Events are scheduled the week of Oct. 3 to take place in Washington, D.C., including the American Dream Movement’s summit and protests at Freedom Plaza.
Photo by Ed Rampell
Speakers at the rally, which stretched around much of L.A.’s City Hall, included perennial congressional candidate Marcy Winograd, as well as the wheelchair-bound Kovic, who recited folksinger Woody Guthrie’s people’s anthem, This Land is Your Land. Later in the afternoon on the lawn near First Street and Main Avenue anyone who wanted to speak could through an open mic system; a poet read anti-capitalist poetry. Although LAPD maintained a substantial presence, there was no overt police abuse of power, such as the pepper spraying and mass detentions in New York by the NYPD.
The signs and T-shirts of many of the up to 3,000 people who gathered at L.A.’s City Hall bore anti-corporate slogans, such as: “Tax the Rich”, “Regulate the WBankers”, “End Corrupt Oligarchs”, “Make Love, Not Interest Bearing Debt”, “Robbed at Pen Point at Blank Check Range”, “From Tahrir to Eternity”, “Old & Still Idealistic”, “We the People”, and “We Are the 99%”, referring to the idea that America’s economic inequities overwhelmingly affect the vast majority of the population in adverse, unfair ways.
Photo by Ed Rampell
Many participants showed individual initiative with their sloganeering. A young woman literally thinking outside of the box wore a cardboard box emblazoned with the words: “I’m here so I don’t have to live in this box.”
A toddler sat in a baby stroller sporting the sign: “Help! They’ve stolen my future.” One man held aloft an effigy of the Monopoly game mascot Rich Uncle Pennybags, wearing a top hat, holding a martini glass and the words: “I’ve had Enough Trickle Down Economics.”
Photo by Ed Rampell
Some wore the same mustachioed mask as the militant character in 2006’s V for Vendetta movie, while others carried America’s 13 star flag from the Revolutionary War.
As she listened to Ron Kovics’ speech Katiuska Cruz — who identified herself as an unemployed class of 2009 college grad with no healthcare, originally from the Dominican Republic — held a placard proclaiming: “Revolution starts now; We need a reform.” In smaller letters were the words “Unity”, “Freedom”, “I am 99%”; the word “Greed” was X-ed out in a circle.
The aspiring actress, who recently moved from Boston to L.A., told Back Page Magazine: “I think it’s very unfair what’s going on. The 1 percent pretty much have all the money. Now Bank of America is going to charge $5 a month [debit card fees]. It’s pretty screwed up how a lot of people are getting their houses taken away, and most of them are really poor. While the rich are sitting in their… homes, drinking champagne.
“It’s just very unfair what’s going on and it’s about time something is done. I’m just so glad – people say we’re a ‘lost generation,’ but we’re not. Look at what we’re doing: We’re standing up, we’re tired; we’re over it. We’re going to do something about it. And we’re starting right now!” asserted the young Latina, who performs protest music in the Sex Pistols and Gogol Bordello tradition in order to “speak up.”
A grey-haired Caucasian man who identified himself as Tom and as an attorney held a sign stating: “John Galt can go to hell.” Tom called this character in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged “a rich asshole who tells the public to be damned. He’s the patron saint of rich assholes. He justifies, provides morality, for all rich assholes.”
Photo by Ed Rampell
Tom described this ethos of the marketplace as “believing religiously in [Adam Smith’s] ‘invisible hand,’ that will provide prosperity to man, if everybody is nice and greedy.”
Tom expressed outrage that while around 1,000 people have been arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests (700 marchers were held by NYPD following an Oct. 1 march across the Brooklyn Bridge), none of the corporate culprits who devastated the economy have been charged with crimes.
“I have clients that do 25 to life for stealing a pack of underwear, and these guys steal billions – and they don’t do any time! It’s like the government’s conspiracy of the haves versus the have nots,” said Tom, who explained he was at the City Hall demo to “lend my body… to the crowd and let the powers that be know that we’re here – and we’re going to take over.”
Sitting on City Hall’s lawn a Filipina named Christina likened the national occupation movement to the 1980s “People’s Power” uprising against dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Christina’s homemade sign declared: “USA has the biggest income gap among developed countries – time for change”, and she maintained “the most unequal society is USA, and next is Great Britain,” where riots took place last summer.
“In essence, statistics show and everywhere you see it: 1 percent of the population controls 90 percent of the wealth… There has to be equality in our lives… so all of us benefit from the resources of the world,” insisted Christina, who was laid off last year from her position with healthcare insurers, but has a new job working for personal injury victims. Christina participated in Occupy L.A. “because I just want to get involved. I think it’s time for change. I think it’s time for Americans to wake up… We formed the People’s Power revolution to oust Pres. Marcos… The American people have to rise up… This is the beginning of [People’s Power in America].”
Photo by Ed Rampell
On Saturday night hundreds of people camped out on City Hall’s grounds, although not inside of the cordoned off municipal building itself. No arrests were reported as of Sunday afternoon.
Media coverage of and international support for the movement is growing, just as the occupations are. Author and free speech champion Salman Rushdie tweeted: “The world’s economy has been wrecked by these rapacious traders. Yet it is the protesters who are jailed.”
Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore spoke at Lower Manhattan rallies, where – due to an NYPD ban on PA systems at Occupy Wall Street — listeners repeated en masse each sentence out loud so members of the audience and media could hear the filmmaker’s speech. (The same tactic was used during one of Kovic’s speech, apparently out of solidarity with the New York occupiers.) On Oct. 2 Moore stated on C-SPAN’s Book TV: “This movement is boiling over. Please join us.”
Occupy L.A.’s Mario Brito asserted: “The vast majority of Americans actually believe income inequality is a major problem. They only reason they haven’t acted upon it is because there hasn’t been a mass movement.”
That is, perhaps, until now.
Denouncing “corporate pigs” and praising the Arab Spring, 20-something Katiuska Cruz called the occupation movement: “Genius… great! …This is the new ’60s. This is our own ‘Spring’ – you know, how Egypt did it. We’re just doing it in the American way.” Call them the 21st century’s “volunteers of America.”
For more info see: http://occupylosangeles.org/
Comment BelowTags: 60s, American Dream Movement, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Back Page Magazine, bankers, Brooklyn Bridge, capitalism, Citizen Activism, downtown la, economic justice, Ed Rampell, income inequality, Jefferson Airplane, John Galt, Katiuska Cruz, LA City Hall, LAPD, Mario Brito, Martin Luther King, Michael Moore, Nelson Mandela, NYPD, Occupy L.A., occupy los angeles, Occupy Wall Street, occupylosangeles.org, October 2011, Pershing Square, photos, pics, protest, Ron Kovic, Salman Rushdie, Susan Sarandon, Volunteers, Washington D.C., what are the goals, Woody GuthrieRELATED POSTS2011 MLB Playoffs: A Chance for the Underdogs to Rise UpUPDATE: Radiohead NOT Playing “Surprise” Gig at Occupy Wall Street Protest Today in NYCThe Stolen Rembrandt: What’s Going On Here?
THE AUTHOR
Ed Rampell
Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film historian/critic and author of Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States. His interview with Charles Ferguson, the Oscar-winning director of Inside Job, is in the September issue of The Progressive Magazine.
The First Two Days of Occupy Los Angeles
FIGHT THE POWER || BY ED RAMPELL || OCT 03, 2011
Editor’s Note: The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has spread within the past week to over 100 American cities. Though to many the goals of the national protest seem unfocused, with no apparent long-term strategy, there is no doubt that this movement has energized a good many in this country.
Back Page Magazine sent reporter Ed Rampell into downtown L.A. for the first two days of “Occupy L.A.” to get a read on this citizens’ movement.
“Look what’s happening out in the streets
Got a revolution Got to revolution
Hey I’m dancing down the streets
Got a revolution Got to revolution…
We are volunteers of America
We are volunteers of America”
– Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane
“Not since the late 1960s has there been anything like this!” declared Ron Kovic, the Vietnam vet Tom Cruise portrayed in the 1989 movie Born on the Fourth of July. “This is the beginning of a revolution in the spirit of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela,” the longtime peace organizer told a throng of supporters outside of Los Angeles’ City Hall.
Photo by Ed Rampell
The hundreds of demonstrators who marched on Oct. 1 from Downtown L.A.’s Pershing Square to City Hall – where some planned to camp out as part of a nationwide “occupation” movement — were, like ’60s activists, mostly young. But unlike members of Kovic’s generation, for whom the Indochina war was the paramount issue, today’s campaigners are primarily preoccupied with the economy, in particular with America’s growing income inequality.
The so-called “Occupy Los Angeles” movement belongs to a national “leaderless resistance” using social media, and is acting in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, where protesters have been rallying and camping out at Lower Manhattan’s Financial District to condemn bankers, corporations and other plutocrats they contend are looting and pillaging the U.S. and world economies.
Mario Brito, Occupy L.A.’s city liaison, summed up the occupation cause’s raison d’etre as “economic justice,” and told Back Page Magazine: “This is an international movement – it’s not only happening in Wall Street, it’s happening in 170 cities in the U.S., and cities in Europe and Latin America.” Events are scheduled the week of Oct. 3 to take place in Washington, D.C., including the American Dream Movement’s summit and protests at Freedom Plaza.
Photo by Ed Rampell
Speakers at the rally, which stretched around much of L.A.’s City Hall, included perennial congressional candidate Marcy Winograd, as well as the wheelchair-bound Kovic, who recited folksinger Woody Guthrie’s people’s anthem, This Land is Your Land. Later in the afternoon on the lawn near First Street and Main Avenue anyone who wanted to speak could through an open mic system; a poet read anti-capitalist poetry. Although LAPD maintained a substantial presence, there was no overt police abuse of power, such as the pepper spraying and mass detentions in New York by the NYPD.
The signs and T-shirts of many of the up to 3,000 people who gathered at L.A.’s City Hall bore anti-corporate slogans, such as: “Tax the Rich”, “Regulate the WBankers”, “End Corrupt Oligarchs”, “Make Love, Not Interest Bearing Debt”, “Robbed at Pen Point at Blank Check Range”, “From Tahrir to Eternity”, “Old & Still Idealistic”, “We the People”, and “We Are the 99%”, referring to the idea that America’s economic inequities overwhelmingly affect the vast majority of the population in adverse, unfair ways.
Photo by Ed Rampell
Many participants showed individual initiative with their sloganeering. A young woman literally thinking outside of the box wore a cardboard box emblazoned with the words: “I’m here so I don’t have to live in this box.”
A toddler sat in a baby stroller sporting the sign: “Help! They’ve stolen my future.” One man held aloft an effigy of the Monopoly game mascot Rich Uncle Pennybags, wearing a top hat, holding a martini glass and the words: “I’ve had Enough Trickle Down Economics.”
Photo by Ed Rampell
Some wore the same mustachioed mask as the militant character in 2006’s V for Vendetta movie, while others carried America’s 13 star flag from the Revolutionary War.
As she listened to Ron Kovics’ speech Katiuska Cruz — who identified herself as an unemployed class of 2009 college grad with no healthcare, originally from the Dominican Republic — held a placard proclaiming: “Revolution starts now; We need a reform.” In smaller letters were the words “Unity”, “Freedom”, “I am 99%”; the word “Greed” was X-ed out in a circle.
The aspiring actress, who recently moved from Boston to L.A., told Back Page Magazine: “I think it’s very unfair what’s going on. The 1 percent pretty much have all the money. Now Bank of America is going to charge $5 a month [debit card fees]. It’s pretty screwed up how a lot of people are getting their houses taken away, and most of them are really poor. While the rich are sitting in their… homes, drinking champagne.
“It’s just very unfair what’s going on and it’s about time something is done. I’m just so glad – people say we’re a ‘lost generation,’ but we’re not. Look at what we’re doing: We’re standing up, we’re tired; we’re over it. We’re going to do something about it. And we’re starting right now!” asserted the young Latina, who performs protest music in the Sex Pistols and Gogol Bordello tradition in order to “speak up.”
A grey-haired Caucasian man who identified himself as Tom and as an attorney held a sign stating: “John Galt can go to hell.” Tom called this character in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged “a rich asshole who tells the public to be damned. He’s the patron saint of rich assholes. He justifies, provides morality, for all rich assholes.”
Photo by Ed Rampell
Tom described this ethos of the marketplace as “believing religiously in [Adam Smith’s] ‘invisible hand,’ that will provide prosperity to man, if everybody is nice and greedy.”
Tom expressed outrage that while around 1,000 people have been arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests (700 marchers were held by NYPD following an Oct. 1 march across the Brooklyn Bridge), none of the corporate culprits who devastated the economy have been charged with crimes.
“I have clients that do 25 to life for stealing a pack of underwear, and these guys steal billions – and they don’t do any time! It’s like the government’s conspiracy of the haves versus the have nots,” said Tom, who explained he was at the City Hall demo to “lend my body… to the crowd and let the powers that be know that we’re here – and we’re going to take over.”
Sitting on City Hall’s lawn a Filipina named Christina likened the national occupation movement to the 1980s “People’s Power” uprising against dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Christina’s homemade sign declared: “USA has the biggest income gap among developed countries – time for change”, and she maintained “the most unequal society is USA, and next is Great Britain,” where riots took place last summer.
“In essence, statistics show and everywhere you see it: 1 percent of the population controls 90 percent of the wealth… There has to be equality in our lives… so all of us benefit from the resources of the world,” insisted Christina, who was laid off last year from her position with healthcare insurers, but has a new job working for personal injury victims. Christina participated in Occupy L.A. “because I just want to get involved. I think it’s time for change. I think it’s time for Americans to wake up… We formed the People’s Power revolution to oust Pres. Marcos… The American people have to rise up… This is the beginning of [People’s Power in America].”
Photo by Ed Rampell
On Saturday night hundreds of people camped out on City Hall’s grounds, although not inside of the cordoned off municipal building itself. No arrests were reported as of Sunday afternoon.
Media coverage of and international support for the movement is growing, just as the occupations are. Author and free speech champion Salman Rushdie tweeted: “The world’s economy has been wrecked by these rapacious traders. Yet it is the protesters who are jailed.”
Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore spoke at Lower Manhattan rallies, where – due to an NYPD ban on PA systems at Occupy Wall Street — listeners repeated en masse each sentence out loud so members of the audience and media could hear the filmmaker’s speech. (The same tactic was used during one of Kovic’s speech, apparently out of solidarity with the New York occupiers.) On Oct. 2 Moore stated on C-SPAN’s Book TV: “This movement is boiling over. Please join us.”
Occupy L.A.’s Mario Brito asserted: “The vast majority of Americans actually believe income inequality is a major problem. They only reason they haven’t acted upon it is because there hasn’t been a mass movement.”
That is, perhaps, until now.
Denouncing “corporate pigs” and praising the Arab Spring, 20-something Katiuska Cruz called the occupation movement: “Genius… great! …This is the new ’60s. This is our own ‘Spring’ – you know, how Egypt did it. We’re just doing it in the American way.” Call them the 21st century’s “volunteers of America.”
For more info see: http://occupylosangeles.org/
Comment BelowTags: 60s, American Dream Movement, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Back Page Magazine, bankers, Brooklyn Bridge, capitalism, Citizen Activism, downtown la, economic justice, Ed Rampell, income inequality, Jefferson Airplane, John Galt, Katiuska Cruz, LA City Hall, LAPD, Mario Brito, Martin Luther King, Michael Moore, Nelson Mandela, NYPD, Occupy L.A., occupy los angeles, Occupy Wall Street, occupylosangeles.org, October 2011, Pershing Square, photos, pics, protest, Ron Kovic, Salman Rushdie, Susan Sarandon, Volunteers, Washington D.C., what are the goals, Woody GuthrieRELATED POSTS2011 MLB Playoffs: A Chance for the Underdogs to Rise UpUPDATE: Radiohead NOT Playing “Surprise” Gig at Occupy Wall Street Protest Today in NYCThe Stolen Rembrandt: What’s Going On Here?
THE AUTHOR
Ed Rampell
Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film historian/critic and author of Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States. His interview with Charles Ferguson, the Oscar-winning director of Inside Job, is in the September issue of The Progressive Magazine.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Op-Ed New York Times - The Bankers and the Revolutionaries
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Bankers and the Revolutionaries
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 1, 2011
RECOMMEND
TWITTER
LINKEDIN
E-MAIL
PRINT
REPRINTS
SHARE
AFTER flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway.
Enlarge This Image
Jason Polan
On the Ground
Share Your Comments About This Column
Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels.
Go to Columnist Page »
Multimedia
Advice for the Wall Street Protesters
Related
Times Topic: Occupy Wall Street (Wall St. Protests, 2011)
Related in Opinion
Charles Blow: Hippies and Hipsters Exhale (October 1, 2011)
Opinionator | The Thread: Can You Hear Them Now? (September 30, 2011)
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
The “Occupy Wall Street ” movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.
“Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards — mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches — but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.
I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that raised eyebrows. True, no bullets are whizzing around, and the movement won’t unseat any dictators. But there is the same cohort of alienated young people , and the same savvy use of Twitter and other social media to recruit more participants. Most of all, there’s a similar tide of youthful frustration with a political and economic system that protesters regard as broken, corrupt, unresponsive and unaccountable.
“This was absolutely inspired by Tahrir Square, by the Arab Spring movement,” said Tyler Combelic, 27, a Web designer from Brooklyn who is a spokesman for the occupiers. “Enough is enough!”
The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills, and impressive in their organization. The square is divided into a reception area, a media zone, a medical clinic, a library and a cafeteria. The protesters’ Web site includes links allowing supporters anywhere in the world to go online and order pizzas (vegan preferred) from a local pizzeria that delivers them to the square.
In a tribute to the ingenuity of capitalism, the pizzeria quickly added a new item to its menu: the “OccuPie special.”
Where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn’t really have any. The participants pursue causes that are sometimes quixotic — like the protester who calls for removing Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill because of his brutality to American Indians. So let me try to help.
I don’t share the antimarket sentiments of many of the protesters. Banks are invaluable institutions that, when functioning properly, move capital to its best use and raise living standards. But it’s also true that soaring leverage not only nurtured soaring bank profits in good years, but also soaring risks for the public in bad years.
In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.
We’ve seen that inadequately regulated, too-big-to-fail banks can undermine the public interest rather than serve it — and in the last few years, banks got away with murder. It’s infuriating to see bankers who were rescued by taxpayers now moan about regulations intended to prevent the next bail-out. And it’s important that protesters spotlight rising inequality: does it feel right to anyone that the top 1 percent of Americans now possess a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent?
So for those who want to channel their amorphous frustration into practical demands, here are several specific suggestions:
¶Impose a financial transactions tax. This would be a modest tax on financial trades, modeled on the suggestions of James Tobin, an American economist who won a Nobel Prize. The aim is in part to dampen speculative trading that creates dangerous volatility. Europe is moving toward a financial transactions tax , but the Obama administration is resisting — a reflection of its deference to Wall Street.
¶Close the “carried interest” and “founders’ stock” loopholes, which may be the most unconscionable tax breaks in America. They allow our wealthiest citizens to pay very low tax rates by pretending that their labor compensation is a capital gain.
¶Protect big banks from themselves. This means moving ahead with Basel III capital requirements and adopting the Volcker Rule to limit banks’ ability to engage in risky and speculative investments. Another sensible proposal, embraced by President Obama and a number of international experts, is the bank tax. This could be based on an institution’s size and leverage, so that bankers could pay for their cleanups — the finance equivalent of a pollution tax.
Much of the sloganeering at “Occupy Wall Street” is pretty silly — but so is the self-righteous sloganeering of Wall Street itself. And if a ragtag band of youthful protesters can help bring a dose of accountability and equity to our financial system, more power to them.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+ , watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter .
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on October 2, 2011, on page SR11 of the New York edition with the headline: The Bankers and the Revolutionaries.
The Bankers and the Revolutionaries
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 1, 2011
RECOMMEND
REPRINTS
SHARE
AFTER flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway.
Enlarge This Image
Jason Polan
On the Ground
Share Your Comments About This Column
Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels.
Go to Columnist Page »
Multimedia
Advice for the Wall Street Protesters
Related
Times Topic: Occupy Wall Street (Wall St. Protests, 2011)
Related in Opinion
Charles Blow: Hippies and Hipsters Exhale (October 1, 2011)
Opinionator | The Thread: Can You Hear Them Now? (September 30, 2011)
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
The “Occupy Wall Street ” movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.
“Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards — mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches — but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.
I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that raised eyebrows. True, no bullets are whizzing around, and the movement won’t unseat any dictators. But there is the same cohort of alienated young people , and the same savvy use of Twitter and other social media to recruit more participants. Most of all, there’s a similar tide of youthful frustration with a political and economic system that protesters regard as broken, corrupt, unresponsive and unaccountable.
“This was absolutely inspired by Tahrir Square, by the Arab Spring movement,” said Tyler Combelic, 27, a Web designer from Brooklyn who is a spokesman for the occupiers. “Enough is enough!”
The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills, and impressive in their organization. The square is divided into a reception area, a media zone, a medical clinic, a library and a cafeteria. The protesters’ Web site includes links allowing supporters anywhere in the world to go online and order pizzas (vegan preferred) from a local pizzeria that delivers them to the square.
In a tribute to the ingenuity of capitalism, the pizzeria quickly added a new item to its menu: the “OccuPie special.”
Where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn’t really have any. The participants pursue causes that are sometimes quixotic — like the protester who calls for removing Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill because of his brutality to American Indians. So let me try to help.
I don’t share the antimarket sentiments of many of the protesters. Banks are invaluable institutions that, when functioning properly, move capital to its best use and raise living standards. But it’s also true that soaring leverage not only nurtured soaring bank profits in good years, but also soaring risks for the public in bad years.
In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.
We’ve seen that inadequately regulated, too-big-to-fail banks can undermine the public interest rather than serve it — and in the last few years, banks got away with murder. It’s infuriating to see bankers who were rescued by taxpayers now moan about regulations intended to prevent the next bail-out. And it’s important that protesters spotlight rising inequality: does it feel right to anyone that the top 1 percent of Americans now possess a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent?
So for those who want to channel their amorphous frustration into practical demands, here are several specific suggestions:
¶Impose a financial transactions tax. This would be a modest tax on financial trades, modeled on the suggestions of James Tobin, an American economist who won a Nobel Prize. The aim is in part to dampen speculative trading that creates dangerous volatility. Europe is moving toward a financial transactions tax , but the Obama administration is resisting — a reflection of its deference to Wall Street.
¶Close the “carried interest” and “founders’ stock” loopholes, which may be the most unconscionable tax breaks in America. They allow our wealthiest citizens to pay very low tax rates by pretending that their labor compensation is a capital gain.
¶Protect big banks from themselves. This means moving ahead with Basel III capital requirements and adopting the Volcker Rule to limit banks’ ability to engage in risky and speculative investments. Another sensible proposal, embraced by President Obama and a number of international experts, is the bank tax. This could be based on an institution’s size and leverage, so that bankers could pay for their cleanups — the finance equivalent of a pollution tax.
Much of the sloganeering at “Occupy Wall Street” is pretty silly — but so is the self-righteous sloganeering of Wall Street itself. And if a ragtag band of youthful protesters can help bring a dose of accountability and equity to our financial system, more power to them.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook and Google+ , watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter .
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on October 2, 2011, on page SR11 of the New York edition with the headline: The Bankers and the Revolutionaries.
New York Times
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Read all about it: Chelsea Potter distributed the first issue of The Occupied Wall Street Journal near Zuccotti Park Saturday morning.
Just before noon, Chelsea Potter stood on the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street holding a sheaf of newspapers and offering them to passers-by.
“Excuse me,” she said to a man in a tan raincoat. “Would you like a copy of The Occupied Wall Street Journal?”
The man accepted the paper without breaking stride then looked at it as he continued walking.
Over the last two weeks, as people participating in a protest called Occupy Wall Street have called attention to what they say are inequities in the economic system, the ways in which news organizations have covered the protests have been a subject of hot debate.
Some protesters have wished aloud for reporting more in line with their own conception of themselves.
Now, they have their own newspaper. It debuted on Saturday with a print run of 50,000, after two independent journalists in New York started a campaign using the online fund-raising platform Kickstarter.
“This movement has sometimes been misrepresented,” said Arun Gupta, 46, one of the two primary organizers of the project. “This paper is for the general public to let them know what is going on here.”
The four-page broadsheet includes a story by Mr. Gupta headlined “The Revolution Begins at Home,” an essay by the former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges urging people to participate in the protests, and a “Declaration of the Occupation” approved at a meeting of protesters on Sept. 29.
“There are no excuses left,” Mr. Hedges writes in a piece reprinted from the site Truthdig, where has a regular column.
Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
Mr. Gupta, and the other main organizer, Jed Brandt, 38, both have experience working on the Indypendent, a left-leaning paper that publishes about 16 issues a year and that Mr. Gupta co-founded 11 years ago.
The two men opened an account on Kickstarter on Thursday, Mr. Brandt said, describing the paper as a public art project. Within eight hours, he said, they had raised more than $12,000.
The papers were printed Friday night in Long Island City, Queens, and delivered to Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, where protesters have been camping, on Saturday morning.
There, the papers made their way to people like Ms. Potter, 20, from Augusta, Ga., who said that she had come to New York to join to protests because she believes that corporations have all but taken over government.
“We need a different world,” she said.
Papers were distributed to protesters and nonprotesters. Somebody tucked a copy into the arm of J. Seward Johnson’s “Double Check,” a life sized bronze statue of a businessman looking into a briefcase that sits on a granite bench in the park.
One of the nonprotesters who accepted a paper was Veronica Cook, 19, from Groton, Conn., who was visiting New York with her husband, Steven Cook, who is in the Navy.
Ms. Cook said that she did not know much about the protesters or their objectives, but said she would take a look at the paper she had been handed.
“At least they are not just shouting in a corner,” she said. “Making a newspaper is a good way to try to get a message out.”
E-mail ThisPrint
Recommend
Share
TUMBLRDIGGLINKEDINREDDITPERMALINK
Twitter
Cultural Affairs, Government & Politics, Public Spaces, Occupy Wall Street, Wall Street protests
Read all about it: Chelsea Potter distributed the first issue of The Occupied Wall Street Journal near Zuccotti Park Saturday morning.
Just before noon, Chelsea Potter stood on the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street holding a sheaf of newspapers and offering them to passers-by.
“Excuse me,” she said to a man in a tan raincoat. “Would you like a copy of The Occupied Wall Street Journal?”
The man accepted the paper without breaking stride then looked at it as he continued walking.
Over the last two weeks, as people participating in a protest called Occupy Wall Street have called attention to what they say are inequities in the economic system, the ways in which news organizations have covered the protests have been a subject of hot debate.
Some protesters have wished aloud for reporting more in line with their own conception of themselves.
Now, they have their own newspaper. It debuted on Saturday with a print run of 50,000, after two independent journalists in New York started a campaign using the online fund-raising platform Kickstarter.
“This movement has sometimes been misrepresented,” said Arun Gupta, 46, one of the two primary organizers of the project. “This paper is for the general public to let them know what is going on here.”
The four-page broadsheet includes a story by Mr. Gupta headlined “The Revolution Begins at Home,” an essay by the former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges urging people to participate in the protests, and a “Declaration of the Occupation” approved at a meeting of protesters on Sept. 29.
“There are no excuses left,” Mr. Hedges writes in a piece reprinted from the site Truthdig, where has a regular column.
Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
Mr. Gupta, and the other main organizer, Jed Brandt, 38, both have experience working on the Indypendent, a left-leaning paper that publishes about 16 issues a year and that Mr. Gupta co-founded 11 years ago.
The two men opened an account on Kickstarter on Thursday, Mr. Brandt said, describing the paper as a public art project. Within eight hours, he said, they had raised more than $12,000.
The papers were printed Friday night in Long Island City, Queens, and delivered to Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, where protesters have been camping, on Saturday morning.
There, the papers made their way to people like Ms. Potter, 20, from Augusta, Ga., who said that she had come to New York to join to protests because she believes that corporations have all but taken over government.
“We need a different world,” she said.
Papers were distributed to protesters and nonprotesters. Somebody tucked a copy into the arm of J. Seward Johnson’s “Double Check,” a life sized bronze statue of a businessman looking into a briefcase that sits on a granite bench in the park.
One of the nonprotesters who accepted a paper was Veronica Cook, 19, from Groton, Conn., who was visiting New York with her husband, Steven Cook, who is in the Navy.
Ms. Cook said that she did not know much about the protesters or their objectives, but said she would take a look at the paper she had been handed.
“At least they are not just shouting in a corner,” she said. “Making a newspaper is a good way to try to get a message out.”
E-mail ThisPrint
Recommend
Share
TUMBLRDIGGLINKEDINREDDITPERMALINK
Cultural Affairs, Government & Politics, Public Spaces, Occupy Wall Street, Wall Street protests
NPR
EnlargeMario Tama/Getty Images
A protester marches on Friday in New York City as part of larger demonstration focused on corporations, wealth and income distribution.
text size A A A October 2, 2011
A protest in New York dubbed "Occupy Wall Street" appears to be settling in for the long term. Twice a day, protesters leave the tents, makeshift kitchen and free bookstore set up in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan and begin a slow march down the sidewalk.
Anywhere from hundreds to thousands of supporters are showing up for marches each day. A protest on the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday resulted in about 700 arrests. Another major demonstration is set for mid-week as union members join protesters.
Pick just about any cause, including the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia in September, and it's likely represented here. The primary focus is on corporations, the wealthy and income distribution.
The objective, as protester Mike Luciano from Pennsylvania puts it, is "taking the big cats down, bringing down Wall Street, changing how the government works and the dirty deals are done."
EnlargeMichael Nagle/Getty Images
Occupy Wall Street protesters have been camped in Zuccotti Park for about two weeks, and an organizer says they are planning to improve infrastructure so they can stay there for months.
Luciano says he belongs to a union. Given recent reports that local organized labor is starting to get behind the protest, he expected to see more fellow union members.
Next Wednesday afternoon, several unions are planning a march from City Hall to the protest site. That day there likely will be only one march.
"We have been in the past doing two — one at 9 and one at 4 ... for the opening and closing bells," says Victoria Sobel, a college student at Cooper Union and a protest organizer. "I believe we are moving toward one march a day to have a bigger march."
That does not mean this protest is winding down. Sobel says organizers hope to improve infrastructure for the estimated 200 to 300 people who are living at the protest site so they can stay here for months. There's a makeshift kitchen already set up, but few options for bathrooms.
Despite organizers' intentions, the big question is how long the city will let the protesters occupy the park. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has not yet answered that question definitively.
Related NPR Stories
700 Arrested After Brooklyn Bridge Protest Oct. 1, 2011
New York Unions Vow To Support Wall Street Protesters Sept. 29, 2011
NYPD Will Examine Use Of Pepper Spray On 'Occupy Wall Street' Protesters Sept. 28, 2011
A protester marches on Friday in New York City as part of larger demonstration focused on corporations, wealth and income distribution.
text size A A A October 2, 2011
A protest in New York dubbed "Occupy Wall Street" appears to be settling in for the long term. Twice a day, protesters leave the tents, makeshift kitchen and free bookstore set up in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan and begin a slow march down the sidewalk.
Anywhere from hundreds to thousands of supporters are showing up for marches each day. A protest on the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday resulted in about 700 arrests. Another major demonstration is set for mid-week as union members join protesters.
Pick just about any cause, including the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia in September, and it's likely represented here. The primary focus is on corporations, the wealthy and income distribution.
The objective, as protester Mike Luciano from Pennsylvania puts it, is "taking the big cats down, bringing down Wall Street, changing how the government works and the dirty deals are done."
EnlargeMichael Nagle/Getty Images
Occupy Wall Street protesters have been camped in Zuccotti Park for about two weeks, and an organizer says they are planning to improve infrastructure so they can stay there for months.
Luciano says he belongs to a union. Given recent reports that local organized labor is starting to get behind the protest, he expected to see more fellow union members.
Next Wednesday afternoon, several unions are planning a march from City Hall to the protest site. That day there likely will be only one march.
"We have been in the past doing two — one at 9 and one at 4 ... for the opening and closing bells," says Victoria Sobel, a college student at Cooper Union and a protest organizer. "I believe we are moving toward one march a day to have a bigger march."
That does not mean this protest is winding down. Sobel says organizers hope to improve infrastructure for the estimated 200 to 300 people who are living at the protest site so they can stay here for months. There's a makeshift kitchen already set up, but few options for bathrooms.
Despite organizers' intentions, the big question is how long the city will let the protesters occupy the park. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has not yet answered that question definitively.
Related NPR Stories
700 Arrested After Brooklyn Bridge Protest Oct. 1, 2011
New York Unions Vow To Support Wall Street Protesters Sept. 29, 2011
NYPD Will Examine Use Of Pepper Spray On 'Occupy Wall Street' Protesters Sept. 28, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Occupy Los Angeles Saturday October 1, 2011
NATIONAL
Photo: OccupyLA
Occupy Los Angeles Publishes Plan for Saturday Protest
Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Photo: OccupyLA
UPDATE: OccupyLa has published it plans for parking and logistics for Saturday demo in downtown L.A.
As the inchoate but persistent Occupy Wall Street protests near completion of their second week, they are beginning to spread to numerous other cities including America's second largest, Los Angeles.
Activists are calling for a march and rally on L.A. City Hall on Saturday October 1.
Other protests are simmering in cities ranging from Boston, to San Francisco, Chicago, San Diego and even in Lexington, Kentucky.
The "leaderless" anti-capitalist protests began two weeks ago on Wall Street and while the crowds have not been very large, several hundred protesters remain persistent in their efforts, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon have dropped in. A seasoned diplomat dispenses free advice. Supporters send everything from boxes of food and clothes to Whole Foods gift cards. They even have their own app, for the legions of fans following them on iPhones and Androids.Nearly two weeks into a sit-in at a park in Manhattan's financial district, the "leaderless resistance movement" calling itself Occupy Wall Street is at a crossroads. The number of protesters on scene so far tops out at a few hundred, tiny by Athens or Cairo standards. But the traction they have gained from run-ins with police, a live feed from their encampment and celebrity visits is upping expectations. How about some specific demands, a long-term strategy, maybe even … office space?So far the group, which generally defines itself as anti-greed, has none of those.
On Thursday, however, the protests began to take on more defined form as some major labor unions joined the fray. The Business Insider reports that the New York Transit Workers Union voted to support the demonstrations. The powerful Teamsters as well as the union representing pilots from United Airlines have also thrown in their support and were seen among the New York protesters.
While even some sympathetic observers have criticized the demonstrators for not clearly articulating their demands, a 10 point program has finally emerged.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)