Occupy Wall Street -- or somewhere close to it.
So I went downtown today in a light drizzle to check out the Occupy Wall Street activities. The US govt OCCUPIED Iraq & Afghanistan, now the American PEOPLE, or at least a disgruntled few hundreds, are daily occupying Wall Street.
Well not exactly Wall Street -- but close to it.
Zucotti Park to be precise, several blocks down and over. Those of us who actually are the 99%, who have been cheated by the banks and defrauded by the Govt. who stole our money and bailed out the financial houses, not just the banks.
At Zucotti, there's a lot of singing, dancing and free food. Blue tarps cover sleeping protesters and their belongings. Lots of banners and placards and flyers ranging from American Indian issues to the World Socialist Movement.
What's missing? I wish Zucotti had a Discussion Tent, where people could gather in small, decentralized groups to try to understand the many complex interrelated issues and then take the action back to their neighborhoods and to DC.
My sense is you can't talk about greed and corruption without aiming at those rabid Republicans and Tea Partiers who have just defeated Obama's Jobs Bill.
Regrettably, Obama offered TLTL -- Too Little Too Late -- he did not come up with ANY Job Action in his first 90 days in office, instead here he is,3 years later, 3 years too late, trying to get a Jobs Bill passed, in the heat of a re-election bid against those same Republicans. Good luck with that, hocus POTUS.
Yeah Yeah you will be re-elected because your opposition borders on suicidal lunacy or at the very least cynically simplistic solutions.
But to return to the Occupiers. Mainly they seemed to be feeling the moment and zen-like, were in the moment. Hope the moment can stretch and gain depth. That's essential.
Q. How did Zucotti ever become a PRIVATE Park, right off Broadway? I was shocked to research and discover that Brookfield Properties owns it.
Property IS Theft from the 99%.
Privatizing PUBLIC spaces, especially scarce green spaces, is THEFT of Public Resources, by the 1%, from the 99%.
Interestingly, Mayor Bloomberg's girlfriend, Diana Taylor, is on the Board of Directors of Brookfield Properties. She is a high-flying capitalist, who is shrewd enough to makeexcessive piles of money, access power, move with the movers and shake with the shakers, and then also sit on the boards of a fistful of PUBLIC-spirited non-profits, how shrewd is that.
So, is that why the Mayor came down yesterday to tell the Occupiers that they are ordered to vacate "temporarily" so the Park can be cleaned? Actually, it's relatively clean and well-maintained, today it's raining so Nature is cleaning as well, I saw Occupiers wielding brooms.
So my guess is the Mayor had a motive which had little to do with Lysol.
Help we really really need a cleaning crew during a Revolution! After we've been cleaned OUT already.
Wall Street, the street itself was pretty much cordoned off, lots of police and barricades, no singing, dancing, free food and overnight sleepers there. A union Local of building workers was protesting today with banners and a bullhorn, they repeated somewhat robotically "We are the 99%."
The bankers undoubtedly have central a/c, so could they hear the noisy % claim?
Then I walked over to Broadway and Morris to observe the famed Bull of high capitalism. I note he has surprisingly modest testicles. NYPD was guarding him while impressed tourists took pictures of themselves posing with him.
I asked a cop, Officer Feliciano, while leaning against a barricade and taking in the rock band, back again at Zocotti:
"How long do you figure this will last?"
He looked at his watch with a grin "Till tomorrow -- or maybe till it turns cold."
That's at least 3 months away.
Dr. Chithra Karunakaran
City University of New York [CUNY]
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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