Jim Hightower tells Occupistas : just being out here is a big part of the battle

Jim Hightower visits Stop the Machine contingent of Occupy DC The commentator and writer spoke to the Stop The Machine contingent of Occupy DC today, saying this movement is part of the “march of democracy” that continues to this day, taking some steps forward while also, unfortunately, taking steps backward.

Hightower, who writes about the Occupy Movement in the November edition of his newsletter, the Hightower Lowdown, disagrees with what some commentators have said about it.

“You’re being condemned even by some progressives for not having an agenda. Well, hello ? Wall Street is in the movement’s name. Seems like an agenda to me. Right now, protest is the issue. Just being here is a big part of the battle.”

Hightower said there is no rush for having a list of demands or a manifesto. He said during the American Revolution it was years before that happened.

Created Equal: Condom course is an outrage to Ohio taxpayers!

Wednesday evening, anti-abortion activist and Christian Domionist Mark Harrington and his latest knock off organization, Created Equal, protested a private fashion show fundraiser for Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio held at the Shadowbox Theatre on S. Front Street. .While any excuse to picket Planned Parenthood is a good excuse for Harrington, this event billed as "Condom Couture"--condom-inspired fashion with a cause" has driven the usually stay-at-home Harrington into the street. (As this piece was going to press I learned that some kind of altercation occured with Created Equal, Planned Parenthood security, and Columbus police. I am trying to suss this out and will report on it later if I learn anything.)

Maybe it's because this isn't' just some rubber chicken banquet. It's $ponsored by the marketing research firm One Point Contact, Continental Real Estate Companies, the Crane Group, and Teva Women's Health. I have no idea who showed up this year, but last year’s local luminaries included Mary and Bob Lazarus, Howard Sirak, and Channel 10's Andrea Cambern. Not a rubber chicken in sight.

The abandoned class: Will Occupy Wall Street hold together long enough to cut to the deep chase?

Will it find a voice to articulate not merely the pain of the struggling middle class but the endemic unfairness and racism of inescapable poverty? “Everyone is important,” read the sign of an elderly protester. My God, what if it were true? What if we could see, in the desperate thrashing of the abandoned class, everyone’s future, that of the 99 percent and that of the 1 percent?

Let the Occupy movement become such a merging of voices that it reaches and changes the rigged game of American democracy and puts the collective failure of the system, in all its manifestations — from environmental collapse to our doomed wars and the hubris of empire to the violence in our streets — at the forefront of our media and our consciousness. Let the movement be the first tremor of a new awareness that dehumanizes no one.

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Occupy The Hood

Occupy The Hood Daryl Lamont Jenkins is involved with Occupy Philadelphia, and is the founder of One People’s Project, an anti-racist organization. He’s also involved with Occupy the Hood. He spoke with the Columbus Free Press at Freedom Plaza, one of two Occupy DC sites. “This is our way of encouraging people in the Black and Hispanic communities and poorer communities to know--- straight up---‘this is about you.’ Matter of fact, we’ve been the 99 percent for a very long time.”

Jenkins said it’s not a case of being segregated. It’s a matter of connecting various occupations around the nation with people in the nearby communities who might not recognize their affinity with people protesting and camping out in their cities.

Let's protest big banks at their Columbus branches

Occupy DC Shuts down a K Street banch of Citibank Oct 20 ----If Occupy DC is doing this, why aren’t we ? About 25 activists shut down a branch of Citibank on K Street this afternoon amid the high-rise offices of lobbyists. People in expensive business suits walked past as we chanted, “ Hey, Citibank, stop all foreclosures. Hey CEOs, pay all your taxes…”

Management there apparently instruct their staff to shut down during protests in order to prevent persuaded customers from closing their accounts. And closing accounts is exactly what we intend to get an increasingly greater number of people to join us in doing, whether it’s here in D.C. or in Columbus.

Three days before we vote down SB-5, there will be an international Move Your Money day of action.

Obama vs. jobs; Hope vs. reality

Last week, President Obama racked up several more broken campaign promises as he pushed through Congress three new job-killing corporate trade agreements. The Senate Finance Committee was quite open about the fact that these agreements will kill off more jobs and eager to mitigate the damage with band aids attached to the treaties. Some of us who were in the hearing room felt an obligation to speak up and ask why in the world the senators -- with perfect bipartisan harmony -- insisted on causing the damage in the first place. And for that we were thrown in jail.

Imagine the denunciations of human rights abuses in Colombia if the plan for that country this week were war rather than corporate exploitation to produce impoverishment to produce drug crops to produce war. Imagine the denunciations of human rights abuses in Iran having continued as usual if U.S. cops weren't cracking skulls in New York, Boston, Denver, and San Diego. Maybe we wouldn't have needed the Tale of the Moronic Mexican Iranian Assassins at all.

Occupy Columbus Update

Occupy Columbus unanimous in support of union fight to repeal SB5
The Occupy Columbus General Assembly has voted unanimous support to the union fight to repeal SB5. This is the first specific issue the local group has formally endorsed. Occupy Columbus met for its weekly General Assembly at Bicentennial Park Amphitheater last night (October 18).

Other issues of concern but not yet formally adopted by the group include publicly funded elections, over-reaching corporate influence in politics, home foreclosures, extraordinary debt incurred by college students, and protecting social safety programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and programs for women, children, the elderly and the poor.

The group also authorized their legal team to continue talks with City officials to obtain a site for their occupation camp. So far the City has stonewalled requests. A request to City Council to intervene on the group’s behalf was denied on Monday night.

Bangkok becomes a medieval-style fortress against deadly floods

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Floods have smothered much of Thailand, killing at least 317 people and prompting Bangkok to surround itself with makeshift walls, leaving those outside the perimeter to suffer from diverted water, reminiscent of medieval times when people dug moats and sealed off their fortress cities against plague, war and other calamities.

"We have been doing everything we can, but this is a big national crisis," Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra told reporters on Wednesday (Oct. 19).

"I'm begging for mercy from the media here," she said, after heavy criticism for her poorly coordinated response to the floods.

Bangkok is now a virtual island under siege from a relentless flow of brown water, strewn with garbage and chemicals, after three months of widespread monsoon rains and increasingly swollen rivers, all flushing alongside the capital and draining into the nearby Gulf of Thailand.

The Crack at Davis-Besse is just one more 'Nail in the Coffin', says Coalition

Nuclear Critics Say Containment Cracking May Be Cause for Public Concern - Press Conference Held in Toledo, OH
A growing Coalition of groups that opposes a 20-year operating license extension for the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Port Clinton says it is closely watching developments since the discovery last week of a 30-foot-long crack in the plant's reactor containment building. The cracking, which is being investigated by the utility and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has prompted critics to widen their opposition to the continued operation of Davis-Besse for the generation of electricity.

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