#Occupied: Reports From the Front Lines – Pre-May Day Edition

Search form

#Occupied: Reports From the Front Lines – Pre-May Day Edition

#Occupied: Reports From the Front Lines – Pre-May Day Edition

Fri, 4/27/2012 - by Jennifer Sacks and SIUKittyPie
This article originally appeared on Occupied Wall Street Journal

Photo: Stacy Lanyon. The Tax Dodgers celebrated corporate loopholes in Bryant Park on tax filing day, April 17.

This week in Occupy, several shareholder meetings were #occupied, Chicago fought to preserve mental health care, #occupied Wall Street is here to stay and we all prepared to call out sick on May Day. #Maybe you weren’t aware? Wall Street is still #Occupied. Albeit with restrictions.The Sleepful Protest: Occupiers hunker down on Wall Street.

#It’s shareholder meeting season, and Occupy has noticed. In San Francisco, members of Occupy bought shares in Wells Fargo specifically so they could interrupt the annual shareholders’ meeting. They were able to speak with some of the shareholders, and eventually CEO John Stumpf had the doors to the building closed, which denied entry to shareholders and Occupiers alike. Shareholders who were not part of the protest were allowed to come and go through a side door, while the others were told the meeting was “filled to capacity.”

#In Detroit, several hundred assembled outside GE’s annual shareholders meeting.

#In London, Gulf Coast residents and activists protested BP’s annual shareholders meeting. Gulf Coast residents also bought shares in the company so they could alert executives to the poisoned Gulf, which is producing diseased fish and causing health problems in humans two years after the Deepwater Horizon spill.

#The International Monetary Fund’s spring meeting was #occupied.

#Reuters decided that the increasing number of shareholder occupations signifies a trend. Lucky us.

#In Chicago, Woodlawn Mental Health Clinic was #occupied in an attempt to salvage the city’s mental health care. Ten were arrested.

#More than 100 Occupy Wall Street protesters stormed Kings County Supreme Court in Brooklyn on April 19 in an attempt to disrupt foreclosure auctions. Thirty-seven were arrested.

#Occupy Wall Street demonstrators interrupted a Bronx foreclosure auction to protest the housing crisis that continues to plague the borough. They serenaded a courtroom of real estate investors with the lyrics, “Y’all are speculating off people’s pain. With all due respect, you should be ashamed.” “We want a moratorium on foreclosures,” said Blair Ellis, 29.

#Employing the language of the 99%, hundreds of San Francisco union workers marched on City Hall to demand better compensation.

#Dozens of members of Occupy Portland attempted to occupy two downtown parks last weekend, but police gave them the same spiel they now give anyone from the Occupy Movement: Exercise your rights and face arrest.

Chile's student movement #occupies Santiago. Photo: Reuters#On Earth Day, Occupy the Farm planted itself in Northern California’s Gill Tract, a 10-acre parcel of agricultural land owned by the University of California, which is planning to sell it to private developers.

#Occupy Richmond held an Earth Day protest at a Chevron refinery in Richmond that drew 200. Dozens of groups joined them in protesting the pollution and greed perpetuated by Big Oil.

#An April 17 tax filing day demonstration in Manhattan marched past Bank of America, The Paulson Group, Chase and Trump Tower. The group donned baseball attire to “spend the day rubbing elbows with our favorite 1%ers and fellow Tax Dodgers.”

#ACT UP — the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power — staged a protest marking 25 years since it was formed in the same neighborhood as Occupy Wall Street. To commemorate the milestone, a demonstration was staged in the Financial District asking government to impose a small “Robin Hood tax”on each Wall Street trade to finance treatment and services for people with HIV. The Washington Post reported that New York Stock Exchange workers jeered from the sidewalk as protesters wearing Robin Hood costumes were dragged across the pavement.

#Occupy Detroit celebrated its six-month anniversary on April 12.

#Nathan Kleinman, a member of Occupy Philly, has entered the Democratic Congressional primary for Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District.

Occupy San Diego gets illuminated.#More than 500 people with disabilities descended on D.C. last week from across the country to protest cuts to Medicaid. Actor Noah Wyle from “E.R.” was arrested alongside them.

#The unions that comprise the so-called Big Labor bloc are once again a political force to be reckoned with – just ask politicians Scott Walker, John Kasich and Jason Altmire.

#A judge has ruled that the New York district attorney has the right to subpoena Occupiers’ tweets.

#The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, has retreated from crafting Stand Your Ground and voter ID laws…or so it said. Just before the announcement, the right wing corporate lobbying group released a statement decrying “the coordinated intimidation campaign against its members” in the wake of the Trayvon Martin murder. Aw, protesters scaring you, moneymen?

#The police chief who oversaw the U.C. Davis police department during its notorious pepper-spraying of Occupy protesters has resigned. Meet the new police chief.

#Debtors’ prisons are returning to America. Hospital patients are stalked by debt collectors. This is why I Occupy.

Neil Aquino/Texas Liberal#School-to-prison pipeline alert: A Georgia six-year-old was arrested for having a tantrum in class.

#The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are retreating from a plan to regulate many reaches of the U.S. trade in financial derivatives known as swaps, including the credit derivatives that nearly brought down the financial system.

#Sheila Bair, former head of the FDIC, is fighting for the 99%. First up: Give everyone $10 million. No, really.

#The New York Attorney General has finally begun investigating stop-and-frisk arrests, which are illegal.

#Architects of a proposed ethics and campaign reform initiative credit Occupy Wall Street, which took hold in Little Rock, as their inspiration.

#Here are the ten states that tax the poor the most. If you live in Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana, it’s time to occupy that situation.

#Xenophobic Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio’s campaign of oppression against the newly emigrated seems to be backfiring.

#Tarek Mehanna, a Massachusetts resident, was sentenced to 17 1/2 years in prison for translating and distributing Al Qaeda’s documents and videos, worrying First Amendment rights activists. “This case is being used by the government to really narrow First Amendment activity in dangerous new ways,” said Nancy Murray of the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. Jurors said they wept when coming to their decision, and one said she wished the judge had shown Mehanna mercy.

#A student demonstration in Montreal turned violent on April 25 when police shot explosives at 15,000 demonstrators.

The Writing's on the Wall. Photo: Tim Pool#Despite huge anti-government demonstrations in Bahrain that have left at least 50 dead, Formula One held the Grand Prix there. The sport has history of ignoring the political realities in some countries where it races.

#Norwegian spree killer Anders Breivik, who is currently on trial for killing 69 people, declared that Norwegian society is corrupted with Marxism, so 40,000 gathered in downtown Oslo to sing “Children of the Rainbow” in a conscious demonstration of everything he hates. Norwegians have decided that the best way to support democracy, tolerance and multiculturalism is to do it peacefully and with dignity.

#Chile’s education equality protests drew tens of thousands to the streets of Santiago this week.

#Economic despair is driving Europeans to suicide.

#The city of Volos, Greece, has done away with the Euro and instituted a bartering system. Needless to say, cutting out the middleman has made them much happier.

#Welcome, Occupied Tampa Tribune.

#Occupy Atlanta is fighting Bank of America to keep Pamela Flores in her home after the banking giant advised her to stop making payments so that she could qualify for the Making Home Affordable Program, a federal initiative meant to provide mortgage relief.

The IMF's spring meeting: #occupied.#Sick of deceptive credit cards fees? So is Hawaii. The state is suing Bank of America, Chase, Citi, Barclays, Capital One, Discover, HSBC and their subsidiaries.

#Bank of New York is squaring off against the IRS in U.S. Tax Court in New York over the halting of foreign tax abuses.

#According to Occupy Arrests, there are now 6,925 whistleblowers in America.

#¿Por Qué Occupy?

#May Day is upon us. Will you Occupy?

Sign Up

Article Tabs

Government is supposed to be public and open to inspection by its citizens - and we the citizens have a constitutional right to privacy.

Regulators' complicity in the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal is a weak point for the global banking cartel—which, like Al Capone's network of gangsters, may finally be on the way out.

Public banking could be the antidote to free us from our dependency on Wall Street and put monetary power in the people's hands.

Hansen accused the Canadian government of "holding a club" over the U.K. and European nations to accept its "dirty" oil, while a new study confirmed that 97% of climate reports attribute climate change to human actions.

They are going to serve up transgenic maize on every table in spite of the fact that food sovereignty depends on growing native corn.

Monsanto snuck a "rider" last week into the latest Senate agricultural legislation, giving the biotech giant blanket immunity from USDA action to halt potentially harmful GMO crops.

There's a big difference between our perception of wealth inequality in America, and how the real numbers add up.

Last weekend, 4,000 supporters of Binz, Zurich’s longest-established squat, were met with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons when a party turned into a march to protest their imminent eviction.

Tens of thousands from across the world called for new measures of liberty and dignity as they descended on Tunis to open the weeklong World Social Forum.

Lula Rod

At the Heart of An Occupation is photographer Stacy Lanyon’s photo journal of the people who comprise Occupy Wall Street. On July 24, she presented Freedom, in her own words.

 

On Monday, the County Commission of Mora County in northeastern New Mexico became the first in the U.S. to pass an ordinance banning all oil and gas extraction.

Stopped and Frisked? There's an App for That

Policing the police begins with this handy smartphone app.

Mike Shatz

After a stream of police shootings that have resulted in numerous deaths in recent months, citizens of Wichita are finding new ways to monitor the law -- and enforce justice on their terms.

Jason Reed

Bankers writing our laws, our rights to impair, playing tricks with the law, so they'll be billionaires. "And no one to prosecute," they proclaim with a flair: "It was more or less legal, we promise, we swear!"