#OCCUPYWALLSTREET HONORS SPIRIT OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. WITH YEAR’S LARGEST ACTION; HUNDREDS GATHER FOR GLOBAL CANDLELIGHT VIGIL AT HISTORIC RIVERSIDE CHURCH

[MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, NY] — Religious leaders, artists, and members of the Occupy movement will unite globally on January 15th, 2012 to honor the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

At 6:30 p.m. hundreds of Occupy Wall Street activists will assemble on the steps of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine (1047 Amsterdam Avenue) and at 7:00 p.m. begin a massive candlelight march to nearby Riverside Church (490 Riverside Drive). The group will join additional feeder marches and members of the community at Riverside Church for a candlelight vigil and celebration renewing King’s message of peace, justice, and equality for all, regardless of race or economic class. The action will culminate in an assembly featuring performances and speak-outs from artists, celebrities, religious leaders, and activists. Performances by Patti Smith, Steve Earle, Stephan Said, and Kozza Olantunji, as well as many more, will complement the inspirational words of Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Yoko Ono, Russell Simmons, Reverend Stephen H. Phelps, Daisey Kahn, Norman Siegel, Sumumba Sobukwe and Malik Rhasaan of Occupy The Hood.

“Poverty, an issue to which King showed increased focus in the years just before his death, finds its way into the darkest chapters in American History. Dr. King sought to shine a light of justice against those dark chapters of war, repression and racism, our candles symbolize that light,” says Abigail Keegan of Occupy Wall Street.

“These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. ‘The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.’” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

Riverside Church has been an intersection of faith and social justice in the greater New York metropolitan area for over 170 years. At Riverside in 1967, Dr. King gave his historic “Beyond Vietnam” speech. On King’s birthday and in the spirit of his vision for racial and economic equality, peace, and non-violence, activists will return to Riverside in solidarity with others holding candlelight vigils from California to Cairo; New York to New Orleans; Germany to Nova Scotia, to unite our world in a global movement for systemic change.

This candlelight vigil kicks off more than 24 hours of Occupy Wall Street-organized events and actions including a march on Monday, Jan. 16th at 9am from the African Burial Ground to the Federal Reserve Bank for a rally for economic justice. For more information about the January 15th action visit http://j15global.org  For more information the public can visit http://theriversidechurchny.org

The Riverside Church (www.theriversidechurchny.org) is an interracial, interdenominational and international church built by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1927. The 1,200-member Riverside Church in Morningside Heights has a rich tradition of providing a forum for important civic and spiritual leaders. Past speakers include: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., President William J. Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Fidel Castro, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

Victoria Collier and Ronnie Cummins - Occupy Rigged Elections: A Call for the Second American Revolution in 2012

Tuesday 27 December 2011

by: Victoria Collier and Ronnie Cummins, Truthout | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-rigged-elections-call-second-american-revolution-2012/1323891807 

When candidates emerge who support the positions and demands of the 99 percent, the more certain we can be that our elections will be rigged.

A great battle is coming. The 2012 elections are our chance to turn the tide back toward real democracy, but we must begin immediately. Only by organizing for a democratic revolution now can we break the hold of corporate criminals over our elections and take real power in 2012, legitimately and nonviolently.

Thanks to Occupy Wall Street and the 99 percent movement, millions of Americans are finally shaking off the depression and torpor of the past decade, heeding the mass-consciousness call to reclaim power from corporatist forces that have hijacked our country, our planet, and our future. We may not all have taken to the streets yet, but we will. Or we'll contribute in other creative, personally liberating ways, pitching in with prison-break fervor to unblock the channels of revolutionary energy.

Despite the jeering of the corporate media, the Occupy movement is not going to fade away, burn out or be crushed like the radical movements of the 60s and 70s. The Occupy movement is going to change the world, because the world itself has arrived at a momentous crossroads where change is inevitable. Occupy is part of an unstoppable transformation - the contractions of a new world desperate to be born, based on a renewal of community, tolerance, justice and deep respect for all life. A sane, resilient world capable of withstanding the ecological, climatic and economic upheavals we can no longer avoid.

Now is the time to prepare, in this newly awakened, prerevolutionary phase, for Occupy Elections 2012. Because the closer we get to democratically taking power - when candidates emerge who support the positions and demands of the 99 percent - the more certain we can be that our elections will be rigged.

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George Monbiot - This Bastardized Libertarianism Makes 'Freedom' an Instrument of Oppression

Published on Tuesday, December 20, 2011 by the Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/19/bastardised-libertarianism-makes-freedom-oppression

It's the disguise used by those who wish to exploit without restraint, denying the need for the state to protect the 99%

by George Monbiot

Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the right-wing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?

In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.

Right-wing libertarianism recognizes few legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others. In the UK it is forcefully promoted by groups like theTaxPayers' Alliance, the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, and Policy Exchange. Their concept of freedom looks to me like nothing but a justification for greed.

So why have we been been so slow to challenge this concept of liberty? I believe that one of the reasons is as follows. The great political conflict of our age – between neocons and the millionaires and corporations they support on one side, and social justice campaigners and environmentalists on the other – has been mischaracterized as a clash between negative and positive freedoms. These freedoms were most clearly defined by Isaiah Berlin in his essay of 1958, Two Concepts of Liberty. It is a work of beauty: reading it is like listening to a gloriously crafted piece of music. I will try not to mangle it too badly.

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Danny Schechter - Bull Moose or Bull Shoot: Is Obama Changing His Stance Towards Wall Street?

By Danny Schechter

Author of The Crime of Our Time

Is Obama changing?

Many in the Occupy Wall Street Movement are patting their efforts on the back, and even claiming credit for what looks like a shift by President Obama towards a more engaged campaign discussing economic fairness.

The President’s speech in Kansas was modeled on remarks made by the Republican Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt in 1910. There’s nothing like quoting a Republican for credible centrist positioning. (Note: he quotes TR, not FDR.)

Will he embrace GOP Pres Eisenhower’s warning about the Military Industrial Complex next? Unlikely.

Richard Eskow was quick to salute the new Obama:

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David Rosen - Austerity and Social Unrest

WEEKEND EDITION DECEMBER 9-11, 2011

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2011/12/09/AUSTERITY-AND-SOCIAL-UNREST/

by DAVID ROSEN

Whatever the long-term fate of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, it has made two major contributions to the warming 2012 political climate.

First, OWS put the concept of economic and social (in)equity, of the haves and have-nots, the 99%-ers, of class, center stage in national political discourse.  This is no insignificant accomplishment.  For the last half-century, there has been an unstated ban on acknowledging the concept of class in political discourse.  It was an agreement shared in politics, education/academia, the media and the labor movement.  “Workers” became the “middle class” and the sins of capitalism forgiven.

OWS’s second contribution has been to recover direct action, particularly mass social mobilization, as a valid form of political engagement.  There is a growing perception that petition signing, marches and voting mean little, rituals confirming predetermined outcomes.  People on all sides of the growing number of political and social issues (including grassroots Tea Partyers) are discovering their voices, mobilizing and getting busted.  Not surprising, activists often use high-tech communications media to accomplish miracles.  Direct action is likely to take still new and unexpected forms as the economic crisis deepens, drags on and social unrest mounts.

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George Lakoff - Conservative Frank Luntz Has Set a Trap for Progressives -- Here's How to Outsmart Him and Boost the Occupy Movement

By George Lakoff, AlterNet

Posted on December 6, 2011, Printed on December 7, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153348/conservative_frank_luntz_has_set_a_trap_for_progressives_--_here%27s_how_to_outsmart_him_and_boost_the_occupy_movement

Progressives had some fun last week with Frank Luntz, who told the Republican Governors' Association that he was scared to death of the Occupy movement and recommended language to combat what the movement had achieved. But the progressive critics mostly just laughed, said his language wouldn't work, and assumed that if Luntz was scared, everything was hunky-dory. Just keep on saying the words Luntz doesn't like: capitalism, tax the rich, etc.

It's a trap.

When Luntz says he is "scared to death," he means that the Republicans who hire him are scared to death and he can profit from that fear by offering them new language. Luntz is clever. Yes, Republicans are scared. But there needs to be a serious discussion of both Luntz's remarks and the progressive non-response.

What has been learned from the brain and cognitive sciences is that words are defined by fixed frames we use in thinking, frames come in hierarchical systems, and political frames are defined in moral terms, where "morality" is very different for conservatives and progressives. What lies behind the Occupy movement is moral view of democracy: Democracy is about citizens caring about each other and acting responsibly both socially and personally. This requires a robust Public empowering and protecting everyone equally. Both private success and personal freedom depend on such a Public. Every critique and proposal of the Occupy movement fits this moral view, which happens to be the progressive moral view.

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Jim Garrison - Arab Spring, American Fall

HUFFINGTON POST: 11/30/11

Jim Garrison, President, State of the World Forum

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-garrison/arab-spring-american-fall_b_1120902.html

With the elimination of the Los Angeles and Philadelphia Occupy sites, the Federal Government, in partnership with mayors across the U.S., has essentially closed down most of the Occupy sites across the nation, replacing protestors representing the 99 percent with police occupations protecting the 1 percent. Simultaneously, Tahrir Square in Cairo has been reoccupied by activists as the first more or less free election in Egyptian history gets underway, guarded by a military that is not really sure democracy is a good idea.

There are important distinctions in these diverse and politically loaded arenas in which democratic insurgents clash with state power. What ignited in Tunis and Egypt in the Spring catalyzed a global conflagration of activism both fed up with the inequalities of the current economic and political systems and desperately seeking to wake the wider public up to the scope of what is essentially a crisis of governance. In Tunis and Egypt, this concerned protesting dictatorships that had infested the polity virtually unopposed for decades. In the U.S., it concerns protesting the rapaciousness of the financial elites who are throttling the American middle class and destroying the economy.

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Dan McKanan - The Spiritual Heritage of the #Occupy Movement

 Prof. Dan McKanan is the Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School. He will take part in a panel discussion on The Progressive Commentary Hour this Monday, November 5, 2011, discussing the role and necessity of spirituality in the #OccupyWallStreet and other protest movements.

The Spiritual Heritage of the Occupy Movement

The Occupy protests have much in common with political movements of the 1840s, 1890s, and 1930s—including a spiritual dimension.

by Daniel McKanan

Almost two hundred years ago, shoemakers, tailors, and other “working men” gathered at Philadelphia’s First Universalist Church to protest the increasing inequality of their society. Wealth was becoming more concentrated, workshops were growing into factories, and artisans could no longer hope to rise from apprentice to journeyman to master craftsman. “When we look around us, my fellow workmen,” declared leader William Heighton, “we behold men on every side, enjoying wealth in all its luxuriant profusion . . . while we, comparatively, receive nothing but the crumbs which fall from their tables.” The situation betrayed the revolutionary promise that all people are created equal, and Heighton proposed a revolutionary solution. He called on workers to educate themselves, to join a federation of unions, and to vote only for other workers. The resulting “Working Men’s Party” was the first of its kind in the world, and it prodded the major parties to expand voting rights and create the public school system.

The Poor People's Campaign - Washington DC - 1968 Photo/Laura JonesHeighton would fit right in at the “Occupy” demonstrations in cities across the United States. Once again, Americans are standing up to declare that economic inequality is a grave threat to democracy. Once again, people who have been disempowered by economic changes are finding new power by coming together, sharing their stories, and promising to work together. And once again, they are claiming a new identity that underscores their common cause: the “Working Men” have become the “Ninety-Nine Percent.”

Heighton’s Working Men and today’s Occupiers stand in a continuous tradition of struggle for economic justice. The tradition includes the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, labor movements that challenged the traditional division of workers into specific “crafts.” It includes the Populist movement of the late nineteenth century, the Socialist party of Eugene Debs, and the Popular Front of the Great Depression, political movements that challenged the major parties’ dependence on corporate wealth. It includes “Coxey’s Army” of unemployed workers who marched from Ohio to Washington, D.C., in 1894, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Poor People’s Campaign” of 1968, in which poor people of all races established a tent city in the nation’s capital. Remembering this history is one way to deepen our commitment to justice struggles today.

Recalling the long struggle for economic justice is especially important because the Occupy movement differs in important respects from activism of the 1960s. The African- American freedom struggle, the student uprisings, and women’s liberation were all “revolutions of rising expectations”—attempts to accelerate and expand the egalitarian project of the New Deal. Americans had prospered greatly during the postwar years, and members of marginalized communities mobilized to ensure that they would share in that prosperity. Others, especially college students, were radicalized by the paradoxes of their own privilege. Having been “bred in at least modest comfort,” Students for a Democratic Society refused to inherit the complacency of middle-class society. They also initiated a shift in radical energies away from the category of “class” (then associated with a complacent labor movement), and toward emerging identities based on race, gender, and sexuality.

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Dave Lindorff - Time for Obama to Act to End Police-State Violence Against the Occupiers

Monday 21 November 2011

by: Dave Lindorff , This Can't Be Happening [3] | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/time-obama-act-end-police-state-violence-against-occupiers/1321974759 

The growing number of video clips and photos showing police in Darth Vader-like riot gear assaulting peaceful demonstrators with everything from tear gas and mace to truncheons, point-blank shots with beanbags and rubber bullets, and of course the ubiquitous fist and club, have made a bad joke out of claims that America is either the land of the free or the home of the brave.

Scott Olson, a veteran of America's Iraq War, suffered a severe brain injury that nearly killed him, and left him with difficulty speaking, thanks to a shot to his head by an attacking police officer in Oakland who was firing teargas canisters from a gun-like weapon. Olsen is lucky to be alive and will hopefully recover over time. A comrade, veteran Kayvan Sabehgi, who was retreating from advancing police that same night with his hands tucked in his pockets, can be seen being chased and so brutally beaten [4] by another attacking thug cop that he had to be hospitalized for treatment of a lacerated spleen (although the cops left him writing in agony in a cell for hours before sending him to the hospital).

Old women, pregnant mothers-to-be, and even children have been hit with pepper spray, teargassed and terrorized by police goons in New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Dallas, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere in what is almost certainly a coordinated attack on the Occupy Movement being run out of Washington.

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Harvey Wasserman - Dewey Square Says HELL NO! to an Attack on Iran

By HARVEY WASSERMAN, whose brand new show GREEN POWER debuts Tuesday, November 29 at 2pm ET on PRN.

The wall-to-wall tents at Dewey Square make a bright, brilliant statement against the idea of yet another useless imperial war.  Defying all odds, Occupy Boston has sustained its place in the sun.  And with it comes the unmistakeable message that the 1% is dead wrong to think it can count on a free pass to attack Iran.

On a bright, sunny Sunday, for a full 90 minutes prior to the coming of the great Peter Tosh, the Occupy Movement, Boston Branch, made it clear that this spontaneous global grassroots uprising has come to be in the knick of time. 

Among the many things this movement knows, there is one above all:  War is the health of the corporate state. The 1% needs its endless cash flow to stay in power. 

As the slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan transform into something less visible, the 1% war machine must have a new profit center. The pretext for this latest war is the spectre of a nuclear-armed Iran. It's a tawdry re-run of the lies George W. Bush used to sell the 2003 attack on Iraq. It's no surprise those "Weapons of Mass Destruction" were never found---or that Bush could later joke about it. 

The hypocrisy of the 1% railing against bombs allegedly flowing from Iran's "Peaceful Atom" program comes in unholy tandem with the corporate push for a "nuclear renaissance" peddling these same reactors all over the world. (It helps to remember that the nuclear industry once tried to sell 36 "peaceful" reactors to the Shah). 

STOPPING THE ATTACK ON IRAN IS ABSOLUTELY VITAL TO OUR HOPES FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY. THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT HOLDS THE KEY. 

The slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan has been horrific, but pales beside the bloodshed that could come next. Iran is a far more advanced country, with 76 million people. It's powerful, diverse and sophisticated, with significant ties to Russia, China, India and throughout the mideast. In the 1980s it fought a land war with Iraq that killed a million people. Does the 1% expect us to embrace a re-run? 

It's up to our newly energized grassroots movement to stop this madness before it happens. 

Remember that peace movements have been critical in shaping the course of history. For example, Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to beat Southeast Asia into submission included the use of nuclear weapons. But he refrained, in part because of his well-justified fear of a national upheaval. 

Global demonstrations failed to stop George W. Bush from attacking Iraq. Today the GOP wannabes are AGAIN howling for war. There are certainly advisors within the Obama Administration arguing---as they did for Bush in 2003---that an on-going war might be a ticket to re-election. 

We must find non-violent ways to stop this war in Iran. Old tactics and new---time-tested strategies and ones not yet imagined---will surface and resurface in the coming months. The de facto universities, debating societies, strategizing collectives, and action groups that help define the Occupy Movement will give birth to a new generation's means of making social change. If we work hard enough at it, one or more of them will hold the key to our future. Somewhere, somehow, the means for stopping the next war must emerge. 

The truly great news is that we are all now party to every organizer's dream: a spontaneous eruption of the global dispossessed. It is a thoughtful, sophisticated, diverse, energized populace, ready to change the world---and compelled to find the non-violent means for doing it. 

Step one is to cut off the endless military spending that is the lifeblood of the 1%, and to begin starving out the warfare state. 

It's the only way to a world built on social justice and ecological survival. 

So let's find that fork in the road... and take it!!! SEE YOU IN THE STREETS! 

--
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with his HISTORY OF THE US.  Check the Occupy Network for his talk at Dewey Square, and be sure to tune in for his brand new show GREEN POWER, only on PRN!

Harvey Wasserman - Dewey Square Says HELL NO! to an Attack on Iran

by Harvey Wasserman, host of GREEN POWER on PRN, debuting Tuesday, Nov 29 at 2pm ET.

The wall-to-wall tents at Dewey Square make a bright, brilliant statement against the idea of yet another useless imperial war.  Defying all odds, Occupy Boston has sustained its place in the sun.  And with it comes the unmistakeable message that the 1% is dead wrong to think it can count on a free pass to attack Iran.

On a bright, sunny Sunday, for a full 90 minutes prior to the coming of the great Peter Tosh, the Occupy Movement, Boston Branch, made it clear that this spontaneous global grassroots uprising has come to be in the knick of time. 

Among the many things this movement knows, there is one above all:  War is the health of the corporate state. The 1% needs its endless cash flow to stay in power. 

As the slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan transform into something less visible, the 1% war machine must have a new profit center. The pretext for this latest war is the spectre of a nuclear-armed Iran. It's a tawdry re-run of the lies George W. Bush used to sell the 2003 attack on Iraq. It's no surprise those "Weapons of Mass Destruction" were never found---or that Bush could later joke about it. 

The hypocrisy of the 1% railing against bombs allegedly flowing from Iran's "Peaceful Atom" program comes in unholy tandem with the corporate push for a "nuclear renaissance" peddling these same reactors all over the world. (It helps to remember that the nuclear industry once tried to sell 36 "peaceful" reactors to the Shah). 

STOPPING THE ATTACK ON IRAN IS ABSOLUTELY VITAL TO OUR HOPES FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY. THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT HOLDS THE KEY. 

The slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan has been horrific, but pales beside the bloodshed that could come next. Iran is a far more advanced country, with 76 million people. It's powerful, diverse and sophisticated, with significant ties to Russia, China, India and throughout the mideast. In the 1980s it fought a land war with Iraq that killed a million people. Does the 1% expect us to embrace a re-run? 

It's up to our newly energized grassroots movement to stop this madness before it happens. 

Remember that peace movements have been critical in shaping the course of history. For example, Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to beat Southeast Asia into submission included the use of nuclear weapons. But he refrained, in part because of his well-justified fear of a national upheaval. 

Global demonstrations failed to stop George W. Bush from attacking Iraq. Today the GOP wannabes are AGAIN howling for war. There are certainly advisors within the Obama Administration arguing---as they did for Bush in 2003---that an on-going war might be a ticket to re-election. 

We must find non-violent ways to stop this war in Iran. Old tactics and new---time-tested strategies and ones not yet imagined---will surface and resurface in the coming months. The de facto universities, debating societies, strategizing collectives, and action groups that help define the Occupy Movement will give birth to a new generation's means of making social change. If we work hard enough at it, one or more of them will hold the key to our future. Somewhere, somehow, the means for stopping the next war must emerge. 

The truly great news is that we are all now party to every organizer's dream: a spontaneous eruption of the global dispossessed. It is a thoughtful, sophisticated, diverse, energized populace, ready to change the world---and compelled to find the non-violent means for doing it. 

Step one is to cut off the endless military spending that is the lifeblood of the 1%, and to begin starving out the warfare state. 

It's the only way to a world built on social justice and ecological survival. 

So let's find that fork in the road... and take it!!! SEE YOU IN THE STREETS! 

--

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with his HISTORY OF THE US.  Check the Occupy Network for his talk at Dewey Square, and be sure to tune in for his brand new show on PRN: Green Power and Wellness

Livestream of the #OccupyWallStreet Demonstrations

[Video] #OWS ZUCCOTTI PARK 11-17-11 PROTESTER BEATEN - ARRESTED

A protester was allegedly thrown to the ground in the middle of Zuccotti park as a mass of riot gear police seemingly randomly swarmed into the park. This man was dragged bleeding from his head out of the park.