Friday, October 21, 2011

The Occupy Movement Must Be Permitted To Find Its Own Voices And Leaders.









The Occupy Movement Must Be Permitted To Find Its Own Voices And Leaders.


If The “Occupy Movement” Is To Survive And Succeed; It Will Need Time To Evolve And Its Own Co-Ordinated Voice And A Leadership, New Leadership From Within Its Own Ranks. All Support Is Welcome But For Any Self-Ordained Activist Or Group To Assume It Can Or Has The Right To Speak For All Will Doom Everything. The DC Actions Under The Hands Of Old Political Theater Players Is A Good Example Of Just One Such Effort Where Passion And Vibrancy Is Lacking And Where Militancy Should Prevail We Have The Usual Torrent Of Words From The Same Old Voices.   


Will The Real 99% Please Stand Up?

Occupy Wall Street is meant to be a leaderless movement. But that hasn't stopped some people from trying to identify leaders. And some activists charge that organizations are trying to co-opt their message. How can a phenomenon with no central authority exercise authority over its brand?

Over the past two weeks, a group of Occupy Wall Street supporters called "We Will NOT Be Co-Opted" has been working on a statement to declare its independence from any group or political organization. Nothing's been approved yet, but some form of the first sentence from the draft will likely make it through: "The Democratic and Republican parties do not represent the people because they've been bought and corrupted by Wall Street, and the occupation does not support their candidates." The statement probably won't name names.

But activist journalist Dave DeGraw, one of the members, confirmed that it was prompted by fears of MoveOn.org trying to become the mouthpiece of the movement, and in the process co-opt OWS under the Democratic Party.

A bit more explicit is an online petition called "MoveOn, please stop," created by someone named Geoff Parker using MoveOn's own petition-generating platform.

It's a tricky matter, though, because MoveOn is also an important supporter. Many activists appreciated its national petition that collected 300,000 signatures to oppose the cleaning of/possible eviction from Zuccotti Park on October 14.

"We have never tried to speak for Occupy Wall Street. We have never claimed to," said Justin Ruben, the executive director of MoveOn.org. The group posted a clarifying message on its website, too. 

To be explicit, on Thursday October 20, MoveOn added a new entry to its FAQ (developed together with DeGraw) titled “What's MoveOn's relationship to Occupy Wall Street?” As the second item on the FAQ, right below “What is MoveOn?” it begins “MoveOn stands in solidarity with the brave protesters at Occupy Wall Street, but we're not Occupy Wall Street and we're not trying to become Occupy Wall Street.”

But on October 18, MoveOn started collecting money for a "Make Wall Street Pay" campaign to begin next week with “mass meetings in hundreds of cities.” According to a spokesperson, “MoveOn members will begin planning local campaigns in their communities, ranging from moving their money from the big banks, to encouraging banks to pay their fair share in taxes. MoveOn members will launch these campaigns nationwide on November 5th to ‘Make Wall Street Pay’."

Will this take attention from the occupations already going on in hundreds of cities? 

"We said, we'll create a channel for that. So people can decide locally what they want to do," said Ruben. "It is not connected to Occupy Wall Street, but I'm sure that there may be people in Occupy Wall Street who want to take part."

In dealing with Occupy Wall Street--whether as a journalist, a politician or just an onlooker--it's tempting to look to an organization such as MoveOn, because, well, it is an organization. It has a Web site, defined goals, executives and publicists. Occupy Wall Street, by definition, has none of that.

The site occupywallst.org appears to be an official voice. It's not. Justine O'Tonnaigh had created it before the New York General Assembly had even formed. (She had to go with the "st" abbreviation because Adbusters had already registered occupywallstreet.org back in June.) O'Tonnaigh has earned respect for posting items that represent the consensus view from Zuccotti Park. But that's up to her. She has no obligation.

Similarly the Twitter account @OccupyWallSt is described as "Official twitter of our site!" However, "Opinions tweeted do not reflect the occupation as a whole." But when the owners discovered @occupywailstreet (substituting the letter "i" for the first "l"), they asked Twitter to shut down the account, and it did.

On October 6, occupywallst.org ran a disclaimer disavowing a site called occupyparty.org. "This Site Has Nothing To Do With Us," read the headline. The site is plastered with stock photos of people waving flags, the phrase "99 percent" and rolling updates about Occupy Wall Street news.

Especially grating was the phrase "We are the Tea Party of the Left." The terse post stated simply "We are not a political institution." In fact, participants in the movement generally loathe all political parties. And contrary to stereotype, some members do not identify as left.

It's hard to tell what occupyparty.org is. The site has no contact information. Emails sent to various combinations of letters before "@occupyparty.org" bounce back. A Whois lookup indicates that it belongs to someone in Australia. The blog post spawned 570 comments speculating what it could be. Many feared a right-wing plot.

Unable by its principles of inclusiveness to say what it is, Occupy Wall Street's main communication goal is to say what it's not.

"Occupy Wall Street is outside institutions," said volunteer Bill Dobbs. "The challenge is, [organizations] coming in sometimes want to get more than they want to give." In other words, he fears takeover schemes, especially from the left. "I think that in the long term the Democrats are going to try to co-opt us," he said. "We are definitely opposed to that." After all, "we" includes people carrying Ron Paul signs.

In answer to suspicions that MoveOn.org would be the co-opting agent, Justin Ruben replied "First of all, MoveOn is not the Democratic party. Many organs of the Democratic establishment cannot stand us."

Dobbs's use of the word "we" is tricky. Despite the notion that Occupy Wall Street has no party line, Dobbs is a member of something called the Public Relations Working Group, and he has worked for years as a publicist for causes including United for Peace and Justice and Act Up. He spoke while sitting at a table in Zuccotti marked "Press."

The group is more limited than an agency working for a control-freak client. In fact, the PR team has to make sure that it has no message, other than an appreciation for diversity. "We try to keep our views and political ideas out of it and emphasize the plurality of the movement," said Mark Bray, a history PhD candidate from Rutgers and member of the PR team. Also, anyone can join the group, he points out.

Bray says that his job is simply to help the press find interesting people. Harrison Schultz, a "business intelligence analyst" and OWS volunteer who has become a regular on national news, said "I just get called and show up for interviews."
So when Adam Nelson, owner of boutique PR and branding firm Workhouse Publicity, sent out a message supporting the movement, there was some concern among the activists that Workhouse was trying to become the official PR firm. News headlines didn't help. "Occupy Wall Street protesters picked up by public relations firm Workhouse pro-bono," read theNew York Daily News.

In truth, all he did was send an email on September 28 titled "OCCUPY WALL STREET: News From The Front." It linked to a Facebook album with photos he had taken in the field of cardboard signs that have become a fixture at Zuccotti Park.

"Our friends, particularly on the West Coast, had no idea this was going on, and we broadened the message," Said Nelson. His roster or friends includes Bianca Jagger, Matthew Modine, Spike Lee, Michael Moore, Buck Henry, and Julian Schnabel. Nelson also collaborates with super producer/activist Russell Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam records, who has been a highly visible OWS supporter.

Nelson has sent out additional messages, including one with a graphic defending OWS against the plans to clean and possibly clear Zuccotti Park--essentially his version of what MoveOn did with its petition.

Nelson dedicates up to eight of his employees to some projects for OWS. But, he says, "Our position has always been that we are not affiliated."

His description is similar to how Justin Ruben describes MoveOn's involvement: as a supporter but not a formal spokesperson.

In fact, there is no such person. Some articles have identified Patrick Bruner as the official voice. We were unable to reach Bruner by press time. But in an email to Fast Company, Mark Bray wrote "We do not have an official spokesperson.

Patrick has been involved since the start, but what he says carries no more weight that the words of anyone else." And there is no sign that Bruner has ever claimed a spokesperson role.

Besides, the only official information the press can get is logistical: The number of arrests, the amount of money received in donations, where the Wi-Fi comes from. "Occupy Wall Street" isn't a name, it's a task. The "organizers"--whoever wants to pitch in--make sure the occupation works logistically--with food, sanitation, shelter, communications.

Everything else in the park or online is simply individuals trying out ideas. "We don't own this anymore," said Harrison Shultz. "This is just happening on its own. No one really feels that important or that critical."

Thus comes the greatest critique of the movement: It has no demands. Even if the power elites wanted to yield to the protesters, what would they do?

Of course many topics come up, and they are often quite specific: end corporate personhood, limit corporate financing of political campaigns (by reversing the Supreme court's ruling in Citizens United), forgive student loan debt, reinstate the 1933 Glass--Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banks.

They are all in the same vein: reining in the power of big money in government and the economy. But any specific demand might have only a narrow constituency. And there is a concern that narrowing the list of demands will narrow the base of support.

A movement isn't a platform. Occupy Wall Street may inspire participants, organizations and even politician to take specific actions. But it may never develop its own specific agenda, despite Web sites like The99PercentDeclaration, posted around October 18 by a few OWS attendees and calling for a national assembly next summer.

Despite the Huffington Post headline "Occupy Wall Street Protesters Propose A National Convention, Release Potential Demands," it does not actually represent the entire movement, and many activists first learned of it from the HuffPo article. But other participants concede that, while such a statement is not "official," it can't be censored, either.

That seeming inability to produce an official statement makes OWS vulnerable to any person or group trying to slap a mission statement on it. But by vigorously emphasizing plurality and inclusiveness, and frankly by demonstrating a lack of focus, OWS may show how implausible those claims of leadership are.
The State of the Left
Huffington Post (blog)
Indeed, the Democratic Party's front group MoveOn.org's website is so saturated with #Occupy information, it almost presents itself as an official mouthpiece. Despite White House advances toward OWS, protesters should be skeptical of the Democratic ...
See all stories on this topic »

Secret Cash Baiting Officials Leaves No Trace in U.S. Attack Ads

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Ben Nelson doesn’t face re-election to the U.S. Senate for another year and won’t know his opponent until next May. Yet advertising attacks on the second-term Democrat began months ago.
“Can Nebraskans trust Ben Nelson?” began a radio spot in January sponsored by American Future Fund, a tax-exempt group that backed Republicans in the 2010 election. Two other independent organizations aired commercials in July criticizing him over federal spending. A third sponsored rallies in August accusing him of hiding from constituents.
The last election was barely over when airwaves began humming with messages blasting lawmakers for the next one. Many of the ads don’t count as political spending under federal rules because they’re appearing so long before November 2012, and they don’t urge an explicit vote

This helps independent associations such as American Future Fund keep their tax-exempt status as groups whose primary activity can’t be political campaigning.
The early barrage means incumbents in Congress and President Barack Obama are stuck in “permanent warfare,” said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research group, in an interview. The amounts of money surged since court rulings wiped out limits on corporate contributions and as government requirements for disclosing donors eroded.
“We have seen the virtual collapse of the regulatory system governing campaign finance in this country,” said Mann, who co-edited the 2000 book, “The Permanent Campaign and Its Future.” Today’s environment of unlimited, undisclosed and uncounted funding amounts to a new reality that “flows against everything we’ve been trying to do to not allow large concentrations of money to dominate our politics,” he said.
Campaigns ‘Don’t End’
In Nebraska, the state Democratic Party came to Nelson’s defense, airing spots starting in July in which the senator discussed economic and health-care issues. The state Republican Party filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that a transfer of funds from a national Democratic committee to help pay for the ads violated a limit on the amount a party can spend in coordination with its candidate. Nelson argued otherwise.
The attack ads started earlier this time than in his two previous runs for the Senate, said Nelson, 70, a former two-term governor, in an interview. Campaigns “don’t end anymore,” he said. Whether the ads count as election-related under federal campaign-accounting rules or not, he views them as political messages from special-interest groups using money from anonymous donors, he said.
“It’s the new system, and you have to accept that that’s what it is,” Nelson said.
Spending Climbs
The outside groups operate independently of individual candidates’ campaigns and of the Democratic and Republican parties. At the same time, they are often set up and run by people with close ties to the political organizations.
Spending reported to the FEC by independent committees rose four-fold to $305 million during the 2009-2010 election cycle from the 2005-2006 period, about half of it from secret donors. That was almost a 10th of the total of $3.7 billion spent on the election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington nonprofit that tracks data reported to the campaign monitoring agency.
That amount may understate the organizations’ impact on the last election by 50 percent or more. Media purchases by independent groups exceeded $450 million, estimated Kenneth Goldstein, president of Arlington, Virginia-based Campaign Media Analysis Group, a unit the advertising company WPP Plc. The total may have been as high as $560 million, according to the Campaign Finance Institute, a Washington nonprofit.
Disclosure Gaps
The figures differ because a significant portion of these groups’ ad purchases didn’t count as political under the rules of the FEC. The agency requires that independent committees report as campaign spending those ads that explicitly urge a vote for or against a particular candidate. They also have to disclose buying commercials that identify a candidate and run within 60 days of a general election or within 30 days of a primary. This means many ads about policy issues that are critical of candidates don’t have to be reported.
The flood of secret cash buying politically oriented advertising will only increase and will lead to scandal, said the Committee for Economic Development, a group of business leaders and university professors, in a report last month. Spending normally jumps in a presidential election year.
‘Most Expensive Campaign’
“This will be the most expensive campaign in American history,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The independent groups “are going to be funded at greater levels than the candidates’ own campaign committees. That means the candidates’ voices, particularly in campaigns for Congress, are going to be drowned out.”
The fundraising goals of two of the biggest committees backing Republicans have surged. Crossroads GPS and its sister group, American Crossroads, doubled their initial target to $240 million, after raising $71 million last year. The organizations were founded by Karl Rove, the White House political adviser to President George W. Bush, and Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
While it’s too soon to project the impact on voting in 2012, research shows negative commercials have staying power, said John Petrocik, a political science professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Attack ads now, he said, are “creating a backdrop, a drumbeat that is simply going to get louder.”
‘Long-Range Artillery’
“That’s your long-range artillery, the preparatory barrage that’s raising the salience of something you are going to come back to,” Petrocik said. “People are going to remember it because it’s been around so long.”
The independent groups say the broadcast messages are part of their mission to inform voters about public issues or hold elected officials accountable. For example, Crossroads GPS, organized as a tax-free “social welfare” group under the U.S. tax code, said its mission is educating Americans on “critical economic and legislative issues,” according to its website.
Many of the ads this year have been by nonprofits that back Republicans, including the Crossroads groups, the Iowa-based American Future Fund and 60 Plus Association, an advocate for the elderly that favors privatizing Social Security, ending traditional Medicare and repealing the estate tax.
Some tax-exempt groups that favor Democrats have broadcast ads attacking Republican House members this year. Washington- based Americans United for Change aired a television spot in April criticizing Republican Representative Chip Cravaack of Minnesota for voting “to end Medicare.”
‘Way Ahead’
In July during the debt ceiling debate, Moveon.org Civic Action ran radio ads in three Republican districts. With a siren in the background, the spot depicted the members “holed up” inside, “holding the economy hostage.”
“By expenditures, we can see conservative groups are ahead,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “By news reports, we hear that conservative groups are in fact way ahead.
“But in the end we don’t really know,” Krumholz said. “We just know that there’s spending happening now, aimed at elections, and a lot of it will never be reported.”
Crossroads GPS, American Future Fund, Americans United and Moveon.org Civic Action are all set up as tax-exempt “social welfare organizations” under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which also supports conservative candidates, is a tax-free nonprofit trade association under Section 501(c)(6). Groups in both categories can raise unlimited amounts from companies, unions and individuals without identifying donors.
Super PACs
American Crossroads is covered by a different provision of the tax code, Section 527, applying to tax-exempt political organizations. It is now known as a super PAC, for political action committee, and can accept unlimited donations from any source. Super PACs have to disclose the names of donors to the FEC. Supporters of Obama and several Republican presidential candidates also started super PACs.
While Crossroads GPS founder Rove declined to be interviewed for this story, he appeared on Fox television in June to discuss the start of a $20 million ad campaign on Obama’s economic record. The messages blamed the president for increases in unemployment, national debt and gasoline prices.
Interviewer Juan Williams asked Rove whether the group’s supporters could ‘live with” a Republican nominee like Representative Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota.
‘Primary Activity’ Rule
“Look, we’re focused on doing what we can to hold the Republican House, to create a Republican Senate and to replace President Obama,” Rove said. Primary voters will pick the nominee, he said. “It’s our job to lay the foundation for a Republican victory in the fall of 2012.”
Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Crossroads GPS, said Rove’s comment doesn’t conflict with the group’s tax-exempt status. Rove “informally advises” American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS and was responding to a political question, Collegio said.
Nonprofits under Sections 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) can’t have political campaigning as their “primary activity,” according to the tax code.
To keep its tax-exempt status and avoid penalties, Crossroads GPS needs to spend more than half its resources on “issue and policy advocacy” that isn’t “political intervention” under IRS rules, according to an Oct. 10, 2010, legal memo prepared for the organization by Tom Josefiak, a former FEC chairman. Crossroads GPS intends to allocate “much more” than that to “a sustained advocacy effort in furtherance of its ‘social welfare’ purpose,” according to the memo, which Crossroads GPS provided to Bloomberg.
IRS Enforcement
The IRS declines to say what it does to enforce the rule. In September, the campaign watchdog groups Democracy 21 and Campaign Legal Center asked the IRS to investigate the tax- exempt status of four groups that can accept unlimited donations without naming the givers. They include Crossroads GPS and Priorities USA, run by former Obama aides to back his re- election.
“These groups have little if anything to do with promoting social welfare and everything to do with electing and defeating candidates,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21. Spokesmen for the groups dismissed the complaint as frivolous.
Nebraska’s Nelson was one of five Democratic senators whom Crossroads GPS targeted with TV ads in July. The messages criticized the lawmakers for “reckless spending.”
‘Spenditol’ Spots
The state’s airwaves also carried ads in July on the same issue, sponsored by the Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee. A social welfare group under the tax code, the committee opposes abortion and same-sex marriage and didn’t report any campaign spending in 2010. The TV spots pitched “Spenditol” in a parody of drug advertising.
“Call Senator Ben Nelson,” the announcer said at the end. “Tell him to stop spending it all.”
The goal was to influence the budget debate, said Penny Nance, the president of the group, based in Washington. She said she could see why Nelson might view the $250,000 ad buy as political. The senator is vulnerable, she said, and his vote Oct. 12 against Obama’s jobs bill may have been a sign “he paid attention.”
The rallies targeting Nelson in August took place in Lincoln, Omaha and North Platte under the sponsorship of the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, another social welfare group under the tax code. Americans for Prosperity, whose sister foundation’s chairman is billionaire David Koch, reported spending $1.2 million to support Republican congressional candidates last year.
‘Where’s Ben Nelson?’
“Where’s Ben Nelson?” was the rallies’ theme. The senator was making appearances throughout the state, often before members of civic groups, according to his office. Americans for Prosperity wanted a chance to confront Nelson in a public forum, said spokesman Mike Friend.
In Missouri and Massachusetts, the League of Women Voters aired messages in April criticizing votes on clean-air legislation by Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill and Republican Senator Scott Brown. The League, another social welfare group under the tax code, describes itself as nonpartisan and has been active since 1920.
“Shouldn’t Claire McCaskill protect the people and not the polluters?” asked the narrator in an April television spot. A little girl wearing an oxygen mask scribbled black all over a drawing.
Rebuke on Environment
It was a rebuke for a vote by the 58-year-old first-term senator to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide or methane for two years. Brown, 42, voted for a different amendment to block the EPA on climate change. Both senators declined to be interviewed, and both face re-election next year.
The Massachusetts Republican party filed a complaint with the FEC saying the ad should have been reported as political because it was an “attempt to distort” Brown’s record “to encourage voters to defeat his re-election.”
The messages were “accountability” ads, not political, said Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League, in an interview. “We are interested in protecting the Clean Air Act, and that is our only goal,” she said.
In North Dakota, former Democratic Representative Earl Pomeroy attributes his defeat in 2010 to advertising attacks a year before the election. In November 2009, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 60 Plus Association, which reported spending $7.1 million last year backing Republicans, aired commercials criticizing his vote for the national health-care overhaul.
Attack-Ad ‘Blizzard’
“Running into a saturation blizzard of attack ads one year before the election was something I had not encountered before,” Pomeroy, who served nine terms, said in an interview. “It played a material role in damaging my poll numbers, which aided in the recruitment of a top-tier challenger.”
The Chamber of Commerce TV spot accused Pomeroy of voting “yes” to new taxes, spending and regulations that could cost the state jobs. It urged viewers to call the congressman and tell him “he should have said no to Washington and yes to North Dakota.”
The Chamber aired similar ads targeting other vulnerable Democrats in 2009. The campaign helped turn constituents against them, Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s top lobbyist, said in an interview shortly after the 2010 vote. “They stayed with us” on the health-care bill, he said, referring to voters. “And that carried through to the midterm elections.”
The 60 Plus ad showed citizens telling Pomeroy, “you have betrayed us” and added that “North Dakota seniors won’t forget.”
North Dakota Vote
The Chamber and 60 Plus each paid more than $350,000 for ads in North Dakota in the month after the House vote, according to Wayne Kranzler, Pomeroy’s media buyer in Bismarck. Neither group reported the spending to the government election agency, and neither would comment.
Last November, Republican Rick Berg beat Pomeroy by 55 percent to 45 percent. Though he spent more than Berg, Pomeroy couldn’t counter the flood of early negative ads, he said.
“By the time the campaign started,” Pomeroy said, “I was thoroughly damaged goods.”
--With assistance from Jonathan Salant in Washington and Nora Zimmett in Los Angeles. Editors: Robert L. Simison, Flynn McRoberts.
To contact the reporter on this story: Charles R. Babcock in Washington at cbabcock1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net
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Washington Post
President Obama's awkward, unreturned embrace of Occupy Wall Street is among the strangest developments of the 2012 campaign. The tie-dyed T-shirt doesn't fit. Obama has been the unrivaled leader in fundraising from the financial sector in recent years ...
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What Occupy Wall Street isn't
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Fashion Police: Plainclothes NY officer at Wall Street protest grabs attention ...
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YouTube
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Occupy Wall Street's Library Keeps Growing
School Library Journal
Roughly two weeks after the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests began on September 17, Betsy Fagin, the first OWS librarian, started a small collection, which soon turned into a makeshift library organized by genres like gender studies, law, and history. ...
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Video: Jon Stewart And Al Sharpton Criticize Occupy Wall Street "Theatrics"
Gothamist
Al Sharpton visited the Daily Show last night, and sat down with Jon Stewart to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have been nestled in Zuccotti Park for the last month. Among other things, they covered the media bias in reporting on OWS, ...
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Nothing Sexist About 'Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street'
AVN News (press release)
By Tom Hymes NEW YORK—I just finished reading a few articles about this brewing controversy over the Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street video, which I also just watched. The video is being criticized as sexist by some, and has inspired impassioned ...
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Parents for Occupy Wall Street to Hold Family Sleepover on Oct. 21
eNews Park Forest
The parent founded and run group, “Parents for Occupy Wall Street,” will be hosting a Family Sleepover, from 4 PM, Friday, October 21st until 11 AM the following Saturday morning—a second try after being forced to cancel their planned sleepover last ...
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Why Occupy Wall Street will fail

MarketWatch
But will the Occupy Wall Street movement succeed in changing anything? Don't count on it. Here are five reasons I think these protests are doomed to fail. Why are they down in Lower Manhattan? Do they think that's where the power — and the money ...
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Occupy Wall Street: Cowardly, Stenchy and Undeveloped
FrontPage Magazine
The “Occupy Wall Street” gatherings are not only infantile, but fail to reach any semblance of cultural history, unless mass public defecation and fornication in New York City is something new. Even the '60′s hippie movement, irresponsibly juvenile as...
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Occupy Wall Street supporters target REBNY over parks access
The Real Deal New York (blog)
Supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement have now begun targeting the Real Estate Board of New York on social media and then in turn by phone, following news reports that REBNY seeks to submit a proposal to the city limiting the public access ...
Hipster cop acts as bridge between Wall Street protesters and police
Christian Science Monitor
Hipster cop: a plainclothes officer has surprised many at the Occupy Wall Streetgathering for his unconventional look. By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press / October 20, 2011 "Hipster cop," Detective Rick Lee (r.), poses for a photographer in Zuccotti ...
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Wall Street Protesters 'Occupy' MoMA, Slam Admission, Don Mask
BusinessWeek
Members of an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street calling itself Occupy Museums yesterday targeted the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. They took turns reading from a statement, with the crowd repeating each line in a ...
Simon Baker Talks MARGIN CALL, Occupy Wall Street, THE MENTALIST, and ...
Collider.com
During our extended conversation, Baker talked about making Margin Call, his thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, and what's coming up on his very popular CBS show The Mentalist. In addition, he talked about his favorite actors and his favorite films, ...
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Steve Wynn Rants on Occupy Wall Street Movement
The Inquisitr
Steve Wynn, Chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts is sounding off about “Occupy Wall Street.” During a recent corporate conference call, Wynn referenced the ongoing movement saying Americans are finally waking up to the specter of long-term debt hanging ...
See all stories on this topic »-The Inquisitr

Masked Protector of Gotham Has His Eye on Wall Street Protesters
New York Times
Part of the sequel to “The Dark Knight” will be shot over two weekends in Lower Manhattan, only two blocks from the base of the Occupy Wall Street protests. By KATE TAYLOR He is a tycoon, but he is also a crusader for justice: Bruce Wayne is coming to ...
See all stories on this topic »-New York Times

Occupy Wall Street: Cutting Edge, Old-Fashioned Village
The Nation. (blog)
It seems like every day more news emerges about Occupy Wall Street's plans to expand the movement. New chapters spring up across the country, more citizens join the cause, and now OWS even has its very own commercial. As David Dayen reports,...
See all stories on this topic »-The Nation. (blog)

Reader pics: Celebs drop by 'Occupy Wall Street'
USA Today
By Whitney Matheson, USA TODAY Yesterday one of the folks who stopped by 92YTribeca was Bing, an importer/exporter who happens to live where the "Occupy Wall Street" protests are taking place. Bing told me that every day when he leaves for work and ...
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#tellusatoday: How do you view Wall Street protests?
USA Today
We asked our Twitter followers what they thought of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. Comments are edited for clarity, grammar: By Spencer Platt, Getty ImagesOccupy Wall Street protesters gather in front of the Manhattan District Attorney's office ...
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Alec Baldwin defends capitalism, banks at Occupy Wall Street protest
Yahoo! News Blogs (blog)
By Chris Moody By Chris Moody | The Ticket – 6 hrs ago Alec Baldwin visited the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City this week, where he found himself defending the very institutions the demonstrators are protesting: Banks, capitalism and the ...
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THESE PEOPLE HAVE ONLY ONE HYMNAL THEY SING FROM!
Radical Anti-American Billionaire george Soros Is A Major Backer Of A Left-Wing Group That Is Funneling Money To The Occupy Wall Street Movement.
The nonprofit organization at the receiving end of Soros’ largesse, Alliance for Global Justice, is managing donations benefiting the communists, socialists, anarchists and hippies now occupying Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.  As of Oct. 19, OWS had taken in a grand total of $435,000 from all sources, including donations made by individuals online and in person, according to reports.

It should surprise no one that Soros (net worth: $22 billion), the ultimate Wall Street insider and preeminent funder of the activist Left today, embraces Occupy Wall Street.

As I note in my new book Subversion Inc., this Communist sympathizer co-founded the ultra-secretive Democracy Alliance, a billionaires’ club that wants to radically transform America.  He has said that European-style socialism “is exactly what we need now” and favors American decline.  Soros, a currency manipulator with an insider-trading conviction, praises Red China effusively, saying the totalitarian nation has “a better-functioning government than the United States.”

The Alliance for Global Justice has received grants from George Soros’ philanthropy, the Open Society Institute ($100,000 since 2004), and from the left-wing, money launderers of the Tides Foundation ($60,000 since 2004) that allows high-profile donors to give secretly to radical causes.

Much of the money received by the Tides network of philanthropies has come from Soros’ charity, according to philanthropy databases.

The Open Society Institute has given $24,599,553 to the Tides network of philanthropies since 1999.  Of that total, $18,154,270 went to the Tides Foundation and the remaining $6,445,283 went to the Tides Center, which like the Alliance for Global Justice, serves as a fiscal sponsor for small or new activist groups.

A hotbed of anti-American activity, the Alliance takes money from the most extreme left-wing philanthropies operating in America today. The Alliance has accepted grants from the (pro-Fidel Castro) Arca Foundation ($185,000 since 2001), General Service Foundation ($165,000 since 2001), and Foundation for DeepaEcology ($30,000 since 2000), an anti-science environmentalist group that regards human beings as a cancer on the earth.

Alliance for Global Justice is a “fiscal sponsor,” which means that it serves as a financial clearinghouse for radical causes that haven’t filed papers to incorporate themselves as nonprofit organizations.  Donors give money to the Alliance and are then able to deduct the donations from their income tax even though the cause they are funding isn’t recognized as tax-exempt by the IRS.  Fiscal sponsors take a percentage of donations as management fees, and then pass on the rest to the cause favored by the donor.

Founded in 1998, the Alliance, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., has a long history of anti-American activism.  The Alliance and its resident, Katherine Hoyt, are longtime supporters of the Sandinista (Communist) movement in Nicaragua and the Zapatistas, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement in Mexico.

When a credit card-processing glitch caused the Alliance’s website to reject $144,000 in donations for Occupy Wall Street, Hoyt claimed that an evil capitalist conspiracy was afoot.  “I can’t help but believe that politics must be involved somewhere,” Hoyt said in a statement on the Alliance’s website.
  
It turns out the donations were rejected because of the Alliance’s own technological blundering, so Hoyt’s comment was scrubbed from the website.  Alliance leader Chuck Kaufman blamed technology for the banking error.

“Our group normally processes a dozen donations a week, so all of a sudden Occupy Wall Street took off and it was 400 per day,” Kaufman said.  “We just didn’t understand the banking architecture.”

Other causes supported by the Alliance include the antiwar group World Can’t Wait (a spinoff of the Revolutionary Communist Party), and Courage to Resist, which encourages U.S. soldiers to desert and supports accused traitor Bradley Manning of WikiLeaks infamy.  Its leaders also have an abiding hatred of Israel.  The Alliance has funded anti-Israel groups including Israeli Anarchists Against the War and Bil’in Center for Joint Struggle.

The Alliance for Global Justice’s antipathy toward things that Americans revere makes it a perfect business partner for George Soros.



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