Protesters Hold ‘Spring Training’ at Zuccotti Park

15 04 2012

About 100 people were gathered inside Zuccotti Park on Friday as Zak Solomon stood on a granite bench and offered instruction on protest tactics with names like “Melt,” “Wall,” and “The People’s Gong.”

While demonstrating the last, Mr. Solomon, an Occupy Wall Street organizer, was joined by Jason Shelton, 28, from Greenpoint, who contrasted the People’s Gong with the bell that closes the New York Stock Exchange.

The bell, Mr. Shelton declared, symbolizes “the validation of greed over mutual aid,” whereas the gong is a “call to fight against this injustice.”

With that, the crowd raised their voices in an approximation of the sort of deep, reverberating tone that a large gong might produce when struck by a mallet.

Last fall, Occupy Wall Street protesters exceeded their most ambitious aims, establishing an encampment in Zuccotti Park that became a model for more than 100 others across the country and making financial inequity part of the national dialogue. The group has been mainly quiet during the winter and their movement has faded from the headlines, but organizers are planning a springtime resurgence that they hope will be launched by marches and other actions scheduled for May 1.

To prepare, organizers have held weekly practice sessions, called “spring training,” inside Zuccotti Park, where participants learn about the gong and other tactics, some of them adapted from a British activist group called the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army.

Over the course of an hour on Friday, protesters practiced several tactics, including “hup,” which involves a knot of people jumping up and down (and can be used to coalesce a scattered group) and “melt,” in which protesters drift to the ground (used for a ”die-in” or to de-escalate a confrontation).

One tactic, known as “wall,” involved ranks of protesters locking elbows and trotting forward in close formation, and could be used, organizers said, to move quickly while making it difficult for the police to physically break up the group.

Organizers said the sessions, which have been followed by short marches to the stock exchange for the closing bell, are meant to teach participants to work together and instill a sense of camaraderie.

As the protesters hone their tactics, the police officers who watch them and who follow the weekly marches appear to be absorbing lessons and engaging in their own preparation.

For instance, Mr. Solomon said, one week four marches had simultaneously left the park from different points. The next week, the police had posted scooters at each corner of the park.

On Friday, the protesters divided one march into three segments, two of which broke off in different directions soon after leaving the park. The remaining segment, which included about 30 people, sometimes slowed to a near crawl and other times began jogging, as officers followed. At several points, the group executed an abrupt about face and marched in an unexpected direction.

At Broadway, the police blocked access to Wall Street, but many of the marchers made it to a spot near the stock exchange, some employing a tactic called “civilian,” in which a block dissolves into individuals who then try to blend in with nonprotesters. There, the protesters executed a performance of the People’s Gong, but word soon spread that one of the march segments had been stopped blocks from the exchange.

As the training participants streamed back into Zuccotti Park for a post-march meeting, an organizer, Sandra Nurse, said that the practices provided a sort of laboratory to see what tactics worked best in different situations.

“What feels good and what works well is something that continues to be used,” she said. “And things that we feel like are less effective we end up dropping.”

 




Tolerance for Income Gap Maybe Ebbing

22 03 2012

This article talks about some inequalities related to the income gap.

“From 1993 to 2010, the incomes of the richest 1 percent of Americans grew 58 percent while the rest had a 6.4 percent bump. There is little reason to think the trend will go into reverse any time soon, given globalization and technological change, which have weighed heavily on the wages of less educated workers who compete against machines and cheap foreign labor while increasing the returns of top executives and financiers.

The income gap narrowed briefly during the Great Recession, as plummeting stock prices shrunk the portfolios of the rich. But in 2010, the first year of recovery, the top 1 percent of Americans captured 93 percent of the income gains.”

“A big income gap is likely to open up other social breaches that make it tougher for those lower down the rungs to get ahead. And that is exactly what appears to be happening in the United States, where a narrow elite is peeling off from the rest of society by a chasm of wealth, power and experience.”

“One doesn’t have to believe in equality to be concerned about these trends. Once inequality becomes very acute, it breeds resentment and political instability, eroding the legitimacy of democratic institutions. It can produce political polarization and gridlock, splitting the political system between haves and have-nots, making it more difficult for governments to address imbalances and respond to brewing crises. That too can undermine economic growth, let alone democracy.”




U.S. Law May Allow Killings, Holder Says

6 03 2012

US Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. gave a speech regarding the law which may allow the government to kill citizens whom they believe are a threat to the US. “It was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances.”

“He focused on one situation in which someone could be killed without a trial: when a citizen who is believed to be an operational leader of Al Qaeda or its allies and who is plotting attacks; who is located in a country that either granted the United States permission to strike or that is unable or unwilling to suppress the threat on its own; and whose capture is not feasible.

Significantly, Mr. Holder did not say that such a situation is the only kind in which it would be lawful to kill a citizen. Rather, he said it would be lawful “at least” under those conditions. Later, he offered an example of another situation in which it would be lawful to kill a citizen even if all those requirements were not met: “operations that take place on traditional battlefields.””

 




Top 1% Feels Broke Too

29 02 2012

Many people form the 99% group feel that they just have enough money for a living. However, the top 1% are no different either. Many bankers experienced a reduce bonus for 2011 and they feel that they are trapped financially too. The amount of money they are bringing in is not enough for them to keep up with their current lifestyle.

“Schiff, (director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc.) 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.”

“M. Todd Henderson, a University of Chicago law professor who’s teaching a seminar on executive compensation, said the suffering is relative and real. He wrote two years ago that his family was “just getting by” on more than $250,000 a year, setting off what he called a firestorm of criticism.”

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/wall-street-bonus-withdrawal-means-trading-aspen-for-cheap-chex.html




Inside Apple Factory in China

25 02 2012

On Tuesday, Nightline aired a special episode where Bill Weir got an inside tour of the Apple Factory in China. He talked about the people who work there and what their working conditions were like.

Click the link below to watch the Nightline episode: http://abcnews.go.com/watch/nightline/SH5584743/VD55173552/nightline-221-apples-chinese-factories-exclusive

Link to the article: http://abcnews.go.com/International/trip-ifactory-nightline-unprecedented-glimpse-inside-apples-chinese/story?id=15748745#.T0lbEHaDDX4