NYC Withdraws Cleaning Evacuation Order in Face of Defiant Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Occupy Wall Street protesters are celebrating in Manhattan’s Financial District today after successfully defying orders to evacuate the encampment they have held for nearly four weeks. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had said Zuccotti Park — renamed Liberty Plaza by protesters — would have to be cleared by 7:00 a.m. following a request by its owners that it be cleaned. Thousands of people began congregating in the square overnight amidst concerns the cleaning order was a pretext for evicting the protesters. Hours later, New York City officials announced the request to clear the park had been withdrawn. We go live to Zuccotti Park to speak with Democracy Now!'s Ryan Devereaux. "At about 6:00 in the morning, a march of union members arrived to Liberty Square, and the reception was one of pure joy, chanting, cheering," Devereaux says. He describes how protesters allocated $3,000 from their treasury to purchase cleaning supplies and then "spent the better part of all day yesterday cleaning this plaza, making sure that it was as clean as possible when the inspectors would arrive, giving the city absolutely no excuse to say that this was a unsanitary place." We also speak with New York City Council Member Jumaane Williams, who is one of many local officials who have lent their support for the occupation. "I think everyone kind of understands that this is a great movement going on," Williams says. “More importantly, it's something that should be supported, just like we supported all the other movements that were going on around the world."

The situation at the Occupy Wall Street encampment is rapidly developing this morning. Thousands answered a call for support and streamed into New York’s Financial District overnight ahead of a, quote, "cleaning" that many feared would actually lead to a [clearing] of Zuccotti Park, where protesters have stayed since September 17th. Well, shortly before 7:00 a.m. this morning, they got word that the feared evacuation had been canceled.

 It’s been a really interesting dynamic between the protesters and the police, that’s for sure. Obviously, you know, some of the things that the police have done in recent weeks have caught a lot of headlines, beginning in late September when 80 people were arrested on a march near Union Square. Four young women were corralled and pepper-sprayed by Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. That was caught on video, that—those videos went viral, as did another video of Bologna pepper-spraying another protester on the sidewalk. Following that incident, the protest gained more attention. More people began to follow what was going on, and more people turned out in Liberty Plaza to support the cause.

Exactly one week later, the NYPD made headlines once again when they arrested over 700—over 730 protesters attempting to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. The arrests came under fire from a lot of critics who said that the police led the protesters onto the bridge, that they escorted them onto the bridge, and that they gave them the false impression that they would be able to cross the bridge. And then, when they made it about halfway across, about a third of the way across, they were stopped, kettled, as it’s called—caught in orange nets—and arrested en masse. And once again, the police, in their actions, gained this movement a ton of attention, a ton of press and a ton of sympathy in the United States and around the world.
And following that incident, we began to see occupation movements springing up around the country. There are reportedly over a thousand occupations taking place in cities around the United States.

2012 - The 99% of U.S. Social Uprising

United States Long Overdue Political, Economic and Social Evolution

The one thing we all have in common is that we are the (99.09%) ninety nine point zero nine percent of U.S. population, and will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the (0.01%) one tenth of one percent.

In order to evolve out of and remove our current Republican and Democrat (Republicrats) tyrannical and criminal imperialistic political, economic and social shackles, first we need to get an accurate perspective, that: in reality Republicans and Democrats are the two wings of the same brutal bird of prey. 

The said brutal bird of prey consists of one tenth of one percent (0.01%) of the United States and the European populations.  The said (0.01%) of the European and American Monarchy wants all there is for free, including all of our persons and our labor for nothing and would do all that it can in secrecy, to plunder and get what it wants. 

The European Union of Nation-Less Corporations and the United States of Nation-Less Corporations have successfully dumb down millions of people and destroyed any and all social upward mobility chances, replacing it with a dismal downward slavery and misery.


We, the people, have all one thing in common, we are the (99.09%) ninety nine point zero nine percent of the U.S. population, victimized and constantly plundered and held back by the one tenth of one percent (0.01%) criminal, greedy, narcissistic bastards, owners and operators of the Nation-less Corporations. We, the people, will no longer tolerate the massive corruption of the 0.01% percent.

Why Nation-Less Corporation and not Multi Nationals:
Multi-National is a euphemistic and highly misleading phrase, implying that a Multi-National Corporation, operating in multiple of countries, is responsive and loyal to multiple of nations.  We all know nothing could be further from the truth.

Dear Occupiers: A Letter from Anarchists

October 7, 2011 at 8:47 pm ·

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Starting with the occupation of a park next to Wall Street on September 17, a new movement is spreading across the country in which people gather in public spaces in protest against social inequalities. We’ll present a full analysis of this phenomenon here shortly; in the meantime, here’s an open letter to the occupation movement, engaging with some of the issues that have arisen thus far. Please forward this widely and print out versions to distribute at the “Occupy” events!

Dear Occupiers [online viewing version]
Dear Occupiers [print version]: A two-sided flier intended to be folded down the middle, longways.

Dear Occupiers

A letter from anarchists

Support and solidarity! We’re inspired by the occupations on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country. Finally, people are taking to the streets again! The momentum around these actions has the potential to reinvigorate protest and resistance in this country. We hope these occupations will increase both in numbers and in substance, and we’ll do our best to contribute to that.

Why should you listen to us? In short, because we’ve been at this a long time already. We’ve spent decades struggling against capitalism, organizing occupations, and making decisions by consensus. If this new movement doesn’t learn from the mistakes of previous ones, we run the risk of repeating them. We’ve summarized some of our hard-won lessons here.

Occupation is nothing new. The land we stand on is already occupied territory. The United States was founded upon the extermination of indigenous peoples and the colonization of their land, not to mention centuries of slavery and exploitation. For a counter-occupation to be meaningful, it has to begin from this history. Better yet, it should embrace the history of resistance extending from indigenous self-defense and slave revolts through the various workers’ and anti-war movements right up to the recent anti-globalization movement.

The “99%” is not one social body, but many. Some occupiers have presented a narrative in which the “99%” is characterized as a homogenous mass. The faces intended to represent “ordinary people” often look suspiciously like the predominantly white, law-abiding middle-class citizens we’re used to seeing on television programs, even though such people make up a minority of the general population.

It’s a mistake to whitewash over our diversity. Not everyone is waking up to the injustices of capitalism for the first time now; some populations have been targeted by the power structure for years or generations. Middle-class workers who are just now losing their social standing can learn a lot from those who have been on the receiving end of injustice for much longer.

The problem isn’t just a few “bad apples.” The crisis is not the result of the selfishness of a few investment bankers; it is the inevitable consequence of an economic system that rewards cutthroat competition at every level of society. Capitalism is not a static way of life but a dynamic process that consumes everything, transforming the world into profit and wreckage. Now that everything has been fed into the fire, the system is collapsing, leaving even its former beneficiaries out in the cold. The answer is not to revert to some earlier stage of capitalism—to go back to the gold standard, for example; not only is that impossible, those earlier stages didn’t benefit the “99%” either. To get out of this mess, we’ll have to rediscover other ways of relating to each other and the world around us.

Police can’t be trusted. They may be “ordinary workers,” but their job is to protect the interests of the ruling class. As long as they remain employed as police, we can’t count on them, however friendly they might act. Occupiers who don’t know this already will learn it firsthand as soon as they threaten the imbalances of wealth and power our society is based on. Anyone who insists that the police exist to protect and serve the common people has probably lived a privileged life, and an obedient one.

Don’t fetishize obedience to the law. Laws serve to protect the privileges of the wealthy and powerful; obeying them is not necessarily morally right—it may even be immoral. Slavery was legal. The Nazis had laws too. We have to develop the strength of conscience to do what we know is best, regardless of the laws.

To have a diversity of participants, a movement must make space for a diversity of tactics. It’s controlling and self-important to think you know how everyone should act in pursuit of a better world. Denouncing others only equips the authorities to delegitimize, divide, and destroy the movement as a whole. Criticism and debate propel a movement forward, but power grabs cripple it. The goal should not be to compel everyone to adopt one set of tactics, but to discover how different approaches can be mutually beneficial.

Don’t assume those who break the law or confront police are agents provocateurs. A lot of people have good reason to be angry. Not everyone is resigned to legalistic pacifism; some people still remember how to stand up for themselves. Police violence isn’t just meant to provoke us, it’s meant to hurt and scare us into inaction. In this context, self-defense is essential.

Assuming that those at the front of clashes with the authorities are somehow in league with the authorities is not only illogical—it delegitimizes the spirit it takes to challenge the status quo, and dismisses the courage of those who are prepared to do so. This allegation is typical of privileged people who have been taught to trust the authorities and fear everyone who disobeys them.

No government—that is to say, no centralized power—will ever willingly put the needs of common people before the needs of the powerful. It’s naïve to hope for this. The center of gravity in this movement has to be our freedom and autonomy, and the mutual aid that can sustain those—not the desire for an “accountable” centralized power. No such thing has ever existed; even in 1789, the revolutionaries presided over a “democracy” with slaves, not to mention rich and poor.

That means the important thing is not just to make demands upon our rulers, but to build up the power to realize our demands ourselves. If we do this effectively, the powerful will have to take our demands seriously, if only in order to try to keep our attention and allegiance. We attain leverage by developing our own strength.

Likewise, countless past movements learned the hard way that establishing their own bureaucracy, however “democratic,” only undermined their original goals. We shouldn’t invest new leaders with authority, nor even new decision-making structures; we should find ways to defend and extend our freedom, while abolishing the inequalities that have been forced on us.

The occupations will thrive on the actions we take. We’re not just here to “speak truth to power”—when we only speak, the powerful turn a deaf ear to us. Let’s make space for autonomous initiatives and organize direct action that confronts the source of social inequalities and injustices.

Thanks for reading and scheming and acting. May your every dream come true.

                                    -Crimethinc.

Thanksgiving Survival Guide

 Thanksgiving Survival Guide is here to help!

Here's what to do:

• Print out this checklist. It includes info on vegan products to add to your dinner and recipes for veganizing holiday faves.

Remember: The best way to speak out for turkeys this holiday season is not to eat them!

Have a cruelty-free and happy Thanksgiving!

"We Are the 99%":

 Labor unions and students joined a growing Occupy Wall Street movement on Wednesday in the largest march since the protest began 20 days ago here in New York City. Tens of thousands marched from Foley Square to Liberty Plaza, the site of the protest encampment where hundreds have been sleeping since a timber 17th. The march was peaceful, but police later beat a handful of protesters with batons after they toppled a police barricade in an attempt to march down Wall Street. Police say a total of 28 people were arrested on Wednesday. Meanwhile, smaller protests against Wall Street continue to take part across the country.

Early this morning, police raided the occupy San Francisco encampment less than a day after some 1000 protesters marched to the city’s financial district. In Boston, protesters have entered their seventh day occupying of Dewey Square and the city’s financial district. In St. Louis, police arrested 10 people on Wednesday. In Washington State, 26 Occupy Seattle protesters were arrested after police moved into a public park where protesters have been camped out for five days. Video shot in Seattle shows police entering a tent and arresting the activists inside.

The Occupy Wall Street march was endorsed by a coalition of labor groups including the Transport Workers Union, National Nurses United, SEIU 1199, and the United Federation of Teachers. We hear the voices of union leaders addressing the boisterous crowd at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan before the march headed to the Financial District

Occupy Wall Street captured the spirit of our time. This is the spirit of our time. This is Madison. This is Cairo. This is Tunisia. You can’t see it, brothers and sisters, but back up the street they are still streaming in. We’re here to say, no more to the bailouts of Wall Street and the disasters on Main Street. No more to tax cuts for the rich and no jobs for the rest of us. We need to turn our energy, take this spirit, and take this state and this country back. And we are going to do it. Occupy Wall Street has started a movement that we are all part of around the world. And together, we will win. Together, we will win.

 We need bailouts with jobs. We need bailouts with health care. We need bailouts in education. We need to know that our future generation will have a place in this country, not subservient to those who have more than they will ever need in this country. We’re here because of corporate greed. Everyone one of us is here because of corporate greed. Everyone of us is here there’s signs in the audience that say, we are the 99%. Well, we are the 99%, and it is time that the 1% made the sacrifice that they’ve been telling us we have to make.

Students made up a large contingent of Wednesday’s march in support of Occupy Wall Street. A national day of student walk-outs was held to protest budget cuts and to show support for Occupy Wall Street. According to the website OccupyColleges.org, walkouts occurred at 75 schools across the nation including many in New York City. Democracy Now! met up with several students who walked out of classes at the City University of New York, the New School and New York University to attend Wednesday’s march in Lower Manhattan.

The Occupy Wall Street protest grows daily, spreading to cities across the United States. “We are the 99 percent,” the protesters say, “that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.”
The response by the New York City Police Department has been brutal. Last Saturday, the police swept up more than 700 protesters in one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history. The week before, innocent protesters were pepper-sprayed in the face without warning or reason.


Organized labor will serve notice today on the bankers and the politicians that the young protesters of Occupy Wall Street speak for millions.

Tens of thousands of transit and city workers, teachers, and maintenance and hospital workers are expected to march to Zuccotti Park late today in a show of solidarity.

The labor rally will signal just how far unions have come since that infamous day 41 years ago, when bands of construction workers rampaged through the Financial District and City Hall. Back then, the hardhats brutally beat scores of youths protesting the Vietnam War.

Now the young people and the unions are on the same side.

Continued..

Here in New York, the city’s powerful unions are set to join the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations now entering its 20th day. Their march to City Hall be bolstered by the walkout of hundreds, potentially thousands, of students at major public universities in New York City where tuition rates are on the rise. The movement received a boost Monday when the SEIU 1199 healthcare workers union issued a statement of support for the protest, promising to send nurses to train those providing first aid at the encampment. The healthcare workers union joins the Transport Workers Union, which runs the city’s subway and bus system, in supporting the growing movement. On Monday, attorneys for the TWU attempted to obtain a temporary federal restraining order to prevent the police from commandeering buses operated by its members to ferry protesters who are arrested. Over the weekend, the NYPD used at least three city buses to transport some of the more than 700 protesters arrested attempting to cross the Brooklyn bridge. Tony Murphy is an activist with the Bail Out the People movement.

Demonstrators are marching on Wall Street today on the third day of a campaign dubbed "Occupy Wall Street," which began on Saturday when thousands gathered in New York City’s Financial District. Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have slept outside near Wall Street for the past two nights.

The "Occupy Wall Street" protests in the financial district took a dramatic turn on Saturday when protesters tried to march across the Brooklyn Bridge. When police arrested 700 of the demonstrators, the event quickly turned into one of the largest arrests of non-violent protesters in recent history. Some protesters claim police lured them onto oncoming traffic on the bridge’s roadway; others said they did not hear instructions from police telling them to use the pedestrian walkway. Meanwhile, similar "Occupation" protests have spread to other cities, including Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles, where hundreds of protesters are now camped out in front of City Hall.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, now entering its 17th day, draws inspiration from the Arab Spring. According to its website, the protest consists quote, "people of many colors, genders, political persuasion. The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." The encampment received a boost last week when one of New York City’s largest unions, The Transit Workers Union, announced its backing. Labor unions in the city plan a solidarity march with Occupy Wall Street this Wednesday. Meanwhile, most of the 700 people arrested Saturday have since been released but were given citations for disorderly conduct and a criminal court summons. Similar occupation protests that spread to other cities including Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, where protesters are now camped out in front of City Hall.

This Saturday will mark the beginning of the third week of the Occupy Wall Street protest. A major demonstration is scheduled here in the Financial District and lower Manhattan. Protesters say they’re planning to stay here indefinitely and hope that Occupy Wall Street inspires similar protests across the country.

For the past two weeks, the media center here at Occupy Wall Street has been the way the protesters have gotten word out to the rest of the country and the world. Over here is the food area. Hundreds of people here have been eating donated food every day: muffins, apples, power bars. They have been serving three meals a day to the hundreds of protesters who have been camping out here. Tents are spread throughout this part of Liberty Plaza. Protesters are preparing to spend another night, the 13th night in a row inside this park, as part of Occupy Wall Street. The Police have barred the use of tents, but it has not stopped protesters from staying here even in the rain and the cold. On the northern end of Liberty Plaza space has been set aside for protesters to make homemade posters. Some of them read: "You are the 99%,” “System Change. Not Climate Change,” “Wall Street Bonuses = Money From Crime.”

Book Fairs, Next Leg of Work Tour

One of my favorite books by Crimethinc. has been on tour, if you are located in any of these areas definitely check it out!

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This Thursday through Sunday, September 29 through October 2, will maintain a somewhat improbable CrimethInc. table at the New York Art Book Fair in New York City. There also will be tables at the anarchist book fairs in Boston, MA and Carrboro, NC on November 12 and in Humboldt County, CA on December 10.

In addition, on the strength of the success of earlier events presenting on the issues discussed in the Work book, they are booking two more short tours: one in October that will traverse the South as far as Texas before returning east via the Midwest, another in November to New York City, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Whether or not you’ve read the book yet, please check it out!

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Promotional Materials

Tabloid (11″x17″): Color[2.9MB] | B&W[1.4MB]
Letter (8.5″x11″): Color[2.3MB] | B&W[1.2MB]
Quarter (4.25″x5.5″): Color[8.7MB] | B&W[4.5MB]

 

Tour Dates

Monday, October 17, 6:30 pm
WonderRoot, 982 Memorial Drive SE Atlanta, GA 30316 / http://www.wonderroot.org/

Tuesday, October 18, 7 pm
Underground Books, 102 Alabama Street, Carrollton, Ga 30117

Wednesday, October 19, 7:30 pm
Nowe Maisto, 223 Jane Place, New Orleans, LA 70119

Thursday, October 20, 7:30 pm
Seminar Room 4 (2nd floor), Monroe Library, Loyola University, 6363 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA

Friday, October 21, 7 pm
Sedition Books, 901 Richmond Avenue, Houston, TX

Saturday, October 22
San Antonio, TX

Sunday, October 23, 7 pm
Treasure City Thrift, 2142 E 7th Streeet, Austin, TX 78702 / http://www.treasurecitythrift.org/

Monday, October 24, 7:30 pm
Smoke and Mirrors Art Gallery & Infoshop, 1920 N.Haskell Avenue, Dallas,TX 75204

Tuesday, October 25
Norman, OK

Wednesday, October 26
Kansas City, MO

Thursday, October 27
St. Louis, MO

Friday, October 28
Boxcar Books, 408 E. 6th Street, Bloomington, IN 47408

Saturday, October 29
Warren Wilson College, NC

Tuesday, November 15 to Wednesday, November 16
New York CIty

Thursday, November 17, 7 pm
Wooden Shoe Books, 704 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19147 / http://woodenshoebooks.com/

Friday, November 18
Big Idea Bookstore, 4812 Liberty Avenue (in Bloomfield), Pittsburgh, PA / http://www.thebigideapgh.org/

The 411 on Dissection

October is "Cut Out Dissection" Month, and we wanted to arm you with the facts on dissection in the easiest, most eyeball-friendly, sharable way—with our handy-dandy infographic!

Feel free to print this out, pass it along, blast it all over the interwebs, and help get the word out!

click image to enlarge