[Occupy Wall Street] isn’t anti-Semitic. It started in New York. Its ideological hero is Naomi Klein. This is a movement studded with liberal Jews!
[…]
Occupy Wall Street is acting more as a safety valve preventing a slide into extremism than a transmitter enabling a slide into extremism. It takes a while for negative narratives about movements to show up in polls, but right now, the solid popularity of Occupy Wall Street suggests that voters understand this.
Can President Obama take advantage of the egalitarian sentiment let loose in the country by the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations? Would doing so be consistent with the moderate, conciliatory persona he has cultivated?
The best response comes not from polls but from history.
The best response comes not from polls but from history.
E.J. Dionne Jr., “Lincoln points Obama to the high ground”
The Occupiers of Wall Street have been portrayed as everything from hippies to “hot chicks,” from everyday people with friendly dogs to violent anarchists. Now, two surveys offer some actual data about the demonstrators and their sympathizers. Here, a look at the movement’s demographics:
15
Percent of the demonstrators who are unemployed53
Percent of demonstrators who say they have previously participated in a political movement, according to Schoen’s survey98
Percent who say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their aims
31
Percent who say they would support violence
8
Percent who say they are unsure of what they would like to see the movement accomplishPhoto: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
This is the article we’ve been waiting to be written. Important comments, important pictures, just…important.
Please spread this.
(Source: velocipedestrienne)
Digby, “Bad behavior:”
I keep hearing how well behaved the Tea Partiers were compared to Occupy Wall Street, what with their polite and well mannered rallies and all. They are all over the place, getting face time as the supposedly civilized face of American protest, recalling the glory days of their “peaceful” movement.
They were anything but civilized. I’m just going to re-run this [video] again because I think it says everything that needs to be said…
Also, too, there was this. And just this past month at the GOP debates they’ve been cheering for executions, booing active duty soldiers, applauding the uninsured dying and, last night, clapping wildly for the comment “it’s your own fault” if you don’t have a job.
Humans are often not nice, and neither side in the political/cultural divide has a monopoly on goodness. But I really don’t want to hear any more nonsense about how “decent” the Tea partiers were in contrast to the Occupy Wall Streeters. Many of them behave very badly, very often and they have absolutely no room to be judgmental.
And don’t forget this nujob.
Another debunking of Douglas Schoen’s right-wing anti-OWS hitpiece.
I’m shocked, just shocked that a former Democratic pollster turned Faux News “analyst,” a guy who has publicly argued that Barack Obama should not seek reelection, a guy who spent years arguing that Democrats should roll over for Bush and be more Republican than Republicans, is smearing the left-wing Occupy Wall Street movement.
Just shocked!
There’s a crisis of income growth in this country that’s papered over by credit. That’s why there’s $56-billion in student loan debt. That’s why there’s $14-trillion in mortgage debt. That’s why there’s more than $1-trillion in home equity lines of credit outstanding. Because people have been borrowing against an uncertain future to finance an ever more expensive present. At the same time income has stagnated. Let’s be clear. When you adjust wages for prices, when you look at the real wage, it’s stagnant for 40 percent of the population; and for the next 20 percent of the population it’s barely edged up over 25 years. Meanwhile the top one percent has increased its share from the late 1970s, from 9 percent of national income to 24 percent just now. You can’t say these things are not causally related… Economically, inequality is a bad thing. You don’t even need to make a moral argument. You don’t have to mention the word justice once. More equal societies grow faster. They’re better…
Mark Blyth (6): Going to school on “Occupy Wall St.” | Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon (via ronmarks)
(via ronmarks)
Occupy D.C.? Most Back Protests, Surtax
A new survey shows that Americans overwhelmingly support the self-styled Occupy Wall Street protests that not only have disrupted life in Lower Manhattan but also in Washington and cities and towns across the U.S. and in other nations. Some 59 percent of adults either completely agree or mostly agree with the protesters, while 31 percent mostly disagree or completely disagree; 10 percent of those surveyed didn’t know or refused to answer.
Wall Street lobbyists are telling Democrats they can’t have it both ways: They can’t support Occupy Wall Street protests and then ask for Wall Street cash.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a recent e-mail calling on supporters to sign a petition backing the protests. Then livid banking executives called DCCC officials demanding answers, financial services lobbyists told Politico.
“Most Wall Street guys, they feel like they’re going to be burned in effigy,” Anthony Scaramucci told the newspaper. Scaramucci is a managing partner of SkyBridge Capital who gave to the Obama campaign in 2008. Now he is fundraising for Mitt Romney, and told Politico other moderate donors “fled from [President] Obama in his support of the Wall Street protests.”
Obama narrowly raised more Wall Street campaign funding in 2008 than Republican nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona. But now Democrats are facing a particularly hard sell…
Wall Street rejects Dem fundraising
“Most Wall Street guys, they feel like they’re going to be burned in effigy.” Would they rather be burned in real life? A large number of Americans would be happy to do that. And it doesn’t matter who’s in the White House in 2012, OWS and the widespread, global anger behind it won’t be going away. — Ryking
While an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Occupy Wall Street protesters flooded into Times Square on Saturday, there was still a regular New York general assembly at 7 p.m. During that meeting, according to sources who contacted The Huffington Post, the Zuccotti Park General Assembly — though at a reduced presence due to the Times Square march — approved the formation of a new working group.
This “Demands Working Group” then immediately “established a website and fairly educated/articulated list of solutions.” A separate group out of Zuccotti Park has also been working on a list of possible proposals, but a member of the Education and Empowerment Working Group said he suspects the Demands Working Group’s list will become the national platform.
They’ve posted the list online but they’ve also made this announcement under the radar — a national convention to be held July 4, 2012:
WE, THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in order to form a more perfect Union, by, for and of the PEOPLE, shall elect and convene a NATIONAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY beginning on July 4, 2012 in the City Of Philadelphia.They plan to elect delegates by direct vote, one male and one female per each of the 435 Congressional Districts. The office would be open to any United States citizen over the age of 18. The 870 delegates would then compose a petition of grievances that would be non-partisan.
The posted “demands” are only a working list of “suggestions,” however. Number one and two are a ban on private contributions to politicians seeking or holding federal office and instead public financing for campaigns, and a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court.
The list then goes on to suggest single-payer national health care, immediate passage of the DREAM Act, a jobs plan, a deficit reduction plan and recalling military personnel at all non-essential bases.
The movement would also reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, increase regulation and increase taxes by way of eliminating corporate tax loopholes.
The idea of coming up with a list of demands has been controversial among protesters.
David Sauvage, who directs videos for the Occupy Wall Street protests and supports the movement, said he viewed demands as being too similar to talking points.
But Daniel Lerner, a physicist and member of the Demands Working Group, argued to Mother Jones that their demands would have wide appeal.
In their list, however, they close with one last warning: if Congress, the President and the Supreme Court do not act on the settled grievances the movement eventually comes up with, its members are prepared to form a third, independent political party to run in every Congressional seat in 2014 and 2016.
(Source: socialuprooting)
Critics of Occupy Wall Street have a transparent objective: They want to persuade blue collar whites and ordinary middle class Americans to turn on the movement for cultural reasons — because its optics offend these voters’ cultural instincts — even if they broadly agree with its general principles and critique of what’s gone wrong.
What Occupy Wall Street’s critics are really trying to accomplish
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