Occupy Homes and Occupy DC

Here are excerpts from Washingtonsblog.com. Full story here.

Occupy Movement … Stronger than Ever?

Posted on December 6, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog

OWS: Down, But Not Out …

While some might assume that the Occupy movement is dead – given that scenes of large protests have been absent from the news recently – but the truth is quite different.

As Zero Hedge notes today:

The city of Cleveland has passed a resolution endorsing the Occupy movement, calling on congress to reform financial regulations, and to prosecute the big banks. The vote passed 18-1. Other cities have passed similar resolutions.

Here is Cleveland City's resolution: 

(C OF C 125-174
Resolution No. 1720-11
Council Members Cummins, Westbrook,Zone, Cimperman, Cleveland, Mitchell,J. Johnson, Brancatelli, Brady, Polensek,Pruitt, Conwell, K. Johnson, Dow.FOR ADOPTIONDecember 5, 2012
AN EMERGENCY RESOLUTION
Recognizing and supporting the principles of theOccupy Movement and the peaceful and lawful xercise of the First Amendment as a cherished andfundamental right in the effort to seek solutions for economically distressed Americans at the federal,state and local levels; committing to work with the Jackson administration to take steps to minimize economic insecurity and destructive disparities in theCity of Cleveland; and requesting our County, Stateand U.S. elected leaders generate solutions for economically distressed Americans.) 

(Seattle Joins Los Angeles, San Francisco and Buffalo In Supporting Occupy Protests

The Seattle Times reports today:

The Seattle City Council on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution in support of Occupy Seattle that calls on the city to examine its banking and investment practices, home-foreclosure patterns and the financing of local elections.)

Richard Eskow writes:

Widespread criminality … created the Wall Street mortgage boom and led to our ongoing financial crisis. [There is] overwhelming evidence of illegal activity on the part of big banks, [yet] none of those banks’ executives have been prosecuted.

As ugly as the situation is, there is some logic behind the government’s actions — and its inactions. They’re acting on a tragically incorrect (but internally coherent) set of assumptions that can be summed up in one sentence. It goes something like this:

“To preserve the health of the American economy, banks must be allowed to keep preying on their consumers.”

That’s it. That’s the logic.

But there are two exciting ‘Occupy’ developments this week that could change the equation — ‘Take Back the Capitol’ in the District of Columbia, and Tuesday’s ‘Occupy Our Homes’ events around the country. Think of them as complementary actions: One is taking place at the site of our greatest government power. The other is bringing the action to homes where people have been victimized by bankers.

***

The thinking goes something like this: Our largest banks are too big to fail, and since we lack the will or the motivation to break them up or regulate them we must protect them at all costs. We’ve propped them up with TARP, quantitative easing, and $7.7 trillion in secret Federal Reserve loans, but they’re still shaky as hell. If we prosecute any of their executives, their stock prices will fall and they’ll collapse again. And they’ll take the entire economic system with them.

That leads to some grotesque miscarriages of justice. Nobody at Wells Fargo has been indicted for money laundering, for example, despite the fact that the bank has paid millions to settle charges of laundering cash for the Mexican drug cartels that have murdered more than 35,000 people. As an experienced bank investigator working for the Senate observed, “There’s no capacity to regulate or punish them because they’re too big to be threatened with failure.”

***

Some powerful folks are afraid the banks will fail if they’re forced to write off the bad loans on their books, or to stop profiting from loans sold deceptively or irresponsibly.

TARP may be over, but there’s another massive bank rescue going on. Who’s funding it? We are. Every time we pay a usurious interest fee on a credit card, we’re propping up the banks. Every time we make another month’s payment on an underwater mortgage, we’re propping them up too. Every time we pay an overpriced consumer loan of any kind, we’re making another payment into the consumer-funded bailout that’s keeping the big banks afloat.

It would be great if politicians in Washington stopped using American consumers to subsidize banks that shouldn’t even exist. But they haven’t. That’s where “Occupy Our Homes” comes in.

It’s also a day for helping people in our communities who have been victimized by predatory lending, criminal bank forgery, unfair or illegal foreclosure practices, and other bank abuses that victimize the public. Occupy Minnesota has already occupied an illegally-foreclosed home, and plans to do the same thing with another home tomorrow. Here in Los Angeles, where an inspiring victory has already taken place, OccupyLA will help two brave families re-occupy their illegally foreclosed homes.

What will happen if consumers stopped blaming themselves? What if they demanded that the banks take responsibility for their irresponsible and/or predatory lending? What if they refused to stop this country’s perverse economic role reversal, where customers have become the ATMs while banks keep making the withdrawals?

If 10% of America’s homeowners declared a mortgage strike it would rock the banking world. If everybody paying exorbitant credit card interest declared a moratorium on payments all at once, Wall Street would change forever.

Think about it: “Occupy ALL Our Homes.” “Occupy Our Credit Cards … Our Payday Loans … Our Buy-and-Drive Loans …” I’m not saying these are necessarily the right tactics, although they very well may be. But what’s most important is that we understand that consumers have far more power than we usually realize – provided we act together.

Many of Washington’s leaders will cringe at the thought, of course. “That could hurt our biggest banks,” they say. It would be tempting to reply, You say that like it’s a bad thing. Here’s a better response: Then start planning to break them up in an orderly fashion. We’re done living a life of indentured servitude just so we can subsidize their greed.

Those are the discussions that we should be having. If powerful people on Wall Street and in Washington aren’t worried about Occupy Our Homes , they’re not paying attention. But with any luck, they soon will.

(If you are understandably squeamish about deadbeats not honoring their debts, please read this.)

Occupy is also attempting to shut down all West Coast ports on December 12th.

Occupy protesters have started to arrive in Washington, D.C. to protest political corruption, and are aiming for one million tents set up by January 17th.

A top Republican strategist – and the world’s top expert on framing mainstream Republican ideas in language which persuades people, Frank Luntz – said (via Think Progress):

Luntz told attendees that he’s “scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death.” The pollster warned that the movement is “having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.” So the pollster offered some advice for them about how to fight back. Here’s a few snippets of what he said [:]

***

Luntz instructed attendees to tell protesters that they “get it”: “First off, here are three words for you all: ‘I get it.’ … ‘I get that you’re. I get that you’ve seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system.”

(The other top framing expert – George Lakoff, a liberal – supports OWS.)

And Democrats are feeling the anger of the Occupy protesters as well, given their complicity in selling out the people to benefit the big banks and support for police state tactics against the American people.

While police have resorted to brutal military tactics to try to shut down the protests, such tactics have drawn world-wide condemnation, including condemnation from the United Nations, former police chiefs (and see this), and the inventor of pepper spray.

And do you know how the police have denied protesters the use of megaphones as a way to try to silence them (hence the famous “Human Mic”)? There’s a new iPhone App the ‘Inhuman Microphone’which circumvents the megaphone ban by unifying all the smart phone speakers into one voice.

So Occupy is down, but not out … and arguably growing stronger than ever.

While the general media may be ignoring the latest peculiar twist on the “Occupy” theme, or in this case the “occupyourhomes.org“, Bank of America is taking it quote seriously. As a reminder, “Tuesday, December 6th is the National Day of Action to stop and reverse foreclosures.

The Occupy Homes movement is holding actions around the country in support of homeowners and people fighting to have a home. Find an event near you and join in our day of action tomorrow!. There are actions happening in over 20 cities nationwide. Events are taking place in Brooklyn, Buffalo and Rochester New York; Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Petaluma, Sacramento, Paradise and Contra Costa California; Lake Worth, Florida; Atlanta, Fayetteville, and DeKalb Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Bloomington, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Cleveland, Ohio; Denver, Colorado; Detroit and Southgate Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington.” And if you have not heard about today’s protest on the conventional media that is understandable: as BAC says internally, this event “could impact our industry.” ........

here is more from Washingtonsblog.com. This is why we have Occupy Wall Street--

60 Minutes: Fraud Caused Financial Meltdown, But There Have Been No Prosecutions

and----

Is The Amount of Energy Put Into Mining, Processing, and Shipping Uranium, Plant Construction, Operation, and Decommissioning GREATER than the Energy a Nuclear Plant Can Produce In Its Lifetime?

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)