Occupy Doylestown (PA)
(10-10) 17:15 PDT OAKLAND -- Hundreds of protesters poured into Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza this afternoon, joining a multi-city movement taking aim at economic inequality and corporate excess.
Teachers, nurses, families and the unemployed participated in the Occupy Oakland protest, carrying signs in front of an empty City Hall. The city offices were closed for a furlough day.
Asia Patterson, a 69-year-old, part-time convenience store clerk, showed up at the start of the 4 p.m. protest, saying he was marching in the name of his nephews, nieces and cousins who had been laid off.
"I need to get up and let my voice be heard," he said. "We have allowed the financial industry to get off the hook with their gambling. I'm fed up with it."
The protest followed the lead of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy SF and similar movement in other cities, where protesters have camped out to voice a wide range of economic concerns.
Taking a cue from other Occupy events, the Oakland protest organizers emphasized that they had no specific demands or even a cohesive message, save perhaps a unified frustration with the status quo.
"While we have much in common, we believe the people are stronger united behind many banners, rather than a single one," according to the website occupyoakland.org, which promoted the protest. "We want to make it very clear that Occupy Oakland is not putting forward leaders, tactical or strategic directives, or a uniform message or political platform."
The Oakland banners included one that read, "I'm a white guy and even I'm not getting a fair deal."
Another read, "Sweden still has millionaires," an apparent reference to the potential coexistence of socialism and profit.
Pam Smith, an Oakland veterinarian, said she was encouraged by the large turnout despite the daylong light rain.
"There seems to be an increasing awareness of these problems, of corporate profits coming before people's basic needs like jobs, health care, homes and education," said Smith, 51. "We need to fix the favoritism in government that favors corporations."
Police were at the scene monitoring the protest. It was unclear if any participants planned to follow protesters in other cities in setting up encampments.
DoylestownThey're gonna occupy... where?
Posted: Monday, October 10, 2011 6:15 pm | Updated: 8:21 pm, Mon Oct 10, 2011.
They have occupied Wall Street, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia.
And now they plan to "Occupy Doylestown."
And Newtown. And possibly Lansdale, Morristown, New Hope, Perkasie, Sellersville, Souderton and Willow Grove.
They say they are part of the 99 percent of people who are "getting kicked out of (their) homes," "forced to choose between groceries and rent," "suffering from environmental pollution," "working long hours for little pay, if (they're) working at all," and "getting nothing while the other 1 percent get everything." They are angry because they feel like their elected representatives listen more to the 1 percent than to them.
And they want to be heard.
Marlene Pray, a community activist and Doylestown Council candidate who is helping to organize the Occupy Doylestown rally, said the organizers want "people in the suburbs and people in communities like Doylestown to know that this economic crisis is impacting your friends, your families, your co-workers, people who stand next to you in the grocery store, people who are waiting for hours next to you in the pediatrician's office."
They want elected officials to "take responsibility for the corruption that exists throughout the political system," Pray said. "Every level of government needs to pay attention to the occupy movement."
Pray said Occupy Doylestown is a small part of the larger Occupy Wall Street movement.
The movement started in July when Adbusters, a Vancouver-based anti-consumerist magazine, called for "redeemers, rebels and radicals" to "occupy Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America" for several months.
The call to action demanded that "Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It's time for DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY, we're doomed without it... If we hang in there, 20,000-strong, week after week against every police and National Guard effort to expel us from Wall Street, it would be impossible for Obama to ignore us. Our government would be forced to choose publicly between the will of the people and the lucre of the corporations."
The occupation of Wall Street began on Sept. 17. About 1,000 people participated on the first day.
The occupation has continued and spread to other cities, including Los Angeles and Boston, in the past few weeks.
Occupy Philadelphia has become one of the largest rallies outside of New York City. Protesters gathered Thursday outside of City Hall, and continued their rally throughout the weekend. Hundreds of protesters marched from a makeshift camp outside City Hall to the Liberty Bell on Saturday.
More than 1,200 rallies are planned in cities and towns around the world this month.
PennAction, the BuxMont Coalition for Peace Action and the National Campaign to Protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are holding a "Rally for Jobs Not War, Main Street Not Wall Street" outside of Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick's Newtown office on Wednesday. A press release from PennAction said the participants will ask Fitzpatrick to support the American Jobs Act; defend Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; and reduce military spending by 25 percent.
Occupy Doylestown will be held Thursday near the intersection of State and Main streets.
And the "Occupy Together" page on Meetup.com shows that occupation rallies are planned, but not scheduled yet in Feasterville, Lansdale, Levittown, New Hope, Perkasie, Sellersville, Souderton and Willow Grove.
Pray acknowledged that Doylestown seems, to many people, to be a community that is insulated from the recession. But, she said, quoting former Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, "I think the national statistics of 24 million people who can't find a full-time job, 50 million who cannot see a doctor when they're sick, 47 million who need government help in order to feed themselves, 15 million families who owe more on their mortgage than the value of their home... Those are big numbers. They include people in Doylestown."
Pray said more people than ever before are getting food from the food pantry in New Britain.
"It certainly is important that small towns like Doylestown are given a voice in this struggle," Pray said.
Pray said she and the other organizers of the Occupy Doylestown rally also want to support and honor local businesses at the rally on Thursday, and celebrate local elected officials because "many people feel our local government in Doylestown is accessible."
Christina Kristofic: 215-345-3079; email, ckristofic@phillyburbs.com; Twitter, @CKristofic
Occupy Wall Street... mansions
@CNNMoney October 10, 2011:NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Occupy Wall Street is on the move ... uptown.
Why uptown? Because that's where the rich folks live!
Organizers are planning a march on Tuesday that will visit the homes of JP Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) CEO Jamie Dimon, billionaire David Koch, hedge fund honcho John Paulson, Howard Milstein, and News Corp (NWSA, Fortune 500) CEO Rupert Murdoch.
The millionaires and billionaires are being targeted for what event organizers called a "willingness to hoard wealth at the expense of the 99%."
So far, protesters have not strayed too far from downtown, where a home base of sorts has been established at Zuccotti Park.
Tuesday's march -- organized by UnitedNY, the Strong Economy for All Coalition, the Working Families Party and New York Communities for Change -- will cover quite a bit of ground if successful.
The itinerary calls for protesters to hop on the subway, emerging at 59th street near Central Park, where they will start their tour just after noon.
Doug Forand, a spokesman for the groups, said that the protesters do not have a permit for the march, but were not planning on obstructing traffic and would stick to the sidewalks.
Organizers declined to estimate how many protesters would attend. A Facebook event page dedicated to the march had a modest number of confirmed attendees. Less than 100 people said they would attend as of 6 p.m. Monday.
Earlier Monday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- also a billionaire -- said that Occupy Wall Street protesters could stay in Zuccotti Park indefinitely, so long as they obeyed the rules.
"The bottom line is people want to express themselves, and as long as they obey the laws, we'll allow them to," Bloomberg said. 
Monday, October 10, 2011 |
Teachers, nurses, families and the unemployed participated in the Occupy Oakland protest, carrying signs in front of an empty City Hall. The city offices were closed for a furlough day.
Asia Patterson, a 69-year-old, part-time convenience store clerk, showed up at the start of the 4 p.m. protest, saying he was marching in the name of his nephews, nieces and cousins who had been laid off.
"I need to get up and let my voice be heard," he said. "We have allowed the financial industry to get off the hook with their gambling. I'm fed up with it."
The protest followed the lead of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy SF and similar movement in other cities, where protesters have camped out to voice a wide range of economic concerns.
Taking a cue from other Occupy events, the Oakland protest organizers emphasized that they had no specific demands or even a cohesive message, save perhaps a unified frustration with the status quo.
"While we have much in common, we believe the people are stronger united behind many banners, rather than a single one," according to the website occupyoakland.org, which promoted the protest. "We want to make it very clear that Occupy Oakland is not putting forward leaders, tactical or strategic directives, or a uniform message or political platform."
The Oakland banners included one that read, "I'm a white guy and even I'm not getting a fair deal."
Another read, "Sweden still has millionaires," an apparent reference to the potential coexistence of socialism and profit.
Pam Smith, an Oakland veterinarian, said she was encouraged by the large turnout despite the daylong light rain.
"There seems to be an increasing awareness of these problems, of corporate profits coming before people's basic needs like jobs, health care, homes and education," said Smith, 51. "We need to fix the favoritism in government that favors corporations."
Police were at the scene monitoring the protest. It was unclear if any participants planned to follow protesters in other cities in setting up encampments.
E-mail the reporters at mkuruvila@sfchronicle.com and jtucker@sfchronicle.com.
In the 10 days since the Occupy DC movement sprung up in McPherson Square, it has grown from a handful of protesters waving cardboard signs along K Street to an encampment similar to what’s in Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street protesters have lived since September 17.
Occupy DC now has food tables where volunteers dish up donated food, a library area, a media center and a “comfort station” piled with blankets. More than 100 attend the groups’ twice-daily general assembly meetings. Dozens have spent the night in the downtown square on air mattresses and sleeping bags and showing up for daily protest marches to the White House and elsewhere around the District.
Occupy DC does not have a permit to occupy the square, but so far, they said, police have left them alone.
“No one has any plans to ask for a permit — or to leave,” said Legba Carrefour, a self-described anarchist and participant. “We haven’t had any problems with police. So far they seem content to let us stay here.”
Carrefour said that they would embrace the other protesters who have been “occupying” Freedom Plaza since Thursday, should they decamp to McPherson Square because their permit expired.
Rooj Alwazir, 23, a District resident, joined the protests last week, and says she feels that the message of economic populism is catching fire, especially among her peers — other twentysomethings facing staggering student debt and scant job prospects.
A 2009 graduate of Marymount University in Arlington, Alwazir has been looking for a marketing job for eight months ever since her last position was downsized. She says she sends out 7 to 10 resumes and applications a day and has still come up empty.
“This movement was bound to happen,” she said. “People in our generation are frustrated... they should be demanding their rights and getting their rights. They feel really empowered by what’s going on.”
By | 04:15 PM ET, 10/10/2011
Published October 10, 2011 | FoxNews.com
Rep. John Lewis is one of 435 members of the House interminably frustrated by the arcane ways of the Senate. At an Occupy Atlanta protest, he encountered a process arguably worse.
A lengthy video posted online over the weekend showed what happened when the Democratic congressman tried to address an "assembly" of protesters in his home state. Instead of giving the floor to a man who is not just a longtime U.S. representative but a revered civil rights icon, the protesters employed a tangle of parliamentary procedures to ultimately prevent him from speaking.
A stunned Lewis could be seen watching the whole thing unfold before ambling away.
The procedures they used -- rather, invented -- would make the Senate blush. Imagine some combination of Model U.N., Lord of the Flies and a Phish concert.
The central premise, it appeared, was that no one person is inherently more valuable than anyone else. So when the group's leader, a bespectacled man with a bullhorn, said anything, he spoke in clipped fragments so the rest of the crowd could repeat what he was saying back to him. Another rule -- no clapping, because "clapping can prevent someone else who is addressing the assembly from being heard."
Instead, the leader urged everyone to use effusive hand signals to show approval.
With these fundamentals in place, the assembly spent 10 minutes debating whether Lewis should be allowed to speak before the crowd, which had gathered as one of many offshoots of the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York.
Anonymous Briefly Disrupts Traffic to NYSE Site: Report
By Chao Deng From The Street.com
Photos: Occupy Portland largest 'Occupy' event to date
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Officials in Phoenix are watching other cities across the U.S. as they prepare for the Occupy Phoenix protests, which are scheduled to begin October 15.
Protests were held in several major cities around the country last week, the largest being in Portland, Oregon. Protesters started gathering just after noon on Thursday at Portland's Waterfront Park beneath the Burnside Bridge. At around 2:30 p.m., thousands walked city streets to Pioneer Courthouse Square, which they occupied for about an hour before marching through city streets to two city parks.
"The corporations have taken our futures away from us and we're just not going to stand by and let that happen," one protester told a reporter from KGW.
"We are not the problem," another man said. "The problems are the bankers on Wall Street that destroyed this economy."
The protest prompted complaints from some business leaders. Many opted to close early due to the rally. Others, like the downtown Apple store, stayed open but workers were urged to skip their breaks and stay inside. Wells Fargo Bank hired extra security officers over concerns it could be a target.
"If you listen to their conversations, there's no real leadership. They're leading by committee so understanding what they want or are are trying to achieve, I don't think anyone does right now," said William Palmer, chairman of the downtown retail council.
TriMet briefly halted Green and Yellow MAX service along the Portland Transit Mall on 5th and 6th avenues, due to the protesters.
The occupation protest is inspired by the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, now in their third week, which have spurred other similar demonstrations in major cities like Boston and Los Angeles, all to protest corporate greed.
By Thursday afternoon, nearly 7,000 people had "liked" the Occupy Portland Facebook page. A similar page for Occupy Salem noted that people plan to take over a park next to the Capitol Monday.
In New York, 700 people were arrested over the weekend marching over the Brooklyn Bridge. The protesters range from college students worried about their job prospects to middle-age workers who have been recently terminated.
Google Map: Occupy Events across U.S.
Occupy Wall Street protests spread to Houston
Students, Houstonians gather to rally peacefully against ‘1 percent’
The 99-percenter movement reached Houston this Thursday in the form of Occupy Houston — a grassroots movement which is “dedicated to ending the corporate corruption of democracy,” according to occupyhouston.org.
The protest began with a meet and greet in Market Square Park and continued with a march to JPMorgan Chase Tower before reaching its final destination at City Hall. All protestors were then given a chance to address the crowd, which repeated the message in order to amplify the volume without a permit.
Estimates of Thursday’s attendance ranged from 200 to 400 protestors, with many carrying signs displaying slogans ranging from “Reinstate Glass Steagall” and “Burn Your Credit Cards” to “I will believe corporations are people when Texas executes one” and “Bail Out Students, Not Banksters.”
UH was represented by members of many student groups including the International Socialist Organization, People Against Corporate Tax Evasion, Fair Labor Action Committee and Students for a Democratic Society. Other activist groups present included Houston Freethinkers, Houston Peace News and Infowars.com.
The protest was also heavily attended by the local media, including Fox, NBC, CultureMap, Houston Chronicle, WB and a helicopter from ABC 13.
When asked what the message of the occupation movement was, a spokesperson said it was “catalyzed around our frustration with corporate excess” as well as bailouts and lack of accountability among corporate CEOs, who she said “have swindled billions of Americans’ dollars and ruined their lives.”
She also encouraged all UH students who want to participate to join the discussion at occupyhouston.org.
Friday’s continued occupation brought local politicians Phillip Andrews and KP George, who were running on a grassroots platform that refuses special interest contributions.
Andrews, who is running for US Representative for House District 7, said “the day you start taking money from special interests, you stop serving the people.”
There have been no problems between the protestors and the police as of Friday according to one of the 10 Houston police officers monitoring Friday’s occupation. One officer went so far as to raise his arms in solidarity, which was loudly cheered by the protestors, as they marched to the JPMorgan Chase Tower.
Despite the recent bouts of rain, Occupy Houston is still active and holding general assemblies in which anyone is free to be heard.
Though numbers are down from the initial protest on Thursday, there are no plans to end the protest until demands are met.
'Occupy Cleveland' growing in size and numbers
CLEVELAND - A small town is starting to form on Public Square in Cleveland. The protesters that call themselves, “Occupy Cleveland,” have been in downtown Cleveland since last Thursday protesting everything from corporate greed to the way the United States government is operating.
The protesters have set up on the sidewalk on West Roadway on the outer edge of Public Square. The area is surrounded by homemade signs hanging on a rope tied to trees. Inside the rope and signs, the protesters have set up a few tables with food that has been donated, sleeping bags and blankets and even a laptop with Internet access to push their message to social media.
The whole point, organizers said, of Occupy Cleveland is to make downtown their "home." They said they will not leave until they see some change in America.
They have permits from city officials until October 17, 2011. Then, they will have to re-apply for more permits. So far, they have had very peaceful demonstrations and said they have not seen much resistance from the public or police.
The group said it hopes to get national recognition as more groups gather to demonstrate in other cites around America. The Cleveland group said its goal, as a whole, is to make the change they said America desperately needs for a better future.
