Jason Adams: Occupy Time

Occupy Time
by Jason Adams
Critical Inquiry

“Time and I, against any two” – Baltasar Gracián

[Author’s Note: this piece was composed while Occupy Oakland, Portland, Denver, and other cities were under attack, prior to the eviction of the epicenter, NYC’s Zuccotti Park. The events of the past weekend, it would seem, render the already developing shift from space to time necessary, as well as inevitable.]

Until recently, a casual observer might have thought that Occupy had developed a time management problem, that it was increasingly managed by a static image of space. While it initially began with the declaration that September 17th would be the starting date and that it would continue for an unspecified period, the focus soon shifted to a general strategy of occupying public space. While this produced many victories, a certain ossification also emerged. What should have been one tactic amongst others began to harden into an increasingly homogenous strategy. For many of those involved, maintaining this spatial focus became the sine qua non of the movement, even in the face, for instance, of the changing of the seasons and ongoing police evictions. In nearly every history-altering moment of the past however, from the Paris Commune to the antiglobalization movement, it was the element of time that proved most decisive. There is a reason, for instance, that the clock towers were the first target chosen by the French communards. Occupy is no exception: as the Jesuit thinker Baltasar Gracián held, beyond all other considerations, it is time rather than space that best positions one to win. Indeed, even those events of the past that are currently narrated as failures can always be renarrated as successes, in that they have left behind possible successes that remain to be actualized. The recently viral image of police surrounding the 2012 Olympic Countdown Clock in London is evidence enough that the primacy of time is well understood in some quarters.

Rather than maintaining this spatial strategy at all costs, what is most interesting about Occupy now is that it is increasingly complicating static images of space: it is, in short, occupying time. This has meant a shift to a more fluid, tactical approach, one not only appropriate to the specifics of constantly changing situations deployed from above, but one that more importantly, allows it to bring forth new ones, from below. Indeed, the initial introduction of an open duration for the Occupy events already oriented the subsequent events primarily towards the temporal and the tactical rather than the spatial and strategic. This was truly its greatest strength and is the major reason the spatial strategy did as well as it did. While Ken Knabb and others have linked Occupy to the Situationists’ promotion of factory and university occupations during the French Events of May 1968, what was most central for the latter was once again not space but time. What they called for and what Occupy is increasing calling for was the “creation of situations.” Already this approach has made it impossible for the actions to be declared a failure once and for all, since it was the temporal focus that enabled the creation of hundreds of new “situations” nationwide and worldwide.

For instance, when one occupation was evicted by police, more often than not, several more have simply appeared elsewhere. Or, if laws governing public parks were cited as an excuse, existing occupations simply moved to private rather than public space, such as abandoned buildings or foreclosed homes. As one online commenter put it, while Rome wasn’t built in a day, it wasn’t dismantled in a day either. The tactical innovation the open timeframe enabled also allowed the coordinates of each situation to be produced by the enactors themselves, on their own, distinct terms. Thus, while the originally spatially-oriented events in lower Manhattan gave birth to Occupy Wall Street, it was the temporal structure that enabled the emergence of Occupy the Hood in Queens several weeks later. Had it simply been billed as a conventional one-day protest confined to a single space, the few hundred who initially showed up in the streets near the New York Stock Exchange would not have even registered in the media, let alone countless peoples’ affective attachments, as is now the case.

Perhaps then, if transforming the collective situation remains the primary concern, some consideration of the space/time as well as strategy/tactics relationships is in order. For instance, consider the temporal quality of the moment in which Occupy has emerged. Today, the experience of time has become greatly accelerated, much more so than just one decade ago. Whether or not one has access to the social media sites or smartphones that are increasingly turning the old, spatially-defined continents into new, temporally-defined telecontinents, trillions of dollars in financial transactions still speed around the globe daily. Beyond the rhetoric of the “digital divide”, this continually creates new realities that everyone is faced with. The most recent example is the economic crisis. It was not only attributable to unsustainable, individually-purchased mortgages, but more importantly, to what brought them to market in the first place: the massively increased pace at which global financial transactions occur. This is one reason, perhaps, that the spatial strategy is evolving into a temporal tactics. As Karl Marx argued in the Grundrisse, economics is ultimately a matter of time. The less time required to accumulate money in the first place, he held, the more time available to mobilize other forces to produce more of it. Thus ever-increasing speed is a primary basis for the contemporary mode of production. Today it is not time is money but money is time.

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David Graeber: Occupy Wall Street's anarchist roots -- The 'Occupy' movement is one of several in American history to be based on anarchist principles.

Occupy Wall Street's anarchist roots: The 'Occupy' movement is one of several in American history to be based on anarchist principles.
by David Graeber
Al Jazeera

Almost every time I'm interviewed by a mainstream journalist about Occupy Wall Street I get some variation of the same lecture:

"How are you going to get anywhere if you refuse to create a leadership structure or make a practical list of demands? And what's with all this anarchist nonsense - the consensus, the sparkly fingers? Don't you realise all this radical language is going to alienate people? You're never going to be able to reach regular, mainstream Americans with this sort of thing!"

If one were compiling a scrapbook of worst advice ever given, this sort of thing might well merit an honourable place. After all, since the financial crash of 2007, there have been dozens of attempts to kick-off a national movement against the depredations of the United States' financial elites taking the approach such journalists recommended. All failed. It was only on August 2, when a small group of anarchists and other anti-authoritarians showed up at a meeting called by one such group and effectively wooed everyone away from the planned march and rally to create a genuine democratic assembly, on basically anarchist principles, that the stage was set for a movement that Americans from Portland to Tuscaloosa were willing to embrace.

I should be clear here what I mean by "anarchist principles". The easiest way to explain anarchism is to say that it is a political movement that aims to bring about a genuinely free society - that is, one where humans only enter those kinds of relations with one another that would not have to be enforced by the constant threat of violence. History has shown that vast inequalities of wealth, institutions like slavery, debt peonage or wage labour, can only exist if backed up by armies, prisons, and police. Anarchists wish to see human relations that would not have to be backed up by armies, prisons and police. Anarchism envisions a society based on equality and solidarity, which could exist solely on the free consent of participants.

Anarchism versus Marxism

Traditional Marxism, of course, aspired to the same ultimate goal but there was a key difference. Most Marxists insisted that it was necessary first to seize state power, and all the mechanisms of bureaucratic violence that come with it, and use them to transform society - to the point where, they argued such mechanisms would, ultimately, become redundant and fade away. Even back in the 19th century, anarchists argued that this was a pipe dream. One cannot, they argued, create peace by training for war, equality by creating top-down chains of command, or, for that matter, human happiness by becoming grim joyless revolutionaries who sacrifice all personal self-realisation or self-fulfillment to the cause.

It's not just that the ends do not justify the means (though they don't), you will never achieve the ends at all unless the means are themselves a model for the world you wish to create. Hence the famous anarchist call to begin "building the new society in the shell of the old" with egalitarian experiments ranging from free schools to radical labour unions to rural communes.

Anarchism was also a revolutionary ideology, and its emphasis on individual conscience and individual initiative meant that during the first heyday of revolutionary anarchism between roughly 1875 and 1914, many took the fight directly to heads of state and capitalists, with bombings and assassinations. Hence the popular image of the anarchist bomb-thrower. It's worthy of note that anarchists were perhaps the first political movement to realise that terrorism, even if not directed at innocents, doesn't work. For nearly a century now, in fact, anarchism has been one of the very few political philosophies whose exponents never blow anyone up (indeed, the 20th-century political leader who drew most from the anarchist tradition was Mohandas K Gandhi.)

Yet for the period of roughly 1914 to 1989, a period during which the world was continually either fighting or preparing for world wars, anarchism went into something of an eclipse for precisely that reason: To seem "realistic", in such violent times, a political movement had to be capable of organising armies, navies and ballistic missile systems, and that was one thing at which Marxists could often excel. But everyone recognised that anarchists - rather to their credit - would never be able to pull it off. It was only after 1989, when the age of great war mobilisations seemed to have ended, that a global revolutionary movement based on anarchist principles - the global justice movement - promptly reappeared.

How, then, did OWS embody anarchist principles? It might be helpful to go over this point by point:

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Introducing Occupy Educated

Common Sense with Dan Carlin: Shows 207 - 212 -- Reflecting on a Time of Civil Unrest

[Dan Carlin is one of my favorite independent, conservative thinkers and I appreciate his insights -- in these series of episodes he reflects on current events, including the Occupy Movement]

Show 207 - Stirring The Pot

Bringing people together is on Dan's mind today as he looks at Truth, protests, Pan-National anger and the theoretical idea of a Goldman-Sachs-like entity outing itself as the global overlord.

Notes:
1. “Tony Bennett Changes His Tune on 9/11 Remarks” by Brian Canova for ABC News (The Note), September 21, 2011.

2. “Trader Alessio Rastani To BBC: 'Governments Don't Rule The World, Goldman Sachs Rules The World' ”

3. “As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe” by Nicholas Kulish for The New York Times, September 27, 2011.

Show 208 - The Fruits of Disillusionment

Dan unveils a new streamlined show format while tackling an issue he dealt with in the last episode...the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Notes:
1. “The Tea Party loses another round” by Dana Milbank for The Washington Post, October 15, 2011.

Show 209 - A Show in Pieces

What happens when Dan meanders too far down an intellectual tangent to find his way back to the point? You get "A show in pieces"

Show 210 - Second Guessing the Navigator

Who is setting the national agenda and how do we feel about their choices? Dan discusses everything from the conflict between liberty and democracy to the ability of governments to solve social problems.

Notes:
1. “The Wrong Inequality” by David Brooks for The New York Times, October 31, 2011.

Show 211 - Tyranny of the Unwise

Is it possible that a political system based on voting and elections has less of a chance of producing wise leadership than a monarchy or dictatorship? Dan tries to look at this heretical idea with an open mind.

Notes:
1. “China mocks U.S. political model” by Patrice Hill for The Washington Times, November 9, 2011.

Show 212 - The Very Velvet Fist

What if pepper spray or other modern crowd control tools had been available during the Civil Rights era? Dan looks at the challenges the protest tactic of civil disobedience faces in a 21st Century world.

Chris Moody: How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street

How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street
by Chris Moody
Yahoo News

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street?

"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share."

Yahoo News sat in on the session, and counted 10 do's and don'ts from Luntz covering how Republicans should fight back by changing the way they discuss the movement.

1. Don't say 'capitalism.'

"I'm trying to get that word removed and we're replacing it with either 'economic freedom' or 'free market,' " Luntz said. "The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we're seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we've got a problem."

2. Don't say that the government 'taxes the rich.' Instead, tell them that the government 'takes from the rich.'

"If you talk about raising taxes on the rich," the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But "if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no. Taxing, the public will say yes."

3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the 'middle class.' Call them 'hardworking taxpayers.'


"They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the 'middle class' and the public will say, I'm not sure about that. But defending 'hardworking taxpayers' and Republicans have the advantage."

4. Don't talk about 'jobs.' Talk about 'careers.'

"Everyone in this room talks about 'jobs,'" Luntz said. "Watch this."

He then asked everyone to raise their hand if they want a "job." Few hands went up. Then he asked who wants a "career." Almost every hand was raised.

"So why are we talking about jobs?"

5. Don't say 'government spending.' Call it 'waste.'

"It's not about 'government spending.' It's about 'waste.' That's what makes people angry."

To Read the Rest of the List of Republican Newspeak

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

For the Wednesday night occupiers who are watching the Hollywood version -- here is the on the streets documentary of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle filmed by over a 100 independent media activists!

Rebecca Solnit: You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring

You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring
By Rebecca Solnit
ZNET

Last Tuesday, I awoke in lower Manhattan to the whirring of helicopters overhead, a war-zone sound that persisted all day and then started up again that Thursday morning, the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and a big day of demonstrations in New York City. It was one of the dozens of ways you could tell that the authorities take Occupy Wall Street seriously, even if they profoundly mistake what kind of danger it poses. If you ever doubted whether you were powerful or you mattered, just look at the reaction to people like you (or your children) camped out in parks from Oakland to Portland, Tucson to Manhattan.

Of course, “camped out” doesn’t quite catch the spirit of the moment, because those campsites are the way people have come together to bear witness to their hopes and fears, to begin to gather their power and discuss what is possible in our disturbingly unhinged world, to make clear how wrong our economic system is, how corrupt the powers that support it are, and to begin the search for a better way. Consider it an irony that the campsites are partly for sleeping, but symbols of the way we have awoken.

When civil society sleeps, we’re just a bunch of individuals absorbed in our private lives. When we awaken, on campgrounds or elsewhere, when we come together in public and find our power, the authorities are terrified. They often reveal their ugly side, their penchant for violence and for hypocrisy.

Consider the liberal mayor of Oakland, who speaks with outrage of people camping without a permit but has nothing to say about the police she dispatched to tear-gas a woman in a wheelchair, shoot a young Iraq war veteran in the head, and assault people while they slept. Consider the billionaire mayor of New York who dispatched the NYPD on a similar middle-of-the-night raid on November 15th. Recall this item included in a bald list of events that night: “tear-gassing the kitchen tent.” Ask yourself when did kitchens really need to be attacked with chemical weapons?

Does an 84-year-old woman need to be tear-gassed in Seattle? Does a three-tours-of-duty veteran need to be beaten until his spleen ruptures in Oakland? Does our former poet laureate need to be bashed in the ribs after his poet wife is thrown to the ground at UC Berkeley? Admittedly, this is a system that regards people as disposable, but not usually so literally.

Two months ago, the latest protests against that system began. The response only confirms our vision of how it all works. They are fighting fire with gasoline. Perhaps being frightened makes them foolish. After all, once civil society rouses itself from slumber, it can be all but unstoppable. (If they were smart they’d try to soothe it back to sleep.) “Arrest one of us; two more appear. You can’t arrest an idea!” said the sign held by a man in a Guy Fawkes mask in reoccupied Zuccotti Park last Thursday.

Last Wednesday in San Francisco, 100 activists occupied the Bank of America, even erecting a symbolic tent inside it in which a dozen activists immediately took refuge. At the Berkeley campus of the University of California, setting up tents on any grounds was forbidden, so the brilliant young occupiers used clusters of helium balloons to float tents overhead, a smart image of defiance and sky-high ambition. And the valiant UC Davis students, after several of them were pepper-sprayed in the face while sitting peacefully on the ground, evicted the police, chanting, “You can go! You can go!” They went.

Occupy Oakland has been busted up three times and still it thrives. To say nothing of the other 1,600 occupations in the growing movement.
Alexander Dubcek, the government official turned hero of the Prague Spring uprising of 1968, once said, “You can crush the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring.”

The busting of Zuccotti Park and the effervescent, ingenious demonstrations elsewhere are a reminder that, despite the literal “occupations” on which this protean movement has been built, it can soar as high as those Berkeley balloons and take many unexpected forms. Another OWS sign, “The beginning is near,” caught the mood of the moment. Flowers seem like the right image for this uprising led by the young, those who have been most crushed by the new economic order, and who bloom by rebelling and rebel by blooming.

The Best and the Worst

Now world-famous Zuccotti Park is just a small concrete and brown marble-paved scrap of land surrounded by tall buildings. Despite the “Occupy Wall Street” label, it’s actually two blocks north of that iconic place. It’s rarely noted that the park is within sight of, and kitty-corner to, Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center towers crumbled.

What was born and what died that day a decade ago has everything to do with what’s going on in and around the park, the country, and the world now. For this, al-Qaeda is remarkably irrelevant, except as the outfit that long ago triggered an incident that instantly released both the best and the worst in our society.

The best was civil society. As I wandered in the Zuccotti Park area last week, I was struck again by how much what really happened on the morning of September 11th has been willfully misremembered. It can be found nowhere in the plaques and monuments. Firemen more than deserve their commemorations, but mostly they acted in vain, on bad orders from above, and with fatally flawed communications equipment. The fact is: the people in the towers and the neighborhood -- think of them as civil society coming together in crisis -- largely rescued themselves, and some of them told the firefighters to head down, not up.

We need memorials to the coworkers who carried their paraplegic accountant colleague down 69 flights of stairs while in peril themselves; to Ada Rosario-Dolch, the principal who got all of the High School for Leadership, a block away, safely evacuated, while knowing her sister had probably been killed in one of those towers; to the female executives who walked the blind newspaper seller to safety in Greenwich Village; to the unarmed passengers of United Flight 93, who were the only ones to combat terrorism effectively that day; and to countless, nameless others. We need monuments to ourselves, to civil society.

Ordinary people shone that morning. They were not terrorized; they were galvanized into action, and they were heroic. And it didn’t stop with that morning either. That day, that week they began to talk about what the events of 9/11 actually meant for them, and they acted to put their world back together, practically and philosophically. All of which terrified the Bush administration, which soon launched not only its “global war on terror” and its invasion of Afghanistan, but a campaign against civil society. It was aimed at convincing each of us that we should stay home, go shopping, fear everything except the government, and spy on each other.

The only monument civil society ever gets is itself, and the satisfaction of continuing to do the work that matters, the work that has no bosses and no paychecks, the work of connecting, caring, understanding, exploring, and transforming. So much about Occupy Wall Street resonates with what came in that brief moment a decade before and then was shut down for years.

That little park that became “occupied” territory brought to mind the way New York’s Union Square became a great public forum in the weeks after 9/11, where everyone could gather to mourn, connect, discuss, debate, bear witness, share food, donate or raise money, write on banners, and simply live in public. (Until the city shut that beautiful forum down in the name of sanitation -- that sacred cow which by now must be mating with the Wall Street Bull somewhere in the vicinity of Zuccotti Park.)

It was remarkable how many New Yorkers lived in public in those weeks after 9/11. Numerous people have since told me nostalgically of how the normal boundaries came down, how everyone made eye contact, how almost anyone could talk to almost anyone else. Zuccotti Park and the other Occupies I’ve visited -- Oakland, San Francisco, Tucson, New Orleans -- have been like that, too. You can talk to strangers. In fact, it’s almost impossible not to, so much do people want to talk, to tell their stories, to hear yours, to discuss our mutual plight and what solutions to it might look like.

It’s as though the great New York-centric moment of openness after 9/11, when we were ready to reexamine our basic assumptions and look each other in the eye, has returned, and this time it’s not confined to New York City, and we’re not ready to let anyone shut it down with rubbish about patriotism and peril, safety and sanitation.

It’s as if the best of the spirit of the Obama presidential campaign of 2008 was back -- without the foolish belief that one man could do it all for civil society. In other words, this is a revolt, among other things, against the confinement of decision-making to a thoroughly corrupted and corporate-money-laced electoral sphere and against the pitfalls of leaders. And it represents the return in a new form of the best of the post-9/11 moment.

As for the worst after 9/11 -- you already know the worst. You’ve lived it. The worst was two treasury-draining wars that helped cave in the American dream, a loss of civil liberties, privacy, and governmental accountability. The worst was the rise of a national security state to almost unimaginable proportions, a rogue state that is our own government, and that doesn’t hesitate to violate with impunity the Geneva Convention, the Bill of Rights, and anything else it cares to trash in the name of American "safety" and "security." The worst was blind fealty to an administration that finished off making this into a country that serves the 1% at the expense, or even the survival, of significant parts of the 99%. More recently, it has returned as another kind of worst: police brutality (speaking of blind fealty to the 1%).

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William Scott: The People's Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On

The People's Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On
by William Scott
The Nation

The People’s Library at Zuccotti Park—a collection of more than 5,000 donated books of every genre and subject, all free for the taking—was created not only to serve the Occupy Wall Street protesters; it was meant to provide knowledge and reading pleasure for the wider public as well, including residents of Lower Manhattan. It was also a library to the world at large, since many visitors to the park stopped by the library to browse our collection, to donate books of their own and to take books for themselves.

At about 2:30 am on November 15, the People’s Library was destroyed by the NYPD, acting on the authority of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. With no advance notice, an army of police in riot gear raided the park, seized everything in it and threw it all into garbage trucks and dumpsters. Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s Twitter promise that the library was safely stored and could be retrieved, only about 1,100 books were recovered, and some of those are in unreadable condition. Four library laptops were also destroyed, as well as all the bookshelves, storage bins, stamps and cataloging supplies and the large tent that housed the library.

For the past six weeks I have been living and working as a librarian in the People’s Library, camping out on the ground next to it. I’m an English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and I’ve chosen to spend my sabbatical at Occupy Wall Street to participate in the movement and to build and maintain the collection of books at the People’s Library. I love books—reading them, writing in them, arranging them, holding them, even smelling them. I also love having access to books for free. I love libraries and everything they represent. To see an entire collection of donated books, including many titles I would have liked to read, thoughtlessly ransacked and destroyed by the forces of law and order was one of the most disturbing experiences of my life. My students in Pittsburgh struggle to afford to buy the books they need for their courses. Our extensive collection of scholarly books and journals alone would have sufficed to provide reading materials for dozens of college classrooms. With public libraries around the country fighting to survive in the face of budget cuts, layoffs and closings, the People’s Library has served as a model of what a public library can be: operated for the people and by the people.

During the raid, Stephen Boyer, a poet, friend and OWS librarian, read poems from the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology (see peopleslibrary.wordpress.com [1]) aloud directly into the faces of riot police. As they pushed us away from the park with shields, fists, billy clubs and tear gas, I stood next to Stephen and watched while he yelled poetry at the top of his lungs into the oncoming army of riot police. Then, something incredible happened. Several of the police leaned in closer to hear the poetry. They lifted their helmet shields slightly to catch the words Stephen was shouting out to them, even while their fellow cops continued to stampede us. The next day, an officer who was guarding the entrance to Zuccotti Park told Stephen how touched he was by the poetry, how moved he was to see that we cared enough about words and books that we would risk violent treatment and arrest just to defend our love of books and the wisdom they contain.

At 6 pm on November 15, a group of writers and supporters of the People’s Library appeared at the reopened park carrying books, and within minutes we received around 200 donations. All night and into the next day folks stopped by to donate to and take from the collection. Because the new rules of the park forbid us from lying down or leaving anything there, Stephen and I stayed up all night to protect the books until other librarians came to take over for us. Frustrated and exhausted, but still exhilarated and eager to maintain the momentum of the movement, we kept the People’s Library open all day in the pouring rain, storing books in Ziploc baggies to keep them dry.

Then at 7:30 pm on November 16, the People’s Library was again raided and thrown in the trash—this time by a combination of police and Brookfield Properties’ sanitation team. The NYPD first barricaded the library by lining up in front of it, forming an impenetrable wall of cops. An officer then announced through a bullhorn that we should come and collect our books, or they would be confiscated and removed. Seconds later, they began dumping books into trash bins that they had wheeled into the park for that purpose. As they were throwing out the books, a fellow OWS librarian asked one of the NYPD patrolmen why they were doing this. His answer: “I don’t know.”

Five minutes after it started, the raid was over and the People’s Library’s collection was once again sitting in a pile of garbage. Yet just as the trash bins were being carted off, a man stepped out of the crowd with a book in his hand to donate to us: Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. We joyously accepted and cataloged it, placing it on display under a new sign for the library that we made right then on a blank sheet of paper. A true people’s library, after all, doesn’t depend on any particular number of books, since it’s ultimately about the way those books are collected and lent out to the public.

We’re still accepting donations and lending books just as we always have, but we’ve reorganized ourselves somewhat. We now have three mobile units staffed by OWS librarians, which we can take anywhere we want. For the November 17 Day of Action, we made sure the People’s Library was there to supply books to anyone who wanted them. All day long, OWS librarians walked among the crowds shouting, “The People’s Library 3.0, mobile and in the streets!” For me, it was easily the most rewarding day in the six weeks I’ve been with the movement. The people we met at our mobile units—Occupiers from New York and other states, friends of the People’s Library, tourists—went out of their way to express their joy that we were still here. They also struggled to articulate their feelings of loss, frustration, anger, disgust and outrage over the seizure and destruction of the library. All we could say in response was, “We’re here to stay! Please take a book! They belong to you!” A group of eight OWS librarians even started a new chant: “Whose books? Your books!” It quickly caught fire with the other marchers.

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Standoff Between Police and Occupy Los Angeles

(via Matt Christie)

Intense standoff in LA, watching live right now despite near total media blackout: "Yesterday we reported about the planned eviction of Occupy Los Angeles. Occupiers have refused to leave and the police are currently enclosing. Thousands have arrived to defend Solidarity Park, forming human chains. Watch it live at: Occupy Wall St

Best of the Left: Compilations of Reports on the Occupy Movement, Pts. 1-7 (September - November)

[A great collection of reports on the Occupy Movement -- thanks Jay Tomlinson! Check back at Best of the Left for future reports and for compilations on other subjects/themes]

#538 The 99 Percent Wakes Up (Occupy Wall St Part 1)
Act 1: Congrats to Wall St. Protesters – The Progressive Air Date: 9-27-11 Song 1: Hi – The Only Thing I Ever Wanted
Act 2: Irony of Police Attacks on Protestors – Jimmy Dore Air Date: 9-27-11
Song 2: Pumped Up Kicks – Torches
Act 3: World Economy Going to Hell – Dan Carlin Air Date: 9-28-11
Song 3: Eleanor Rigby (Strings Only) – Anthology 2
Act 4: Fox News Gives Wall Street Protesters the “Fair & Balanced” Treatment – Media Matters Air Date: 10-3-11
Act 5: Keith Olbermann reads first collective statement of Occupy Wall Street – Countdown
Song 5: The Times They Are A-Changin’ – The Essential Bob Dylan
Act 6: Protesting is a Priviledge? – Majority Report Air Date: 9-28-11
Song 6: Turtle (Bonobo Mix) – One Offs… Remixes & B Sides
Act 7: Fox Host says Tea Party was Organic, Occupy Wall Street is Not – Media Matters Air Date: 10-5-11
Act 8: Michael Moore says We oppose the way our economy is structured – Countdown

#539 We are the other 99 percent (Occupy Wall St Part 2)
Act 1: Police Are On The Wrong Side At The Occupy Wall Street Protests – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-25-11
Song 1: All These Things That I’ve Done – Hot Fuss
Act 2: Romney Would Complain About Class Warfare – The Progressive Air Date: 10-5-11
Song 2: Revolution – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 3: The Screaming Majority song on Occupy Wall St – Majority Report Air Date: 10-7-11
Song 3: Up nights – Amsterband
Act 4: The TRUTH About The Occupy Wall Street Protests – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-27-11
Song 4: Free to Decide – Stars – The Best of 1992-2002
Act 5: Panic of the plutocrats – Green News Report Air Date: 10-11-11
Song 5: Take ‘Em Down – Going Out In Style
Act 6: CNNs Erin Burnett informs viewers about protesters – Counterspin Air Date: 10-06-11
Song 6: I’m a Worried Man – Countryman
Act 7: Erin Burnett’s horrible Occupy Wall St report – Majority Report Air Date: 10-7-11
Song 7: We’re Simple Minds – Spring Came, Rain Fell
Act 8: Occupy DC Event Infiltrated By Conservative from American Spectator –Young Turks Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 8: Solidarity Forever – If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle
Act 9: Purge the agitators at Occupy Wall St – David Feldman Show Air Date: 10-9-11
Song 9: The World Has Turned and Left Me Here – Weezer
Act 10: How staying peaceful means we will win – Citizen Radio Air Date: 10-11-11

#541 Unite like an Egyptian (Occupy Wall St Part 3)
Act 1: A Detailed Plan On How To Decrease Corporate Power – Lee Camp Air Date: 9-21-11
Song 1: What we’ve got (Live) – Emilyn Brodsky & Anthony da Costa
Act 2: News Coverage Numbers of the Occupy Protests vs Tea Party protests – On the Media
Song 2: Fake Plastic Trees – The Best of Radiohead
Act 3: Bill O’Reilly Rips Occupy Wall Street Protesters – Young Turks
Song 3: You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Glee Cast Version) – Glee: The Music, Vol. 2
Act 4: What the Occupy Wall St movement wants Part 1 – Planet Money
Song 4: Union strike song – Lisa Simpson
Act 5: What the Occupy Wall St movement wants Part 2 – Planet Money
Song 5: Rinse Me Down – Flaws
Act 6: President’s Approval Rating Soars After Punching Wall Street Banker in Face – The Onion
Song 6: Fighting Song (feat. Tom Morello) – Eyes On Fire – EP
Act 7: Chris Hedges speech at Occupy DC – Chris Hedges
Song 7: You’re The Best (Theme From The Karate Kid) [Originally Performed by Joe Esposito] – You’re The Best
Act 8: Are We The Modern Day Pompeii – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-02-11
Song 8: Golden Slumbers – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 9: Then Meets Now – Mark Fiore Air Date 10-19-11

#542 Greed is no longer good (Occupy Wall St Part 4)
Act 1: Occupy Wall Street Is A Thought Revolution – And It Won’t Be Minimized – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 1: Bathroom Girl – Virgin Suicides (Original Motion Picture Score)
Act 2: The Occupation – Mumia Abu-Jamal Air Date: 10-10-11
Song 2: Late Afternoon (Live) – Theo Bard
Act 3: False reporting about Soros connection to Occupy Wall St – Counterspin
Song 3: Run Screaming (Live) – Stockdale and Shapiro
Act 4: Round-table discussion of Occupy Wall St. – Jimmy Dore Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 4: The Walls Are Coming Down – Reservoir
Act 5: Tom Hayden offers extraordinary insight into evolution of Occupy Wall Street movement – Countdown Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 5: Cat Faces – Sharpen Your Teeth
Act 6: The Numbers Behind Occupy Wall Street – Lee Camp Air Date 10-20-11
Song 6: Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand
Act 7: This Is the Movement We’ve Been Waiting For – The Progressive Air Date: 10-14-11
Song 7: I Shall Not Be Moved – The Gospel Album
Act 8: Round up of Sunday morning news on Occupy Wall St – Counterspin Air Date: 10-13-11
Song 8: Serre-moi – Tryö
Act 9: Obama, Occupy Wall Street, 2012 Campaign – Young Turks Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 9: Never Again – Fourth Circle
Act 10: Knee jerks defend Wall Street – Jim Hightower Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 10: United We Stand – Sing the 70′s
Act 11: Tonight at Liberty Plaza ‘The American People Agree with Us’ – Michael Moore Air Date: 10-20-11
Song 11: Stand by me – Playing For Change
Act 12: Wall Street Is Dirtier Than Occupy Wall Street – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-17-11
Song 12: Clean Up – Clean Up EP
Act 13: OWS-Hating CBC Anchor Destroyed By Chris Hedges – Young Turks Air Date 10-17-11

#546 The whole world is, in fact, watching and taking part (Occupy Wall St Part 5)
Act 1: Thanks for Nothin’ – Mark Fiore Air Date 10-27-11
Song 1: I’m Looking Through You – I Am Sam (Music from and Inspired By the Motion Picture)
Act 2: Erroneous reporting on the Occupation – Counterspin Air Date: 10-27-11
Song 2: Down the Line – Down the Line – Single
Act 3: Prophetic article calling for the occupation Part 1 – Majority Report 10-25-11
Song 3: Generation – Emerson Hart
Act 4: Why Don’t The Occupy Protesters Stop Whining, Just Work Hard – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-28-11
Song 4: Have you had enough? – Rickie Lee Jones & The Squirrel Nut Zippers
Act 5: Prophetic article calling for the occupation Part 2 – Majority Report 10-25-11
Song 5: I Can Help – The Best of Billy Swan
Act 6: Comparing the Occupation to the Bonus Army encampment – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 10-26-11
Song 6: Down the Drain – Torrent, Vol. 1 & 2: Will Dailey
Act 7: Protest update and thoughts on tear gas – The Bugle Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 7: Touch of Grey – The Very Best of Grateful Dead
Act 8: Poll Americans Distrust Government – Young Turks Air Date: 10-26-11
Song 8: I didn’t fuck it up – Katie Goodman
Act 9: Missing Howard Zinn, Oracle of OWS – The Progressive Air Date: 10-31-11
Song 9: Back to Life – Keep On Movin’
Act 10: Shockupy Wall Street Fad – Colbert Report Air Date: 10-27-11
Song 10: Ave Maria (Pavarotti / O’Riordan) – To the Faithful Departed (The Complete Sessions 1996-1997)
Act 11: The world is, in fact, watching the Oakland Occupation – Matthew Filipowicz Air Date: 10-27-11

#547 Then they fight you (Occupy Wall St Part 6)
Act 1: The Top 1 percent Vs YOU – Young Turks Air Date 10-31-11
Song 1: Give a Damn – Greatest Hits
Act 2: Occupy Wall Street Says “Stop, Thief!” – The Progressive Air Date: 10-28-11
Song 2: Stop Thief – Fabian’s 16 Fabulous Hits
Act 3: What’s in a name at Occupy Wall St? – Jim Hightower Air Date: 10-31-11
Song 3: Liberty Square – Liberty Square
Act 4: NYPD Reportedly Sending Drunks Criminals to Occupy Wall Street – Majority Report Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 4: Out of My Mind – Back to Bedlam
Act 5: The general strike in Oakland – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 5: If it weren’t for the union – Robin Roberts
Act 6: Occupy Wall Street and Amend the Constitution to Overturn Citizens United – The Progressive Air Date: 11-2-11
Song 6: Ride of the Valkyries – Classical For The New Age
Act 7: The dignity of the Occupation and the coverage of it – Matthew Filipowicz Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 7: Dignified and Old – The Modern Lovers
Act 8: Occupation teach-ins on environmental issues – Green News Report Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 8: Return to Sender – The Essential Elvis Presley (Remastered)
Act 9: Giant Protest Puppet Kills Dozens Of Peace Drummers – The Onion
Song 9: Night of the Dancing Flame – Ruby Blue
Act 10: Who Are The 1 Percent? – Young Turks Air Date: 11-9-11
Song 10: What Are Their Names – If I Could Only Remember My Name
Act 11: Economics inequality and journalism ethics called into question – Counterspin Air Date: 11-4-11
Song 11: The Sound of Silence – Sounds of Silence
Act 12: What Do They Want? – Mumia Abu-Jamal Air Date: 11-6-11
Song 12: Too Much Information – The Singles Box 1986-1995
Act 13: Occupy Oakland Protester Shot With Rubber Bullet – Young Turks Air Date: 11-9-11
Song 13: Still Fighting It – Rockin’ the Suburbs
Act 14: Adam Gabbatt on second U.S. veteran injured by Oakland police – Countdown Air Date: 11-8-11
Song 14: Sorrow – The Process of Belief
Act 15: Occupy Wall Street Has Proven We Don’t Have Free Speech – Lee Camp Air Date: 10-31-11

#551 The police are the 99 percent too (Occupy Wall St Part 7)
Act 1: Police Let Vehicular Assault Slide at Occupy Oakland General Strike –Majority Report Air Date: 11-4-11
Song 1: Go Your Own Way (Box Set Bonus Track) – The Treasure Box for Boys and Girls
Act 2: Who are the one percent – Robert Greenwald – Thom Hartmann Air Date: 11-3-11
Song 2: We are the many – Makana
Act 3: Don’t just salute veterans, rally with them – Jim Hightower Air Date: 11-14-11
Song 3: Veterans – The Clips
Act 4: Kim Kardashian, Occupy Wall Street, Credit Default Swaps – Lee Camp Air Date 11-14-11
Song 4: Clowns (Can You See Me Now?) – 200 KM/H in the Wrong Lane
Act 5: Police Need to Back Off on Occupy Wall Street – The Progressive Air Date: 11-14-11
Song 5: Stop the Madness – Versatile Roots
Act 6: Protesting at Berkley, past and present – Rachel Maddow Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 6: This fickle world – Theo Bard
Act 7: Shooting and clubbing veterans is not a solution – Jim Hightower Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 7: Shake It Out – Ceremonials (Deluxe Version)
Act 8: Workers Protest Over-Ventilation Of U.S. Factories – The Onion
Song 8: Seasons In the Sun – Have a Ball
Act 9: Occupy Wall Street Brings on a “Which Side Are You On” Moment – The Progressive Air Date: 11-15-11
Song 9: All You Fascists – Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II
Act 10: Keith’s Special Comment: Why OWS needs Michael Bloomberg – Countdown Air Date: 11-16-11
Song 10: So I Need You – The Better Life
Act 11: Occupy Wall St protest has been hosed – The Bugle Air Date: 11-17-11
Song 11: A Change Is Gonna Come – Learning to Bend
Act 12: Occupy Wall Street Media Blackout, Police State – Young Turks Air Date: 11-15-11

Consensus Decision Making (Direct Democracy @ Occupy Wall Street)

Glenn Greenwald: OWS-inspired activism

OWS-inspired activism
by Glenn Greenwald
Salon

It was only a matter of time before a coordinated police crackdown was imposed to end the Occupy encampments. Law enforcement officials and policy-makers in America know full well that serious protests — and more — are inevitable given the economic tumult and suffering the U.S. has seen over the last three years (and will continue to see for the foreseeable future). A country cannot radically reduce quality-of-life expectations, devote itself to the interests of its super-rich, and all but eliminate its middle class without triggering sustained citizen fury.

The reason the U.S. has para-militarized its police forces is precisely to control this type of domestic unrest, and it’s simply impossible to imagine its not being deployed in full against a growing protest movement aimed at grossly and corruptly unequal resource distribution. As Madeleine Albright said when arguing for U.S. military intervention in the Balkans: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” That’s obviously how governors, big-city Mayors and Police Chiefs feel about the stockpiles of assault rifles, SWAT gear, hi-tech helicopters, and the coming-soon drone technology lavished on them in the wake of the post/9-11 Security State explosion, to say nothing of the enormous federal law enforcement apparatus that, more than anything else, resembles a standing army which is increasingly directed inward.

Most of this militarization has been justified by invoking Scary Foreign Threats — primarily the Terrorist — but its prime purpose is domestic. As civil libertarians endlessly point out, the primary reason to oppose new expansions of government power is because it always — always — vastly expands beyond its original realm. I remember quite vividly the war-zone-like police force deployed against protesters at the 2008 GOP Convention in Minneapolis, as well as the invocation of Terrorism statutes to arrest and punish them, with the active involvement of federal law enforcement. Along those lines, Alternet‘s Lynn Parramore asks all the key questions about the obviously coordinated law enforcement assault on peaceful protesters over the last week.

But the same factors that rendered this police crackdown inevitable will also ensure that this protest movement endures: the roots of the anger are real, profound and impassioned. Just as American bombs ostensibly aimed at reducing Terrorism have the exact opposite effect — by fueling the anti-American sentiments that cause Terrorism in the first place — so, too, will excessive police force further fuel the Occupy movement. Nothing highlights the validity of the movement’s core grievances more than watching a piggish billionaire Wall Street Mayor — who bought and clung to his political power using his personal fortune — deploy force against marginalized citizens peacefully and lawfully protesting joblessness, foreclosures and economic suffering. If Michael Bloomberg didn’t exist, the Occupy protesters would have to invent him.

* * * * *

After visiting numerous Occupy sites over the past few weeks, I’ve repeatedly said that the protests are among the most exciting, inspiring and important political developments over the last decade. That’s true for several reasons: its innovative, pioneering tactics, its refusal to be pigeonholed with partisan identity, its resistance to translating itself into establishment media language, its organic form, its appropriate contempt for the nation’s political and legal institutions, its singular ability to force discussions of wealth inequality into the discourse. But I think its most impressive attribute is that it has inspired a level of activism and a sense of possibility like few other things have. It’s worth highlighting a few representative examples.

Ever since the Occupy movement began, the blog FireDogLake, with very little attention or self-promotion, has overwhelmingly devoted itself not only to covering the protests but also to creating an amazing new template to help sustain it. Exclusively relying on reader donations, FDL has sent one of its youngest and most relentless activists, Kevin Gosztola, around the country for the last two months, visiting over 20 different encampments from every region in the nation. Gosztola has been able to provide first-hand, on-the-scene reporting from all of these sites, but more important, has built a network of representatives and liasons to enable coordination and communication among site organizers.

Over the past month, FDL — with the construction of this network — has done something truly amazing. In addition to police crackdowns, it has long been assumed that the greatest challenge to sustaining the Occupy movement would be the approaching harsh winter in Northern cities. The assumption — not unreasonable — was that few people would be willing to occupy outdoor spaces in zero-degree weather or below. FDL, with its “Occupy Supply” project, is all but ensuring the elimination of this problem.

Again using nothing more than reader donations, FDL designed and then purchased a full line of winter clothing for free distribution to the various Occupy sites around the nation: hats, sweaters, scarves, gloves, socks, blankets, jackets, thermal underwear, face masks, and more. Every penny FDL raises — 100% — goes exclusively toward the manufacture and free distribution of these products to Occupy protesters. They have thus far raised close to $90,000, and spent roughly $85,000 of it on the purchase of almost 7,000 items. They have also furnished heat generators, tents, and sleeping bags to numerous sites as well.

To Read the Rest and To Access Hyperlinked Resources

Love in Action: Occupy Spoken Word Piece with Drew Dellinger

Eric Hoover: Protesters Plan a National 'Student-Debt Refusal' Campaign

Protesters Plan a National 'Student-Debt Refusal' Campaign
By Eric Hoover
The Chroonicle of Higher Education

Occupy Wall Street protesters are poised to announce a national "student-debt refusal" campaign that would begin next week, says a prominent scholar within the movement.

On Wednesday night, Andrew Ross, a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, said members of an Occupy Wall Street working group were finalizing drafts of three "pledges" related to student debt, including a debtors' pledge, whose signers would refuse to make payments on their loans after one million signatures have been collected.

The other pledges are one for faculty members who support those who refuse to pay, and another for nondebtors, including parents and sympathizers, who also want to show their support.

The pledges, Mr. Ross said, are to be based on four beliefs: that student loans should be interest-free; that tuition at all public institutions should be federally funded; that private and for-profit colleges should open their financial records to the public; and that students' "debt burden" should be written off.

Mr. Ross, an expert in academic-labor issues, is a member of Occupy Wall Street's Education and Empowerment working group. On Wednesday, he described how his personal interest in student-debt issues had developed.

"Like many faculty, I see a lot of suffering and humiliation among students in taking on this debt," Mr. Ross said. "There was the recognition that my own salary is debt-financed. ... There's an element of complicity. It's an incredible burden for faculty to bear."

The campaign is scheduled to begin with an event at Zuccotti Park, in New York, on Monday afternoon, followed by a protest at the City University of New York's Baruch College.

Occupy! Gazette

N + 1 magazine's history of the second month of the Occupy Movement:

Occupy! Gazette #2

Nathan Brown: Five Theses on Privatization and the University of California Struggle

Five Theses on Privatization and the UC Struggle
Reclaim UC

The following speech by Nathan Brown was delivered at the UC system-wide strike rally held at UC Davis on November 15:

Hello Everyone!

It’s beautiful to see so many of you here today. On four day’s notice, this is an incredible turnout. Let’s remember how much we can do in so little time.

I’m an English professor, and as some of you know, English professors spend a lot of our time talking about how to construct a “thesis” and how to defend it through argument. So today I’m going to model this way of thinking and writing by using it to discuss the university struggle. My remarks will consist of five theses, and I will defend these by presenting arguments to support them.

THESES

1. Tuition increases are the problem, not the solution.

2. Police brutality is an administrative tool to enforce tuition increases.

3. What we are struggling against is not the California legislature, but the upper administration of the UC system.

4. The university is the real world.

5. We are winning.

THESIS ONE: Tuition increases are the problem, not the solution.

In 2005 tuition was $6,312. Tuition is currently $13,218. What the Regents were supposed to be considering this week — before their meeting was cancelled due to student protest — was UC President Yudof’s plan to increase tuition by a further 81% over the next four years. On that plan, tuition would be over $23,000 by 2015-2016. If that plan goes forward, in ten years tuition would have risen from around $6,000 to around $23,000.

What happened?

The administration tells us that tuition increases are necessary because of cuts to state funding. According to this argument, cuts to state funding are the problem, and tuition increases are the solution. We have heard this argument from the administration and from others many times.

To argue against this administrative logic, I’m going to rely on the work of my colleague Bob Meister, a professor at UC Santa Cruz and the President of the UC Council of Faculty Associations. Professor Meister has written a series of important open letters to UC students, explaining why tuition increases are in fact the problem, not the solution to the budget crisis. What Meister explains is that the privatization of the university—the increasing reliance on tuition payments (your money) rather than state funding—is not a defensive measure on the part of the UC administration to make up for state cuts. Rather, it is an aggressive strategy of revenue growth: a way for the university to increase its revenue more than it would be able to through state funding.

This is the basic argument: privatization, through increased enrollments and constantly increasing tuition, is first and foremost an administrative strategy to bring in more revenue. It is not just a way to keep the university going during a time of state defunding. What is crucial to this argument is the way that different sources of funding can be used.

State funds are restricted funds. This means that a certain portion of those funds has to be used to fund the instructional budget of the university. The more money there is in the instructional budget, the more money is invested in student instruction, in the quality of your education. But private funds, tuition payments, are unrestricted funds. This means there are no restrictions on whether those funds are spent on student instruction, on administrative pay, or anything else.

What Professor Meister uncovered through his research into the restructuring of UC funding is that student tuition (your money) is being pledged as collateral to guarantee the university’s credit rating. What this allows the university to do is borrow money for lucrative investments, like building contracts or “capital projects” as they are called. These have no relation to the instructional quality of the institution. And the strong credit rating of the university is based on its pledge to continue raising tuition indefinitely.

Restricted state funds cannot be used for such purposes. Their use is restricted in such a way as to guarantee funding for the instructional budget. This restriction is a problem for any university administration whose main priority is not to sustain its instructional budget, but rather to increase its revenues and secure its credit rating for investment projects with private contractors.

So for an administration that wants to increase UC revenues and to invest in capital projects (rather than maintaining the quality of instruction) it is not cuts to public funding that are the problem; it is public funding itself that is the problem, because public funding is restricted.

To Read the Rest of the Speech

Behind the News with Doug Henwood: Recent Reports on the Occupy Movement and Related Issues of Concern

Behind the News with Doug Henwood

November 12, 2011 Yanis Varoufakis on the latest developments in the Eurocrisis • Ramsey Kanaan, co-founder of PM Press, on the theory and practice of anarchism

November 5, 2011 Erica Seifert of Greenberg Quinlan Rossner Research on the public mood: pissed off about Wall Street and inequality • Dorian Warren of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs on Occupy Wall Street as politics and social movement

October 28, 2011 back after three-week fundraising hiatus! sociologist Alex Vitale on cops and protest • journalist Sarah Jaffe on OWS, mostly

September 24, 2011 I visit the Occupy Wall Street demos (my report in words and pictures is here) • Rohit Malpani, Oxfam advisor, on land grabs (see here for report) • Steve Keen, author of Debunking Economics, debunks economics

Pepper sprayed UC Davis student leads peaceful shaming of Chancellor

(Courtesy of Dan Bellini)

Pepper sprayed UC Davis student leads peaceful shaming of Chancellor

‎"A pretty remarkable thing just happened. A press conference, scheduled for *4:00pm* between the UC Davis Chancellor and police with local press on campus, did not end in an hour, as planned. Instead, a mass of Occupy Davis students and sympathizers mobilized outside, demanding to have their voice heard. After some initial confusion, UC Chancellor Linda Katehi refused to leave the building, attempting to give the media the impression that the students were somehow holding her hostage.

A group of highly organized students formed a large gap for the chancellor to leave. They chanted “we are peaceful” and “just walk home,” but nothing changed for several hours. Eventually student representatives convinced the chancellor to leave after telling their fellow students to sit down and lock arms (around 7:00pm).

One of the students pepper sprayed yesterday by chemicals that blew into his mouth (he was standing near the students huddled on the ground), a young man wearing a brown down coat over a tie-dye shirt, said he met with Kotehi and personally showed her a video of the pepper spraying attack. Speaking to about a thousand students with the “human mic,” the young man said he personally asked for her resignation..

A few commenters and people on Twitter have asked why the chancellor is at the center of this firestorm over the police pepper spraying. Chancellor Katehi approved of the police action (though specifics of what she ordered exactly are still a mystery), and ordered the UC Davis cops to evict the protesters, resulting in the heinous pepper spraying video now plastered everywhere on the web. She has not apologized to the students or worked to remedy the situation — for instance, one student who was pepper sprayed told me she still has health problems after the incident, and no one from the administration contacted her to see if she’s okay. Katehi’s refusal to condemn the police action has only made a bad situation worse."

Glenn Greenwald: Elite Media Biased Against Occupy Wall Street

[Constitutional lawyer and Salon journalist]

The Council of Elders Stand in Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street

(via Herb Reid)