NYC Cops Attack OWS Protesters

March 23, 2012

RT

By RT

“The cops are at in again in NYC – attacking protesters. What great public service they are doing.” –KTRN

Police rushed a crowd of OWS protesters near Union Square Park in Manhattan early on Wednesday, shoving and attacking people. Activists report a woman was badly injured after officers grabbed and threw her to the ground.

The officers, some in riot gear, were trying to force out Occupy protesters and homeless from the sidewalk after police had barricaded and closed the public city park, usually open-24-hours a day.

Activists said about 500 people came out near the park late on Tuesday. Protesters went face-to-face with police, chanting “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?”

Police reportedly filmed the activists’ faces, which caused some to tweet about the need for bringing bandanas or masks for those arriving to “reinforce” the protest. From one to four people were arrested, according to various sources.

Officers also blocked subway entrances to prevent any protesters from escaping. There were reports on Twitter that WiFi service was cut from the Union Square area.

Police left the area at about 5 am local time and protesters started to return to the park, saying “goodbye” to police. The park officially reopened shortly after.

The protest comes after a rally the Occupy Wall Street protesters held on Tuesday calling on New York City’s Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to resign. Occupiers claim the officer “authorized brutality and extreme abuse of police power.”

The rally was inspired by Saturday’s re-eviction of Liberty Square in lower Manhattan and mass arrest of at least 73 Occupy protesters. Many activists have described Saturday’s events as one of the most violent police crackdowns since the movement against US government financial policies and what they call “financial greed” began in September.

Click here for the full report.

Revolutionaries: The Best Way To Tear Down The System Is To Build Something New

February 9, 2012

Activist Post

By Eric Blair

“What to change the world?  Build something new.”  –KTRN

Due to gross injustices built into the current system, angry mobs of disenfranchised protesters are pushing most of the world to the edge of global revolution. It’s wonderful to see people find solidarity in opposing the destructive nature of the system.

However, the idea that the public will ever force the entrenched corporate-states around the world to bend to their will because they’re on the streets is very unlikely. Even if the protests become violent riots like in Greece, the controllers will not release their clutches. In fact, history says they’ll only tighten them.

Additionally, those seeking systematic solutions all seem well-intentioned and deserve credit for offering ideas. But the more we understand that the system’s creators and beneficiaries don’t want it to change, the more we realize that even apparent solutions will never take place unless they’re co-opted to fit the needs of the controllers. Therefore, so-called collective solutions forced by the current system of control are not likely to benefit the general public even if it appears that more crumbs are offered to the peasants.

There seems to be an awful lot of energy being spent fighting against the system, which is akin to swimming upstream.

We’re getting nowhere fast and it’s zapping our energy, as it seems intended to do. We mustn’t concern ourselves with what other people are doing. Their behavior is and always will be out of our control. Attempting to control people’s behavior is at the heart of what’s wrong with the current system; therefore, why would we think that imposing our flavor of control would taste any better? It won’t.

What if each of us focused our energy on figuratively building our own rafts to float against the current? What if each raft represented a productive individual solution? And what would happen if each disenfranchised protester stopped demanding something, and, instead, simply started creating the change?

I’m not talking about solutions like drafting a petition or a certain piece of legislation and collecting signatures to influence government. That is the perfect example of swimming upstream. Even if successful, it will just use the guns of government to force your ideas on the public, which will never work no matter how noble your collective solution may seem.

I’m talking about taking a systematic problem that you’re most passionate about, identifying a change you can make in your personal life to limit your contribution to the problem, while also finding a tangible alternative to fully support. Ideally, this tangible alternative would be market-based to allow you to make a living while being the change you wish to see in the world.

Click here for the full report.

NDAA’D Americans Still Think They Have the Right to Free Speech

January 12, 2012

The Resistance Hub

By Rick Gedeon

“The NDAA is one of the scariest pieces of legislation ever passed. This is a clear sign that something needs to be done about the crooks in Washington. The people of the USA have the power to vote them out – yet most just continue to vote for Democrats or Republicans. Why?” –KTRN

Here you can see protesters commit the most heinous crime ever. They spoke out against the latest traitorous piece of legislation ever to be passed, the NDAA. This is merely the beginning of what is to become a much worse police state than what America has already transformed herself into. As expected, the police are acting as the henchmen on behalf of the state without flinching.

For this reason it won’t be long until Obama gets his next OKC. Why? Because Americans want to bomb federal buildings? No the next (as the last) OKC will be pretreated by the same scoundrels that were behind the previous terrorist attacks. Everything from the first WTC bombings (1993), OKC (1995), WTC (2001) etc… was committed by these same federal hyenas who claim to protect us now. For more information regarding government complicity in the OKC attacks I refer the reader to the documentary titled A Noble Lie: Oklahoma City 1995.

It’s not like their machinations are a secret, they’ve been salivating for another crisis.  As Democratic strategist Mark Penn stated on national media that Obama needed a new Oklahoma City style terrorist attack in order to ‘click‘ with the American people.

The Bronwshirts at the department of Fatherland insecurity have come out and made it public that they will begin to retain pretty much any and everything we the people post on the internet.  What is the purpose for such a course of action?  The simple answer is that there is no Free Speech left in the United States, period.  Russia Today recently came out with an article where they elucidate this fact:

Click here for the full report.

Occupy Protester Hands President Obama A Note

November 29, 2011

Yahoo News

By Holly Bailey

“Do you think Obama even read it?  Do you think he even cares?” –KTRN

The Occupy movement trailed President Obama to New Hampshire today, where protestors briefly interrupted his jobs speech at a Manchester high school.

Using the so-called “human microphone” method, protestors shouted Obama down just minutes into his speech, calling attention to the arrest of peaceful protestors at Occupy movements around the country.

They were quickly countered by students, who began chanting, “Obama! Obama!”

But after the speech, a member of the movement got close enough to Obama as the president was shaking hands with members of the audience pass him a note, which was photographed by the Associated Press’ Charles Dharapak:

Mr. President: Over 4000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While bankers continue to destroy the American economy. You must stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.

Click here for the full report and video.

Comfortably Numb

November 28, 2011

Info Wars

By Jim Q

“This article is dead on.  It just seems most Americans are either brain dead or oblivious.  Perhaps they would rather focus on having 2.3 children and living in a house with a white picket fence.”  –KTRN

As I observe the zombie like reactions of Americans to our catastrophic economic highway to collapse, the continued plundering and pillaging of the national treasury by criminal Wall Street bankers, non-enforcement of existing laws against those who committed the largest crime in history, and reaction to young people across the country getting beaten, bludgeoned, shot with tear gas and pepper sprayed by police, I can’t help but wonder whether there is anyone home. Why are most Americans so passively accepting of these calamitous conditions? How did we become so comfortably numb? I’ve concluded Americans have chosen willful ignorance over thoughtful critical thinking due to their own intellectual laziness and overpowering mind manipulation by the elite through their propaganda emitting media machines. Some people are awaking from their trance, but the vast majority is still slumbering or fuming at erroneous perpetrators.

Both the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement are a reflection of the mood change in the country, which is a result of government overreach, political corruption, dysfunctional economic policies, and a financial system designed to enrich the few while defrauding the many. The common theme is anger, frustration and disillusionment with a system so badly broken it appears unfixable through the existing supposedly democratic methods. The system has been captured by an oligarchy of moneyed interests from the financial industry, mega-corporations, and military industrial complex, protected by their captured puppets in Washington DC and sustained by the propaganda peddling corporate media. The differences in political parties are meaningless as they each advocate big government solutions to all social, economic, foreign relations, and monetary issues.

There is confusion and misunderstanding regarding the culprits in this drama. It was plain to me last week when I read about a small group of concerned citizens in the next town over who decided to support the Occupy movement by holding a nightly peaceful march to protest the criminal syndicate that is Wall Street and a political system designed to protect them. My local paper asked for people’s reaction to this Constitutional exercising of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Here is a sampling of the comments:

Click here for the full report.

After Pepper-Spraying, A Powerfully Silent Protest At UC Davis

November 21, 2011

NPR

By Mark Memmott

“The cops decide to spray a group of peaceful protesters in the face with pepper spray at the University of California Davis. Watch the video as Chancellor Linda P.B. Kateh walks through of a very powerful yet silent protest as she walks to her car.” –KTRN

What happened Friday on the campus of the University of California Davis has struck a chord. In a demonstration of support for the Occupy movement, a small group of protesters was sitting, arms linked together. Campus police told them to move. The students didn’t. And that’s when an officer walked down the line of seated men and women, pepper-spraying them. Some took it straight in their faces. Many of the several hundred others who were there screamed in terror and frustration.

A video of the incident has been viewed more than half a million times so far and has spread the story.

Click here for the story (and videos) from NPR.

Ret. Police Captain: To Be Arrested In Solidarity ‘Was The Proudest Moment Of My Life’

November 21, 2011

The Raw Story

By David Edwards

“Jesse Ventura said it best about this story – not all protesters are hippies.”  –KTRN

Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis, who was arrested last week alongside others in the Occupy movement, calls the ordeal “the proudest moment of my life.”

“I saw all of you sleeping out here,” Lewis recalled to a videographer in New York City’s Zuccotti Park. “The cause, you were for justice. It’s not like you guys were putting up with this so you could get jobs on Wall Street. You were doing this for justice. All over the world, in fact. And that inspired me. I had to come down here an join you.”

“That day, I had no intention of being arrested. None whatsoever. But when I saw a lot of you sitting down and being drug off, I’m saying, they’re losing their freedom for justice, for other people. And that inspired me again to be arrested.”

Lewis added: “I’m going to tell you a very important thing here. I’ve had a lot of proud moments in my life, a lot of proud moments in my career. But when I had those handcuffs on and was being marched over there with the other protesters in solidarity, that was the proudest moment of my life.”

Click here for the story and videos.

Journalists Arrested, Roughed Up As Police Clear Zuccotti Park Of OWS Protesters

November 16, 2011

Poynter

by Ben Doernberg

“Talk about living in a police state.  These kinds of actions from the cops are only going to make the protesters more upset.  The police are not helping the situation.  They are making it worse – like always.”  –KTRN

Journalists said they were shut out and roughed up as the New York Police Department cleared Zuccotti Park of Occupy Wall Street protesters in the early morning hours Tuesday. “I’m w/ a NY Post reporter who says he was roughed up by riot police as Zuccotti was cleared,” tweeted Brian Stelter of The New York Times. “He thinks violence was ‘completely deliberate.’ “ Julie Walker, a freelancer for NPR, and Jared Malsin were reportedly arrested. Josh Harkinson, a staff writer for Mother Jones, made it into the park and observed the police arresting protesters (which he described in tweets later), but said he was hauled out when he told a police officer he was working for Mother Jones. ”I decided it would be better to stay out of jail and keep reporting on what’s going on tonight, so I let him haul me out, arguing with him,” he tweeted. Josh Stearns, associate program director at Free Press, is updating his ongoing Storify of journalist arrests at Occupy protests. || Update: Several more journalists arrested when protesters returned Tuesday morning (Guardian) | Society of Professional Journalists says charges against journalists should be dropped (SPJ) || Earlier: Three-time Wisconsin ‘Photographer of the Year’ arrested during Occupy rally || Related: Occupy Oakland and news media coexist uneasily (The Bay Citizen)

Click here for the report.

Police, Occupy Protesters Head For Oregon Showdown

November 14, 2011

Yahoo News

By JONATHAN J. COOPER and TERRENCE PETTY

“Keep it up, protesters.  Don’t let them take away your right to protest and assemble.”  –KTRN

Anti-Wall Street protesters and their supporters flooded a city park area in Portland early Sunday in defiance of an eviction order, and authorities elsewhere stepped up pressure against the demonstrators, arresting nearly two dozen.

Crowds converged on two adjacent downtown Portland parks where protesters are camped after city officials set a midnight Saturday deadline to disperse.

But hours later, the protesters were still there, backed by many supporters who spilled out into the streets next to camp, tying up traffic. They obeyed police orders to clear the street early Sunday.

At one point the numbers swelled to thousands but then started to thin in the early morning hours.

Organizers said they hope enough people will join them to make it difficult if not impossible for police to carry through on any eviction.

“Occupy the street,” one organizer said through a bull horn. “Remain peaceful and aware. We have strength in holding the streets.”

Demonstrators also used pallets and old furniture, wood debris and even a bicycle to set up makeshift barricades on either end of a street that runs through the encampment, apparently in an attempt to block traffic. Some protesters were arguing about the barricades, though, saying they want them to come down.

Mayor Sam Adams had ordered the camp shut down, citing unhealthy conditions and the encampment’s attraction of drug users and thieves.

Police numbers shifted throughout the night, but they showed no signs of moving against the protesters.

Around 4 a.m., a line of about 200 police stretched across a street and in front of a federal courthouse.

Protesters facing them appeared to be in a festive spirits with some banging on plastic pails, another clanging a cowbell while others danced in the streets as a man juggled nearby.

Police had prepared for a possible clash, warning that dozens of anarchists may be planning a confrontation with authorities. Officers seized pieces of cement blocks Friday, saying they were told some demonstrators had plans to use them as weapons against police. They said they believe some demonstrators are building shields and trying to collect gas masks.

“We’ll take action that’s appropriate, when it’s appropriate,” police spokesman Lt. Robert King told The Associated Press.

“We are not going to engage in confrontation for a misdemeanor,” he said, noting that is the legal violation for remaining in the park after midnight.

It appeared earlier that about 200 campers planned to get arrested. But police action seemed less likely after the crowds swelled the parks in the early morning.

Click here for the full report.

Occupy protesters interrupt Michele Bachmann speech in South Carolina

October 11, 2011

Yahoo News

By Holly Bailey

“Way to go protesters. Watch how Bachmann just freezes.” –KTRN

Michele Bachmann was forced off stage at a speech in South Carolina Thursday after a group of Occupy Charleston protesters swarmed the event and began shouting down the congresswoman.

The protest occurred as Bachmann was delivering a foreign policy speech aboard the USS Yorktown in Charleston.

“This will only take a minute,” the two-dozen protesters shouted, using the “human microphone” technique that has become a symbol of the Occupy Wall Street protests. “You capitalize on dividing Americans…claiming people that disagree with you… are unpatriotic socialists… and you promote discrimination.”

As the protesters shouted, Bachmann stood frozen on stage, unsure of what to do. Soon, police escorted her from the stage, as her own supporters began to shout down the protesters with chants of “USA! USA!”

Click here for the full report and video.

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