Activism

Take our children, please!: A modest proposal for Occupy Wall Street

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Inspired in turn by Swift, I want to suggest that we put in motion a similar undertaking: on January 16th, Martin Luther King Day, citizens from around the country should gather at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. Let’s call this macabre gathering — with luck and even worse times, it should be mammoth — “We Surrender” or “Restore Debtor’s Prisons” or “De-Fault Is Ours” or “Collateralize Us.” And plan on a mirthful day of mourning.

From Foreclosure to Occupation

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A group of low-income San Franciscans has come up with a positive, long term solution to the housing crisis that is causing millions of Americans to be evicted and some to embrace the “Occupy Homes” movement: buy the buildings. In October 2011, residents of the Columbus United Cooperative (CUC) in San Francisco celebrated final approval of the ownership of their building as a permanently affordable, resident-owned limited-equity housing cooperative. The residents can now purchase “shares” in the co-op for only $10,000 in the heart of San Francisco (where housing starts at $500,000) to become cooperative homeowners, though most earn less than 50 percent of area median income.

Inside an Occupy affinity group – a next step into phase two

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The U.S. financial, economic, political, social, educational, health, religious, military, and other institutions seem to be collapsing. “They’re rotting out from the inside,” Ken noted. Occupy offers bold, intense, new national and international conversations that can help create alternatives that strive not to repeat the same mistakes, which have caused the growing gap between the super-wealthy 1% and the 99% rest of us.

A mindful path to a steady state economy

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The Occupy Wall Street movement has struck a chord with its protests against growing inequality in the United States. Suddenly, it is conceivable that policies may be enacted in the next Congress that would raise taxes on the rich and make the American dream more affordable. But if all the Occupy movement does is to restore middle-class demand for large homes and late-model automobiles, it will have been a failure.

Monday Mayhem: Occupy Wall Street on Common Sense and Equal Time Radio

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It’s another edition of Monday Mayhem, where talk radio hosts Rob Roper and Carl Etnier are guests on each others’ shows. Roper hosts Common Sense Radio on WDEV, Waterbury, Vermont, and the show’s focus is “improving the economic well being (sic) of Vermonters through reliance on free markets, limited government, and fiscal responsibility.” Etnier hosts the Monday edition of Equal Time Radio, focusing on energy, food, and the local economy at the end of the age of oil. The theme this Monday Mayhem is Occupy Wall Street.

Bringing It Down To Earth

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The last two months of posts here on The Archdruid Report have focused on the murky interactions between the crisis of the industrial world and the deep structures of our minds — and the ways in which those deep structures have been manipulated by marketers and advertisers at the bidding of competing political and economic interests. Abstract as though these issues may seem at times, they link up directly to the most practical issues we face at the end of the age of cheap energy — and the link between them has very often been the missing piece in proposals for dealing with the challenges of the future.

Why Occupy has taken off

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The Occupy movement, unlike the peak oil/climate/Transition movement (?) is a bottom-up not a top-down approach. That appeals to the younger people and many of the older ones as well. What they are doing is not coming in the form of ‘delivered wisdom’ from the ‘experts in the field’ with their laundry list of what we ‘must’ do.

Occupy Maine and the need to decentralize

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Decentralization of the Occupy movement is as important as the decentralization of any other piece of our infrastructure. If the #OWS crowd popped up in small groups around NYC, they would be easier to raid individually, but not much worth it. If one goes down, there are sites still available to regroup and relocate. … Good communications could combine dispersed occupiers for various marches and individual protest demonstrations. Seriously, we need to be in little, flexible, creative bunches everywhere, not in one giant lump.