#Occupy – VOICES – Oct 17
– Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” played for 500,000 in Spanish protest
– From the Heart of Liberty Plaza
– Ben Zolno “End of Growth” Street Seminar
– US Marine tells off NYPD
Activism
End-of-growth uprising goes global
Brutal police and military repression of the protests could buy time for politicians, but it would solve nothing. The unrest would go underground and tear at the social fabric, leading eventually to revolution or societal breakdown.
Reform, if it is to make a difference, must be fundamental. It must start by addressing issues of economic inequality, but then must eliminate the massive debt overhang that plagues not just governments but households and the entire financial sector. In essence, policy makers must cobble together a new economic model that meets human needs in the absence of economic growth.
Talk amongst yourselves
People working in the City of London have played a starring role in creating the global economic crisis. Since our representative institutions have thus far failed to address this crisis in a way that is both sensible and just, it is only fitting that we should use the City as a place in which work on solutions ourselves.
10 ways to support the Occupy movement
The #OccupyWallStreet movement continues to spread with more than 1,500 sites. More and more people are speaking up for a society that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent.
Here are 10 recommendations from the YES! Magazine staff for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement. Only two of them involve sleeping outside.
I believe it because it is absurd
When people lose wisdom, the easiest way out appears to them to find an enemy, Our new enemies seem to be the scientists. We haven’t seen yet climatologists being lynched by angry mobs, as it happened to Hypatia long ago – but we seem to be getting close to something like that.
Is #OccupyWallStreet the Millennial Generation’s WTO?
There are now tens of thousands of so-called Millennials who—for likely the first time ever—are having the life-changing experience of standing up and demanding change, of marching in the streets, of getting beat on and pepper-sprayed by the police, of getting misportrayed and vilified by the media,… and of coming back and keeping at it, and seeing their actions pay off.
And there are maybe millions of Millennials who are not on the streets but are watching on TV people just like them having these experiences — and don’t doubt for a second that they’re being affected too .
#Occupy is proving to be their first big political roar. Watch out.
The compost candidates
Something special is happening in France. A nationwide campaign will be launched next week by the Colibris movement for the 2012 Presidential Elections – but without a charismatic leader. The campaign, instead, is for everyone to be a candidate – for a new kind of politics.
In their language and tone-of-voice Les Colibris are like the Transition Movement, but different. They are like Occupy Wall Street but different, too. This is surely healthy. The movement for a global democracy is an ecology, not a single homogeneous movement.
“We know that an election won’t change society” says the Colibris manifesto [colibris is the French for hummingbird]. “For a real transformation, things have to change at the bottom and involve everyone amongst us.”
Economics – Oct 14
– The Depression: If Only Things Were That Good
– Adjusting the economy to the new energy realities of the second half of the age of oil
– The Ecology of Marxian Political Economy
#Occupy – NEWS – Oct 14
– Facing Eviction, Protesters Begin Park Cleanup
– Occupy Wall Street: More popular than you think
– Occupy Wall Street protests reveal liberal tensions
– Lech Walesa, former Nobel Prize winning and Polish president, warns of ‘revolt against capitalism’
– Mr. Walesa goes to Wall Street
#Occupy – VIEWS – Oct 14
– Bloomberg vs Occupy: tactical suggestions from John Robb (Global Guerrillas)
– Matt Taibb’s Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Hit Bankers Where It Hurts
– Dave Winer: Did politics just change?
– Pham Bihn: Wall Street occupation ignites mass movement
Making sense of the protests through a post-growth lens
The world has recently seen protests on Wall Street, rioting in London, and tension in other parts of Europe as it deals with insolvent debtor nations. Mass confusion is in the air.
…Among all the mass confusion, steady-state theory might help us account for not only the the economic problems, but also the ideological divide.
Dear Occupy Wall Street
Right now, I know that things are tense. I know that you’re waiting for the word on whether or not you will be evicted from Liberty Plaza tomorrow, from the beautiful occupation you’ve built right in the the belly of the beast of global corporate power. I know that you are worried that there will be police violence, or another mass arrest. I know this because right now, I’m reading news reports about what you’re doing from across the globe, and talking to people sitting in the square, even though I’m thousands of miles away. You see? The whole world is watching. You did that. Whatever happens tomorrow, the whole world will be watching the New York authorities try to clean the people of America off the sidewalks of Wall Street.
