Occupy Wall Street (OWS) — and similar protests — don’t fit into the trite frames of America’s mainstream news, but rather represent a collective message of people laying their bodies down against the depredations of modern-day capitalism, as poet Phil Rockstroh explains.
Special Report: For more than four decades, Democrats have tolerated Republican abuses, claiming accountability wouldn’t be “good for the country.” But this softness has only encouraged the kind of hardball behavior that has now taken the U.S. economy “hostage,” writes Robert Parry.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry may hope that Republican voters give him a second look if they tire of hearing about Herman Cain’s sexual harassment troubles. But Michael Winship says the voters should really focus on Perry’s troubling record as an enabler of crony capitalism.
Exclusive: Election 2012 may turn on whether Ronald Reagan’s narrative of evil government and beneficent tax cuts for the rich has finally run its course – and has been replaced by a new narrative demanding government intervention to save the American middle-class, writes Robert Parry.
One week ago, Oakland authorities – citing safety hazards from an “Occupy” encampment – unleashed a predawn police raid to drive the protesters from a plaza. City officials called the action necessary, but a local security guard emerged to tell Dennis Bernstein a very different story.
The response to Occupy Wall Street is personal for many participants and visitors alike. For historian William Loren Katz, the iconic protest in Lower Manhattan was a reminder of Depression-era “Hoovervilles” — but with a youthful optimism.
The Right got what it wanted when Bay Area police stormed the Occupy Oakland encampment touching off clashes that left one protester, Iraq War vet Scott Olsen, in critical condition. Filmmaker Michael Moore discussed the protests with Davey D and Dennis Bernstein.
The mainstream news media still seems baffled by the Occupy protests, wanting them to spell out specific demands – mostly likely, so experts and pundits can then tear the ideas down. So far, the protesters are getting their message across through their simple presence, Danny Schechter reports.
Many Americans are accustomed to the top one percent on the economic pyramid getting the bulk of the benefits from society’s work and investments, as if that’s the natural order of things. But a new movie “In Time” presents a similar dilemma in a parallel reality, writes Lisa Pease.
With a few exceptions, the initial reception of the “Occupy” movement across America was fairly benign. But authorities in Oakland and elsewhere are now turning aggressive, sending in police to shut down encampments and disperse protesters, as Phil Rockstroh observes.
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