Live stream link at end of diary: The protest continues! Here's a collection of vignettes to make up for the disinformation and quasi-media blackout and to provide a current insight to what is happening. Cameo appearances from Gordon Gekko and Ron Paul. I hope politicians are listening to the words of the people occupying Zucotti Square. Listen to them here:
One of the demonstrators said that eight years working as a consultant for an investment bank was enough to turn him into a protester.
"I just shuffled other people's money around and took a cut. Nothing was being contributed. A lot was just being taken out," he told Silverman. "[I] watched the silliness compound on itself. At some point, I wanted a lifestyle that didn't consist of going up to computers to deal with angry people."
And reports of arrests? This remains a peaceful protest.
One young woman was arrested because she didn't stop writing on the sidewalk with chalk. The charge? Graffitti
Others were arrested for wearing a face mask. There's an NYC rule that no more than two face masks are allowed during a protest. One had their face mask on the back of their head.
CBS reported
The demonstration's staging area in nearby Zuccotti Park (re-named Liberty Plaza) houses tents and cardboard used by those camping out.
There are no tents. Tents are not allowed by NYPD.
It looks like the youth are fed up and idealistic. It's a David and Goliath fight for sure.
What concerns me is a potential vulnerability that a demogogue could rally support from youthful idealism, or idealism in general. Hats off to lifelong idealists who fan the flames for justice for all. Your ideas are needed now more than ever.
Do you have any ideas that can be presented to disgruntled activists that can help them win the battle to return our governance to control BY the people and not by Wall Street and multi-national corporations? Ideas are needed to ward off chaos.
Regardless of who produced and/or financed the following video, I think it hits a cord. A cord of discord that many of our youth are listening to. What America doesn't need is a misguided movement that could end up entrapping us all in the very system we are pushing back against: Corporate Takeover of our government, sometimes referred to as fascism.
Perhaps today's youth are much more savvy then we were in the 1960s. Today's youth have watched their parents and grandparents suffer, lose jobs, have their homes taken away, die from lack of health care, go off to war for a decade, and not be able to retire because Wall Street "lost" their 401Ks.
I hope todays activists will avoid the traps of substance and moral abuses.
I think they have a chance to change the world if they present themselves as clean cut, clear minded, peaceful, yet unmoving in their goals to end Wall Street and political corruption.
They are also facing life long debt and under or unemployment. They have much to gain and little to lose.
Unlike our generation, the promise of "Play by the rules, you win" has been exposed as a sham.
America is ripe for revolution, as is much of the world.
I pray with all my heart, this revolution looks like Gandhi's movement. I believe it will.
However, for the now-called Occupy Wall Street protest to win, we will have to join their efforts.
What are some things we can do, even from our homes, to help send a message that we, too, have had enough?
Ideas?
Also
Live streaming from the protests here. Arrests are under way.