Protesters defending the medical tent in Zuccotti Park last night (
ANIMALNewYork)
The second month of Occupy Wall Street is underway, and the movement is stronger than ever:
- Last night, Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park formed a human chain to successfully defend the encampment's medical tent. Civil rights activist and former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson participated:
A little after 11:25PM, there was a big commotion on the south side of Zuccotti Park as someone mic checked that the NYPD was moving into to remove the “medical tent” (tents are a violation of the park’s rules.). Occupy Wall Street protesters immediately locked arms and vowed to protect it. Out of nowhere, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson swooped in and briefly spoke face to face with the NYPD as officers continued to amass on Cedar Street.
A demonstrator asked him to join the “human barricade” to which he immediately agreed. She took his hand and led him over to the tent, which he then proceeded to guard, locking arms with others who formed a circle around it.
After a few tense minutes, the police dispersed and the crowd cheered. The tent will not be removed tonight.
However, despite the successful defense, expect the police to continue attempting to remove tents and other sleeping equipment from the park.
- Media coverage of Occupy Wall Street continues to rise.
- A Twitter account called @OccupyArrests is maintaining a running total of the global arrests of Occupy protesters. As of this writing, the count stands at 1,791.
- Expect more legal confrontations between Occupy Wall Street and New York City. Mayor Bloomberg says that "the Constitution doesn't protect tents," while hundreds of the protesters who have been arrested are suggesting they will demand jury trials both as a point of principle and in order to clog the city's judicial system.
- The New York City police officer who pepper sprayed protesters has been docked ten days pay.
- Check out the story of how Occupy Los Angeles helped a family avoid foreclosure, and how others are successfully using protest as a means of staying in their homes.
- In an attempt to make Occupy Wall Street look bad, it turns out pollster Doug Schoen grotesquely misrepresented the data from his own questionable, but widely publicized, poll of OWS protesters.
- The "demands" working group at Occupy Wall Street in New York has approved an ambitious proposal:
The plan would involve the federal government raising about $1.5 trillion in new revenue and using it to create 25 million new public-sector jobs paying union-level wages. It would put Americans to work building bridges, roads, and affordable housing; providing free public transportation and free university education for all; staffing a single-payer health care system; and pursuing clean-energy research.
This is just one working group at one Occupy encampment, so it's a long way from being an actual agenda item for the movement. There remains a strong contingent of occupiers who think that no list of demands should ever be made.
- So far, the hundreds of local Occupy Wall Street solidarity groups have operated as independent entities. Now, however, a new working group has been formed to help them work together:
As the movement has grown, with an estimated 2000 protest communities from Honolulu to Dunedin, New Zealand, according to the Occupy Together website, it is adapting to find better ways to communicate between groups. Up until recently, they have relied on email and social networking between contacts.
But OWS has now set up an International Solidarity working group, in recognition of it's growing size, to more formally facilitate communication between groups.
Several new online tools will be rolled out this week in order to assist with this project.
- Adbusters, which initiated the original call to Occupy Street, is now calling for global marches on October 29 in favor of a 1 percent 'Robin Hood tax' on all financial transactions and currency trades. If you are unfamiliar with the Robin Hood tax, this film with Bill Nighy from RobinHoodTax.org explains:
- As the harsh upper midwest winter approaches, Occupy Minnesota is being denied the use of tents by Minneapolis authorities.
- Occupy Sacramento is in danger of being shut down, as the mayor and city council appear poised to deny them an exception that would allow for round-the-clock protests at their main encampment site.
- The hikers who were recently freed from Iran came home to Oakland and spoke at to the local Occupy crowd:
- MTV is looking to cast someone from the Occupy movement for their next edition of the Real World.
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