Something changed yesterday. We are bigger now, not only in numbers, but in presence and diversity. We are of all backgrounds, ages, colors - we are the 99% and we will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. You could feel it as you walked through the Municipal Building arcade to police plaza, greeted by throngs of photographers. They are now paying attention. They are starting to take us seriously.
More after the jump, but most importantly - if you can be in NYC, the march is today @ 3 PM! The goal is for today to make last night look like a dress rehearsal. This will be the biggest demonstration yet.
Yes, they (the media) are beginning to take us seriously - our message is beginning to get through. Last night's march was against police brutality and limits to freedom of expression, but far from being off-message, this was one focused march within the broader context of the movement. I'm sure today will be a return to the broader economic message. Nevertheless, the media has taken notice of both the broader message and that of last night. Importantly, this media coverage is international, which will hopefully inspire our brothers and sisters abroad to help take up the cause further.
The Daily Mail - Thousands of protesters descend on Manhattan as police gear up for a weekend of mayhem... but is this the start of a middle class uprising?
New York City police are bracing for a weekend of mayhem in lower Manhattan with thousands expected to risk arrest as the Occupy Wall Street protest moves into its third straight week.
More than 1,000 demonstrators speaking out against corporate greed and social inequality took their protest to the New York Police Department (NYPD) headquarters yesterday.
Reuters - Wall Street protesters march on police
The Occupy Wall Street movement, whose members have vowed to stay through the winter, are protesting issues including the 2008 bank bailouts, foreclosures and high unemployment.
More than 1,000 people marched past City Hall and arrived at a plaza outside police headquarters in the late afternoon. Some held banners criticizing police, while others chanted: "We are the 99 percent" and "The banks got bailed out, we got sold out."
...
Marty Goodman, a unionized subway worker, said, "Last year we had 900 of our members laid off ... These are our issues too: Wall Street, the banks, layoffs, the struggle that these young people are spearheading is our struggle too."
Among those pledging solidarity were the United Federation of Teachers and the Transport Workers Union Local 100, which has 38,000 members. The unions could provide important organizational and financial support for the largely leaderless movement.
CBS - For "Occupy Wall Street," Radiohead just a sideshow
But the protests, conceived by anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, also show that there is energy on the left for a real movement to oppose what participants see as a plutocratic system that rewards the super-rich while leaving most Americans behind. When the Tea Party emerged, the mainstream media breathlessly covered it; as Occupy Wall Street backers have bitterly pointed out, however, the media has largely dismissed their movement.
The involvement of the unions may well change that, far more than a day's worth of headlines about Radiohead ever could. The unions have organizational experience and media savvy that the protesters lack, and their presence is likely to create a perception that the protests could be coalescing into something significant and perhaps even historic.
The Guardian - Occupy Wall Street protesters march against police brutality
Several thousand anti-Wall Street protesters marched through downtown Manhattan on Friday night to protest against incidents of police brutality at a previous demonstration.
The group was part of the Occupy Wall Street movement which has camped for almost two weeks in a New York square to protest against the finance industry, among other grievances.
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From unpromising beginnings the Occupy Wall Street movement has now become a major American news story. A similar group is set to occupy a square in the financial district of Boston over the weekend and actions are also planned for Los Angeles and Washington DC and other large cities in October. This week several large New York unions have also announced they will be joining the protesters in Zuccotti Park.
BBC - Occupy Wall Street protests grow amid Radiohead rumour
An estimated 2,000 people have gathered in Lower Manhattan, New York, for the largest protest yet under the banner Occupy Wall Street.
Demonstrators marched on New York's police headquarters to protest against arrests and police behaviour.
Several hundred people have camped out near Wall Street since 17 September as part of protests against corporate greed, politics, and inequality.
Washington Post - 1,000 Occupy Wall Street demonstrators speaking out against corporate greed march to NYPD
MSNBC - Wall Street protesters march on NY police headquarters
NY Times - Wall Street Occupiers, Protesting Till Whenever
Al Jazeera - Wall Street protests spread to other cities
Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement have vowed to stay through winter in a park near New York's iconic financial district where they are protesting issues including the 2008 bank bailouts, foreclosures and high unemployment in the United States.
A group in Boston has taken on the tactics of New York's protesters and on Friday night set itself up in the city's Dewey Square. Activists remained camped out at what they called "the heart of the financial district" on Saturday.
"We are establishing our subsection of a national dialogue on finance reform and governance reform," Nadeem Mazen, an organiser with Occupy Boston, told Al Jazeera.
Mazen said that the Bosten protest quickly drew a thousand people. "It shows that we're experienced and that we've all been independently thinking about what change we want to see... I think we're all very hungry for change."
Le Monde - Les New Yorkais se rebiffent contre Wall Street
RTE (Ireland) - 'Occupy Wall Street' protest held in New York
Crain's - Veteran agitators flock to Occupy Wall Street
The city's most experienced agitators—the labor and community groups that typically organize local marches, rallies and sit-ins—have been largely missing from the Occupy Wall Street protest that is in its 13th day at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.
But that's about to change.
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“It's a responsibility for the progressive organizations in town to show their support and connect Occupy Wall Street to some of the struggles that are real in the city today,” said Jon Kest, executive director of New York Communities for Change, which is helping to organize the march. “They're speaking about issues we're trying to speak about.”
(From FOX helicopter)
Huffington Post - I Hear You, Occupy Wall Street
The protesters bill themselves as the "Other 99 percent," in contrast to the 1 percent of Americans who account for 25 percent of all income earned in the United States and 40 percent of the country's wealth.
Yesterday, I was able to hear the protest from my office at the Merchants Exchange, just down California Street from the Bank of America building, where people across the socioeconomic, ethnic, occupational and ideological spectrum had gathered in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York.
They are protesting a culture which concentrates money and power in the hands of a tiny elite, all while allowing corporate executives of public companies to achieve monumental pay packages without investing a dime of their own money.
I recently talked to the 45-year-old retired CFO of a famous Silicon Valley company who justified his $250 million stock package by saying that he had worked six days a week for five years. I thought of my father, who worked six- and seven-day weeks for 40 years as a deliveryman for Berkeley Farms and Dreyer's Ice Cream.
And finally..
truthout - The Best Among Us
There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
March today in NYC @ 3 PM! Social network #occupywallstreet. Occupy Boston, Chicago, San Francisco... occupy everywhere!.
Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes! To the cynics that remain, "shake it off, stop grumbling, stop complaining."
We are growing. Labor has joined us:
- Transit Workers Union Local 100
- Laborers’ International Union of North America
- National Nurses United
- United Steelworkers
Together, WE are too big to fail!