The “Occupy Wall Street” American Autumn Movement
The Occupy Wall Street movement - The 99 percent movement - The Occupy Together movement

by Sheila Musaji

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs  Thomas Jefferson, (Attributed) 3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)

”... This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.  In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.  We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.  ...” Dwight D. Eisenhower final address to the nation 1961

THE MOVEMENT AND THE MEDIA

Initially, the Movement was mostly ignored by major media, and when it was mentioned, it was with disdain, or even attempts to downplay the numbers, or an attempt at dirty tricks to undermine the movement.  However, this didn’t result in the movement becoming weakened because of the protestors reliance on social networking tools and alternative media.  Just as we had the “Arab Spring” which was successful because ordinary people got the word out minute by minute, the same resources were used effectively by the Occupy Wall Street (OWP) protestors..

With the “Occupy Wall Street Protest” we have the beginning of an “American Autumn” which has not yet achieved the same momentum, but it is happening.  The protests began on September 17th in NYC after a call by Adbusters and continue to grow as a series of grassroots protests against corporate greed.  The protest began with only about 150 young people with no political experience.

The major media is finally beginning to report on the movement, although they still are having trouble taking it seriously.  Jon Stewart as usual does an excellent job of showing up the media bias and double-standards.  It is ironic that a Fox News crew was maced and beaten along with the protestors during a march. 

On 10/1 the first issue of a newspaper “Occupied Wall Street Journal” was produced and distributed by the protestors in NYC.

Keith Boykin has an excellent overview Everything The Media Told You About Occupy Wall Street Is Wrong which lists and counters the top ten media myths about OWS.  And, Media Matters has published A Guide To The Smear Campaign Against Occupy Wall Street

Of course, once there was any Muslim involvement in OWS, the Islamophobes claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind OWS.  Keith Olbermann tore this argument apart. 

Another smear often used by the media is that the protestors are damaging the parks and not being clean.  Local groups are attempting to make sure that this is not a concern.  For example, The Occupy DC group—which has been in McPherson Square since Oct. 1—has decided it will take responsibility for repairing the park. Protesters have begun replanting grass in some of McPherson’s bare areas and are soliciting estimates for professionals to resod any areas they can’t fix themselves.  “I think it’s a little bit silly to focus on the cost of trampling a bit of grass when we’re out here trying to keep something much bigger, which includes destruction of the environment worldwide,” Patterson said. “I would say that a patch of grass in McPherson Square is not nearly as important as the greater good that we are trying to achieve.”

THE OWS MOVEMENT AND LAW ENFORCEMENT

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”   ― Frederick Douglass

This entire section has now been moved to a separate article The OWS movement and law enforcement and includes lists of arrests, and the involvement of legal groups and now former Marines to observe and protect the protestors.

THE MOMENTUM IS GROWING

The protests have spread to all 50 States, and the District of Columbia.  See the OCCUPY TOGETHER list of the current cities.  Here is a list that shows that there is at least one Occupy Together site in every state:

Anchorage AK,
Birmingham AL, Auburn AL
Little Rock AR
Tucson AZ,
San Francisco CA,  Los Angeles CA, Santa Barbara CA,  Santa Cruz CA,  San Diego CA,
Colorado Springs CO, Denver CO,
Hartford CT,  New Haven CT,
Newark DE
Orlando FL,
Atlanta GA,
Kona & Hilo HI,
Iowa City & Des Moines, IA,
Pocatello ID,
Chicago IL,
Indianapolis IN,
Wichita KS,
Louisville KY,
New Orleans LA, 
Baltimore MD, 
Boston MA,  Worcester MA
Portland ME,
Lansing MI,  Grand Rapids MI,
Minneapolis MN, 
Jackson MI
Saint Louis MO,  Kansas City MO, Springfield MO,
Missoula MT,
Omaha NE
Bismarck ND
Las Vegas NV,
Concord NH,
Jersey City NJ
Albuquerque NM,
New York City (original site), Buffalo NY
Asheville NC, Charlotte, Raleigh, Winston-Salem & Greensboro NC
Cincinnati OH,  Youngstown OH, 
Norman OK, Tulsa OK,
Portland OR, Eugene, OR,
Philadelphia PA, Harrisburg PA,
Providence RI,
Greenville & Spartanburg SC
Vermillion SD
Knoxville TN, Nashville TN
Dallas, Austin, Houston, and San Antonio TX,
Salt Lake City UT,
Burlington VT
Richmond VA,
Spokane WA, Seattle WA,
Charleston WV,
Madison WI, Eau Claire WI
Casper WY
and the District of Columbia

Events are being planned nationwide with more popping up all the time.  As of 9/29 there are Occupy Protests underway or planned in more than 100 cities, and the list is growing by the day and by the hour.  As of 10/6 Occupy Together “meetups” could be found in 575 cities that stretched across the world to places as diverse as Athens, Greece, and Wellington, New Zealand.  On 10/7 Occupy Together listed 719 cities with Occupy meetings, and includes an interactive map.  As of 10/8 estimates are that the protests have spread to over 1,000 cities across the U.S.  As of 10/9 the list has grown to 1,188 cities.  As of 10/11 the list includes 1,306 cities.  As of 11/3 the list has grown to 2,286 cities.

The crowds are also growing.  More than 3,000 marched on Bank of America in Occupy Boston on 9/30.  On 10/5 crowd estimates for a few cities were quite large, e.g. New York City 20,000, Portland OR 10,000, Philadelphia PA 1,000.

Not only is the momentum growing in the U.S., but the Saturday 10/15 Global Day of Action in Solidarity With Occupy Wall Street saw events across the globe.  Protests were planned for 91 cities in 81 countries.  In Lisbon, Portugal about 40,000, in Frankfurt, Germanyu 6,000, in Madrid, Spain 10,000 protestors marched.  The protests were peaceful everywhere but Rome where there was violence.

More organizations are supporting the movement daily

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has spoken positively about the protests.  Over 700 hundred Continental and United airline pilots, joined by additional pilots from other Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) carriers joined the protestors on 9/27.  The NYC Transit Union has joined the Occupy Wall Street protest.  The executive board of the New York Transit Workers Union/Transport Workers Local 100 voted unanimously to support Occupy Wall Street. Local 100 has 38,000 active members and covers 26,000 retirees, according to its website. The United Federation of Teachers has expressed solidarity.  Terry O’Sullivan, General President of the Laborers International Union LIUNA has issued a statement in support of Occupy Wall Street

Daniel Massey of Crain’s Business reports that now that organized labor and experienced activists are getting involved, the protests may grow even more

A loose coalition of labor and community groups said Thursday that they would join the protest next week. They are organizing a solidarity march scheduled for Wednesday that is expected to start at City Hall and finish a few blocks south at Zuccotti Park.

...  The protestors have transformed the park into a village of sorts, complete with a community kitchen, a library, a concert stage, an arts and crafts center and a media hub. All of that has enabled them not just to sustain the action but to build momentum. And as celebrities like Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Russell Simmons and Cornel West have joined in, the city’s traditional activists have been forced to jump into the fray.  “It’s become too big to ignore,” said one political consultant.
Some of the biggest players in organized labor are actively involved in planning for Wednesday’s demonstration, either directly or through coalitions that they are a part of. The United Federation of Teachers, 32BJ SEIU, 1199 SEIU, Workers United and Transport Workers Union Local 100 are all expected to participate. The Working Families Party is helping to organize the protest and MoveOn.org is expected to mobilize its extensive online regional networks to drum up support for the effort.

“We’re getting involved because the crisis was caused by the excesses of Wall Street and the consequences have fallen hardest on workers,” a spokesman for TWU Local 100 said.

Thom Hartmann reports that

You need to know this.  The Occupy Wall Street movement is picking up some crucial support.  Demonstrators have been camped out for 13 straight days now in lower Manhattan – but reinforcements are on the way.  Top unions and progressive organizations like the SEIU, the United Federation of Teachers, the Transport Workers Union, as well as MoveOn.org, and a slew of others have pledged to join the demonstrators next week.  With their support – the number of people on the streets could swell by the thousands. Each day this goes on – it’s looking more and more like something really is happening.  Corporate greed, crony capitalism, and the “for the rich, by the rich” economy may have finally reached a tipping point in America.

Chris Hedges wrote the following heartfelt appeal to all Americans to join in this movement

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.

To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal. Ask Tim DeChristopher.

Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you. They are terrified this will spread. They have their long phalanxes of police on motorcycles, their rows of white paddy wagons, their foot soldiers hunting for you on the streets with pepper spray and orange plastic nets. They have their metal barricades set up on every single street leading into the New York financial district, where the mandarins in Brooks Brothers suits use your money, money they stole from you, to gamble and speculate and gorge themselves while one in four children outside those barricades depend on food stamps to eat. Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets. They disseminate the lies that pollute our airwaves. They know, even better than you, how pervasive the corruption and theft have become, how gamed the system is against you, how corporations have cemented into place a thin oligarchic class and an obsequious cadre of politicians, judges and journalists who live in their little gated Versailles while 6 million Americans are thrown out of their homes, a number soon to rise to 10 million, where a million people a year go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills and 45,000 die from lack of proper care, where real joblessness is spiraling to over 20 percent, where the citizens, including students, spend lives toiling in debt peonage, working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, a world devoid of hope, a world of masters and serfs.

The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.

Who the hell cares? If the stocks of ExxonMobil or the coal industry or Goldman Sachs are high, life is good. Profit. Profit. Profit. That is what they chant behind those metal barricades. They have their fangs deep into your necks. If you do not shake them off very, very soon they will kill you. And they will kill the ecosystem, dooming your children and your children’s children. They are too stupid and too blind to see that they will perish with the rest of us. So either you rise up and supplant them, either you dismantle the corporate state, for a world of sanity, a world where we no longer kneel before the absurd idea that the demands of financial markets should govern human behavior, or we are frog-marched toward self-annihilation.

Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope. They know that hope has a cost, that it is not easy or comfortable, that it requires self-sacrifice and discomfort and finally faith. They sleep on concrete every night. Their clothes are soiled. They have eaten more bagels and peanut butter than they ever thought possible. They have tasted fear, been beaten, gone to jail, been blinded by pepper spray, cried, hugged each other, laughed, sung, talked too long in general assemblies, seen their chants drift upward to the office towers above them, wondered if it is worth it, if anyone cares, if they will win. But as long as they remain steadfast they point the way out of the corporate labyrinth. This is what it means to be alive. They are the best among us.

On 10/5 the movement had the largest march yet in NYC.  Thousands turned out including members of teachers and nurses unions, and many others.  National Nurses United, the largest union and professional association of nurses in the US, today re-affirmed that it stands with the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests and rallies and announced that NNU members will be attending support actions today in New York, Boston, San Francisco and other cities.

On 10/7, Massachusetts’ largest health care union, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, announced it will give support and resources to Occupy Boston.  The union’s members “stand in solidarity with the Occupy Boston protesters and their demand that Wall Street be held accountable for the current economic crisis,” 1199SEIU Executive Vice President Veronica Turner said in a press release.  “It is time for large corporations and the super-rich to pay their fair share so this country can invest in our communities, create jobs and get back to work,”

On 10/7 Teams of ]b]New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) legal observers, staff and volunteers moved into the Occupy Wall Street event Friday to defend the protesters right to speak their minds from heavy-handed police according to the ACLU at noon Friday and Tweets of releived protesters. NYCLU is also offering trainings to the protesters and recording police misconduct.  “The NYCLU is here to ensure that the NYPD respect and strengthen the protest rights of all New Yorkers,” the ACLU stated in a written statement that it posted on its website shortly after noon Friday.

On 10/7, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) National President John Gage issued a statement in support of the protests.

On 10/23 a large group of doctors, nurses, and medical professionals turned out ot OWS.  Laurie Wen, executive director of the local chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, said they’re joining the protesters because they believe the private insurance companies are making their patients sick.  “Unchecked corporate greed is making our patients sick,” she said. “Social and economic inequalities are making our patients sick. And doctors and nurses are tired of practicing in a system that is so broken.”

PUBLIC OPINION

David Weigel of Slate reports that Rasmussen has done the first poll of the American public’s response to the Occupy Wall Street movement, and found that the movement is starting out with favorable ratings.  Initially, the American public rates OWS more favorably than they rate the U.S. Congress.

A new poll from ORC International taken on 10/28-31 shows that public opinion is increasingly favorable.  The gains are small, but important.  64% of people have now heard of the movement compared to 51% in early October.  36% now say they agree with OWS compared to 27% earlier.

ABOUT THE DEMAND FOR DEMANDS

The movement continues to grow and to spread across the country, and Wednesday 10/5 will be a big day with many marches and demonstrations planned.  The media is beginning to take notice.  One of the most commonly heard complaints has been that there has not been a clear statement of demands and goals from the organizers.  This is simply a distraction.  This section is now a separate article titled The OWS demands are clear.

FIRST OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF OWS

The first official statement has now been released as of 10/4:

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!  *These grievances are not all-inclusive.

STATEMENTS BY LOCAL GROUPS

Occupy Boston MA ratified and issued a Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples

Occupy Iowa City IA expressed solidarity with the OWS statement.

Occupy Huntington WV also expressed support for OWS and added this list of demands

— We demand real hope, real change and something we can really believe in.
— We demand an end to monopolistic capitalism.
— We demand that JP Morgan Chase Bank phase out all funding for industries that pollute and destroy our environment. The people of Appalachia want clean energy jobs.
— We demand the creation of a clean and sustainable economy and the halt of the destruction of the environment of Appalachia and elsewhere.
— We demand recognition of climate change as fact. We demand the end of corporate ownership of mineral rights. We demand the city of Huntington stop the lay-off of workers.
— We demand the complete funding of pensions of all city employees and the recognition of a union’s right to collective bargaining.
— We demand an end to poverty and the establishment of a living wage.

Gadi Dechter wrote about what he sees as the key issues raised by the Occupy Together movement to date.  They include:  Rising income inequality, Shrinking income mobility, A rigged tax code, A rigged democracy, An assault on fundamental protections. 

 

PLEDGE TAKEN BY D.C. PROTESTORS

On October 6th the protests moved into Washington D.C., and the protestors have taken the following pledge announcing the reasons for the movement:

“I pledge that if any U.S. troops, contractors, or mercenaries remain in Afghanistan on Thursday, October 6, 2011, as that criminal occupation goes into its 11th year, I will commit to being in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., with others on that day with the intention of making it our Tahrir Square, Cairo, our Madison, Wisconsin, where we will NONVIOLENTLY resist the corporate machine to demand that our resources are invested in human needs and environmental protection instead of war and exploitation. We can do this together. We will be the beginning.”

If you want to sign this pledge, you can do so HERE.

THE MOVEMENT BECOMING AN UMBRELLA FOR MANY ECONOMIC & SOCIAL JUSTICE CAUSES

Community groups like Make the Road New York, the Coalition for the Homeless, the Alliance for Quality Education and Community Voices Heard are also organizing for Wednesday’s action, and the labor/community coalitions United New York and Strong Economy For All are pitching in as well.

As Barbara Ehrenreich notes, the OWS protestors are shining a light on the ongoing problem of homelessness:  What the Occupy Wall Streeters are beginning to discover, and homeless people have known all along, is that most ordinary, biologically necessary activities are illegal when performed in American streets - not just peeing, but sitting, lying down, and sleeping. While the laws vary from city to city, one of the harshest is in Sarasota, Florida, which passed an ordinance in 2005 that makes it illegal to “engage in digging or earth-breaking activities” - that is, to build a latrine - cook, make a fire, or be asleep and “when awakened state that he or she has no other place to live.”  It is illegal, in other words, to be homeless or live outdoors for any other reason. It should be noted, though, that there are no laws requiring cities to provide food, shelter, or restrooms for their indigent citizens.

As Mark Engler points out, as of 10/6:

As the movement spreads nationwide, #OccupyWallStreet is becoming a unifying umbrella under which people outraged about corporate greed can get involved in supporting any number of ongoing efforts to create living-wage jobs, end foreclosures and predatory lending practices, hold banks accountable, get corporate money out of politics, and otherwise promote economic justice and genuine democracy. Much as the Tea Party has served as an overarching brand for conservative discontent, #OccupyWallStreet is giving people the opportunity to identify with a national struggle while advancing causes relevant to their local communities.

In Boston, community groups doing anti-foreclosure actions at Bank of America were able to merge their efforts with #OccupyBoston demands. Likewise, #OccupyLA joined with the United Teachers of Los Angeles in a bank protest during one of its first days in existence. Organizers who have been working on anti-corporate campaigns for months or years now are starting to benefit from the new energy—and new media attention—afforded by a movement that is now seen as a national phenomenon. #OccupyWallStreet, in turn, benefits whenever greater numbers of local drives identify with their overarching effort, when their coalition is broadened, and their credibility as a national force is reinforced by the local buy-in.

The potential for expanding this type of solidarity is great, and it is likely that more groups will be linking up their campaigns in the days and weeks to come. Fortunately, #OccupyWallStreet, which has already made some remarkable strides, is evolving still.

On 10/9, Occupy Boston ratified a Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples

Stop the Machine (an anti-war group) has been participating with Occupy Together in marches, but the two remain separate entities.

The U.S. Food Movement has made its presence felt in Occupy Wall Street. Voices from food justice organizations across the country are connecting the dots between hunger, diet-related diseases and the unchecked power of Wall Street investors and corporations

Credit unions are seeing a surge in new accounts as many people move their money from big banks.

Some Encouraging Signs That OWS Protestors Are Being Heard

This section has been moved to a separate article [/url=http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/some-encouraging-signs-that-ows-protestors-are-being-heard/0018842]here[/url].  It is encouraging that already, some of the issues being raised by OWS are being considered by our elected representatives.  There is a long way to go, but each small gain is important.

RESPONSE OF OUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES

All of these responses both in support of the movement and in opposition have been moved to a separate article Our Elected Representatives Need to Respond to Clear OWS Demands

ENDORSEMENTS OF THE MOVEMENT

By Business Leaders

On 10/5 Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, said about Occupy Wall Street: ‘I Can’t Blame Them’.  New York Magazine quotes him as saying “I would just say very generally, I think people are quite unhappy with the state of the economy and what’s happening,” Bernanke said. “They blame, with some justification, the problems in the financial sector for getting us into this mess, and they’re dissatisfied with the policy response here in Washington. And at some level, I can’t blame them.” 

Warren Buffett sided with the protestors. While many of the demonstrators seemed ill-informed, he said, the “feeling is real and there is enough basis in that feeling that we want to get rid of that basis,” which he described as unfair taxes and lack of jobs.

Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher surprised a business group in Fort Worth, Texas, on Thursday when he said, “I am somewhat sympathetic — that will shock you.”

The head of General Electric Co finance arm, Michael Neal, said he was sympathetic to the cause.  “People are really angry, and I get it. If I were unemployed now, I’d be really angry too.”

Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors issued a statement in Support of Occupy Wall Street

By Others

Noam Chomsky said Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street—financial institutions generally—has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world). And should also know that it has been doing so increasingly for over 30 years, as their power in the economy has radically increased, and with it their political power. That has set in motion a vicious cycle that has concentrated immense wealth, and with it political power, in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1%, while the rest increasingly become what is sometimes called “a precariat”—seeking to survive in a precarious existence. They also carry out these ugly activities with almost complete impunity—not only too big to fail, but also “too big to jail.”  The courageous and honorable protests underway in Wall Street should serve to bring this calamity to public attention, and to lead to dedicated efforts to overcome it and set the society on a more healthy course.

Princeton professor Dr. Cornel West (who could be seen throughout the day carrying a sign that read “If only the war on poverty were a real war, then we would actually be putting money into it”) spoke to protesters Tuesday night and told them “There is a sweet spirit in this place. I hope you can feel the love and inspiration.”

A 10/9 NYT editorial backs Occupy:  “It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge”

As of 10/15, there is now a page Writers in support of the Occupy Movement which states We, the undersigned writers and all who will join us, support Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world. and includes a long and growing list (over 100 so far) of writers including Neil Gaiman and China Mieville, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists Jennifer Egan and Michael Cunningham . 

Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie joined an OWS rally. 

OBJECTIONS TO THE MOVEMENT - PEOPLE WHO JUST DON’T GET IT

Glenn Beck said that Occupy Wall Street Is “Only Interested In Destruction,” Which “Leads To Gas Chambers,” “Guillotines,” “Mao”

The International Business Times reports that Ann Coulter said that the OWS movement is comparable to ideals that were advocated by Nazi Germany that ultimately led to the establishment of a totalitarian regime

Pamela Geller jumped in with a typical vicious screed in which she called the protestors “the dregs of the earth” and which included this: The manufactured, union sponsored pre-election civil unrest movement staged to create a faux response to the organic tea party is slowly becoming a magnet for every disenfranchised, anti-American, communist, marxist, jihad sympathizing, Jew-hating misanthrope in this great nation.  Even Obama is getting on the train of destruction, just today agreeing with the destroyers that Americans were frustrated with the banks (here). If he weren’t president, he’d be one of scores of dopes “occupying Wall Street.” It’s a coup, people.  She also included video of an interview with one deranged protestor arguing with an elderly Jewish man and spouting crap, as if that represented the entire group.

Kimberly Guilfoyle on Sean Hannity said that the Wall Street Protesters Are “People With Absolutely No Purpose Or Focus In Life” There To Just “Dirty The Streets”

Rush Limbaugh said I Was More Self-Sufficient At Age 10 Than “This Parade Of Human Debris Calling Itself Occupy Wall Street”  He also called them “Pure, Genuine Parasites,” and “Bored Trust Fund Kids”

Bill O’Reilly called the protestors “far left loons” and “anarchists”.

 

UNDECIDED? - PEOPLE SITTING ON THE SIDELINES OF HISTORY

Where is President Obama?

 
This movement seems like a clear call for “hope” and for “change” that we can believe in.  As Roger Bybee notes

The present moment also affords him a badly-needed chance to alter the public’s perception that his administration has been far too close to Wall Street. The administration’s infamous line,“We’re only bailing out Wall Street in order to save Main Street,” has now been widely recognized as thinly veiling unlimited generosity to the big bankers and hedge-fund traders whose fortunes have been exploding while offering only the most token help to families on the verge of losing jobs, homes, college educations and secure retirements.

But instead of seizing the moment, Obama is undermining the credibility of his articulate and progressive pro-jobs message outlined on September 8, by supporting three intensely unpopular NAFTA-style free trade” agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, which will all promote the shift of more U.S. jobs and capital overseas. This legislation was just introduced on Monday—as Occupy Wall Street’s momentum really started picking up.

Obama did make a “sort of” statement that really says nothing.  CBS News reports that the president, speaking at a press conference, said he had heard about and seen television reports on the recent protests on Wall Street, and noted that “I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel.  We had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression - huge collateral damage throughout the country, all across main street. And yet, you are still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practices that got us in the situation in the first place.  I think people are frustrated.”

Obviously he doesn’t want to be pinned down.

Robert Scheer has written an excellent article If a Republican were President discussing Obama’s poor showing on economic reform.  In that article, he notes

But the protest signs in a nation headed by a Republican, though surely gussied up a bit with ad agency savvy, would be the same as they are now: Stop catering to the top 1 percent who get ever wealthier and focus on helping the 99 percent who are hurting. To accomplish that, we need a moratorium on bank-ordered evictions, along with a government-funded program to aid the underemployed that is as robust as the trillions spent to save the Wall Street swindlers who caused all of this trouble.

Instead we are left with a Democratic president who sooths our rage with promises of decent-paying jobs that in actuality are being vigorously exported from our shores by the president’s top corporate backers. That absurdity was marked by Barack Obama’s choice of Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric—a company that has shifted to foreign countries two-thirds of its workforce and 82 percent of its profits—to head the president’s job creation council. 

Obama has failed not because he is a progressive in the mold of Franklin Delano Roosevelt but because he is not. He has blindly followed the lead of George W. Bush in bankrupting the nation by throwing money at Wall Street while continuing to fund wildly expensive and unneeded wars. 

Meanwhile, the Republicans divert public attention from their culpability in destroying a sound federal financial regulatory system and gifting Wall Street crooks with a platinum get-out-of-jail-free card. To listen to the GOP presidential candidates, the banking meltdown was caused by everyone except the bankers.

Where are the clergy and the leaders of religious and interfaith organizations?

 
This section is now a separate article titled Occupy Together - the Spiritual Dimension and will also be regularly updated.

THIS MOVEMENT WILL NOT BE CO-OPTED

While it is nice to see some of the bankers and politicians expressing some support for the movement, it would be wise to wait and see whether or not their support is just a political move to be certain they don’t lose votes.  The truth is that both parties, the Republicans and the Democrats have let the American people down big time. 

Chris Hedges wrote an important article about this issue in which he said in part (please read the whole article)

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do—fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”

Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests. The Teamsters’ arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment. The union bosses, in short, had no choice.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters. It proposes something new. It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power. It holds fast to moral imperatives regardless of the cost. It confronts authority out of a sense of responsibility. It is not interested in formal positions of power. It is not seeking office. It is not trying to get people to vote. It has no resources. It can’t carry suitcases of money to congressional offices or run millions of dollars of advertisements. All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back. It has no other way of defying the corporate state. This rebellion creates a real community instead of a managed or virtual one. It affirms our dignity. It permits us to become free and independent human beings.

Martin Luther King was repeatedly betrayed by liberal supporters, especially when he began to challenge economic forms of discrimination, which demanded that liberals, rather than simply white Southern racists, begin to make sacrifices. King too was a radical. He would not compromise on nonviolence, racism or justice. He understood that movements—such as the Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists, who fought for women’s rights, the labor movement and the civil rights movement—have always been the true correctives in American democracy. None of those movements achieved formal political power. But by holding fast to moral imperatives they made the powerful fear them. King knew that racial equality was impossible without economic justice and an end to militarism. And he had no intention of ceding to the demands of the liberal establishment that called on him to be calm and patient.

“For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there,” King said shortly before he was assassinated. “Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values.”

... What took place early Friday morning in Zuccotti Park was the first salvo in a long struggle for justice. It signaled a step backward by the corporate state in the face of popular pressure. And it was carried out by ordinary men and women who sleep at night on concrete, get soaked in rainstorms, eat donated food and have nothing as weapons but their dignity, resilience and courage. It is they, and they alone, who hold out the possibility of salvation. And if we join them we might have a chance.

Where is the Tea Party?

The ideas about solutions to the very real problems facing us may be different for the tea party and the occupy together movements, but the frustration and identification of these problems is very similar.  It might at least be possible for both groups to come together and discuss the issues and work together at least where there is common agreement.

Bob Edgar wrote an article about the need for these groups to find common cause in which he said

Both groups sense that America is in danger. The government “of, by, and for the people,” we learned about in junior high is something far different from the government we have today. Neither group knows quite what to do about it—they often can’t agree even among themselves—but they know things can’t go on like this.

The rest of us, the thoughtful majority struggling to pay our bills and hold onto our homes, know it too. We’re uneasy with people on the fringes, Tea Party and left-wing alike, but we also see our government spending dangerously beyond its means and fighting wars that seem unending and increasingly pointless. Millions of us have lost our jobs or watched our neighbors lose theirs. Our pension funds are drying up and our employers no longer match our 401k donations. We read about bank and investment executives collecting million dollar bonuses drawn from government bailout funds. We see them funnel anonymous contributions into the campaigns of our politicians and buy influence through their new “Super PACs,” and we know we can’t just watch and read and wait much longer.

We need to get busy. Some of us are joining up with the Wall Street occupiers, as others joined up earlier with the Tea Party. Both movements need our thoughts and our energies. I think I know what all of us should be working on.

Left, right and center, Republican, independent, and Democrat, pretty much everyone agrees that our system has been corrupted. Big money, from banks and insurance companies, the medical lobby, defense contractors, the trial lawyers, the big unions and a boatload of other special interests, is in control.

The power of big money is why our tax laws allow some of our largest corporations and richest citizens to pay less than their fair share of our national expenses. It’s why our military invests in high-tech weapons that are of little use to our troops in the Afghan mountains and Iraqi deserts. It’s why the financial “wizards” who’ve nearly run our economy aground can get away with collecting fat bonuses drawn from government bailout funds. It’s why we grow ever more dependent on energy purchased overseas from people who don’t like us. It’s why we can’t get our act together to tackle the challenge of climate change. It’s why Congress never seems able to do much of anything.

Since I served in Congress in the 1970s and ‘80s, I’ve been convinced that taming the influence of big money in our political system is critical to moving our country forward. But instead of taming, our Supreme Court and our political leaders are turning big money loose. Last year’s Citizens United decision has given big corporations and big unions carte blanche to pour millions—and before long billions—of dollars into our elections. And our tax laws allow those donations to be made anonymously, so voters have no way of knowing exactly who is trying to influence their votes, no way of evaluating what might be behind the messages that jam our airwaves and flood our mailboxes.

At Common Cause, we know of several ways to attack this problem. We want to build a campaign finance system that allows candidates to run competitive campaigns on the power of small donors, and we want strong disclosure laws. Fixing our broken politics should be the first priority of the Wall Street occupiers, the Tea Party and the thoughtful majority. We are willing to consider any ideas, willing to work with anyone, regardless of party or philosophy, who will join us in taking on this challenge.

Lawrence Lessig has also written an excellent article on the need to find common ground in which he says

Instead, we should use the energy and anger of this extraordinary movement to find the common ground that would justify this revolution for all Americans, and not just us. And when we find that common ground, we should scream it, and yell it, and chant it, again, and again, and again.

For there is a common ground between the anger of the Left and the anger of the Right: That common ground is a political system that does not work. A government that is not responsive, or—in the words of the Framers, the favorite source of insight for our brothers on the Right—a government that is not, as Federalist 52 puts it, “dependent upon the People alone.”

Because this government is not dependent upon “the People alone.” This government is dependent upon the Funders of campaigns. 1% of America funds almost 99% of the cost of political campaigns in America. Is it therefore any surprise that the government is responsive first to the needs of that 1%, and not to the 99%?

This government, we must chant, is corrupt. We can say that clearly and loudly from the Left. They can say that clearly and loudly from the Right. And we then must teach America that this corruption is the core problem—it is the root problem—that we as Americans must be fighting.

There could be no better place to name that root than on Wall Street, New York. For no place in America better symbolizes the sickness that is our government than Wall Street, New York. For it is there that the largest amount of campaign cash of any industry in America was collected; and it was there that that campaign cash was used to buy the policies that created “too big to fail”; and it was there that that campaign cash was used to buy the get-out-of-jail free card, which Obama and the Congress have now given to Wall Street in the form of a promise of no real regulatory change, and an assurance of “forgiveness.”

INFORMATION ABOUT THE MOVEMENT

— Follow the action on Twitter with the hashtag #occupyWallStreet

— There is now a site with livestreams from Occupy movements around the nation and the world where you can click on your own state http://www.occupystream.com/

— There is now a website called OCCUPY TOGETHER, which says about its’ mission that it is “an unofficial hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with Occupy Wall St. As we have followed the news on facebook, twitter, and the various live feeds across the internet, we felt compelled to build a site that would help spread the word as more protests organize across the country. We hope to provide people with information about events that are organizing, ongoing, and building across the U.S. as we, the 99%, take action against the greed and corruption of the 1%.” - This site being updatd with information about local groups being developed across the country.

— There is an OCCUPY WALL STREET website with updated information as well as a NYC Official Website and a We are the 99 percent website. 

— There is a page called Occupy Everywhere and another called Occupy Info that are regularly updating twitter feeds, facebook pages, and websites for “Occupy ..... ” events in cities across the U.S., Canada, and the world.

— There is a great INTERACTIVE MAP showing the now hundreds of cities where protests are planned.  You can just click on a city to get information.

— There was an online VIRTUAL MARCH on Wednesday 10/5.  Go to REBUILD THE DREAM for information.  A large and growing list of organizations is supporting this effort.

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP

— You can go to Roots Action and sign their I Support Occupy Wall Street petition HERE
— The Huffington Post has a HOW YOU CAN HELP page with a long list of ways you can help even if you cannot attend the protests in person.  The page includes where you can donate money, how you can donate food, supplies, expertise, medicine, medical help, etc.
— People are being encouraged to close their accounts with the large banks and move them to credit unions.  There is now a site called Move Your Money Project with information about this effort called Bank Transfer Day.
— 10 ways to support the Occupy movement http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/16
— There is an Occupy the Boardroom site where you can send letters to the officers of major banks and wall street corporations http://www.occupytheboardroom.org/
— Tell Congress to Stand Up to Corporate Influence http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8566
— Ask your Members of Congress to Protect SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program http://fightingpovertywithfaith.com/f2/
— Sign the People of faith say no to attacks on Occupy Wall Street petition http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2518/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8542
—  Tell the FBI: Don’t map me or my community!  https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3771&s_subsrc=111025_FBI_mapping_fb_share++&t=ACLU%3A+Tell+the+FBI%3A+don%27t+map+me+or+my+community%21
— Sign the First Amendment is Our Permit Petition http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4882
— check out the main page of TAM at http://www.theamericanmuslim.org for regularly updated things you can do

 

SEE ALSO:

TAM ARTICLE SERIES DOCUMENTING THE OWS MOVEMENT
— The “Occupy Wall Street” American Autumn Movement summary of the movement since 9/17 with extensive article collection
— OWS demands are clear with updated information on demands, statements, etc. from the movement.
— The OWS Movement and Law Enforcement including updated information about arrests, law enforcement responses, etc.
— Occupy Together - the Spiritual Dimension includes information about participation, or lack thereof, of clergy, interfaith leaders and religious institutions, and an article collection.
— Our Elected Representatives Need to Respond to Clear OWS Demands including updated information about the positions (pro and con) taken by various elected representatives and politicians.  It’s Time to Fight Back and Take the Occupy Movement to the Ballot Box as a response to these politicians.
— Some Encouraging Signs That OWS Protestors Are Being Heard

TAM ARTICLE COLLECTION ON OWS MOVEMENT

3 Things That Must Happen for Us To Rise Up and Defeat the Corporatocracy, Bruce Levine http://www.alternet.org/story/152158/3_things_that_must_happen_for_us_to_rise_up_and_defeat_the_corporatocracy/?page=entire

11 Facts You Need To Know About The Nation’s Biggest Banks, Pat Garofalo http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/07/338887/1-facts-biggest-banks/

30 Major Companies Paid Zero Income Tax http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/320-80/8230-30-major-companies-paid-zero-income-tax

The 147 Companies That Control Everything, Bruce Upbin http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2011/10/22/the-147-companies-that-control-everything/

A Letter to the #Occup(iers): The principle of Non-contradiction, Lawrence Lessig http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/a-letter-to-the-occupiers_b_1007459.html

A list of evidence justifying the #Occupy movement, Erich Vieth http://dangerousintersection.org/2011/11/04/a-list-of-evidence-justifying-the-occupy-movement/

A movement too big to fail, Chris Hedges http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_movement_too_big_to_fail_20111017/?ln

A New Declaration of Independence (draft proposal), Alex Pareene et al http://www.salon.com/2011/10/31/a_new_declaration_of_independence/singleton/

A proposed demand for OWS, Alex Pareene http://www.salon.com/2011/10/05/a_proposed_demand_for_occupy_wall_street/singleton/

Addressing Oppression, Racism and Privilege in the Occupy Movement, John Chasnoff & Sandra Tamari http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/addressing-oppression-racism-and-privilege-in-the-occupy-movement/0018822

America Occupies Wall Street Because Wall Street Occupies America, Bill Moyers http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8222-america-occupies-wall-street-because-wall-street-occupies-america

American Government’s Indifference to Popular Protest, William Pfaff http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/american_governments_indifference_to_popular_protest_20111005/

Annals of the culture of politics:  Part 1 - to the streets, Arlene Goldbard http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/annals-of-the-culture-of-politics-part-1-to-the-streets/0018823  — Part 2 - think globally http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/annals-of-the-culture-of-politics-part-2-think-globally/0018824

Artist: William Banzai, Visual Combat: Wall Street Monopoly Board http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/10/visual_combat_william_banzai_wall_street_monopoly.php

As Movement Grows, Thousands In Boston Protest Against Bank Of America’s Greed, Zaid Jilani http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/01/333721/movement-boston-bank-of-america/

As Occupy Wall St. Protest Grows, Obama Sits on Sidelines With CEOs,  Roger Bybee http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12052/victims_of_greed_occupy_wall_street_obamas_preoccupied_with_ceos/

The Bankers and the Revolutionaries, Nicholas D. Kristof http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-the-bankers-and-the-revolutionaries.html 

Mayor Bloomberg Claims ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protesters Are Targeting Bankers Who ‘Are Struggling To Make Ends Meet’  http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/30/333038/mayor-bloomberg-wall-street-make-ends-meet/

Budgeting for Growth and Prosperity, A Long-term Plan to Balance the Budget, Grow the Economy, and Strengthen the Middle Class http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/05/budgeting_for_growth.html

Herman Cain: Wall Street Protests Are Un-American, Lee Fang http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/06/337522/herman-cain-occupy-wall-street/

CHART: How Income Inequality Skyrocketed And The 1 Percent Profited From The Decline Of Unions, Zaid Jilani http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/21/350012/income-inequality-decline-of-unions/

CHART: The ‘47 Percent’ Pay Their Fair Share http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/chart-of-the-day-the-47-percent-pay-their-fair-share.php?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

CHART:  One Year of Prison Costs More Than One Year at Princeton http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/8DeAIG/www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/chart-one-year-of-prison-costs-more-than-one-year-at-princeton/247629/

CHARTS - 11 charts that explain what’s wrong with America http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

The Choice Between Democracy and Autocracy: City mayors are going medieval on their protesting subjects, David Sirota http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/12160/the_choice_between_democracy_and_autocracy

CNN’s Factcheck Failure on Occupy Wall Street http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4408

Confronting the Malefactors, Paul Krugman http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html?_r=1 

Conservative Writer Admits ‘Infiltrating’ 99 Percent Movement To ‘Mock And Undermine’ It, Ali Gharib http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/09/339788/conservative-infiltrate-99-percent-movement/

Credit Unions Seeing Surge In New Accounts http://consumerist.com/2011/10/credit-unions-seeing-surge-in-new-accounts.html

Debts, Deficits, and Defense: A Way Forward, a report on Federal Budget cuts http://fcnl.org/issues/checkbook/sustainabledefensereport.pdf

Defining and Tackling the Moral Disaster of 21st Century Economics, Dr. Robert D. Crane http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/defining_and_tackling_the_moral_disaster_of_21st_century_economics

The Economics of Occupy Wall Street, Annie Lowrey http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/10/occupy_wall_street_says_the_top_one_1_percent_of_americans_have_.html

Even Fund Managers Say Occupy Wall Street Is Right, Lee Munson http://www.thestreet.com/story/11285596/1/even-fund-managers-say-occupy-wall-street-is-right.html

The Fight for Autonomy in Oakland, Darwin Bond-Graham http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/26/the-fight-for-autonomy-in-oakland/

FIRST AMENDMENT/ FREEDOM OF SPEECH
- Which comes first: the Constitution or cities’ no-camping rules?  http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00537
- Occupying the First Amendment, Bruce Ackerman and Yochai Benkler http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-ackerman/occupy-wall-street-first-amendment-_b_1023709.html
- Protecting Protest at Occupy Wall Street http://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/protecting-protest-occupy-wall-street
- Why the Constitution and Courts are Allies of the Occupiers http://www.forbes.com/sites/bradlockwood/2011/11/02/why-the-constitution-and-courts-are-allies-of-the-occupiers/
- ACLU - Occupy the First Amendment by exercising it!  http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/10/29/aclu-occupy-amendment-exercising-ows-79111/
- Does the First Amendment Protect the “Occupy” Protesters?  http://legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com/does-the-first-amendment-protect-the-%E2%80%9Coccupy%E2%80%9D-protesters-93737
- Yes, We Have a Permit to Occupy; It’s Called The 1st Amendment To The United States Constitution http://justanothercoverup.com/politics/yes-we-have-a-permit-to-occupy-its-called-the-1st-amendment-to-the-united-states-constitution

Forget Wall Street: Occupy The Voting Booth, Marni Chan http://www.forbes.com/sites/marnichan/2011/10/10/forget-wall-street-occupy-the-voting-booth/

From Boston To Wichita To Denver: Thousands Around The Country Join The 99 Percent Movement http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/06/336668/thousands-join-99-percent-movement/

From Europe With Love: U.S. ‘Indignados’ Occupy Wall Street, Ihsaan Tharoor http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/10/05/from-europe-with-love-the-u-s-indignados-have-arrived/#ixzz1ZuQ9El2v

From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Everywhere, Nathan Schneider http://www.thenation.com/article/163924/occupy-wall-street-occupy-everywhere?rel=emailNation

GOP Fiscal Conservatives With A Taste For Pork http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/30/fiscal-conservatives-with-a-taste-for-pork.html

GOP Releases Plan To Cut Corporate Taxes, Make Offshoring Jobs Easier http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/26/354280/gop-corporate-tax-cut-offshoring-easier/

GOP: Calling BS on GOP ideas for job creation, Greg Sargent http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/calling-bs-on-gops-ideas-for-job-creation/2011/10/31/gIQATJNKZM_blog.html

Got Class Warfare? Occupy Wall Street Now!, Henry A. Giroux http://www.truth-out.org/got-class-warfare-occupy-wall-street-now/1317760461

Group tries to link Occupy Wall Street to anti-Semitism, Tim Molloy http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/us-occupywallstreet-idUSTRE79H8DE20111018

Here’s a demand: forgive student loan debt, Robert Applebaum http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/03/demand-forgive-student-loan-debt

Here’s Occupy Wall Street’s “One Demand”: Sanity, Richard RJ Eskow http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/heres-occupy-wall-streets_b_992659.html

The Hidden Power of Occupy Wall Street, Edward Murray http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-murray/occupy-wall-street-protest_b_988341.html?ref=mostpopular

Homeless in America, Barbara Ehrenreich http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/24/homeless-in-america/

How I was arrested at OWS, Naomi Wolf http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/19/naomi-wolf-arrest-occupy-wall-street?newsfeed=true

How Killer Student Debt and Unemployment Made Young People the Leaders at Occupy Wall Street http://www.alternet.org/rss/1/675403/how_killer_student_debt_and_unemployment_made_young_people_the_leaders_at_occupy_wall_street?akid=7657.200602.1t_5V3&rd=1&t=12

How the Legal System Favors the 1 Percent, Glenn Greenwald http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/legal-system-favors-one-percent 

How the Rich Subverted the Legal System and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land, Glenn Greenwald http://www.thenation.com/article/164162/how-rich-subverted-legal-system-and-occupy-wall-street-swept-land?rel=emailNation

How #OccupyWallStreet Is Evolving and Gaining Power, Mark Engler http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/06

How Unequal We Are: The Top 5 Facts You Should Know About The Wealthiest One Percent Of Americans, Zaid Jilani http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/

How Wall Street Occupied America, Bill Moyers http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/04

If Top 1% Hadn’t Ripped Off Trillions, You’d Likely Be Making Thousands of Dollars More Right Now http://www.alternet.org/economy/152621/if_top_1_hadn’t_ripped_off_trillions,_you’d_likely_be_making_thousands_of_dollars_more_right_now/

The importance of protests, Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/2011/10/30/the_importance_of_protests/

Indigenous (Native American) Groups at Occupy Wall Street Mark Columbus Day as Day of Mourning http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2011/10/11/indigenous_groups_at_occupy_wall_street

Is “Occupy Wall Street” class warfare? Damn right. And about time, Anita Bartholomew http://www.examiner.com/liberal-in-tampa-bay/is-occupy-wall-street-class-warfare-damn-right-and-about-time

Is the Wall Street Occupation a Spark that Can Ignite a New U.S. Economic Justice Movement?  Interview with Chris Hedges http://www.btlonline.org/2011/seg/111007af-btl-hedges.html

It’s Labor vs. Capital, Stupid, David Morris http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/07-1

It’s Time to Fight Back and Take the Occupy Movement to the Ballot Box, Sheila Musaji http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/take-the-occupy-movement-to-the-ballot-box/0018838

Van Jones on America’s Uprising: It’s Going To Be an Epic Battle http://www.alternet.org/story/152616/van_jones_on_america%27s_uprising%3A_it%27s_going_be_an_epic_battle?akid=7664.200602.bvLHRV&rd=1&t=2

Journalists Funded By ‘Vulture Capitalist’ Paul Singer Campaign To Smear Wall Street Protests, Lee Fang http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/10/339862/paul-singer-vulture-capitalist-journalists/

Lawyers Who Have Occupy Wall Street’s Back, Victoria Pynchon http://www.forbes.com/sites/shenegotiates/2011/10/19/lawyers-who-have-occupy-wall-streets-back/

The Legitimate Gripes of the Other 99 Percent, Gadi Dechter http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/10/legitimate_gripes.html

MEDIA AND OWS
- A Guide To The Smear Campaign Against Occupy Wall Street http://mediamatters.org/research/201110180014
- Does Occupy Wall Street Make Mainstream American Media Irrelevant?, David Nassar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-nassar/occupy-wall-street-media-coverage_b_996942.html
- Everything The Media Told You About Occupy Wall Street Is Wrong, Keith Boykin http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-boykin/occupy-wall-street-media_b_1019707.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1047286,b=facebook
- How the Bitter Elitists at Fox News Keep Trying—And Failing—to Dampen Support for Occupy Wall Street, Mark Howard http://www.alternet.org/media/152889/how_the_bitter_elitists_at_fox_news_keep_trying_—_and_failing_—_to_dampen_support_for_occupy_wall_street
- New York Post declares war on Occupy Wall Street, Justin Elliott
- Keith Olbermann: Occupy Wall Street Confusing ‘Corrupt’ And ‘Dense’ Media (VIDEO)  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/keith-olbermann-occupy-wall-street-media_n_998093.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
- Why Establishment Media & the Power Elite Loathe Occupy Wall Street, Kevin Gosztola http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/09/27/why-establishment-media-the-power-elite-loathe-occupy-wall-street/

Medical Professionals Protest Corporate Greed At Occupy Wall Street http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/10/23/medical-professionals-protest-corporate-greed-at-occupy-wall-street/

Meet the 0.01 Percent: War Profiteers, Robert Greenwald http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/10/27/meet-the-0-01-percent-war-profiteers/

The More Americans That Go On Food Stamps The More Money JP Morgan Makes http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-more-americans-that-go-on-food-stamps-the-more-money-jp-morgan-makes

The NYPD’s Violent Crackdown on Occupy Wall Street Protesters, Michael Tracy http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-police-violence

NON-VIOLENCE
- Non Violent Struggle – 50 Crucial Points http://howtocamp.takethesquare.net/2011/10/12/non-violent-struggle-50-crucial-points/

Obama: Occupy Wall Street reflects “broad-based frustration”  http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20116707-503544.html

The Obligation to Peacefully Disrupt, Naomi Wolf http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8042-the-obligation-to-peacefully-disrupt

Occupiers Have to Convince the Other 99 Percent, Chris Hedges http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/occupiers_have_to_convince_the_other_99_percent_20111024/

The Occupation Movement has Broken Through a Wall in America: Corporate Greed is on the Table, Dave Lindorff http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/07/corporate-greed-is-on-the-table/ 

‘Occupy’ anti-capitalism protests spread around the world http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/16/occupy-protests-europe-london-assange

Occupy the Food System!,  Eric Holt Gimenez and Tanya Kerssen http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/271-38/8060-occupy-the-food-system

Occupy Oakland, a gallery of rebels http://silverunderground.com/2011/10/occupyoakland-a-gallery-of-rebels/

Occupy Sesame Street, Alexandra Petri http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/post/occupy-sesame-street/2011/10/05/gIQAviCBOL_blog.html

Occupy the Treasury! Reclaim the Monetary System with the NEED Act - HR 2990 sponsored by Dennis Kucinich http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article31264.html

Occupy the world, Noam Chomsky http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8210-occupy-the-world

The OWS Movement and Law Enforcement, Sheila Musaji http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/the-ows-movement-and-law-enforcement/0018837

Occupy Wall Street: As Movement Spreads, a Message Evolves, Nate Rawlings http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/10/03/occupy-wall-street-protest-message-becomes-clearer-as-movement-spreads/#ixzz1Zqq3LvPN

OWS and Homelessness: Throw Them Out With the Trash, Barbara Ehrenreich http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8058-ows-and-homelessness-throw-them-out-with-the-trash

OWS Demands Are Clear, Sheila Musaji http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/ows-demands/0018835

Occupy Wall Street demonstrators send message: Where are the jobs? http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2011/09/occupy_wall_street_demonstrato.html

Occupy Wall Street: echoes of the past as protesters grasp the future, Ana Marie Cox (comparing SDS & Port Huron Statement)  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ana-marie-cox-blog/2011/oct/04/occupy-wall-street-protesters

Occupy Wall Street Ends Capitalism’s Alibi, Richard Wolff http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/04-3

Occupy Wall Street FAQ, Nathan Schneider http://www.thenation.com/article/163719/occupy-wall-street-faq

Occupy Wall Street An ‘Effective’ Movement, Thomas Friedman Says:  ‘Your generation, the MTV generation, they need to be the regeneration,’ writer tells MTV News http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1672209/occupy-wall-street-thomas-friedman.jhtml

OWS deserves our respect, Ralph Gomory http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-gomory/occupy-wall-street-goal_b_1067476.html

Occupy Wall Street protest ‘about people claiming some autonomy’, Brad Knickerbocker http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1002/Occupy-Wall-Street-protest-about-people-claiming-some-autonomy

Occupy Wall Street Protest: Why Reckless Bankers Still Owe America, Hao Li http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/222018/20110929/occupy-wall-street-protest.htm

OWS Real Demands, Keith Ellison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-keith-ellison/occupy-wall-streets-real-_b_1009368.html

Occupy Wall Street: the week in pictures http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/sep/30/occupy-wall-street-in-pictures?newsfeed=true

Occupy Wall Street: inquiries launched as new pepper-spray video emergesNYPD officer Anthony Bologna faces two investigations as video emerges of a second pepper-spray incident http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/sep/28/occupy-wall-street-anthony-bologna?newsfeed=true

The Occupy Wall Street Movement: Report from the Frontlines: Origins of the 99% Movement, David DeGraw http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26864

Occupy Wall Street’s Crowd Democracy– the Anti-Mob http://www.indypendent.org/2011/10/08/crowd-democracy-antimob/

Occupying the Heart of the Beast: Observations, Impressions and Images From Amid the Multitudes in Liberty Plaza, Phil Rockstroh http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/05-1

OWS to Supercommittee: Accountability, Not Austerity! http://www.thenation.com/article/164079/ows-supercommittee-accountability-not-austerity

#OccupyWallSt, Then #OccupyKSt, Then #OccupyMainSt, Lawrence Lessig http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/occupywallst-then-occupyk_b_995547.html

Scott Olsen injuries prompt review as Occupy Oakland protests continue http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/26/scott-olsen-occupy-oakland-review?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

Our Elected Representatives Need to Respond to Clear OWS Demands, Sheila Musaji http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/ows-demands-are-clear-elected-representatives-response-is-not/0018836

Our Politicians Are Money Launderers Not Too Different from Tony Soprano, Bill Moyers http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152949/bill_moyers:_our_politicians_are_money_launderers_not_too_different_from_tony_soprano_/

Patriot Act: Reform the un-American Patriot Act, Farhana Khera http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/26/opinion/khera-patriot-act/index.html

Patriotic Millionaires Echo Occupy Wall Street http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/03/patriotic-millionaires-occupy-wall-street_n_993360.html

The People Versus the Police, Naoi Wolf http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/275-42/8211-the-people-versus-the-police

Poets Occupy Philadelphia in Solidarity With Occupy Wall Street, Feliz Molina http://www.huffingtonpost.com/feliz-l-molina/occupy-philadelphia-_b_993375.html

Policing the Prophets of Wall Street, Amy Goodman http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/policing_the_prophets_of_wall_street_20111004/

Poverty Swallows America, Andy Kroll http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/06/poverty-swallows-america/

Protestors’ Message Pretty Simple and Clear: Enough Is Enough, Donna Smith http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/05-8

The real Wall Street occupation is online http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/the-real-wall-street-occupation-is-online/2010/12/20/gIQAFKANfM_blog.html

Rediscovering Civil Disobedience, George Goehl http://www.thenation.com/article/164030/rediscovering-civil-disobedience?rel=emailNation

Rich People Create Jobs And five other myths that must die for our economy to live, Kevin Drum http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/rich-people-dont-create-jobs

Semper Fi: Occupy Marines Bringing Reinforcements To Occupy The Nation, Stephen D. Foster, Jr.  http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/22/semper-fi-occupy-marines-bringing-reinforcements-to-occupy-the-nation/

So Real it Hurts - Notes on Occupy Wall Street, Manissa McCleave Maharawal http://www.leftturn.org/so-real-it-hurts-notes-occupy-wall-street

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s assignment editor, Glenn Greenwald http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/04/andrew_ross_sorkins_assignment_editor/singleton/

SPIRITUALITY, RELIGION & THE OWS MOVEMENT
- A Shining City: The Occupy Movement and the American Soul, Elizabeth Drescher http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/5239/a_shining_city%3A_the_occupy_movement_and_the_american_soul
- An Open Letter to the Occupiers from a Veteran Troublemaker, Jim Wallis http://blog.sojo.net/2011/10/13/an-open-letter-to-the-occupiers-from-a-veteran-troublemaker/
- Bowing Down to the God of Economic Liberty, Larry Greenfield http://ethicsdaily.com/bowing-down-to-the-god-of-economic-liberty-cms-18680
- Faith Diary: Banking on Sharia http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/uk/2009/religion/7924673.stm
- Faith Groups Lend Diverse Voices to the Occupy Movement http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/10/occupy_faith_groups.html
- Faith groups target ‘Super Committee’ on poverty http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/faith-groups-target-super-committee-on-poverty/2011/10/26/gIQAj4CUJM_story.html
- Faith leaders join call of Occupy Wall Street protesters, find link between religion and movement, Albor Ruiz http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/occupy_wall_street/2011/10/12/2011-10-12_faith_leaders_join_call_of_wall_st_protesters.html
- God Dissolves into the Occupy Movement, Anthea Butler, Elizabeth Drescher, Peter Laarman, Sarah Posner and Nathan Schneider http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/5268/god_dissolves_into_the_occupy_movement
- How Christian Fundamentalism Helped Empower the Top 1% to Exploit the 99%, Frank Schaeffer http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152724/how_christian_fundamentalism_helped_empower_the_top_1_to_exploit_the_99
- In Praise of Capital, Amy Levin http://therevealer.org/archives/9599
- Interfaith forum examines what it means to be a paycheck away from poverty http://www.mpac.org/programs/government-relations/forum-examines-reality-of-being-a-paycheck-away-from-poverty.php
- Is #OccupyWallStreet a Spiritual Movement?, Eric Allen Bell http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/12/1025489/-Is-OccupyWallStreet-a-Spiritual-Movement
- Islamic Banking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking
- Steve Jobs, #occupywallst, and Usury, Jay Michaelson http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/jaymichaelson/5226/steve_jobs%2C_#occupywallst%2C_and_usury
- “Just Camp Here and Stay:” Dr. King and the Occupy Wall Street Movement, Be Scofield http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2011/10/18/just-camp-here-and-stay-dr-king-and-the-occupy-wall-street-movement/
- Less mosques, more charity, Abrahim Appel http://www.altmuslim.com/a/a/a/4478
- Major Faith Organizations Join to Kick Off National Food Stamp Challenge http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/major-faith-organizations-join-to-kick-off-national-food-stamp-challenge-132641143.html
- The Message and Strategy That Is Needed by Occupy Wall Street, Rabbi Michael Lerner http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-michael-lerner/post_2544_b_1016513.html
- My Take: Occupy Wall Street looks like church to me, Marisa Egerstrom http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/07/my-take-occupy-wall-street-looks-like-church-to-me/
- “Occupy”: A Taste like Pickled Herring?, Rabbi Arthur Waskow http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/occupy-a-taste-like-pickled-herring/0018825 
- Occupy Together - the Spiritual Dimension, Sheila Musaji http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/occupy-together-where-are-the-clergy/0018828
- Occupy Interfaith: Why Millennials, Including the Irreligious, Need to Care About Religion, Chris Stedman http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2011/10/occupy-interfaith.html
- Occupy Wall Street is a church of dissent not a protest, Mat Stoller http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/matt-stoller-occupywallstreet-is-a-church-of-dissent-not-a-protest.html
Occupy the Greek Orthodox Church, Louis A. Ruprecht http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/5263/occupy_the_greek_orthodox_church
- The Occupy movement and its religious connections, Bill Haley http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/the-occupy-movement-and-its-religious-connections/2011/10/17/gIQAfeXluL_blog.html
- Occupy Religion: Religion for the Rest of Us (a divine nobodies revolution), http://www.divinenobodies.com/blog/2011/10/occupy-religion-a-divine-nobodies-revolution/
- Occupy Wall Street: ‘Protest Chaplains’ Shepherd Movement’s Spiritual Side, Jack Jenkins http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/occupy-wall-street-protest-chaplains_n_1004112.html
- Occupy Wall Street looks like church to me, Marisa Egerstrom http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/07/my-take-occupy-wall-street-looks-like-church-to-me/
- Occupy Wall Street protests have a spiritual side, Cathy Lynn Grossman http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-protests-catholic-god/1
- #OccupyWallSt, spirituality, and faith, John D. Boy http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/10/12/occupywallst-spirituality-and-faith/
- Occupy Wall Street’s Most Unlikely Ally: The Pope, Thomas J. Reese http://www.npr.org/2011/10/24/141659992/occupy-wall-streets-most-unlikely-ally-the-pope
- Parameters of the Islamic Economic System , Mehmet Can http://www.scribd.com/doc/38145880/The-Vatican-Islamic-Banking
- Prophets Against Profits? What Occupy Wall Street Misses, Bruce Wydick http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/octoberweb-only/occupy-wall-st.html
- Religion at OWS, Kim Lawton http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/october-28-2011/religion-at-occupy-wall-street/9828/
- Religion claims its place in Occupy Wall Street, Jay Lindsay http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g94hEKVdDTDRWlf5DUYh12CdZWiA?docId=d8f8676e9f4a4c52a9f300c0565bc671
- Risky Business: The Pitfalls at the Corner of Church & Wall Street: What Role Should Churches Play in Economic Change?, Elizabeth Drescher http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5141/risky_business%3A_the_pitfalls_at_the_corner_of_church_%26_wall_street_/
- Should Muslims Occupy Wall Street Too?, Dr. David Liepert http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/should-muslims-occupy-wall-street-too/0018829
- Spirituality and the “Occupy Wall Street” Movement, Courtney Bender http://uscmediareligion.org/theScoop/453/Preoccupations-Spirituality-and-Occupy-Wall-Street-Movement
- The Spirituality of #Occupy, Jack Varnell http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-spirituality-of-occupy/
- SPIRITUALITY AND THE OWS MOVEMENT, with article collection http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/occupy-together-where-are-the-clergy
Talking Religion At #OccupyWallStreet, Timothy King http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-king/occupywallstreet-bruce-ca_b_1003785.html
- Unitarian Universalists and the Occupy Movement http://uugrowth.com/uu-occupy-movement/
- Vatican Calls For Economic Equality, Sweeping Reform Of Global Financial System, Travis Waldron http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/24/351277/the-vatican-calls-for-economic-equality-reform-of-world-financial-system/
- Vatican Paper Supports Islamic Finance. France Wants Its Share of Sharia Banking http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3819
- Vatican Says Islamic Finance May Help Western Banks in Crisis, Lorenzo Totaro http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aOsOLE8uiNOg
- Vatican urges major economic reform, Victor L. Simpson http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iAhjVj2Uh-wzWQQx9YZrodvKmVkQ?docId=14b9f8e16b19419f8c06d0cea6971dec
- The Vatican’s Breathtakingly Good Statement on Economics, Steve Schneck http://catholicsinalliance.org/cgf102611schneck.php
- Wall Street protests gain Vatican support, Flavia Rotundi http://www.smh.com.au/world/wall-street-protests-gain-vatican-support-20111025-1mi3a.html
- What If “Occupy Wall Street” Could Be Attempted in the Catholic Church?, Tom Beaudoin http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=4642
- When the Good Samaritan Came to Wall Street, Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-osagyefo-uhuru-sekou/occupy-wall-street-religion_b_1011791.html
- Where Are the Clergy? A Report from Occupy DC , Sarah Posner http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/5217/where_are_the_clergy_a_report_from_occupy_dc

Jon Stewart on the Wall Street pepper-spray attack http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/09/30/morning_clip

TEA PARTY & OWS MOVEMENT
- Tea Partiers: The self-hating 99 per cent, Heather Digby Parton http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/10/2011101883450141716.html
- Tea party, Occupy movements find some common ground, Marc Fischer http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/newsworldnation/937174-227/tea-party-occupy-movements-find-some-common.html
- Tea Party: Join Us. #OccupyWallStreet:  An open letter to the Tea Party leaders and supporters http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/02/1022242/-Tea-Party:-Join-Us-OccupyWallStreet
- 10 Things The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street Have In Common, Josh Brown http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2011/10/07/10-things-the-tea-party-and-occupy-wall-street-have-in-common/
- A Cause to Unite Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, Bob Edgar of Common Cause http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-bob-edgar/tea-party-occupy-wall-street_b_1000604.html
- Can Tea Party members join the “Occupy Wall Street” protest, have they and the liberals found common ground?  http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/the-tea-party-members-join-the-occupy-wall-street-protest-have-they-and-the-liberals-found-common/question-2198783/
- Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party: The Search For Common Ground, Gene Maddaus http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/10/tea_party_occupy_wall_street.php
- Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party: Strange Bedfellows, Tom Hitchcock http://politics.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980520360
- Top 5 Reasons Why The Occupy Wall Street Protests Embody Values Of The Real Boston Tea Party, Lee Fang http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/10/03/333925/top-5-reasons-why-the-occupy-wall-street-protests-embody-values-of-the-real-boston-tea-party/

Think Again: The Era of the ‘One Percent’, Eric Alterman (good breakdown of income inequalities) http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/10/ta100611.html

Thoreau and the OWS movement, Hasan Zillur Rahim http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/thoreau-and-the-occupy-wall-street-movement/0018819

Too Big to Jail, Robert Scheer http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/83-83/8231-too-big-to-jail

Top 1% Files for Trademark of “Occupy Wall Street”  http://www.ipbrief.net/2011/10/30/top-1-files-for-trademark-of-%E2%80%9Coccupy-wall-street%E2%80%9D/

Transaction Tax On Financial Speculation Gets Boost From Occupy Wall Street, Ryan Grim http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/transaction-tax-financial-speculation-occupy-wall-street_n_1024692.html

Transportation Union Requests Right to Refuse NYPD Orders to Transport Arrested Protesters http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/147875/transportation-union-requests-right-to-refuse-nypd-orders-to-transport-arrested-protesters/

Unions Lend Money And Muscle To Occupy Wall Street http://ology.com/politics/unions-lend-money-and-muscle-occupy-wall-street

U.S. Marines Defend Occupy Wall Street Protesters [Video] http://www.care2.com/causes/u-s-marines-protect-occupy-wall-street-protesters-video.html#ixzz1bbnCmreU

Utopian, Practical: What DREAM Is Our One Demand?, Roger Kimmel Smith http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/06-3

VIDEO Alan Grayson on Occupy Wall Street http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yhrwmJcsfT0

Video: Keith Olbermann on Islamophobic Smears of Occupy Wall Street http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42UFY3Ate8s

Video:  Message To Humanity: The Time is Now - The Revolution Is Coming!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-gAm5qxsQY&feature=youtu.be

Video:  Matt Taibbi With Don Imus - My Advice To Occupy Wall Street: Hit Bankers Where It Hurts http://dailybail.com/home/matt-taibbi-with-don-imus-my-advice-to-occupy-wall-street-hi.html

Video:  Occupy Wall Street - Chris Hedges shuts down CBC Kevin O’Leary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAhHPIuTQ5k&feature=share
VIDEO:  Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) http://www.vimeo.com/30081785

VIDEO:  We The People Have Found Our Voice (Occupy Wall Street)  http://vimeo.com/30241489

Wall Street Isn’t Winning – It’s Cheating, Matt Taibbi http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025

Wall Street Occupiers Fight America’s Democracy Deficit, Roger Bybee http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12057/occupiers_of_wall_street_fight_real_federal_deficit_absence_of_democracy/

Wall Street Protesters: Middle Class Issues, Peter S. Goodman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-s-goodman/occupy-wall-street-protests_b_989125.html

Wall Street’s 99 Percent Show Family Values, Sonya Huber http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sonya-huber/99-percent-family-values_b_993920.html 

Wall Street’s Two Worst Nightmares: Truth and Democracy, Thomas Magstadt   http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/84-84/7971-wall-streets-two-worst-nightmares-truth-and-democracy

Elizabeth Warren stands by Occupy Wall Street,  Greg Sargent http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/game-on-elizabeth-warren-stands-by-occupy-wall-street/2011/10/26/gIQAX1iMJM_blog.html

We Are All Human Microphones Now http://www.thenation.com/blog/163767/we-are-all-human-microphones-now

‘We haven’t had a shortage of demands and solutions. We’ve had a shortage of mass movements.’, Ezra Klein http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/we-havent-had-a-shortage-of-demands-and-solutions-weve-had-a-shortage-of-mass-movements/2011/08/25/gIQAqE6aIL_blog.html

We Need Real Change Not Promises, Sheila Musaji http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/obama_hope_is_a_terrible_thing_to_waste

We, the 99 Percent, Demand the End of the Wars Now, Robert Naiman http://www.truth-out.org/we-99-percent-demand-end-wars-now/1318014376

Welcome to the Revolution: Life @ Occupy Wall Street’s Liberty Park, David DeGraw (with video of soldiers at protest) http://www.truth-out.org/welcome-revolution-life-occupy-wall-streets-liberty-park/1317825971

Were U.S. Elections Sold to Corporations So Clarence Thomas Could Reward His Friends?  http://www.alternet.org/news/152901/were_u.s._elections_sold_to_corporations_so_clarence_thomas_could_reward_his_friends/

Cornel West interview with Amy Goodman on Occupy Wall Street: It’s the Makings of a U.S. Autumn Responding to the Arab Spring http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/9/29/cornel_west_on_occupy_wall_street_its_the_makings_of_a_us_autumn_responding_to_the_arab_spring

Dr. Cornel West interview with Amy Goodman: “We Are in a Magnificent Moment of Democratic Awakening” http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2011/10/24/dr_cornel_west_we_are_in

What are those OWS people so angry about?, Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/2011/10/17/what_are_those_ows_people_so_angry_about/singleton/

What are your demands?l, Ben Tripp http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-tripp/what-are-your-demands_b_991130.html

What do they want?: Justice, Robert Scheer http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_do_they_want_justice_20111006/

What if the Occupy Movement Is a Revolution?, Max Berger http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-berger/what-if-the-occupy-moveme_b_1072174.html

What Occupy DC wants: Less corporate money in politics http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-occupy-dc-wants-less-corporate-money-in-politics/2011/10/03/gIQAgUj4IL_blog.html

What OWS says about America, Hart Williams http://themoderatevoice.com/126984/what-occupy-wall-street-says-about-america/

What the protestors are so angry about (with excellent charts) http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

What’s behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?, Glenn Greenwald http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/28/protests_21/

Who are the 99 percent?, Ezra Klein http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/who-are-the-99-percent/2011/08/25/gIQAt87jKL_blog.html

Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue, Barbara Ehrenreich http://www.thenation.com/article/164138/why-homelessness-becoming-occupy-wall-street-issue?rel=emailNation

Why Lists of Demands Don’t Matter in Zuccotti Park, Tom Engelhardt http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/06-7

Why Occupy Wall Street and Democrats aren’t natural allies, James Downie http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/why-occupy-wall-street-and-democrats-arent-natural-allies/2011/10/05/gIQAYuvyNL_blog.html

Why So Many Demands for Demands?, Betsy Reed http://www.thenation.com/blog/163762/occupy-wall-street-why-so-many-demands-demands?rel=emailNation

Why the haves have so much http://www.npr.org/2011/10/29/141816778/why-the-haves-have-so-much

Why The Tea Party Should Join Occupy Wall Street, Ray Madeiros http://www.politicususa.com/en/tea-party-occupy-wall-street

Why the US public hates politics: Trust for the US government is at a record low, 22 per cent, as some see government as a threat to personal freedoms http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/2011101112950402587.html

Why There Are Protests On Wall Street: Wall Street’s Actions Impoverished More Than 60 Million People, Zaid Jilani http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/18/321844/why-people-protest-wall-street/

Originally posted 9/29/2011