Occupy Your City video
This story/video is re-posted from Brave New Films.
People young and old are taking the streets to let our government and corporations know that we are a democracy that’s not for sale.
The Occupy Wall Street protest is a full bore international indictment against corporate greed and dysfunctional government. Your leadership has helped us before and we need you again.
Will you use our inspiring video and images to activate and motivate a friend? We want everyone to know about the Occupy movement. Already, there are thousands of protesters in New York City and hundreds more in Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC, Seattle, Miami and elsewhere. The time is now. Protests are growing more each day, with some observers estimating the Occupy movement could swell to 250,000 online activists in the coming days.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
Oh brother.
Occupy? Occupy what? And what on Earth for?
Because all of the “reasons” I’ve seen seem to be dumb college kids scheming to blame their college loan debt on someone else in hopes of being able to avoid paying it off.
Go occupy a job and pay for your degree like generations of other students have done. Or maybe that degree in poetry or art wasn’t such a good idea in the first place.
The fruits of the self-centered Gen-Y indeed.
Another idiotic response from someone who has no idea what the Occupy Wall Street movement is about. The fact that taxpayers bailed out the financial institutions and the banks while millions of people fell into poverty is one of the main reasons for the Occupy Wall Street campaign.
But since you seem to be making unfounded and privileged claims maybe your time would be better spent on blogs that advocate greed and the support for the wealthy.
Oh, but Jeff, all we have to do is read what they are about.
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
(OWS didnt bother to read what happened when they did the tariffs back in the 30s, and the “living wage” thing is such a canard)
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system.
(Socialized Medicine. Let someone else pay for my healthcare)
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
(And how the hell is this going to be paid for. And tell us what idiot is going to pay an income to someone that does not work?)
Demand four: Free college education.
(Turning college into the 13th-16th grade, making most of the worthless degrees they are already turning out even more worthless)
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
(Says the people that spend most of their day on computers, sucking electricity from plants that run on fossil fuels, not to mention their love of gas-guzzling cars and scooters from the 70s and 80s)
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
(Now? Yes sir!…Oh yeah, the nation is broke. Let’s go print some money!)
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.
(Do these so-called college kids even grasp the basic concept of money?)
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
(Ok….)
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
(Cue Twilight Zone music)
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
(Guess too many of the “wrong” people have been winning elections lately because we sure didnt see this uproar in 2008. Gee, I wonder why?)
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all.
(I ran up debt I knew I couldn’t pay off, so I think you should just let me walk without having to pay a cent so I can go run up more debt….and then demand it be forgiven again!)
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
(Make it easy for me to go and buy stuff that I cant afford. Make it hard for the person selling it to me to know I cant pay for it.)
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
(How about people work on their own merits?)
But since you seem to be making unfounded and privileged claims maybe your time would be better spent on blogs that advocate greed and the support for the wealthy.”
oh but I am on one now.
You see, people like you sit around and pretend like you hate the “rich”, but you gladly patronize their products without a blink.
You can start with the computer in front of your face. What is that, a Macbook? Dell? HP?
That smartphone? IPhone? Android from HTC using apps from Google? running on AT&T or Sprint?
The clothes on your back I’m sure your made yourself?
How many TV shows do you watch (broadcast, cable, Netflix)? How many of those Hollywood stars are poor?
Logged into Facebook or Twitter today? Both owned by some very rich people too!
And I can only guess that among your obscure indie music collection you have an occasional Lady GaGa(rich girl) or Kanye West(rich guy) track that you groove to when no one is watching.
See! You support the wealthy too because *dirty little secret time* they make it possible for you to live in an advanced society with convince and comfort.
And because they offer great products/services, you pay them an agreed price that they use a portion of to enhance their lifestyle. You refer to it as “greed” here.
Wow, an apologist for the rich. I hope they pay you to be a cheerleader for them.
Did they commit a crime? I mean other than having more money than you, which is now some sort of felony in the land of Jeff Smith.
The only thing they did was apply themselves with their talents and took a risk, and became successful. Why dont you take a look at Steve Jobs. He started out in a garage with NOTHING and applied himself. HE took risks. He rose, fell and rose again.
He didn’t spend his time moaning about the man and spouting some bull about the “99%”.
Would you have preferred that he did instead of making the products I’m sure you are using right at this moment?
What in Gods name is your problem with people making money from that? If some book publisher offered you a million dollars to write a book, are you going to turn it down because the smell of having a bank account makes you vomit? I can guarantee you that you would take it in a heartbeat.
Wealth takes effort and maturity. Hang out with some successful people for once instead of wannabe Marxists that haven’t aged past 19, and spend their time on a quest to be ironic 24/7, and you will see that the rich have nothing to apologize about, but in fact are owed one by ignorant people that have been taught that it’s ok to steal other people’s wealth because they are jealous.
Ben–
“the “living wage” thing is such a canard.”
Really? Have you tried living on minimum wage? Or on food stamps now that our lovely governor has taken welfare away from people who need it the most? Either try it for a year and see how “groundless” a canard it is, or shut the fuck up about it. Don’t blather Rush’s talking points like they didn’t come directly into your head from right-wing radio; we’ve heard this all before.
“Socialized Medicine. Let someone else pay for my healthcare”
I’ve lived in two countries that had universal healthcare. The care there was much, much better than any healthcare I’ve ever gotten in this country. And the people in those countries think, and rightly so, that Americans are idiots for paying the most money for some of the worst health care in the world.
“And tell us what idiot is going to pay an income to someone that does not work?”
What an illiterate moron you are. They are not asking that people who don’t work get paid wages. They are asking that everyone who has jobs can live on what they make–which is far from the situation now. The NY Times recently ran an article called “Middle Class poverty.” If you would turn off Faux News once in a while and read information from credible sources, you’d know this is a growing trend. The greedy bastards at the top have captured most of the wealth in this country. There are banana republics in South America where the gap isn’t as large between the rich and the poor as it is here.
“Turning college into the 13th-16th grade, making most of the worthless degrees they are already turning out even more worthless…”
Again, I’ve lived in two countries where every citizen can go to school through a PhD program for free. I also have relatives in a third country who have their doctorates from this t ype of program. But then, they don’t live in countries where the upper ten percent is raking in the profits of oppressive taxes on the lower and working classes. Everybody pays the same taxes for education and health care, and the budgets for those programs are balanced and a priority.
I don’t think you could say that a PhD from, say, Wittenburg University or the Sorbonne was worthless. Not even you are that stupid.
“Says the people that spend most of their day on computers, sucking electricity from plants that run on fossil fuels, not to mention their love of gas-guzzling cars and scooters from the 70s and 80s..”
This is ludicrous. Everyone has to use the energy available, but better energy would mean less damage to the environment. And where do you get that poor people love gas-guzzling cars from the 70s and 80s? If you thought about it, which you obviously haven’t, maybe you’d realize that because a lot of those people need transportation and aren’t being paid living wages, they have to nurse older cars along and CAN’T AFFORD to buy ones that have better fuel efficiency. And it’s not like GR has a decent public transportation system. Bet you voted against the Rapid millages.
“Do these so-called college kids even grasp the basic concept of money?”
They grasp the fact that again, in order to hand over most of this country’s wealth to the uber-rich, the environment is being destroyed and priorities that many of us have are being completely ignored. And by the way–Rich DeVos increased his net worth by 43 percent over the past 5 years. Assholes like you kept telling Americans that all we had to do was hand over more money to them and they’d provide jobs for us. Well, Ben, since you’re so smart–where ARE those jobs we were promised? The Fat Capitalists never had any intention of living up to their end of that bargain, and yet people like you keep telling us that it is going to happen every day now. Right.
“The only thing they did was apply themselves with their talents and took a risk, and became successful.”
No, that’s not the only thing they did. They robbed the reserve wealth of this nation through the Wall Street bailout and tax cuts for the richest Americans. They used the hard work of the working class to build their businesses—and then took away their health care and kept cutting their wages so they could pocket more money. They forced people to work the jobs of two or three people for one set of wages. They used roads that we all pay for…they took away regulations on increases for utilities…they duped people into buying into scams that made them rich (can anyone say “pyramid scheme”?). They have increased “productivity” in this country and lowered wages to the point that many middle class people have to work two or three jobs in order to pay for basic necessities—which was not the case 30 years ago.
“Wealth takes effort and maturity.”
Bullshit, Ben. Wealth takes greed, a lack of conscience, and a level of self-interest that excludes treating those who made you wealthy with any fairness at all.
Your other points can all be deconstructed in the same way. You have no real information to offer, just scorn for people who have figured out that you and your kind are rank liars and robber barons. And we are coming for you, Ben. You should be happy to welcome Occupy Grand Rapids–they are a peaceful protest group. There are other people who think that more extreme measures will have to be used to rid the world of people like you.
And isn’t that what your posts are all about, Big Boy? Underneath the mocking and the scorn and the right-wing talking points you’re parroting, I can smell the fear. You know that the line between those who have taken too much for too long and the outraged, ransacked underclass is eroding. The truth is coming out, and your days of raking in the wealth of the country and hoarding it while mocking the very people you’ve robbed are coming to an end. Remember. We’re coming for you, one way or another.