If you haven’t been following Occupy Wall Street, you need to start. I arrived at Union Square Saturday evening fifteen minutes after the rampage of police brutality that left over eighty entirely peaceful protestors beaten, bruised, maced, and behind bars. I had thought that the NYPD had evolved/learned/matured since the “Guantanamo on the Hudson” nightmare of the 2004 Republican National Convention which consisted of 1800 protestors arrested. I was wrong.
The hauntingly oppressive atrocities committed by the NYPD last Saturday cannot be dismissed or forgotten. The term “excessive force” does not even begin to describe the authoritarian brutality of the tactics used. The higher-ranking officers who lead the way in turning Saturday’s peaceful march into a scene of sadistic chaos must be held accountable for their utterly shocking lack of humanity. Below is a link to one of the longest and most disturbing videos taken of the onslaught:
It’s enough to bring tears to your eyes, this murdering of the American dream caught on camera. I don’t care if you not politically inclined, or even if you’re a republican for that matter. If you care about freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, your solidarity lies with these courageous protestors who were slammed down face-first on the pavement for wanting a better America.
But the NYPD’s fascist malice will be their undoing. I spent the majority of Saturday night at Zucotti Plaza, sitting in on the General Assembly that took place at the protest site after the march, and all I saw was strength, resilience, a renewed conviction to continue fighting. Do not let American newspapers fool you; these protestors are not just a couple hundred dirty hippies and bums sitting around, smoking weed, and exchanging vague and lofty radical opinions. They are men and women of all ages and ethnicities, committed to creating a better America for our generation and generations to come, by any means necessary. They just might be our only hope.
On Friday at 4:00pm, the participants of Occupy Wall Street, with the support of various organizations, and all who are enraged by Saturday’s events, are marching from Zucotti Plaza to Police Square to demand that the NYPD be held accountable for their actions. If you live in the New York area, it is your civic duty to join us.
This isn’t over. Occupy Wall Street is growing and gathering strength with every passing day. The corporate pigs who have raped us, the American people, with their bottomless greed, are beginning to sweat. We will not stop until they are tarred, feathered, and driven out of our city.
I haven’t written in this blog in a very long time, and while my sabbatical from political insanity was undoubtedly a matter of personal health, it has also been due to the fact that I’ve been channeling all of my frustration and rage into the novel I’ve been writing about coming of age in the hostility and stupidity of today’s political and economic climate. In a way this blog was the precursor to my novel, a preparatory exercise in leftist journalistic writing that would serve as the innermost spiritual force within my protagonist and his mind-numbing woes. But I suppose it was also a matter of my part in this whole yin and yang arm-wrestles, as the genesis of my blog occurred simultaneously with the release of the Afghan War Diary and, more importantly, the rising presence of that now deflating Fox News parade float, the Tea Party.
But whatever the reason for my writing this blog (which I might add consisted solely of my own original (however pseudo-) journalistic writing (which is more than you can say for most political tumblrs)) and whatever the reason for my recent negligence, the most important thing is that I am nowhere near finished with what I sought out to do here.
As for the current political situation, it is more stagnant with corruption and corporate money than ever. While the unemployment continues to float above 9% and the last two months have produced pathetic job-creation numbers, fat-cat Republicans such as John Boehner continue forsaking economic progress in protecting the wallets of the wealthy from much-needed taxes, and the Democrats, as usual, are either too spineless or concerned with their careers to do anything about it. Citizens all over the Middle-East are calling out for revolution, hoping for the same success Egypt was graced with, while their corrupt leaders mow them down in the streets and grin at the fact that American Republican leaders have finally, and mysteriously, taken a stance against interventionist military action.
In short, it’s all bullshit. Our government has long been flooded with corporate money, and as long as that truth goes unaddressed, we are doomed to suffer the consequences.
But that doesn’t mean that we, the few who seem still care about our world, should throw up our arms and move to pastoral paradises where we can forget about all the evil old white men and their atrocities against both the innocent and apathetic.
The good fight is worth fighting. I’m still fighting it, and I hope you are too. Stay informed, stay angry, and most importantly, never forget the world we can create.
After forty years as congressman, democrat David Obey of Wisconsin as decided not to seek reelection. In this video, Obey explains how money and corporate contributions have poisoned the political world.
“When you blame yourself, you learn from it. If you blame someone else, you don’t learn nothing, cause hey, it’s not your fault, it’s his fault, over there.”
Don’t be fooled by the “protest” that is quickly turning into a coup in Ecuador right now.
Even policemen are reasonable enough to understand that throwing tear gas at your president is not the appropriate response to being told your bonuses will getting cut.
Miguel Carvajal, Ecuador’s minister for interior security, has stated that there were no such threats on policemen’s salaries or benefits in the first place, that the public has been led to believe so by an insidious disinformation campaign.
Who could ever be capable of such a colossal disinformation campaign? Who could completely convince thousands of people that their beneficent president is actually evil and needs to be overthrown?
Hmmm. Does anyone at Fox News speak Spanish?
Don’t be fooled by the facade. It happened in Venezuela, it happened in Honduras, and it’s happening now in Ecuador. But the world has changed. We have the internet, we have exposure, we have truth. The world will not stand by and watch as the economic hopes of yet another Latin American country die with the assassination of an innocent and altruistic president.
The invisible hands of imperialism will be seen. And they will be severed.
“I want to tell the country there has been an attempt at a coup…This is a Machiavellian plan organized by sectors of the right…We call on the citizens. We call on the armed forces. We call on other governments to defend our democratic institutions.”
-Miguel Carvajal, Ecuadorian Minister for Interior Security, today
