Class War in Congress
Source: cheappoet
Passing tests doesn’t begin to compare with searching and inquiring and pursuing topics that engage us and excite us. That’s far more significant than passing tests and, in fact, if that’s the kind of educational career you’re given the opportunity to pursue, you will remember what you discovered.
Brown, 29, had went to two hospitals complaining about pain in her leg in September. When she went to the St. Mary’s Health Center in Richmond Heights, Mo., on Sept. 21, 2011, she was not going to leave until she got answers.
She sat in a wheelchair, draped in a sheet inside the emergency room for seven hours after doctors examined her. When Richmond Heights police arrived they placed Brown under arrest for trespassing; dragged her from the wheelchair; and hauled her off to jail.
In the eight-minute video above we hear Brown moaning and struggling to breathe when officers lay her on a concrete floor in a jail cell. About 15 minutes later, a jail worker found Brown cold to the touch. She was rushed back to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.An autopsy later revealed, that Brown died from blood clots that started in her legs, then lodged in her lungs.
Police suspected Brown was using drugs but no drugs were found in her system.
One could assume that Brown’s treatment was not up to par because she was poor.
People who are well off don’t usually die on the floor of a jail cell.
If this country provided everyone with the same kind of health care these types of stories would not occur. What do you think?
RE: I give up
Not a sentiment I am proud of, but one that is my reality. I’ve been struggling for some time with the idea of seeking change in a world where I often feel so powerless and helpless. I’m surrounded by maddening and disheartening injustice that I am helpless to change. I am…
“And I can tell you this much - that isn’t a problem of Occupy. That is a problem of humanity.”
I actually stopped reading there.
OWS failed and has been failing SINCE DAY 1 not because humanity is imperfect but because the movement claimed to be something it NEVER was. It claimed to be David taking on Goliath, it claimed to fight injustice and stand for the oppressed, which it never did. Despite claims that the movement is headless, it was and still is unofficially led by cis white middle-class men, these are the people who started the first protests. All the attempts to GENUINELY take into consideration the plight of PoC, women, and queers were either ignored or abruptly shut down. We told you time and time again, yet you refuse to listen, you were only interested in unity in YOUR terms. Without unity, OWS is doomed to failure
Let me rephrase. That isn’t a problem specific to Occupy. I would ask you what the social movement groups you do support have done for the oppressed in China, India, tribes in Central and South America? I ask that not to question your integrity or willingness to help those who are oppressed, but to illustrate that there will always be a group that goes ignored (which is NOT to say that is okay). The reason for this goes beyond Occupy. I feel this is a problem with humanity. It is our myopic, self-serving nature as a species. We serve and stand by the issues we identify with.
Would you really have wanted Occupy to speak for PoC? For the most part I have found that it has been an unwelcome intrusion. Black people specifically make up a small % of the US American 99%, so by definition, if Occupy was to represent the 99%, black people would be out numbered and buried in the voices. Hence the problem of living as a minority here in the states and in many countries. Those in the minority feel they continually go unheard, largely due to prejudice and also largely due to statistical reality of being a minority (fewer voices are harder to hear). So how do you get heard? By asking other PoC and whites to stand beside you. On issues specific to black people, white people should take a back seat. Those in the majority have no right to champion the causes of those in the minority. Granted, many who do are not doing so to control poC or overpower PoC - their motives are often well-meaning, but unwelcomed or misplaced.
But what of economic inequality and other issues that affect and oppress all colors of people (which is what Occupy was all about)? What would you have Occupy do? What is the proper way for white activists to approach social and economic issues that affect them as well as PoC? This is a genuine question and I am genuinely listening.
”We told you time and time again, yet you refuse to listen, you were only interested in unity in YOUR terms.”
Because I write under the name Occupy, you presume I am all of those things. In fact, I am a mixed-race, queer, disabled, lower class female.
Occupy was an idea. An idea “co-opted” by people who make a life out of activism. Many of whom being more concerned with arguing over proper terminologies and going by the book of Marxist ideology than about truly understanding what it means to be oppressed and helping those who are. The real 99% are your average citizens (yes some of them white who are poor, dumb, scared and/or oppressed), all people who feel trapped and scared and tired. The thousands of people who went to the street in NYC and Oakland, those are your Occupiers, that is what this was really about, who it was about. It was Occupy the Hood, it was Occupy Homes, it was Occupy Banks, it is not and will never be (unless we redefine it to be) just a bunch of cis white male pretentious elitist racists arguing over proper use of the term “liberal”. I am not Occupy, no one person or one group is Occupy. Therefore the actions of some are not the actions of all. I have never once disregarded the opinions of PoC or other minorities, nor do I accept anyone who does and claims to speak for Occupy.
I’m not defending Occupy. “Occupy” doesn’t matter. Call it whatever you want, I don’t care about brand name and frankly no one should. Prior to Occupy, I have never affiliated myself with any group or movement. For me, Occupy served as an umbrella that heretofore happened to encompass many social issues I supported and changes I wished to see happen. I still support those issues and those are still the changes I wish to see happen. Nothing has changed. All that has changed is the perception of what Occupy stands for or failed to accomplish or failed to represent.
Do we take Occupy back and define it by our terms, by the terms we all believed Occupy to originally stand for or do we toss it aside and go back to square one? What is the most productive way forward?
Source: enlighteningnews
does America still have a ‘working class’ ? If so it’s become strangely invisible because all the media and politicians ever talk about is the ‘middle class’. To listen to them you’d think everyone but the super-rich 1% is ‘middle-class’. Weird ..
Half of what used to be considered middle class is under that same shitty umbrella, I’m afraid to say. Having multiple degrees and working 9-5 in an office doesn’t guarantee health coverage. Most politicians, who are themselves rich, are severely clueless as to the kind of lives their constituents live.
(via raw-r-evolution)
Source: cartoonpolitics
Student loan debt, at $830 billion, now exceeds total US credit card debt, itself bloated to the bubble level of $827 billion. And student loan debt is growing at the rate of $90 billion a year. Will it be the next credit bubble to burst ? More here
(via amodernmanifesto)
Source: cartoonpolitics
Matt Taibi: Another Hidden Bailout: Helping Wall Street Collect Your Rent.
Here’s yet another form of hidden bailout the federal government doles out to our big banks, without the public having much of a clue.
This is from the WSJ this morning:
Some of the biggest names on Wall Street are lining up to become landlords to cash-strapped Americans by bidding on pools of foreclosed properties being sold by Fannie Mae…
While the current approach of selling homes one-by-one has its own high costs and is sometimes inefficient, selling properties in bulk to large investors could require Fannie Mae to sell at a big discount, leading to larger initial costs.
In con artistry parlance, they call this the “reload.” That’s when you hit the same mark twice – typically with a second scam designed to “fix” the damage caused by the first scam. Someone robs your house, then comes by the next day and sells you a fancy alarm system, that’s the reload.
In this case, banks pumped up the real estate market by creating huge volumes of subprime loans, then dumped a lot of them on, among others, Fannie and Freddie, the ever-ready enthusiastic state customer. Now the loans have crashed in value, yet the GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises) are still out there feeding the banks money through two continuous bailouts.
Congratulations, America, your quasi-governmental housing entity is about to subcontract out mass-landlording/slumlording jobs to the likes of John Paulson and Warren Buffett…
OWS Marchers Demand Police Commissioner's Resignation
After police arrested dozens of Occupy Wall Street participants over the weekend, protestors marched to New York City Police Department headquarters today to demand the resignation of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement marched from Foley Square to One Police Plaza, the Lower Manhattan headquarters of the NYPD.
Besides wanting Kelly to resign, the demonstrators also sounded off about the arrests of about 73 people who clashed with police at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan last weekend.
Police say they cleared Zuccotti because protestors were breaking park rules, but some protestors say those arrested were mistreated and attacked by police.
“On Saturday night, as I simply sat in a park, I was violently arrested with my friends and watched as blood-thirsty cops stomped on their faces, knelt on their necks, pulled them by their hair and slammed them into windows,” said Occupy Wall Street protestor Jen Waller.
(via mochente)
Source: fuckyeahmarxismleninism
Occupy and “The American Spring”: Time for Occupy To Blossom?
National Occupation of Washington, DC Will Bring Occupiers Together to Share Experiences, Educate Each Other and Build an Independent Movement to Shift Power from Concentrated Wealth
Many in the corporate media like to think the Occupy is over, but those of us involved know better. We do not rely on the corporate media to validate the work of Occupy, we see it in our communities. And, we know to look to our own media for accurate information. The Occupied Wall Street Journal reports on the actions of the Occupy, it’s weekly “Reports from the Front Lines” is something many of us look forward to so we can see the movement taking action across the country.
Another visible presence of Occupy will be evident this spring in Washington, DC when the National Occupation of Washington, DC begins on March 30th. The event, which will continue through the month of April, is being organized by members of dozens of occupies from around the country. Twenty-five General Assemblies have passed statements of solidarity for this national occupy event.
NOW DC begins with a lot of activity. On the first day, Occupy the EPA, will bring people together to protect the planet for a sustainable future. It will feature Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, known for her anti-nuclear activism, Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo an EPA whistleblower and Margaret Flowers, also a pediatrician, noted for her advocacy for single payer health care among others. The march will include a pack of alpaca’s, a giant Earth and a giant polar bear puppet.
The weekend of March 31st and April 1st includes a two day “Bail Out America” direct action training organized by the Backbone Campaign which will provide information on strategies and tactics and developing creative actions that advance the causes of Occupy. Also that weekend will be the Occupation of the Department of Education, which will include teach-ins about how to end high stakes testing which is destroying schools and being used as a tool to privatize education. Finally, that weekend will include trainings for peace keepers who will help to ensure NOW DC remains non-violent in its challenges to the Washington, DC power structure.
Source: globalresearch.ca
After Six Months, A Look At What Occupy Wall Street Has Accomplished
Since its beginning, Occupy Wall Street and the protests it spawned across the country have faced critics who say it has no goals and wouldn’t achieve any substantial accomplishments. “In fact, the sum total of what Occupy Wall Street has accomplished is zero,” a New York Post columnist wrote in November. “Inspiring chat around the national watercooler is not an achievement.”
The movement turned six months old last Saturday, and a closer look at its record of achievement reveals that it has done more than spark conversation around Wall Street’s watercoolers. Occupy groups have shifted the national debate on taxes and inequality, helped homeowners stay in their homes, forced major policy issues to the forefront of debate at the state and federal level, and gotten the attention of the institutions they’ve challenged most forcefully. With that in mind, ThinkProgress compiled a brief list of Occupy Wall Street’s accomplishments over its first six months:
Income Inequality: The 99 Percent movement refocused America’s political debate, forcing news outlets and eventually politicians to focus on rising income inequality. While debt and deficits were the primary focus of the media before the movement started, their attention after the movement began shifted to jobs, Wall Street, and unemployment. By the end of October,even Republicans were talking about income inequality, and a week later, Time Magazine devoted its cover to the topic, asking, “Can you still move up in America?”
Occupy Our Homes: The movement has drawn attention to many of the predatory, discriminatory, and fraudulent practices perpetrated by banks during the foreclosure crisis, and across the country, Occupy groups, religious leaders, and community organizations have helped homeowners prevent wrongful foreclosures on their homes. Activists in Detroit are working to save their fifth home, and similar actions have taken place in cities like Minneapolis,Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Atlanta. The movement has drawn so much attention that local political leaders and even members of Congress have stepped in to help homeowners facing foreclosure.
Move Your Money: On Bank Transfer Day, activists helped more than 40,000Americans move their money from large banks to credit unions, and more than650,000 switched to credit unions last October. Religious groups have taken up the cause as well, moving $55 million before Thanksgiving. This year, a San Francisco interfaith group moved $10 million from Wells Fargo and other groups marked Lent by moving more money from Wall Street. As a result, analysts say the nation’s 10 biggest banks could lose $185 billion in customer deposits this year “due to customer defections.”
Fighting For Positive Policies: Occupy groups have pushed for positive policy outcomes at both the state and federal levels. Occupy The SEC submitted a 325-page comment letter on the Volcker Rule, a regulation to rein in big banks. Pressure from protesters forced New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to reverse his opposition to a millionaire’s tax, and activists fought Indiana Republicans’union-busting “right-to-work” law, and have pushed big banks to stop financingdestructive environmental practices like mountaintop removal mining in coal states.
Though many of the camps across the country have been disbanded, the 99 Percent Movement isn’t going away. Organizers have continued fighting at the state level, pushing back against banks on fraudulent foreclosures and other issues, and have now turned their attention to the 2012 presidential elections. Movement leaders in New York, meanwhile, are developing high-tech ways to organize protests and keep the movement going. Occupy is starting to assert a political influence, pushing multiple candidates and even running for office themselves — in both Maine and Pennsylvania, former Occupy activists are running for public office.
“It’s changed the language,” one protester told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s brought out a lot of issues that people are talking about. … And that’s the start of change.”
A detailed look at the government’s own data base shows that about 9 million people without jobs have been removed from the labor force simply by the government defining them as not being in the labor force anymore. Indeed - effectively all of the decreases in unemployment rate percentages since 2009 have come not from new jobs, but through reducing the workforce participation rate so that millions of jobless people are removed from the labor force by definition.
When we pierce through this statistical smoke and mirrors and factor back in those 9 million jobless whom the government has defined out of existence, then the true unemployment rate is 19.9% and rising, and not 8.3% and falling.
For the small percentage of people who are aware that the purported decline in unemployment rates is primarily based on the mysterious rapid decline in “labor force participation rates” rather than the number of new jobs, the government has a ready and sensible-sounding explanation: the Boomers are beginning to retire in large numbers, and with an aging population, the percentage of adults who are in the workforce should logically be declining.
Based on in-depth analysis of the government’s own numbers, we will present herein the true picture: 74% of the jobless who have been removed from unemployment calculations are in the 16-54 age bracket, with only 26% in the 55 and above bracket. Yes, the population is aging - but the heart of the workforce participation deception isn’t about the old.
Artwork by Party9999999
Reblogged via (major-hxh-redflag; amodernmanifesto)
Source: party9999999.deviantart.com
