Live Stream of Occupy Wall Street – for some reason the flash link isn’t working, so here is another try at it: http://www.livestream.com/occupywallstnyc
On facebook, I could find videos of actions and marchs for every major city I tried, and lots of minor cities. In Lansing, Michigan the police closed off streets between East Lansing and the capitol for a massive march.
Occupy Dallas filed an injunction to protect its encampment in Pioneer Plaza, and settled for indefinite use as Occupy Dallas’s encampment on another parcel of city land.
Occupy Cinncinatti marchs to their courthouse with arrested Occupiers.
Occupy DC calls for DC voting rights
Like I said – just pick a city and check it out. Boston had a major, student organized march that began on the Boston Common, then marched from the Common to Dewey Square, and was still going on, last I knew. I am not sure why there were a large number of police whose black hats all said “gang unit” – I would think officers like that have better things to be doing.
He says it best
In fact, the footage also shows an Occupy Moscow event
I think I recognize the location from when I was an exchange student to Moscow back in 1967.
I’m guessing there were upwards of a million or more people participating today. This has been a huge success by any stretch of the imagination, and the police have continued to help the movement moment by moment by overreacting — today’s worst/best example is the fact that they arrested upwards of 30 people today trying, merely for trying to close down their bank accounts at Citi.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/15/1026740/-Breaking:-30-Citibank-customers-arrested-for-closing-their-account?via=siderec
The Boston Globe story said 1,000 and MSNBC says a Occupy NYC organizer estimated 5,000. I guess the truth is in there somewhere. So, maybe you should say 500,000 to a million… which is still chump change and will cause no action whatsoever. Except maybe politicians who support the Occupy movements will risk losing support.
I also read a comment from someone saying they expect a much smaller crowd at the opening of the new Wegman’s in Northboro due to the Patriot’s game of only 20,000 people. And I bet a lot more of those shoppers will vote in November 2012.
And did they really arrest people for trying to close their Citibank accounts? Really? So they calmly waited in line, reading Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, when suddenly they were pulled out of line and arrested for “closing their accounts”!
Here is the Occupy Boston post with a photo.
Phoenix coverage of Deval Patrick doing his own walk through, with no media attention, at Occupy Boston.
The photos were taken by various members of the Occupy Boston community. I continue to be impressed by the difference that digital media have made in the Occupy movement.
What Gov. Patrick told the Phoenix’s editor Carly Carlioli after visiting Occupy Boston
http://occupyboston.com/2011/10/15/mass-governor-deval-patrick-stopped-by-this-morning/
Didn’t try to do anything fancy this time…mostly my links were working on the other comments I did, not sure if I just had a firefox glitch.
More likely than not Gov. Patrick was in Boston for the Boston Book Fair (He IS an author with a book to promote, makes sense to me) and did a swing through. It adds to my respect that he would want to do a first person visit. Link to the interview: http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/phlog/archive/2011/10/15/exclusive-interview-massachusetts-governor-deval-patrick-calls-occupyboston-quot-fascinating-quot-and-quot-powerful-quot.aspx
…that the Boston TEA Party rally had to pay $1,800 for police details and overtime for an event that had no arrests as opposed to the hundreds of thousands being spent by Boston to police the Occupy encampment?
Both groups were exercising their constitutional rights to speak and assemble. So why does only one group have to comnply with public safety laws?
The organizers of the Boston Tea Party rally chose to pay the money for “police details and overtime”. Their willingness to do so is just more evidence that those rallies were shallow counterfeits.
Civil disobedience and protest is disobedient. People get arrested. Crowds don’t pay for details and overtime. Can you imagine the founding fathers at, say, the Boston Massacre site obtaining a freaking permit to demonstrate?
When enough people participate in genuine protests, those protests start to cost society real money. Offices can’t open. Executives of financial firms find themselves ashamed to be seen in public. Police have to work overtime, and TAXPAYERS PAY.
Sooner or later, when the cause is just, society makes the changes needed to make the protests go away.
Seriously. I have not a clue why you are asking ME! Just like I have not a clue why an organization like Harvard with a $26,000,000,000 endowment doesn’t pay any real estate taxes, or for the services it receives – nor do the other “so called non-profits” like Beth Isreal, Mass General, BU pay anything other than voluntary contributions – if they pay ten cents – Museum of Science pays no taxes, nothing for snow plowing, police, firefighters, etc.
Further, the costs are controlled by Menino and make little sense. The same article that claimed public safety costs of $160,000 stated $60,000 were caused by the Nut House arrrests at 2:00 AM on 10/11/11 when medics, reporters, elderly veterans, even National Lawyers Guild Observers were doing nothing to qualify for the statutes used to (improperly) form a basis for those arrests. Menino can run up costs by having brigades of police arrest nonviolent assemblies than charge the costs to an informal association that is 10 days old? THAT makes no sense to me.
As to whether the Tea Party folks should have been charged or should have paid I have no idea because I wasn’t paying attention to them and until your post didn’t know they WERE charged or paid! But, really, it is Menino ramping up costs, not Occupy Boston. And from my initial review, those arrests were probably improper and the police presence (the level of it for sure) unneeded.
For the number of police at the march yesterday. it was a calm, if energetic, event with attendees of all ages and from all walks of life. If Mayor Menino chooses to spend taxpayer money on dozens of police when they aren’t needed, then I hope he’s held accountable for that decision. There were at least 10 police in full riot gear standing in front of Verizon, just watching mainly middle aged people and families with strollers and little kids walk by. Who made the decision that such a presence was necessary and who will pay for it?
There were no arrests yesterday and the police were terrific.