From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/24-11

by Michelle Nichols
Published on Monday, October 24, 2011 by Reuters

(Reuters) – An anti-capitalist group which sparked the Occupy Wall Street movement has called for global protests onSaturday to demand G20 leaders impose a “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions and currency trades.

Canada-based Adbusters wants the Occupy Wall Street protest movement against economic inequality to take to the streets to call for a 1 percent tax on such deals ahead of a Nov. 3-4 summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in France.

“Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3 trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day — enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world,” the activist group said on its website, http://www.adbusters.org.

Adbusters put out the initial call for Occupy Wall Street and since protesters set up camp in a park in New York City’s financial district on Sept. 17, they have inspired solidarity demonstrations and so-called occupations around the world.

Thousands turned out for a global day of protests on Oct. 15, which were mostly peaceful apart from in Rome, where there were riots.

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/24-11

From Ad Busters:  http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/robinhood.html

Oct. 29 #Robin Hood Global March

We take from the rich and give to the poor.

Ad busters October 17, 2011

ADBUSTERS TACTICAL BRIEFING #15

Alright you redeemers, rebels and radicals out there,

We’re living through a magical moment … #OCCUPYWALLSTREET has catalyzed into an international insurgency for democracy … the mood at our assemblies is electric … people who go there are drawn into a Gandhian spirit of camaraderie and hope for a new kind of future. Across the globe the 99% are marching! You have inspired more than you know. People are digging into Act One of the long Spring.

Its now time to amp up the edgy theatrics … deviant pranks, subversive performances and playful détournements of all kinds. Open your insurrectionary imagination. Anything, from a bottom-up transformation of the global economy to changing the way we eat, the way we get around, the way we live, love and communicate … be the spark that sustains a global revolution of everyday life!

As the movement matures, lets consider a response to our critics. Lets occupy the core of our global system. Lets dethrone the greed that defines this new century. Lets work to define our first great demand.

OCTOBER 29 – #ROBINHOOD GLOBAL MARCH

This is a proposal for the general assemblies of the Occupy movement.

Eight years ago, on February 15, 2003, upwards of 15 million people in sixty countries marched together to stop President Bush from invading Iraq … a huge chunk of humanity lived for one day without dead time and glimpsed the power of a united people’s movement. Now we have an opportunity to repeat that performance on an even larger scale.

On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.

Take this idea to your local general assembly and join your comrades in the streets on October 29.

for the wild,
Culture Jammers HQ

occupywallstreet.org / 29october.net / occupytogether.org / Facebook / Twitter

PS. Check what’s being said about the Occupy movement

From Mother Jones:  http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/gop-hates-bikes

By Stephanie Mencimer
Tue Oct. 25, 2011

Over the past few months, as Republicans have focused their attention on cutting what they see as wasteful government spending, they’ve zeroed in on a surprising new target: bicyclists, and the programs that serve them.

The federal government spends about $40 billion a year on transportation projects. Of that, about $928 million has been devoted to what’s known as a “transportation enhancement” program, which provides funding for projects—including rails-to-trails conversions, bike lanes and bridges—that make cycling safer, and thus more viable as a commuting option. But as Congress gears up to reauthorize the massive transportation funding bill this year, Republicans are arguing that states shouldn’t be forced to use scarce transportation funds to encourage bike commuting when bridges for cars are falling down.

“We’re doing all these things that, if we had extra money, if we were running a surplus, sure, nobody would really be complaining about it,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told the Washington Post. But, Coburn added, “We can no longer have silly priorities get in the way of real needs.”

States spend only about 1 percent of all transportation funds on projects devoted to cycling or pedestrian improvements. Yet Republicans see this as an area ripe for cutting. Over the summer, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) targeted DC’s nascent Capitol Bikeshare program, which provides cheap rental bikes at subway stations and other strategic locations in the Washington Metro area (including northern Virginia) to encourage bike commuting.

Continue reading at:  http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/gop-hates-bikes

From The Alaska Dispatch:  http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/mayors-across-us-begin-arresting-occupy-wall-street-protesters

Patrik Jonsson | The Christian Science Monitor
Oct 25, 2011

A few days after seeming to accept the idea of Occupy Oakland protesters camping outside Oakland City Hall by saying “democracy is messy,” Mayor Jean Quan ordered riot police Tuesday to move in and scatter two city protest camps in the pre-dawn hours.

In Atlanta, after originally giving protesters until Nov. 7 to clear out from a downtown park, Mayor Kasim Reed threatened to revoke that order on Monday. He said the relationship between the city and protesters had changed and campers are “on a clear path to escalation.”

While the original Occupy Wall Street protesters have won standoffs with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, other city mayors are quickly losing patience with the protest movement, which drew inspiration from Middle East revolutions and anti-austerity protests in Europe as it spread to dozens of US cities in recent weeks.

The rising tensions are testing how far protesters are willing to go to draw attention to their cause – and how long local authorities are willing to let their parks and squares remain occupied.

“The Occupy strategy of [encampments] has been essential to its success in changing the national conversation about economic inequality, but it’s a very difficult strategy to maintain over a long period of time,” says T.V. Reed, an American studies professor and expert on social movements at Washington State University, in Pullman. “If the protests are seen as becoming routine, then they lose their ability to gain the attention of people.”

And Reed continues, gaining the attention of people, many times means clashes with authorities.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/mayors-across-us-begin-arresting-occupy-wall-street-protesters

Police attack and beat peaceful demonstrators:

Perhaps it is time for the DNC and Democrats to slam Republicans for embracing the KKK, Tea Party and insane woman hating Dominionist cults. Perhaps it is time to slam Republicans for their un-American embrace of Confederate Values.

From The Washington Post:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/its-on-republicans-slam-elizabeth-warren-for-embracing-occupy-wall-street/2011/10/25/gIQATF7wFM_blog.html

By Greg Sargent
October 25, 2011

Wow, this is going to be good: Occupy Wall Street is now officially an issue in what may be the highest-profile and most polarizing Senate race in the country.

National Republicans are now attacking Elizabeth Warren for embracing the protests, seeking to make a liability out of the fact that Warren, a longtime critic of Wall Street excess, has now aligned herself with the movement’s intellectual underpinnings. What this means: The conservative effort to turn blue collar whites and independents against the protesters and their broader populist message — exploiting a traditional cultural fault line in our politics — will now unfold in the context of a high profile political campaign.

Warren was asked by the Daily Beast for a comment on the protests. She said: “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do. I support what they do.”

Now the NRSC has opened fire on Warren for the comments, blasting out an email containing links to stories about protesters in Massachusetts battling with cops. Said NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh: “Warren’s decision to not only embrace, but take credit for this movement is notable considering the Boston Police Department was recently forced to arrest at least 141 of her Occupy acolytes in Boston the other day after they threatened to tie up traffic downtown and refused to abide by their protest permit limits.”

The NRSC is also circulating that Doug Schoen Op ed painting protesters as wild-eyed extremists and arguing that Dems who embrace the protests risk driving away independents and moderates, even though it was subsequently proven that Schoen’s conclusions were not supported by his own data.

Continue reading at:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/its-on-republicans-slam-elizabeth-warren-for-embracing-occupy-wall-street/2011/10/25/gIQATF7wFM_blog.html

Funny I haven’t seen any Occupy folks with guns strapped on their hips or assault rifles slung over their shoulders like the Tea Party Thugs.

From Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/10/24/351772/taxpayer-funded-crisis-pregnancy-centers-tell-jewish-woman-to-convert-to-christianity-or-go-to-hell/

By Marie Diamond
Oct 24, 2011

As ThinkProgress has reported, so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” that claim to help women in need are actually established by anti-abortion activists with the sole objective of shaming women out of having abortions. Despite receiving federal and state funding, they have a history of preying on and misleading pregnant women who are seeking abortions and giving them false medical informationto dissuade them from making their own decisions.

After a year-long investigation, a new report to be released today by the pro-choice group NARAL reveals that those problems plague the vast majority of North Carolina’s crisis pregnancy centers. In addition to providing false medical information, many of the centers actively proselytize and tell women of non-Christian faiths to convert or face damnation:

In recent years, NARAL Pro-Choice state chapters have conducted investigations into the pregnancy clinics in New York, California, Maryland, Texas and Virginia, reaching the same general conclusions. Over the past year, the North Carolina office of the organization embarked on an identical investigation, studying the centers’ websites and other material, and sending staff and volunteers posing as pregnant women or couples into the clinics. [...]

NARAL says it found the majority of the centers it investigated in North Carolina had no medical professionals on staff, and only a quarter of them disclosed they were not medical facilities. More than two-thirds provided distorted or false information about abortion risks and consequences.

The report says one Jewish investigator who posed as a pregnant woman was told at five centers she wouldn’t go to heaven unless she converted to Christianity, and that one volunteer challenged her to become a “born-again virgin.”

Continue reading at:  http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/10/24/351772/taxpayer-funded-crisis-pregnancy-centers-tell-jewish-woman-to-convert-to-christianity-or-go-to-hell/

From RH Reality Check: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/10/24/the-criminalization-of-abortion-is-an-abuse-of-state-power

by Meghan Doherty, Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD)
October 25, 2011

On Monday October 24, 2011 the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health will present a report to the UN that unequivocally tells governments they must remove laws that criminalize abortion. This is not the first time a branch of the UN has recommended reforming restrictive abortion laws to protect women’s human rights but it will be the first time that governments at the UN will be told loud and clear that these laws are an abuse of State power and there are no excuses for their continued existence.

This report has the potential to change the way we talk about abortion at the UN, in our parliaments and in our health, human rights, feminist, legal and development organizations because, finally, the right questions are being asked in the UN human rights system. How are criminal laws used as a tool of the State to infringe upon women and girls’ autonomy, dignity, self-determination and decision-making? How do laws and policies related to sexual and reproductive health and rights perpetuate gender inequality and disempower women and girls? Why are criminal laws applied to a health service when the evidence plainly demonstrates only harmful consequences for doing so? What are the impacts of the criminalization of abortion on women’s and girls’ human rights? By asking these questions, the Special Rapporteur succeeds in shifting the focus away from women having to explaining why they should be allowed to have abortions in particular circumstances, over to its rightful place of scrutinizing governments for violating women’s and girls’ human rights through the maintenance of these laws and policies.

The Special Rapporteur analyzes the recommendations and evidence from several different human rights bodies to answer these questions. He logically concludes that laws and policies that criminalize and restrict access to sexual and reproductive health information, supplies and services, including abortion, are unsupportable in international law and must be immediately eliminated. This is not a new analysis for anyone affected by these criminal laws or for anyone working to improve access to abortion care, however, coming from an independent expert mandated by the UN to investigate human rights abuses, it provides an opportunity to change the discourse on abortion in forums where policy and legal decisions are made.

In order to bring about this fundamental change in the way we understand the function of abortion laws, advocates from health, human rights, legal, development, equality and feminist organizations need to work together to pool their expertise to demand accountability from Governments on this issue. This can happen in national, regional and international courts, parliaments, the UN human rights bodies, national human rights institutions and any other venue that challenges the exercise of Government control over its citizens.

Continue reading:  http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/10/24/the-criminalization-of-abortion-is-an-abuse-of-state-power

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/23/united-states-aaa-credit-rating

A downgrade by either Moody’s or Fitch – triggered most likely by concerns over the US deficit – would follow S&P’s move

Reuters
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 October 2011

Ooohh break out the worlds tiniest violin.  The Christo-Nazis are all hurt because after all their years of gay bashing and hippie punching people have started punching back.

The truth is the right wing has never reflected American Value.  The closest they have eve come is managing to reflect Confederate Values, KKK Values and American Nazi Values.  And those sorts of values aren’t any prettier if you put them in a designer dress based on a designer cult religion called Dominionism.

From The Advocate: http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/10/25/Gay_Marriage_Opponents_Want_Apology_from_Cuomo/

By Julie Bolcer 
October 25, 2011

New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, a group of evangelical Protestants opposed to the marriage equality law, wants Governor Andrew Cuomo to apologize for calling their stance “anti-American” during a panel discussion last week.

Last Tuesday, Cuomo headlined a panel discussion presented by The New York Times that offered a behind-the-scenes look at how the bill passed the Republican-controlled state senate in June and became law. During the question and answer session, an audience member asked what lessons the New York victory could offer to other states and the federal-level fight for same-sex marriage.

Saying that he believed progress for marriage equality nationwide was “just a matter of time,” Cuomo pointed to the unsatisfactory arguments of opponents as the fundamental reason why. Earlier, when political reporter Michael Barbaro, who moderated the conversation with metro editor Carolyn Ryan, asked Cuomo what arguments against the bill in New York he had found “persuasive,” the governor said “none.”

“Ultimately, there was no answer by the opposition,” said Cuomo again. “There isn’t. There really isn’t,” he said. “And as soon as you ask the question and you probe the answer, the only answer is, ‘I want to discriminate against gay people.’ And that is anti-New York. It’s also anti-American.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/10/25/Gay_Marriage_Opponents_Want_Apology_from_Cuomo/

From Common Dreams: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/24-4

by Thom Hartmann
Published on Monday, October 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

The Boogeyman is dead, and Santa is dying.

The Republicans have been, since the 1930s, the party of the Boogeyman.  They led the fear-based crusades against Communists, first with the Blacklist, then Joe McCarthy’s hearings, then the twin fears of Communist Mao and the Communist USSR.  With the death of the Soviet Union, and the corporate embrace of still-Communist China, 9/11 let them turn their fears to “radical Islam.”

But when President Obama killed Bin Laden, it took the steam out of their movement.  And to make matters worse, Obama had earlier gone to Egypt and said, in essence, “Tear down these dictators!” – helping spark the Arab Spring and totally deflating the Republican fear machine, which now sputters along on the fringes trembling about Bachmann’s gays, Santorum’s fertilized eggs, and Perry’s immigrants.   The likelihood of Mormon Romney’s presidential candidacy means they can’t even add “God” to their traditional “Gays, Guns, and God” trinity of GOP fears.

Without something or someone to be afraid of, the Republicans are truly lost, wandering in the wilderness.  And no matter how hard they try to gin up fear of the “dreaded deficit bomb,” it just doesn’t make Americans jump the way the USSR’s nukes did two generations ago, or 9/11 did a decade ago. So now they’re trying to whip up fear of the Occupy Wall Street folks, but so far OWS has the sympathy of average Americans; it’s just not working for the Republicans.

But the Democrats aren’t doing much better.

Back in 1976, Republican strategist Jude Wanniski invented the phrase “supply side economics” and then proposed his famous “Two Santa Clauses theory” to sell it.

Continue reading at:  https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/24-4

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/684867/chem_bomb_tossed_into_occupy_maine_encampment%3B_police_seeking_suspects/

October 23, 2011

At around 4 AM Sunday morning, a chemical bomb was tossed into an Occupy Maine encampment in Portland. It exploded as protesters slept, yet fortunately no one was injured. According to Police Sgt. Glen McGarry, the bomb consisted of several chemicals mixed into a Gatorade bottle, and was thrown under a tarp into the kitchen area of the encampment. Local police are investigating.

Here’s the press release from Occupy Portland:

Early Sunday morning, around 4am, the members of the Occupy Maine camp at Lincoln Park woke up to a loud explosion. Witnesses who were awake said a car driving by slowed down, and lobbed an IED over the fence. Within a few seconds, it exploded. The blast reportedly lifted a table about a foot off the ground. The table generally requires 2 people to lift and move. The target was the center of camp where the overnight security team was.

One witness said this type of bomb could have caused a lot more damage if certain things were added and a lot of campers are fearful of another attack. Thankfully no one was injured last night but police investigators were on scene for 2 hours to identify the chemicals used and to try to find out who is responsible.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/684867/chem_bomb_tossed_into_occupy_maine_encampment%3B_police_seeking_suspects/

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/24/population-hiv-aids-mistake-un

Babatunde Osotimehin says it was hard to talk about cutting birth rate as families lost their children

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 October 2011

The international community has “made a mistake” with the intensity of its focus on the global HIV-Aids epidemic and lost ground on family planning issues as a result, according to the head of the United Nations population agency.

In an interview with the Guardian as the world population reaches seven billion, Babatunde Osotimehin, the executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNPF), said efforts to expand family planning services in the developing world stalled for a decade while global health organisations turned their energies to fighting HIV-Aids.

“We made a mistake. We disconnected HIV from reproductive health. We should never have done that because it is part and parcel,” he said.

About 60 million people have been infected with or died from HIV-Aids in the 30 years since the virus was first identified in the US. Meanwhile, the global population is due to hit seven billion on 31 October. About 1.8 billion are young people, the vast majority of whom are living in the world’s poorest countries.

By criticising decades of development policy by the UN and world governments, Osotimehin’s remarks are hugely controversial. Experts on HIV-Aids and population challenged his views.

“I find it difficult to understand how any development leader can believe that funding for Aids in Africa was a distraction from other priorities. Aids was, and continues to be, a make-or-break emergency in much of sub-Saharan Africa,” said Siddharth Dube, a former senior adviser at UNAids and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/24/population-hiv-aids-mistake-un

From The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/occupy-wall-street-bloomberg-free-speech-right-to-disruption-_b_1026535.html

By Naomi Wolf
October 22, 2011

Mayor Bloomberg is planning Draconian new measures to crack down on what he calls the “disruption” caused by the protesters at Zuccotti Park, and he is citing neighbors’ complaints about noise and mess. This set of talking points, and this strategy, is being geared up as well by administrations of municipalities around the nation in response to the endurance and growing influence of the Occupation protest sites. But the idea that any administration has the unmediated option of “striking a balance,” in Bloomberg’s words, that it likes, and closing down peaceful and lawful disruption of business as usual as it sees fit is a grave misunderstanding — or, more likely, deliberate misrepresentation — of our legal social contract as American citizens.

Some kinds of disruption in a free republic are not “optional extras” if the First Amendment governs the land, as it does ours, and are certainly not subject to the whims of mayors or local police, or even DHS. Just as protesters don’t have a blanket right to do everything they want, there is absolutely no blanket right of mayors or even of other citizens to be free from the effect of certain kinds of disruption resulting from their fellow citizens exercising First Amendment rights. That notion, presented right now by Bloomberg and other vested interests, of a “disruption-free” social contract is pure invention — just like the flat-out fabrication of the nonexistent permit cited in my own detention outside the Huffington Post Game Changers event this last Tuesday, when police told me, without the event organizers’ knowledge and contrary to their intentions, that a private entity had “control of the sidewalks” for several hours. (In fact, the permit in question — a red carpet event permit! — actually guarantees citizens’ rights to walk and even engage in political assembly on the streets if they do not block pedestrian traffic, as the OWS protesters were not.)

I want to address the issue of “disruption,” as Bloomberg is sending this issue out as a talking point brought up on Keith Olbermann’s Coundown last night: the neighbors around Zuccotti Square, says Bloomberg, are feeling “disrupted” by the noise and visitors to the OWS protest, so he is going to crack down to “strike a balance” to address their complaints. Other OWS organizers have let me know that the Parks Department and various municipalities are trying to find a way to eject other protesters from public space on a similar basis of argument.

Please, citizens of America — please, OWS — do not buy into this rhetorical framework: an absolute “right to be free of disruption” from First Amendment activity does not exist in a free republic. But the right to engage in peaceable disruption does exist.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/occupy-wall-street-bloomberg-free-speech-right-to-disruption-_b_1026535.html

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/24/new-york-cops-defy-order-to-arrest-hundreds-of-occupy-protesters/

By Andrew Jones
Monday, October 24, 2011

Occupy Albany protesters in New York’s capital city received an unexpected ally over the week: The state and local authorities.

According to the Albany Times Union, New York state troopers and Albany police did not adhere to a curfew crackdown on protesters urged by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Albany mayor Gerald Jennings.

Mass arrests seemed to be in the cards once Jennings directed officers to enforce the curfew on roughly 700 protesters occupying the city owned park. But as state police joined the local cops, protesters moved past the property line dividing city and state land.

“We don’t have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble,” a state official said. “The bottom line is the police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/24/new-york-cops-defy-order-to-arrest-hundreds-of-occupy-protesters/

From The Times Union:  http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Under-pressure-to-make-arrests-police-and-2232934.php#ixzz1bjSOmP1Q

Under pressure to make arrests, police and troopers push back

Governor’s office urged mayor to press police to make arrests at protest

By BRENDAN J. LYONS Senior writer
Updated 09:17 a.m., Monday, October 24, 2011

ALBANY — In a tense battle of wills, state troopers and Albany police held off making arrests of dozens of protesters near the Capitol over the weekend even as Albany’s mayor, under pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s administration, had urged his police chief to enforce a city curfew.

The situation intensified late Friday evening when Jennings, who has cultivated a strong relationship with Cuomo, directed his department to arrest protesters who refused to leave the city-owned portion of a large park that’s across Washington Avenue from the Capitol and City Hall.

At the Capitol, in anticipation of possibly dozens of arrests, a State Police civil disturbance unit was quietly activated, according to officials briefed on the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. But as the curfew neared, the group of protesters estimated at several hundred moved across an invisible line in the park from state land onto city property.

“We were ready to make arrests if needed, but these people complied with our orders,” a State Police official said. However, he added that State Police supported the defiant posture of Albany police leaders to hold off making arrests for the low-level offense of trespassing, in part because of concern it could incite a riot or draw thousands of protesters in a backlash that could endanger police and the public.

From Occupy Philly Media: http://occupyphillymedia.org/content/what-does-police-brutality-have-do-corporate-greed

Submitted by judaslee
Mon, 10/24/2011

Police arrested 15 protesters around noon on Sunday as they sat in front of the Roundhouse in protest against police brutality. Their action has stirred up debate around some crucial questions at Occupy Philly.

On Saturday, Oct 22nd, a group of protesters marched to the Philadelphia Police headquarters, on 8th between Race and Arch, in support of a national day of action against police brutality. They blocked traffic on 8th Street and held an impromptu teach-in and sit-in on decreasing police brutality. The police closed down the street, where protesters remained through the night. The 15 individuals who were participating directly in the sit-in were arrested around noon on Sunday.

The group issued a statement after their arrest. They did not claim to speak on behalf of Occupy Philly, but as members of the movement, their action has elicited different responses from the highly varied groups and individuals at City Hall. Many support the sit-in, but some are criticizing it. After all, the police have been very accommodating of Occupy Philly–why provoke them with this action? Don’t police officers, who are often overworked and underpaid, belong to the 99%? Most of all, shouldn’t we stay focused on corporate greed instead of getting distracted by secondary issues?

Talking to supporters of the sit-in revealed a lot about the close ties between the police, the prison system, and corporations. What makes this issue especially crucial is its direct and immediate importance for Occupy Philly itself, a site that is under tight police surveillance at all times. Understanding the social role of the police sheds light on the most deeply exploited part of the 99%, who are often ignored and left out of the conversation.

Continue reading at:  http://occupyphillymedia.org/content/what-does-police-brutality-have-do-corporate-greed