By The Beachwood Occupation Affairs Desk
This is what democracy looks like.
1. “The Occupy movement received a boost [Tuesday] from senior citizens. To send a message to Congress about plans to cut Medicare and Social Security – cuts that will likely come out of the Gang of 12 – hundreds of senior citizen patriots occupied a downtown intersection in Chicago,” RT reports.
“They were joined by nearby members of Occupy Chicago and other grassroots organizations – as well as a few members of Congress including Representatives Jan Schakowsky and Danny Davis.
“Ultimately, police moved in to break up the demonstration, hauling away 47 people – mostly senior citizens – in handcuffs.
“We can add their names to the growing list of 3,362 patriots who’ve been arrested since the Occupy movement started more than a month-and-a-half ago.
“But these mass arrests of patriots instead of banksters don’t jive with the attitudes of most of the American people.
“A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Occupy Wall Street popularity surging with 60% of Americans supporting the basic sentiment of the occupiers. That’s twice as much support as the Tea Party received in the same poll.
“So while more and more Americans seem to be ‘getting it’ when it comes to the 99% movement – there’s still one group that’s woefully ignorant . . . the corporate media.”
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2. Occupy Des Moines invites Occupy Chicago to Occupy The Caucuses.
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3. Occupy Judaism Chicago.
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4. Famed filmmaker Haskell Wexler is now documenting Occupy Los Angeles. Reports the L.A. Times: “During a recent trip to a Chicago film festival, he stopped by the Occupy Chicago protests in his hometown. ‘In Chicago, they had more overt union participation,’ he recalled. ‘Chicago seemed more working class than here, though the age was pretty spread.'”
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5. “Outside of New York City, in small-city occupations like Allentown, Pa., Youngstown, Ohio, and Lexington, Ky., there are real problems of racial composition that are not being addressed,” Arun Gupta writes for Salon. “But these are also small movements with extremely limited resources.
“In contrast, in Philadelphia, a huge percentage of occupiers were African-American, perhaps 50 percent, though it is constantly shifting. Detroit was more complicated because that city’s black community has been so devastated. The composition of occupiers appeared to be about half African-American as well, but far fewer were participating in the General Assembly on the day I visited. It seemed many African-Americans at the occupation were homeless or impoverished and did not have the cultural capital to fully participate in the movement, but of the 10 African-Americans I talked to, all said they supported ‘the cause’ or were part of the Occupy movement there. And Occupy Detroit organizers are fully aware of this divide and trying to address it.
“Occupy Pittsburgh was at least 20 percent African-American, all of whom were very active in the work and activities there. Baltimore was heavily African-American when I visited about four weeks ago, and D.C. also had a large African-American contingent. Chicago was much harder to classify, even though I spent four days there, because they did not have a designated space, so it was much more fluid.”
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6. Upcoming Occupy Chicago Events.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on November 11, 2011