Curious to see if something lasting actually comes of this, or if it’s just going to be a single day of protests.
cwnl:
Hundreds of demonstrators took to The Streets of Manhattan’s Financial District on Saturday in a largely peaceful protest aimed at drawing attention to the role powerful financial interests played in wreaking havoc on America’s economy.
A totally valid point we keep seeing on Twitter — why Saturday? If you’re going to start this, why not Monday? To give a good comparison: Back in 2000, Rage Against the Machine and Michael Moore drew a TON of press for shooting the music video for “Sleep Now in the Fire” in front of Wall Street … on a Wednesday. On Saturday, the people you’re protesting against are largely at home. And while this is the symbolic home of the stock market, the real home of the stock market has largely moved to New Jersey. This is not to undercut the points being made by the protests … but to point out the logistics at hand. If this is only the start, then our point is moot, but if the movement loses steam in a few days, the initial impact of the moment will be lost. Will be interesting to see where it goes from here.
vruz says: I’m honestly not sure, but I think that you may be missing the point a bit. the point is probably not to disrupt the US economy (that’s what the Tea Party caucus does) but to make a symbolic stand and be heard by those in positions of power who can take decisions when they feel the heat (not the bank clerks). I don’t think anyone at this point is thinking of causing shock, but making peaceful protest. It will depend on the clarity of message they deliver whether it scales up or not, not on the decibels of some Tea Party-like angry shouting, and most certainly not their guns.
» SFB says: Honestly, we’re not thinking of it from a disrupt-the-economy aspect at all, but more a public relations, push-the-message-forward one. It’s sort of like, yes, you have to start somewhere, but if you’re going to make your voice heard, timing is your best friend. A Saturday start for a protest of something that’s best-known as a weekday endeavor, it feels ill-timed to us. The impact gets lost. Tea Partiers have scale and organization to push their momentum … those protesting Wall Street don’t have the same level of scale, but good timing goes a long way to make up for that. That’s why we pulled out the example of “Sleep Now in the Fire” — that wasn’t a massive protest, but it was well-timed and as a result, it helped push the message (which was similar to this one) further. — Ernie @ SFB
(Source: CNN)
Since we’ve brought it up in the past two posts, here’s the video for Rage Against the Machine’s “Sleep Now in the Fire.” As you can see, there are many similarities with “Occupy Wall Street” in terms of message, but some differences — the key one of course is that Michael Moore and the band did not have all of the proper permits necessary (and both he and the band were threatened with arrest), whereas the protest today was fairly peaceful and by-the-books. Overall, we think it’s a good historical comparison.
Because Tumblr user PoetFire asked: Most media outlets are reporting “hundreds” of protesters (or “more than 1,000”) at today’s Occupy Wall Street event. However, a Twitter meme going around today puts that number at closer to 50,000. Above is said tweet, via @AnonOps. Below is a fairly representative crowd shot of the protests, via Twitter user @EgyptEagle, a screenshot from a video of the protests, and (for comparison) an aerial screenshot from a video that showed the crowds at the Tea Party Express protest in Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nev. The Searchlight protest had a crowd of about 9,000 people. Do you see 50,000 people at today’s protests? We don’t. (BTW: If anyone has an aerial shot of today’s protests, please send it along.)
As an update to our post last night: @AnonOps on Twitter gives a bit more realistic head count of the number of people than the one that trended on Twitter yesterday. 1,500 to 2,000 people seems a bit less unrealistic than 50,000.
The method of protest that we’re using, the purpose is to interrupt the flow of Wall Street.Occupy Wall Street protester Joe Sharkey • Revealing that the group’s purpose is to make it difficult for workers to get around the protesters — a method that will see its first real test tomorrow, when an actual work day hits. While the protest has remained largely peaceful, things could start to get thorny in the next day. Starkey says tomorrow is a “crucial period” for the group of roughly 1,500 to 2,000 protesters. ”We are going to ride and coordinate and communicate,” he said. “The process takes a long time.” The protests, put together by anti-consumerism magazine AdBusters, have been planned for a number of months. source (via • follow)
Sent to us via Twitter user Eric Brown, this five minute clip from last night does a good job capturing the mood of the still-budding protests near Wall Street in New York City. “This is a group of passionate, concerned, and intelligent people,” Brown writes. “Their behavior in the park suggested a great appreciation of democracy, and a desire to cut through the clogged media and political channels to communicate a message they feel is incredibly important.” Brown notes a large police presence was there when he shot this last night, but both sides were peaceful. Great clip. source
Police pen up and mace female “Occupy Wall Street” protesters
In a disturbing scene from today’s “Occupy Wall Street” protests, a group of peaceful female protesters were rounded up in an orange-colored mesh pen by police and subsequently sprayed with mace without any provocation.
In spite of multiple reported incidents of possible police violence, major media outlets seem to be content to let the protests go by completely unreported, following the same “who-cares” attitude they have taken toward recent revelations that the NYPD has violated the Constitutional rights of American citizens by spying on them as possible terrorists and enemies of the state despite a complete absence of evidence of any crimes.
This is absolutely disturbing. Penning people up to mace them is police brutality. Period. What will it take to get the mainstream media to pay attention? If you follow the #OccupyWallStreet, you’ll find out that at least 80 were arrested today. AP and Wall Street Journal mentioned the arrests briefly today.
Here’s a longer video that shows slightly more context. Literally, the macing of these protesters came out of nowhere. “I was on the ground sobbing and couldn’t breathe,” said Chelsea Elliott, one of the victims of the macing, who the New York Times actually interviewed in their front-page story on the protests. Elliott claimed she was arrested after shouting “Why are you doing that?” after another protester got arrested. What the heck is this? Why was this reaction called for?
A man is arrested on 12th Street near Union Square. Dozens were arrested after a march from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in lower Manhattan.
We imagine most people reading this currently have the same look on their face as this protester did when he was arrested. Again, why is this necessary?
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
Congrats Tumblr!
Don’t screw this up Yahoo.
In 2007, I was...
I started tumblr when I was at one of the lowest points of...
In this short clip, a protester says something to a police officer. Less than two seconds later, he’s on the ground. Again. WTF? (Side note: The NY Post’s headline for this mess? “March Madness.”)
Curious if Tumblr would consider creating an #occupywallstreet curated tag. This seems like a great opportunity to do something with this feature. Who else do you guys think is doing a great job covering this story on Tumblr?
- Clyde Haberman, the New York Times, haberman@nytimes.com
- Michael Daly, the New York Daily News
- The Investigators, WABC TV (Channel 7), the.investigators@abc.com
- Jonathan Dienst, WNBC TV (Channel 4) (via Twitter)
- New York 1 News, (212) NY1-NEWS…
Great info all around. Despite the meme that’s been floating around for a week, this story is getting press coverage, but it could use more.
Lots of media - guys w expensive cameras and women in suits with notebooks - at #occupywallstreet (Taken with instagram)
Reblogging with emphasis.
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