So there was a NATO summit ongoing in Chicago over the weekend – which naturally attracts a couple of protest groups, members from the “Occupy” movement among them. It also attracted police and Homeland Security, who proceeded to handcuff protesters, detain them at gunpoint, and ram into a crowd of them with a van.
In a slightly surprising move, given the extent to which Google and Facebook have been compliant in handing data over to government enquiry, Twitter filed a motion (PDF) yesterday to block a subpoena that would force the company to turn over the data of one of its users, an arrested Occupy Wall Street protestor.
Hoof. The legal battle waged by the the Occupy London camp to keep their place at St Paul’s Cathedral was lost last night – and within about five minutes of the injunction being ordered, the camp was evacuated by bailiffs and officers from the City of London Police.
I don’t know that there are such things as iconic photographs anymore, what with the proliferation of media and all, but if there are, this is one – of Seattle activist Dorli Rainey, 84, reacting to being hit with pepper spray by cops during an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday, November 15, 2011.
Well done to Keet van Zyl and three other colleagues for being a little bit spicy.
At 2am this morning the NYPD started violently clearing out Zuccoti Park, where the peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors have been camped out. The cops are using pepper spray, they are using LRAD sound weapons, and they are actively preventing any official media from reporting on their violation of OWS members’ constitutional rights. Shit’s gotten real.
By now you must have heard of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) – an ongoing series of demonstrations in New York, now famous for the slogan “We are the 99%”. But who are these people and what are they so upset about? Watch this entertaining, yet sobering clip for the lowdown in no-nonsense layman’s terms.
The global movement against greed has been in the news a lot lately. The Occupy Wall Street protests have been going on for just over a month now, including dismal failures locally, but one network has seen fit to draw some profit from it.
Brookfield Properties, owners of the Zuccotti Park at the OWS protestors are demonstrating in, had called up the NYPD for “ assistance during their cleaning operation”. There were concerns that this would bring the protest to an abrupt end. This was prevented by a last minute statement from Deputy May Holloway, insisting that the “cleaning” operation be postponed.
In an otherwise obscure corner of the internet, a caption writer at the Canadian daily has reminded us humour and wit trumps the banal media worship of celebrities, every time. The anonymous caption writer hijacked the Celebrity Photos of the Week segment by splicing generic celebrity event photographs with shots of the Occupy Wall Street […]
It looks like the tides that swept up the Occupy Wall Street protest campaign – ongoing after three weeks – have broken national boundaries; ‘Operation Ubuntu’ has been set up to launch a simultaneous protests on the 15th of October in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Grahamstown, as part of the global Occupy Revolution campaign.
The New York protest movement, “Occupy Wall Street,” currently enjoying a crowd of 15 000 supporters, has inspired folk in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and other cities around the United States to join in on the fun/outcry. Some level of police violence is being seen in all cases, with Seattle police forcibly removing all “occupation” settlements.
As the “Occupy Wall Street” protests enter their ninth day, an increasing number of videos and photos have begun surfacing, showing near-indiscriminate use of tasers, mace and kenneling by the NYPD on demonstrators, who are protesting a financial system that apparently favours the wealthy and powerful over ordinary citizens.