Merry Occupy Wall Street

In the financial part of Manhattan, protesters handed out the "Occupied Wall Street Journal" to passers-by (The Occupied Wall Street Journal), in which one of the titles reads: "The Revolution Begins at Home" and the other "Declaration of Occupation". In nearby Zuccotti Park, which some call a "revolutionary camp," hundreds of protesters set up tents and field kitchens, played guitars, pounded drums, slept, debated, exercised, typed on laptop keyboards, filmed with small web cameras and into cyberspace for days. sent messages against the greed of the richest. One of the slogans reads "System error", and in constant political discussions, it was explained to newcomers that the protest is about the system, not the regime.

In a few weeks, the movement spread to hundreds of American cities - in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Washington, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Denver, Sacramento, Atlanta, Las Vegas... The action of the group " Occupy Nashville" and the slogan "Occupy Everything!".

Demonstrators in Las Vegas, Chicago, Ohio and Florida carried banners reading "End Corporate Welfare" and "Time for a Revolution", and in New York: "Stop the War on Workers", "Billionaires, Your Time is Up", "Eat the rich', 'Tax the rich', 'Save our Republic' and 'Equality, Democracy, Revolution'.

99 PERCENT: The messages are mostly socially colored and reflect the dissatisfaction of American youth due to rising unemployment and growing social differences. The main slogan is "We are (the) 99 percent", who are fed up with the greed of the privileged rich one percent. That number reflects the fact that at the time when Rockefeller and Carnegie dominated American industry, the richest one percent of Americans took 18 percent of all earnings, and that today the richest one percent takes 24 percent of all income. According to data from the US Congress, the wealth of the richest one percent of Americans is 16,8 trillion dollars, two trillion more than the wealth of the other 90 percent, and the differences are greater now than in 1928 before the Great Depression.

That the blade of this seemingly soft movement was aimed at the group of the richest one percent was to be shown by the action of October 12, during which in upper Greenwich Village a group of about 800 people went to demonstrate with large checks in their hands in front of the houses of the bank director "J. P. Morgan Chase” by billionaire Jamie Dimon, businessman David Koch and News Company Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch. Besieging the private addresses of businessmen was tried before in Los Angeles.

Life in Zuccotti Park is, according to reports, organized chaos. There are also internal security forces that they call "de-escalation". They urge people to respect other people's property and not to violate alcohol and drug laws, although some videos show a pile of what looks like a joint wrapped in rice. They organize the procurement of food, even the washing of socks. In New York, the temperature drops and they collect donations in warm clothes announcing that they intend to stay there for a long time. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lowered his binoculars and declared that he would not stop them from protesting as long as they did not break the law.

And the Occupy LA group announces that it will last until it turns its attention to issues such as ending the war ("Get out!"), corporate tax avoidance and rising unemployment.

For the time being, small groups of American "defenders" are limiting themselves to broadcasting the message. Under pressure from the police, they retreat, then return and appear in another city. At the beginning, the police arrested some of them because they were demonstrating with masks, according to an old provision that prohibits more than three people from wearing masks, unless it is a masquerade ball. When the protest in New York began on September 17, police prohibited protesters from setting up tents in the park under a homeless law that prohibits being in a public place after a certain time. At that a mass of people began to walk up and down Wall Street. They also tried to enter the Stock Exchange building.

New York police arrested 700 people on Sunday, October 2, during the crossing of 1500 demonstrators from Brooklyn to Manhattan, for violating traffic regulations. When one of the arrested was released from custody, he was greeted with cheers like a sports star. The much larger march on Wall Street that followed on October 5 began peacefully, but as night fell, sporadic clashes broke out between protesters and police, who used pepper powder and long batons, arrested 80 of them and shouted "Move! Move!” in order to push the protesters off the road onto the fenced sidewalks. Police blockades and fences on Broadway and on the approach to Wall Street itself, police on horseback in front of Tiffany's...

Despite the large number of arrests, it seems that the repression in the USA is less than in Britain, where after the August outburst of violence and robbery, more than 1700 people have been charged in court so far, half of whom are under 20 years old, and 45 percent of whom were not previously had a criminal record.

LAUGHTER OF CORPORATE ZOMBIES: Wall Street officials, the "corporate zombies", initially mocked the demonstrations of the "occupiers": "Look at those kids with laptops, demonstrating against corporations, and they each gave $400 to Apple".

Despite the legal restrictions, 41 percent of Wall Street employees expect higher bonuses in 2011 than in 2010, and only eight percent of them told researchers that they do not expect a bonus. They were addressed by the slogan carried in the gorge of one of the New York streets surrounded by skyscrapers: "Jump, just once, fuck you!"

The difference between the white-collar workers and the opponents is visible at first glance: some in suits and ironed shirts, ties, others in all the colors of Benetton, as colorful as the UN General Assembly, in T-shirts with many things written about the occupation of Wall Street, in sneakers, with tattoos , funny hats and imaginative hairstyles.

dah '68: A New York Times report described a "implicit ambassador of the movement, rightfully frustrated young people" - a half-naked blonde, who took off everything but her cotton underwear and danced on the north side of Zuccotti Park, towards Liberty Street, in try to jump the time gap there to 1968.

The event has the smell and sound of 1968, even the new slogans were sung to the tune of Dylan songs and Lennon songs Imagine. "I am a child of the 60s, I belong here," declares the 63-year-old participant of the demonstration. They call old ladies "angry grandmothers". The generation that opposed the Vietnam War came to Facebook anarchists with old badges. That is, the part that did not start the "march through the institutions!".

The group "Occupy New Orleans" says on its website with the slogan: "This revolution will not be privatized." In New York, one of the demonstrators, calling on the crowd to join the protest the next day, exclaimed, “This is not Woodstock II.” Many reporters note that the weakness of the movement is that it does not have a clearly defined goal. The movement does not yet have the electricity of '68, although you can feel some of it - but, obviously, it has more persistence and a softer method.

In one part of the Zuccotti park there is a place for the assembly. They say the organization is horizontal, there is no hierarchy, decisions are made by consensus. "Washington Times" describes them as a group of individuals in which different ages, races, socioeconomic groups and political beliefs are represented. They avoid ideological discussions.

NETWORKED: Some say that the "Occupy!" movement was inspired by the protests in Tahrir Square in Cairo by the Canadian anti-consumer magazine Adbusters, which registered the domain on June 9 occupywallstreet.org, and on July 13 presented a proposal to organize peaceful demonstrations of the occupation of Wall Street. Before that, they became famous for the actions "Day without shopping!".

The hacktivist group "Anonymous" encouraged its members to participate in the protest at the end of August. The Internet has definitely become a tool of the left alternative. Many supporters follow the movement via iPhone and Android. In Berlin, the hacker Pirate Party won as many as 15 seats in the city assembly in the elections...

During the culmination of the political dispute over the US debt crisis, the group "New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts" joined its "General Assembly" with another group in front of the bronze sculpture of a running bull erected near Wall Street, of which the bull is considered an icon. One of the signs of that protest is a ballerina doing a pirouette on a running bull, like in the advertisements for circus shows.

The movement usually has a clenched fist for its own sign, like our Resistance. Ivan Marović (Narodni pokret Otpor, Serbia 2000) gave them a speech about the symbolic importance of occupying symbolic places - and ended with a sentence borrowed from the time when man landed on the moon: "A small step for man, a big step for humanity!"

WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE: Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher, bearded, wearing a red shirt, opened the "Radicalism 101" seminar there on Sunday: "There is a danger. Don't fall in love with yourself. We're having a great time here. But remember: carnivals are cheap." And further: "They tell you that change is impossible. And what is possible today... On the one hand, everything is possible in technology and sexuality. You can travel to the moon. You can become immortal with biogenetics. You can have sex with animals, or whatever. But, look, in the field of society and economy: everything is considered impossible. You want taxes to go up a little for the rich, they tell you it's impossible, we'll lose competitiveness. You want a little money for health care, they tell you it's impossible, it means a totalitarian state. There's something wrong with a world where you're promised immortal life but can't spend a little more on health care…”

He also criticized George Soros, the billionaire who finances the left: "First he takes billions from you, then he gives you half back, and that makes him the greatest humanitarian." Take the money, but don't stop fighting the system..." Žižek spoke, and the crowd repeated like a live loudspeaker, as they had done before when the American Nobel laureate, professor at Columbia University, former vice president of the World Bank spoke to them Joseph Stiglitz and others.

Among the "occupiers of Wall Street" were director of socially engaged documentaries Michael Moore, who was not paid much attention, actress Susan Sarandon, as well as some hip-hop artists. John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, said on Twitter: "I love Occupy Wall Street. As John said, 'One hero can't do it. Each of us should be a hero!' And you are. Thank you." Philosopher and lawyer Cornel West, author of the book A racial issue, gave them support and held a lecture.

Van Jones, a left-wing activist, human rights lawyer and former senior Obama administration official accused by Republicans of having ties to certain Marxist organizations, visiting professor at the Center for African-American Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, joined the protests he announced that the protests would turn into an "American autumn".

UNION SUPPORT: Several unions in New York supported the protest on October 5. Teamsters Union (The Teamsters Union, formed in 1903, once known as the International Brotherhood of Chauffeurs), which brings together about 1,4 million Americans, mostly blue-collar workers in the private and public sectors, supported the movement Occupy Wall Street, confirmed president James P. Hoffa, whose last name is the same as the novel's tragic president of that union, Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1975.

The president of the New York United Federation of Teachers, which brings together about 200.000 teachers, said he was proud to support the protest. The Massachusetts Nurses Association is joining their "day of rage," as are about 1000 pilots. Along with the protest are associations that protect the rights of the homeless, writers' associations, human rights activists, those who remember Martin Luther King, tenants' associations and many local organizations and labor associations. Some union activists, however, say they need to see what they are supporting first.

OBAMA UNDERSTANDS: US President Barack Obama said on Thursday, October 6 that he understands the frustrations of Americans who feel the current crisis as the biggest since the Great Depression. Obama, who is trying to win a majority for his job-boosting agenda, says the US needs to have a strong, efficient and well-regulated financial sector.

Observers, however, note that the movement is also critical of Obama because of unfulfilled promises. His election to the US presidency brought to the surface a new political generation, the Facebook generation, networked, mobile, anarchic, threatened and critical.

Some believe that the protest action in New York is the first serious response of the American left and Democrats to the actions of right-wing populists gathered around the Tea Party (tea party), a populist movement that criticizes Obama, calls for lower taxes and opposes health care reform in the US.

Republican activists close to the Philadelphia Tea Party form a group called Free Philadelphia (Liberate Philadelphia) to "unanimously affirm their commitment to free enterprise and the American Constitution against potential political forces and social movements that threaten them." For now, they are "just watching the protests."

Ann Coulter, an American right-wing columnist driven out of several media outlets because of her propensity for insults, compared the Wall Street occupiers to French revolutionaries, Bolsheviks and - Nazis. Republicans began attacking them for being anti-American. The leader of the Republican faction in the US Senate, Eric Cantor, called them a "mob". Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi, who supports the protest, says Cantor said nothing when the Tea Party demonstrated outside the Capitol.

It looks like a hint of a deeper social conflict in America, which is likely to be reflected in the next presidential election. That conflict does not have the ferocity of contemporary social unrest in Europe, such as those in Athens or London, but...

…Las Vegas,…

…Washington,…

…Chicago…

...and Boston

PICTURES OF THE ANTI-SYSTEM REVOLUTION: "Occupation" of a bank in Los Angeles...

...and the newspapers of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement

New York