After a decade of gradually taking the Thanksgiving holiday away from the lowest-paid employees, a backlash is finally rising against the American retail industry.
Source: Tom Dispatch
Last Tuesday, I awoke in lower Manhattan to the whirring of helicopters overhead, a war-zone sound that persisted all day and then started up again that Thursday morning, the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and a big day of demonstrations in New York City. It was one of the dozens of ways you could tell that the authorities take Occupy Wall Street seriously, even if they profoundly mistake what kind of danger it poses. If you ever doubted whether you were powerful or you mattered, just look at the reaction to people like you (or your children) camped out in parks from Oakland to Portland, Tucson to Manhattan.
Source: In These Times
Between the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street autumn, there was an Israeli Summer.
Following a successful consumer boycott of cottage cheese (a cherished and increasingly costly Israeli staple), a 24-year-old video editor named Daphni Leef pitched a tent in central Tel Aviv on July 14 to protest the high cost of housing. Her action mushroomed via Facebook into a massive movement against economic inequality. (During the last few decades, Israeli wealth has been highly concentrated within the hands of 10 families, who control 30 percent of the economy.)
America's jobs program is its military—and the immense industry that provides the military with services and armaments.
Souirce: Truthdig
Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.
Source: Alternet
Occupations across the country have born the brunt of some violent police tactics, and in a world where everyone has a camera-phone, a lot of their brutish behavior has been caught in photographs and on video.
Police work is difficult and dangerous, and the majority of officers on the street behave like pros. When it comes to controlling crowds of angry protesters, they’re often put into tense situations and ordered to do things they may not want to do by commanders who are far removed from the scene. I’ve witnessed a lot of restraint from cops, which of course doesn’t make the news.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019