May 4, 2012

Wells Fargo: Riding their bobsled to hell

A post-M1GS conversation with another Occupier led to some clarity:

-Wells Fargo are still allowed to continue robo-signing illegal foreclosures..after years of authorities know about it
-Wells Fargo and others will push an estimated 1,000,000 homeowners onto the streets just this year in California alone
-Some of these victims will die or suicide over such total loss and inability to adjust
-Many will end up downtown on Skid Row
-Skid Row Los Angeles is the largest homeless population in the country
-Skid Row is targeted for gentrification (Mayor Villain loves developers and has forced out the homeless before)
-Section 8 (assisted income) and single-room occupancies are targeted via Guthrie, who did it in Chicago
-Fifty new cops have been assigned to Skid Row at a cost of $6 million dollars
-Homeless services for ALL of LA total $5.7 million a year
-The Safer City Initiative has cops arresting anyone caught sleeping on the sidewalk or not taking down tents and sleeping arrangement after 6AM or so, every day. You will be arrested if caught laying down on the sidewalk or street until 6 or so at night. Your property can and will be seized. More arrests have occurred than there are total Skid Row residents.
-Wells Fargo have millions of dollars invested in private prison development and operation; 3.5 million shares in one company alone
-Private prisons are farming out inmates as cheap labor
-Private prisons promise investors a 90% occupancy rate
-It is a straight line from having your home stolen by Wells Fargo, to living in their privatized prisons. And being used as a legal slave.


And did you know that BofA run the LA food stamp fund? They profit from the homeless yet again! These banks are evil and must be stopped! All I've said above can be confirmed except for the conclusion, which is in process of becoming obvious. I've spent time on Skid Row and there are more cops there than I've ever seen on any residential or city street. Homelessness has been criminalized, and several cities have even made it illegal to feed the homeless.

How many are one paycheck away from being homeless? There is something terribly wrong with this country! You judge a culture by how it treats its weak, not by its profit margin!

May 4, 2012

Nation: Massive May Day Turnout Highlights Media's Disconnect From Reality

http://www.thenation.com/blog/167695/massive-may-day-turnout-highlights-medias-disconnect-reality

"In my recap of the May Day event in New York City yesterday, I briefly summarized the inaccurate crowd estimations published by major publications like Reuters and the New York Daily News. Reuters declared the protest was a 'dud,' though eventually walked back that diagnosis to make the exact opposite claim that the resurgence was 'far from being a dud,' and the Daily News absurdly claimed that mere 'hundreds of activists across the U.S.' participated in the marches even though in New York City alone, tens of thousands of people took to the streets.

But that was only skimming the surface of bad establishment media coverage. CNN published a screed from Amitai Etzioni, a professor at George Washington University, titled 'Why Occupy May Day fizzled,' that appears to make the argument that Occupy failed because capitalism still exists.

Part of the issue seems to be that certain media outlets believe the protest failed because there wasn’t a general strike, mostly because general strikes are illegal in the United States. No Occupy Wall Street representative I ever spoke with genuinely believed there was going to be an across-the-board general strike, which is why the group started to rebrand the event as a day of 'economic noncompliance' that they continued to call a general strike. The title was kept for a number of reasons, including to draw as many laborers into the fold as possible and also to bring attention to the fact that workers showing mass solidarity in the United States is illegal. Which is kind of insane."

May 4, 2012

"We are the only species who pay to live on this planet. Why?"

M1GS protest sign

May 4, 2012

BofA still attempting to kick a widow and her disabled daughter out on the street!

"HIGH ALERT: Bank of America's lawyers are trying to use high pressure tactics on Dirma Rodriguez to sign away her rights to legal remedies in her fraudulent foreclosure case. They threatened to go after an Occupy Fights Foreclosures member and investigate him for giving legal advice when he's not a lawyer. We are going to need people on stand by, we are going to make sure BofA understand they cannot treat a widowed mother with a severely disabled daughter like this and the Occupy Movement isn't going to let something like this slide...."

The story so far:

Foreclosure Horror Story: Woman, Daughter With Cerebral Palsy Evicted - LATimes

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002567977

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If you know anyone who can help neuter BofA, please alert them to this story. Please make it viral. BofA are sick and must be stopped.

Dirma and her daughter Ingrid, who has a severe form of cerebral palsy. She does not speak and has to wear a diaper. Fuck you, BofA.

May 4, 2012

Latest Batch of DHS Occupy Documents Contains New Details About Monitoring of Protest Movement

"Another email shows the White House approved talking points for DHS in which the agency denied to reporters that it had participated in a coordinated crackdown on Occupy encampments last year.

OWS Documents Sought From Other Law Enforcement Agencies

In January, Truthout also filed, under New York’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), a request for OWS documents, including video, audio, photographs, emails, and threat assessments, with the New York Police Department (NYPD) and its Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). In a February 13 letter sent to Truthout, Lt. Richard Mantellino, a records access officer in NYPD’s legal bureau, said, "Before a determination can be rendered, further review is necessary to assess the potential applicability of exemptions set forth in FOIL, and whether the records can be located."

NYPD would not say when the department expects to complete its 'review.'"

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8667-department-of-homeland-security-releases-another-batch-of-ows-files-to-truthout

May 3, 2012

Ready to Occupy? What You Need to Know about H.R. 347, the "Criminalizing Protest" Law on ACLU

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/ready-occupy-what-you-need-know-about-hr-347-criminalizing-protest-law

Given the approaching protests, it may be worth providing a more detail on how exactly the law works, and what protesters can expect. Preliminarily, it's important to define one particular term in the law: "restricted buildings or grounds." These are specific geographic zones that have been designated by the Secret Service, and can be located under H.R. 347 in three places:

• The White House or the vice president's residence.
• A building or area where any individual under Secret Service protection is visiting.
• A building or area at which a National Special Security Event (or "NSSE&quot is taking place (more on that in a second).

Under the existing statute, four types of activities were illegal with respect to these zones, and remain so under the new law:

• You cannot "knowingly" enter or remain in a restricted zone without lawful authority.
• You cannot "knowingly" engage in "disorderly or disruptive" conduct in or near a restricted zone. A prosecutor would have to show, however, that you intended to disrupt government business and that your conduct actually did cause a disruption. Troublingly, the term "disorderly or disruptive conduct" is undefined.
• You cannot "knowingly" block the entrance or exit of one of these restricted zones. Again, however, the prosecutor would have to show that you did so with the intent to disrupt government business.
• Finally, you cannot "knowingly" engage in an act of physical violence against person or property in one of these restricted zones.