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There are growing rumors that the fabled coffee-giant Starbucks will soon be kicking out its “laptop hobos” – you know those people who buy a cup of Starbucks and a muffin, then flip open their laptop and curl up in their chair for the rest of the day.
Here is a mid-day update on the protests going on currently around Wall Street in New York City. “Occupy Wall Street” actions and a takeover of a local park continue. Tensions between demonstrators and police are mounting, one protester is in critical condition, and it appears that YAHOO was – for a while at least, censoring emails on their accounts that had the words “occupy wall street”. The “problem” appears to be over.
In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care. Higher education is a luxury reserved almost exclusively to the very rich. Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it. Fathers compete with their adolescent children for sub-minimum wage jobs. And our national leaders are utterly powerless to do a thing.
Protestors continue their “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations in New York City for the fourth day. In what began as a day of rage on Saturday, the 17th, continues into this week. Hundreds have been camping out at what used to be called Zuccotti Park – renamed “Liberty Park”.
A livestream video of the protests is available at the OB Rag sidebar.
This morning – the 20th – the livestream reported:
At 730 am of 9/20 three people were arrested including one of the media team. Always classy, NYPD. At any time, 50-70 people typically surround the park w/ about 200-300 people in it.
In the 1964 presidential elections, a young political operative named Bill guarded a largely African-American polling place in South Phoenix, Arizona like a bull mastiff. Bill was a legal whiz who knew the ins and outs of voting law and insisted that every obscure provision be applied, no matter what. … It turned out that it was part of a Republican Party strategy known as “Operation Eagle Eye”, and “Bill” was future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist.
By Micah White and Kalle Lasn / September 19, 2011
We need deeper changes to our financial system, or tent cities of people angry at corporate greed will keep appearing.
On Saturday 17 September, many of us watched in awe as 5,000 Americans descended on to the financial district of lower Manhattan, waved signs, unfurled banners, beat drums, chanted slogans and proceeded to walk towards the “financial Gomorrah” of the nation. They vowed to “occupy Wall Street” and to “bring justice to the bankers”, but the New York police thwarted their efforts temporarily, locking down the symbolic street with barricades and checkpoints.
By Colin Moynihan / New York Times / September 19, 2011
In a continuation of the demonstrations that began on Saturday, nearly 200 protesters marched along Wall Street and other parts of the financial district Monday morning, brandishing American flags and signs denouncing the economic system. At least five of them were arrested.
By Mike Davis / TomDispatch.com / September 13, 2011
1. Twin Towers
Two years from now the staffs of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker will move into the most haunted building in the world. There, the elite of American celebrity photographers, gossip columnists, and magazine journalists may meet some macabre new muses, aloft in the upper stories of 1 World Trade Center where 658 doomed employees were sitting at their desks at 8:46 AM, September 11, 2001.
Editor: This is the personal and harrowing account of the woman who was among three passengers forcefully removed from Flight 623 that originated in San Diego on September 11th. It is a wake-up call to anyone who hasn’t been introduced to the Patriot Act. This is America of today.
________________
Silly me. I thought flying on 9/11 would be easy. I figured most people would choose not to fly that day so lines would be short, planes would be lightly filled and though security might be ratcheted up, we’d all feel safer knowing we had come a long way since that dreadful Tuesday morning 10 years ago.
But then armed officers stormed my plane, threw me in handcuffs and locked me up.
As the nation continued to struggle to escape the effects of the recession, the poverty rate spiked to 15.1 percent in 2010, the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.
About 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty last year, marking an increase of 2.6 million over 2009 and the fourth consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate.
The total number of people living in poverty — defined in 2010 as at or below an income of $22,314 for a family of four — is now at the highest level in the 52 years the statistic has been collected.
Here is a set of national news posts – articles you may have missed in the nation’s rush to commemorate 9-11:
Postal Workers: The Last Union
Obama Team Feared Coup If He Prosecuted War Crimes
Army Base on the Brink : At an Army base near Seattle, soldiers are committing suicide, murdering their families—and in one case, waterboarding their own kids.
(Go inside for the links)
By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / September 11, 2011
As I sat in a college classroom Thursday afternoon, the power went out and we swiftly determined we were in the throes of a regional electrical power failure. My first thought was to check for students in the elevators. My second thought was of the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks and the possibility that the blackout was somehow related.
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