OB Rag

From Tehran to Scotland, from Hong Kong to the always fiery, militant youth of Rome, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread across the globe. Tired and angry over decades of corporate owned capitalism, where wealthy stockholders and huge multi-national corporations set the agenda for political and economic policy decisions, plunging millions of middle-class families into poverty, exacerbating the conditions of the already destitute, and forcing millions of youth into either wage slavery or no future at all; the world’s 99% have taken to the streets.

The First Amendment and the obligation to peacefully disrupt in a free society.

By Naomi Wolf / Reader Supported News / Oct. 22, 2011

Mayor Bloomberg is planning Draconian new measures to crack down on what he calls the “disruption” caused by the protesters at Zuccotti Park, and he is citing neighbors’ complaints about noise and mess. This set of talking points, and this strategy, is being geared up as well by administrations of municipalities around the nation in response to the endurance and growing influence of the Occupation protest sites. But the idea that any administration has the unmediated option of “striking a balance,” in Bloomberg’s words, that it likes, and closing down peaceful and lawful disruption of business as usual as it sees fit is a grave misunderstanding – or, more likely, deliberate misrepresentation – of our legal social contract as American citizens.

The following video was produced for a class by ReinaldoUPR and posted to you tube in October of 2009. In the 2 years it has been up it has been viewed over 650,000 times. This iconic song and the images contained in the video are a powerful reminder of the turbulent era of the 1960’s and that we still have a long way to go. (Doug, it gave me the chills too.)

Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue

By Barbara Ehrenreich / TomDispatch.com

As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems. Large numbers of people must be fed and kept reasonably warm and dry. Trash has to be removed; medical care and rudimentary security provided — to which ends a dozen or more committees may toil night and day. But for the individual occupier, one problem often overshadows everything else, including job loss, the destruction of the middle class, and the reign of the 1%. And that is the single question: Where am I going to pee?

Occupy San Diego – our city’s own version of Occupy Wall Street – has expanded. Due to pressure being placed on the Occupy San Diego demonstrators by the police – a pressure which has prevented the protests’ ability to set up its support network, a solidarity station has been opened at Children’s Park in downtown at Island and First. The solidarity site will work to support the main occupation site, the Civic Center Plaza, where occupiers are now in their 15th day.

By late morning yesterday, October 21st, OccupySD activists had unloaded several vehicles worth of food and gear, and had begun to set up support stations that make up the occupy infrastructure. And by mid-afternoon, they had completed the set-up and establishment of the stations that support the movement. So, for the first time since last week, the Occupy San Diego efforts had the full panoply of its sustainability network: the food-line and kitchen, the medical station, sanitation, the library, arts and crafts, and some media.

Demonstrators beaten after arrests – Americans included

Contrary to what much of the media reported, the breaking up earlier this week of the Occupy Tijuana protest was a lot harsher than originally reported. On Tuesday, October 18th, it was reported that up to 50 Mexican law enforcement agents broke up the encampment at 2:30 in the morning, an encampment that had been going on since Saturday, the 15th, and that 26 people were arrested.

However, according to an American present at the protest in Tijuana, the cops came at 7:30 to 8 pm, and ended up arresting as many as 60 people, many of them from this side of the border. David Fugate was at the site, and he told me that they were very peaceful, were holding signs and some were chanting near the intersection of Revolucion and 8th Street, on a grassy area.

The original OB Rag and other underground newspapers had their vending machines “plucked off the streets” by U-T vendors on orders from high-up

By Frank Green / CounterPunch.org

Print media’s decline in the United States can be tracked in microcosm in San Diego, longtime home to one of the country’s most conservative, reactionary dailies.

Local progressives have been watching in bemusement for several years as The San Diego Union-Tribune – once Richard Nixon’s favorite news source – radically chops staff, loses circulation and, more importantly, sees its once-dominant and domineering position as a right-wing political and cultural force in the area fade.

At San Diego City College today more than a hundred students staged a walkout in solidarity with Occupy San Diego. After holding a rally at Curren Plaza where many students spoke to an enthusiastic crowd, about 150 protesters marched from the campus, down B Street, chanting and addressing pedestrians and onlookers, to the Civic Center Plaza to join the Occupy Movement protesters.

In one of the restaurant reviews I wrote several weeks ago, a reader asked why I was only reviewing “national chains.” He suggested that I review local restaurants. With that in mind, a friend and I went to lunch at “South Beach Bar and Grill” on Newport.

Throughout Tuesday’s made for Reality TV GOP debate I kept muttering- “just answer the damn question” while trying to imagine Romney and the Not Romneys as president of the United States. Their responses to the foreclosure crisis, immigration and foreign policy were so far off the rails that my brain had to come up with a coping mechanism.

Annual Conflict Resolution Conference Brought World Healers to Our Shores

Sister Pauline Acayo, is a large African woman. Large not merely in physical presence, but in the sense her heart is filled with love and compassion. George Gacharo is a young African man. Young not merely in the sense of age, but in the sense he is full of fire and energy for the work he does. Gidon Bromberg looks a bit like an Israeli Peter Sellers. And like Sellers’ comedic nature, his work is subtle and surreptitious in nature and he tells of it with a wry smile.

By Jonathan Benson / Natural News / October 17, 2011

Marketed as a simple and convenient way to carry identification, make payments, and furnish quick and easy access to medical records in the event of an emergency — all with one single bracelet. But the VITAband also has the potential to become a serious invasion of privacy as it allows third parties to access personal data and other information, all of which is linked to a users individual ID tag.