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Protest
As the Occupy Wall Street movement stretches deep into its second month, the media is picking up a new and negative message: “After weeks of cautiously accepting the teeming, round-the-clock demonstrations spawned by Occupy Wall Street, some stressed-out cities have run out of patience.” (The subhead of yesterday’s New York Times article.)
Conservatives are eagerly trying to smear Occupy Wall Street for the odd deranged participant (and in a wide-open movement/tent city like this, they’re not hard to find: homeless people with mental illness, Ron Paul types, and people who are recently laid off and pissed off, but just plain uninformed). They are also trying to work the referees, accusing the mainstream media of secretly supporting the movement (including a freelance arts journalist who worked on — gasp — public radio’s “World of Opera”! So that’s where the liberals sneak their bias into the media ... ).
The greater media threat to Occupy Wall Street, however, comes not from right-wingers but from the more subtle attempts to frame the protests as unpragmatic and past their time. The first such message was the round of publicity given to the price tag of paying overtime to police. This failed to catch on: It seemed crass to put a price on the right to public assembly, especially given the vast public monies wasted on Wall Street.
Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor will speak about economic inequality this Friday at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, and the Occupy Wall Street movement will be there to protest, citing his opposition to the stimulus package, abortion rights, immigrant rights, and environmental protection.
As far as I can tell, this is not some Yes Men performance art, and the real-life Eric Cantor does plan to "talk about the various socioeconomic classes and how Washington should stop pushing different people down the economic ladder and instead can work together to ensure that all people have the ability move up."
Stop the class war, people, and start up your engines of inter-class loving: when's the last time you hugged a banker?
Occupy Philly’s critics say there’s no clear message, or malign the protesters as trust fund hippies. They yell, “get a job” out of their car windows. They don’t stop by for a conversation.
These three videos sent in by our readers show the diverse and articulate Occupy Philly you will find if you decide to make the trip down to City Hall. Before you decide to be a hater, take a few minutes to watch.
Dozens of professors at the University of Pennsylvania declared their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement in a letter posted in yesterday's edition of The Daily Pennsylvanian student newspaper.
(It should perhaps be noted that they neglect to mention Occupy Philly in particular, a revolt that has broken out right down the street.) The first sentence clearly mentions the movement "underway in our city"--my bad.
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More than 2,000 people, from bed-headed young people who had slept the night at City Hall to union workers and families, marched past the Liberty Bell to Independence Hall to support Occupy Philly’s call for economic justice.
“We are the hardworking people,” said Jennifer Martinez, a Certified Nursing Assistant from North Philadelphia and member of SEIU Local 1199-P, whose members sported purple t-shirts reading Stop corporate greed. “It took us too long. I think we’re sending a message not just to the Tea Party, but to the world, that we’re taking America back.”
Video by Marquise Lee. First four photos by Kae Crack, and the rest by photographer Kaytee Riek.
Send your personal testimonies and photos to daniel[DOT]denvir@citypaper[DOT]net and we will post them over the coming weeks--or months?
Follow @DanielDenvir and @Isaiah_Thompson on Twitter for continuing Occupy Philly coverage.
I’m taking off my reporting hat and stepping onto my opinion stump for a moment as, for whatever it’s worth, a lefty journalist who previously spent many years working as an activist and organizer.
In an incredibly disciplined and orderly display of mass democracy, Occupy Philly is just about evenly split on whether to accept Mayor Michael Nutter’s offer of a permit for the indefinite occupation of City Hall. The question has been tabled for the morning.
Why not take it?
Taking the permit will make the space safer for more people--like, say, families and undocumented immigrants. And importantly, no one will be signing away their right to do something else illegal somewhere else in the future.
So if at some point it makes sense to take a stand and get arrested to make some noise, why not do it at the doorstep of some corporate evildoer like (just for the sake of example) Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or Comcast? If there’s going to be a fight, don’t have it with the City unless you can articulate a good reason why Mayor Nutter, etc. is a priority target--and perhaps they are. He did veto labor legislation that would require employers to provide paid sick days to their workers. But the City has given Occupy Philly the opportunity to pick its fights: so pick them and don’t just fall into one.
Plus, it seems like the Mayor is going to hook it up for a viewing of the Phillies game tomorrow.
Good night, and follow City Paper for ongoing Occupy Philly coverage.
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Daniel Denvir discusses Occupy Philly on MSNBC today with Tamron Hall.
Send your personal testimonies and photos to daniel[DOT]denvir@citypaper[DOT]net and we will post them over the coming weeks--or months?
Follow @DanielDenvir and @Isaiah_Thompson on Twitter for continuing Occupy Philly coverage.
First few photos by Brian Wilensky and Quinn Kostman, and then a whole lot from photographer Kaytee Riek
Occupy Philly’s first on-site general assembly at City Hall began today at noon.
Protesters stressed that City Hall is a public space, and asked everyone to respect the area — and the homeless people that call it home. They also discussed how and whether to obtain permits for marches and for an extended residence at City Hall. And many were planning for a long stay.
“I am spellbound by the potential in the community,” says Eric Hunter, 22. They’re even “willing to sleep outside. If the solution is to sleep outside forever even, that’ll be all right.”
Two hours in at Occupy Philly, the protest against financial exploitation and economic inequality that was sparked by mass protests on Wall Street, a growing crowd of more than one thousand people had gathered in front of City Hall.
One man yelled, “Speculators are not job creators!” One woman held a sign reading, “Bail out students, not Wall Street.”
Norris Simon, a member of Steamfitters Local 638, traveled from New York for the first day of Occupy Philly. Yesterday, labor unions and other community groups came out in the first major show of institutional support for protesters on Wall Street.
Representatives of Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter met with Occupy Philly organizers this afternoon, according to Managing Director Richard Negrin.
“First and foremost it’s about getting together and having some common goals and shared interests,” Negrin told City Paper. "The magnitude and all of that is obviously outside our control, and it's something that will be determined over the next days.”
The city will not block the protesters from occupying the land around City Hall, and Negrin says that organizers have agreed to secure permits for any marches so that blocked streets don’t disrupt ambulances and create a public safety issue. He says that the city will go out of its way to help secure permits on an expedited timetable.
“Our interest with those leaders is, how we can do this in a thoughtful, reasonable, and orderly way, that is both lawful and the least disruptive to everyday Philadelphians as possible? The group has committed to us to be as peaceful and orderly as possible. To be as vocal as possible is really their purpose, to fully exercise their First Amendment free speech rights, which we wholly support. Philadelphia is the cradle of liberty, and sometimes democracy is inconvenient.”
Negrin is confident that protesters and the city will be able to work together, and says that Mayor Nutter shares the protesters' goals of social and economic justice.
“This is a global, national problem about the shrinking middle class, and the few who hold the overwhelming amount of wealth. I think the mayor’s sympathetic to that. Those interests generally align. I think we’re looking for social and economic justice across the board. There’s no adversity or antagonism from us in terms of the righteousness of their cause.”
Police, says Negrin, are prepared to handle the protests professionally.
“We’re very fortunate to have a police commissioner who the Mayor says is one of the best in the country. He’s an expert at protests having come from D.C.,” where he was the long-time police chief.
But civil liberties advocates have long criticized Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey for his handling of two protests in the nation’s capital where hundreds of activists were preemptively arrested. D.C. settled the cases for $8.25 million and $13.7 million a piece.
“We think we can make it work,” says Negrin. “Folks just need to keep their word. We’ll keep ours.
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Send your personal testimonies and photos to daniel[DOT]denvir@citypaper[DOT]net and we will post them over the coming weeks--or months?
Follow me on Twitter @DanielDenvir for continuing Occupy Philly coverage.
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