Tag Archives | Activism

Bloomberg Praises Occupy Sandy Relief Effort, Then Sends Police To Shut It Down

By on December 4, 2012 in News 9

After helicoptering in and praising Occupy Sandy this past Thursday (watch below), On Friday New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg threatened to have police shut down the only relief effort actually providing on-the-scene assistance to storm-affected New Yorkers. Via Occupy Wall Street:

The mayor’s office is calling upon local police forces to “clear all outdoor sites” effective immediately. Staten Island police representing the mayor’s office have threatened eviction action against the crucial Staten Island hub in the heavily hit Midland Beach area.

Aiman Youssef, a 42-year-old Syrian-American Staten Islander whose house was destroyed in the hurricane, has been running a 24/7 community pop up hub outside his property at 489 Midland Avenue. Community members are serving hot food and offering non-perishables, medical supplies, and clothing to the thousands of residents who are still without heat, power, or safe housing. This popular hub is well-run, well-staffed, and has a constant hum of discussion, support, and advice as well as volunteer dispatch through another pop-up group.

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Hurricane Sandy Robin Hoods Steal From NYC Luxury Sites To Aid The Poor

By on November 27, 2012 in News 51

Last month’s hurricane further widened the massive economic inequality of New York City — Manhattan has recovered, while poorer outer-borough areas affected remain seriously damaged. Via Grist, an anonymous civic group has taken it upon themselves to correct matters, as their press release explains:

Over the past two weeks, a group of concerned New Yorkers has been expropriating thousands of dollars worth of tools and materials from luxury residential developments across Manhattan and delivering them to neighborhoods devastated by Superstorm Sandy. Confiscated materials, some of them never even used, include: shovels, wheelbarrows, hand trucks, hard bristle brooms, industrial rope, contractor trash bags, work lights, work gloves, flashlights, heat lamps, and gasoline.

Liberated from their role in building multimillion-dollar pieds-à-terre for wealthy CEOs and Hollywood celebrities, these tools are now in the collective hands of some of the hardest-hit communities in the city where they are now being allocated and shared among the people who need them most.

… Read the rest

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Police Arrest Black Friday Protesters On Behalf Of Walmart

By on November 26, 2012 in News 22

On Black Friday, peaceful protest is a jailable offense, while violent mobs are acceptable so long as they are spending money. Rania Khalek writes:

The treatment of peaceful protesters compared to the unruly and sometimes violent crowds of stampeding Black Friday shoppers couldn’t be more different. While the former is ostracized and forcibly removed by police, the latter is encouraged to come out for a competitive brawl over marked off goods. Nowhere is this contrast more clearly defined than in the police treatment of Walmart protesters over the last 24 hours.

On Friday, at least 1,000 Walmart employees throughout the country walked off the job to protest Walmart’s poor labor practices. Local police departments have been happy to disperse and even arrest strikers and their supporters on behalf of the world’s largest retailer.

At a Walmart store in Paramount, just outside of Los Angeles, some 1,500 people rallied against Walmart. Josh Eidelson, live-blogging about the Walmart strikes at The Nation, reports that “Nine people have been arrested for sitting in the street on Lakewood Boulevard, including three striking Walmart retail workers from area stores.

… Read the rest

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Are American College Students The Coal Miners Of Today?

By on November 23, 2012 in News 5

Via Counterpunch, Darwin Bond-Graham argues that students are positioned at a “choke point” in the debt economy:

Now that we know the debt situation is untenable for an entire generation, what are we going to do about it? UC Santa Cruz professor Bob Meister is advocating the university and the plight of the student as a starting point for a wider movement against debt. Historically students have been galvanizers, taking direct action at seemingly impossible moments. Will they do it now?

Meister compared the students of today to the coal miners of early industrial capitalism. Under that regime of production, coal miners had the power to shut down the economy because they labored away at the site of a singular choke point of value extraction upon which all the spinning looms and colonial plantations depended. Students now occupy a choke point, according to Meister. Student loans are assets in the books of banks and the personal fortunes of the wealthy 1%, used to leverage up debts throughout all other sectors of the economy, debts that penetrate into the social collective and reinforce financial servitude for the masses.

… Read the rest

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The Creative Living Of Freegans

By on November 23, 2012 in News 5

Via the Subculture Club, a look at the philosophy and existence of a few New York City freegans, revealing a world of adventure behind every meal:

Freeganism is creative living outside of capitalism. Free from the oppression of the wage slave economy, and free in that you’re not paying for things, not participating in a moneyed economy.

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A Guerrilla Campaign To Correctly Label Food Contents

By on November 21, 2012 in News 12

California’s Proposition 37, which would have required GMO foods sold in stores to be labeled as such, fell short two weeks ago following an advertising blitz against the measure from Monsanto and other players in the agribusiness sector. Label It Yourself suggests an alternative:

The Label It Yourself (#LIY) is a decentralized, autonomous grassroots campaign born out of our broken food system. We have been asking corporations and our government to label food products so we can make educated decisions about what we eat. Our requests have been ignored and so we are taking matters into our own hands.

Using LIY’s resources, we encourage people to: autonomously label GMOs and empower others to do so, rescue words like “All Natural” and “Natural Flavors” from being hijacked, expose unfair labor practices. We have a right to know what is in our food and where it is coming from.

… Read the rest

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Under Proposed Law, Masked Canadian Protesters Could Receive Ten Years In Jail

By on November 5, 2012 in News 5

In surveillance states, concealing one’s face will be considered a significant crime. Via Russia Today:

Canadian lawmakers weren’t exactly in the Halloween spirit when they approved a new bill on Wednesday. The legislation makes it illegal to wear masks during riots and protests. If it becomes law, mask-wearers at riots face up to 10 years in jail.

Parliamentarian Blake Richards, who sponsored the bill, says the measure is aimed at targeting the “growing threat” of vandalism and violence. Lawmakers are particularly targeting the Blak Bloc anarchist group, whose members dress in black and hide their faces with glasses, scarves, and hoods. The group engaged in violence during the Quebec student protests earlier this year.

… Read the rest

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End The NATO5 Witch Hunt

By on November 2, 2012 in News 2

Natalie Solidarity writes at Diatribe Media:

Boots on the ground is one aspect of protest, arguably the most fun, most invigorating, and proffers the sentiment that our voices and bodies are transforming the system.

With our manic dancing to the song of our unified voices singing, “Ah! Anteee! Anteee-capeeetalista!” in the streets under the ruling class’s nose, how could the public remain unmoved? How can they not join in and support us, even for a moment?

With our energy, spirit, dedication, and words, we are altering reality.

We are unstoppable.

We are building a better world with every step forward towards the heart of downtown Chicago. When we stand in the streets, screaming for social change, educating and empowering our sisters, brothers and the masses, the power structures do their best to remove us. All those bastard cops step in and attempt to silence our voices by making arrests. When de-arresting fails and our family is ripped from us by the state’s savage hands and those boots on the ground are transformed into prison slippers on a cold cement floor, how does our movement stand?

… Read the rest

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Can Debt Spark A Revolution?

By on October 30, 2012 in News 10

Via the Nation, David Graeber on rebellion against indebtedness:

The rise of [Occupy Wall Street] allowed us to start seeing the system for what it is: an enormous engine of debt extraction. Debt is how the rich extract wealth from the rest of us, at home and abroad. Internally, it has become a matter of manipulating the country’s legal structure to ensure that more and more people fall deeper and deeper into debt.

Financialization, securitization and militarization are all different aspects of the same process. And the endless multiplication, in cities across America, of gleaming bank offices—
spotless stores selling nothing while armed security guards stand by—is just the most immediate and visceral symbol for what we, as a nation, have become.

As I write, roughly three out of four Americans are in some form of debt, and a whopping one in seven is being pursued by debt collectors. There’s no way to know just what percentage of the average household’s income is now directly expropriated by the financial services industry in the form of interest payments, fees and penalties…[data] suggests it is somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.

… Read the rest

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O.T.O. / AC 2012

By on October 29, 2012 in News, Podcasts 10

The Infinite and the Beyond — Podcast: Episode 028 — O.T.O. / AC 2012

Website • iTunes • Direct Download • RSS

In the latest episode of The Infinite and the Beyond, it’s election time! Are you a voter? Are you voting? Well, before you decide, you should explore your options by checking out our interview with Joseph Thiebes. Joseph tells us about the Ordo Templi Orientis as well as the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, The Gnostic Mass, and what goes into making the Cakes of Light. Later we discuss his Aleister Crowley 2012 presidential campaign as we learn more about Crowley’s views and debunk some of the current myths surrounding him. The final part of the interview with Joseph deals with the ideas regarding authority.

In A Corner in the Occult we learn about occultist and Thelemite Major Grady Louis McMurtry aka: Hymenaeus Alpha and find out how important he was to the O.T.O. Later in the show we discuss Sympathetic Magick and how it effects our everyday lives as we look into The Essence of Magick. And throughout the episode we get to hear some great music by our featured artist Ralph Buckley!

 

To message the show please go here.

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