Peaceful, lawful protest -- if it is effective -- IS innately disruptive of "business as usual." That is WHY it is effective.

naomi wolf reminds us of what the first amendment really means and why it is such a strong tool in our push back against the super-rich elites who are doing their damnedest to vacuum up every last scrap of the world's money and power...

from the huffington post via information clearing house...

I want to address the issue of "disruption," as Bloomberg is sending this issue out as a talking point brought up on Keith Olbermann's Countdown last night: the neighbors around Zuccotti Square, says Bloomberg, are feeling "disrupted" by the noise and visitors to the OWS protest, so he is going to crack down to "strike a balance" to address their complaints. Other OWS organizers have let me know that the Parks Department and various municipalities are trying to find a way to eject other protesters from public space on a similar basis of argument.

Please, citizens of America -- please, OWS -- do not buy into this rhetorical framework: an absolute "right to be free of disruption" from First Amendment activity does not exist in a free republic. But the right to engage in peaceable disruption does exist.

Citizens who live or work near protest sites or marches have every right to be free of violence from protesters and they should never be subjected to destruction of property. This is why I am always saying to OWS and to anyone who wants to assemble: be PEACEFUL PEACEFUL PEACEFUL. Be respectful to police, do not yell at them; sing, don't chant; be civil to pedestrians and shop owners; don't escalate tensions; try to sit when there is tension rather than confront physically; be dignified and be nonviolent.

But the First Amendment means that it actually is not up to the mayor or the police of any municipality, or to the Parks Department, or to any local municipality to prohibit public assembly if the assembly is peaceful but disruptive in many ways.

Peaceful, lawful protest -- if it is effective -- IS innately disruptive of "business as usual." That is WHY it is effective.

[...]

Most of us need to remember, or learn for the first time (since this information is usually concealed from us) that the First Amendment, and the Constitution in general, supersedes all the laws of municipalities in violation of the constitution, as stated in the 1925 Gitlow v. New York ruling. So the First Amendment supersedes the restrictive permit laws now being invoked against protesters. The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right.

[...]

Bloomberg is flat wrong, and he doubtless knows it but hopes you won't notice: New Yorkers have no right to be free of any disruption from the peaceful but disruptive free-speech actions of their fellow citizens, and how New Yorkers lawfully and peacefully assert their First Amendment rights is actually not up to him. There is a higher authority than Michael Bloomberg, or than the NYPD, or even than the guy in the white shirt who signaled to his colleagues to handcuff me earlier this week when I stood peacefully on a sidewalk, obeying what I had confirmed to be the law: and that higher authority is called the Constitution of the United States of America.

our super-rich elites and their bought-and-paid-for governmental puppets (one and the same in bloomberg's case) will stop at nothing to maintain their twisted status quo...

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Occupy Wall Street gets to stay in Zucotti Park - for at least a while longer

this morning...

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Just say "NO" to Bloomberg

sweet jesus...



just what we need... another goddam monied elite bastard wanting to run our country...

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Bloomberg for President: "a neoconservative, combat-avoiding, Bush-supporting, Middle-East-warmonger"

glenn...

[Michael Bloomberg] is just exactly what our country desperately needs, what it is missing most -- a neoconservative, combat-avoiding, Bush-supporting, Middle-East-warmonger who sees U.S. and Israeli interests as indistinguishable and inextricably linked, with a fetish for ever-increasing government control and surveillance, and a background as a Wall St. billionaire. We just haven't had enough of those in our political culture. Our political system, more than anything, is missing the influence of people like that. That's why it's broken: not enough of those.

[...]

In fact -- despite his steadfast neoconservatism -- it's hard to see how the candidacy of a divorced, unmarried, stridently pro-gun-control, pro-choice, socially liberal New York City billionaire would accomplish anything other than offering the Republicans their best hope of winning in 2008. All of this seems to be intended as punishment meted out by the Establishment to the Democrats -- using Bloomberg's billions as the weapon -- for not repudiating their loudmouth, restless liberal base strongly enough. That, more than anything, seems to be the oh-so-noble and trans-partisan purpose of David Broder, David Boren and Sam Nunn: to find a way to stifle the populist anger at our political establishment after 8 years of unrestrained Bush-Cheney devastation, increasingly represented (on the Democratic side) by the Scary, Angry, Intemperate John Edwards campaign.

this would be hysterically funny if it wasn't so goddam pathetic... if there was anything that should be bringing people together in a spirit of harmony, unity, and bipartisanship, it's restoring our country to the principles upon which it was founded and reversing and repudiating the willful flouting of the rule of law, the destruction of the constitution, the total absence of accountability, and our rapid descent into an "endemic surveillance society"... these jokers obviously define "bipartisanship" as "business as usual"...

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Letting Mexico show us the way to fight poverty

this is from a story in today's nyt about nyc mayor bloomberg's trip to mexico to see first-hand how mexico is dealing with its huge number of people living in poverty... i could care less about bloomberg, but i did find the details of the mexican program fascinating... particularly since bushco's concerted attack on any form of implied or explicit social contrast and its championing of social darwinism and the bogus "on-your-own(ership)" society, the u.s. has turned a blind eye to poverty...

If the women and their children have kept all their medical appointments, and if their children have stayed in school, the money is theirs to use as they wish. The awards range from 360 to 3,710 pesos (about $36 to $370), enough to buy food or shoes or other necessities. The size of the award depends on how many children they have and what level of school the children are in.

The program is 10 years old, has a budget of more than $3 billion a year and covers almost a quarter of all Mexicans.

[...]

Outside evaluations have found that the program, called Oportunidades, has been successful in raising school attendance and nutrition levels. The percentage of Mexicans living in extreme poverty has fallen by 17 percentage points since 1996, when it reached 37 percent.

Those results have spurred some 30 countries to adopt some version of the program.

meanwhile, back in the richest country in the world...

• In an economy that produces $13 trillion annually, 37 million Americans still live below the official poverty line.

• In 2005, the richest one percent of Americans had the largest share of the nation's income -- 19 percent -- since 1929, while the poorest 20 percent of Americans had only 3.4 percent of the nation's income.

• In 2005, 16 million people -- 5.4 percent of all Americans -- had incomes below half the poverty line. The number of Americans living in such extreme poverty grew by over three million [PDF] between 2000 and 2005, and the share of poor people living in extreme poverty is now greater than at any point in the last 32 years.

• The federal minimum wage has remained static for nearly a decade. At $5.15 an hour, it is at its lowest level in real terms since 1956.

• There are more Americans living in poverty today than there are total people living in the state of California, the most populous state in the nation.

(u.s. poverty statistics courtesy of the center for american progress...)

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