Posting from the Road
We're in Estonia, teaching a permaculture design course with a backyard mushroom growing seminar thrown in, and before that we were in Spain teaching an introduction to ecovillage design, and before that in Jordan, Palestine and Israel touring permaculture conferences and projects, and so now it has been more than a month since we last posted and apparently Blogger has bolted our entry door to the site. So we are sending in this post by email and hoping it finds its way up onto The Great Change. If you can read this we were successful.
On Oct 11, 2011, at 11:14 AM, Rick Ingrasci M.D. wrote:
Here's a great collection of photos to give you a sense of what's going on across the country.
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On Oct 11, 2011, at 12:12 AM, Tom Atlee wrote:
Three excellent articles on Occupy Wall Street - the last one is greatly inspiring.
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Occupying Wall Street: What Went Right?
By J.A. Myerson:
Truthout | News Analysis
"Of all the criticisms being hurled at Occupy Wall Street, the most substantively interesting is the issue of scale. How large can the living-society portion of the occupation grow, dependent as it is on a reasonably small living space and an inspiringly simple if limited amplification system? Questions like this are worth pondering, and I'll be taking some of them up here at Truthout in the coming weeks, but let us pause for a moment to consider how astonishing it is that this is a concern at all."
rest of the article....
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Where the 99 Percent Get their Power
By Sarah van Gelder
Executive Editor, Yes! Magazine
"Powerful movements build not on a laundry list of policy demands, but on principles and values.... Powerful movements create their own spaces where they can shift the debate, and the culture, to one that better serves. That's why showing up in person at the occupy sites is so critical to this movement's success. In hundreds of communities around North America, people are showing up to make a statement and to listen to each other. They are also teaching one another to facilitate meetings, to take nonviolent direct action, to make their own media. They are taking care of each other, gathering food supplies, blankets, and clothes that can allow people to remain outdoors even as the weather gets wetter and colder."
rest of the article.....
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Ambiguous UpSparkles From the Heart of the Park (Mic Check/Occupy Wall Street)
By Eve Ensler
Author of 'I Am An Emotional Creature" and "The Vagina Monologues," Founder of V-Day
I have been watching and listening to all kinds of views and takes on Occupy Wall Street. Some say it's backed by the Democratic Party. Some say it's the emergence of a third party. Some say the protesters have no goals, no demands, no stated call. Some say it's too broad, taking on too much. Some say it is the Left's version of the Tea Party. Some say its Communist, some say it's class warfare. Some say it will burn out and add up to nothing. Some say it's just a bunch of crazy hippies who may get violent.
rest of article....
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Even more if you want....
On Oct 10, 2011, at 12:24 PM, Rick Ingrasci M.D. wrote:
Panic of the Plutocrats
New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 9, 2011
It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America's direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.
And this reaction tells you something important - namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called "economic royalists," not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.
Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police - confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction - but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.
Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced "mobs" and "the pitting of Americans against Americans." The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging "class warfare," while Herman Cain calls them "anti-American." My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don't deserve to have them.
rest of article...
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Why the Elite are in Trouble
By Chris Hedges
Published: October 9, 2011
Ketchup, a petite 22-year-old from Chicago with wavy red hair and glasses with bright red frames, arrived in Zuccotti Park in New York on Sept. 17. She had a tent, a rolling suitcase, 40 dollars' worth of food, the graphic version of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" and a sleeping bag. She had no return ticket, no idea what she was undertaking, and no acquaintances among the stragglers who joined her that afternoon to begin the Wall Street occupation. She decided to go to New York after reading the Canadian magazine Adbusters, which called for the occupation, although she noted that when she got to the park Adbusters had no discernable presence.
The lords of finance in the looming towers surrounding the park, who toy with money and lives, who make the political class, the press and the judiciary jump at their demands, who destroy the ecosystem for profit and drain the U.S. Treasury to gamble and speculate, took little notice of Ketchup or any of the other scruffy activists on the street below them. The elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible. And what significance could an artist who paid her bills by working as a waitress have for the powerful? What could she and the others in Zuccotti Park do to them? What threat can the weak pose to the strong? Those who worship money believe their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million JPMorgan Chase gave* to the New York City Police Foundation, can buy them perpetual power and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace, blinded by their self-importance, impervious to human suffering, bloated from unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught a lesson in the folly of hubris.
rest of article...
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