Posted 13 years ago on Sept. 24, 2011, 6:09 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
This report just came in a half hour ago from the chair of the NYC IWW chapter:
Protesters arrested today (including the NYC IWW chair) are being locked inside a police van outside the:
1st Precinct Police Station
16 Ericsson Pl.
New York, NY 10013
+1 (212) 334-0611
They've been there for over an hour. One has a very bad concussion, possibly life threatening.
Right now the NYC IWW chair he is calling on us to send people NOW for help out and to demand medical care for our comrades.
If you can't make it in person then please call these numbers:
1st Precinct - (212) 334-0611 - 16 Ericsson Place
6th Precinct - (212) 741-4811 - 233 West 10 Street
NYPD Switchboard: 1-646-610-5000
Central booking: +1 (212) 374-3921
Deputy Commissioner of Public Information: +1 (646) 610-6700
This is the seventh communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.
On September 23rd, 2011, it rained. We organized what shelter the police would allow us and thought. We thought about everything that is wrong with this country, with this world. We talked. We talked about everything that is wrong in this world. There has been no real conversation in this country and this world about wealth and the way it is misused. We are that conversation. Join us and make your voice heard. What is your one demand?
Our voice will no longer be ignored. There are too many things wrong with this world for our voices to be silenced. You know this. We know this. This is why we are here, why we grow every day.
Occupy your homes. You own your home, a callous bank that split ownership of your home into hundreds of parts, redistributing them across the world under false ratings does not own your home. Fifty times as much speculative trading as commercial trading goes on each day in America. You are in debt to people who make money by moving money from place to place using computers.
You have a right to shelter. No one can take that right from you.
Banks are able to restructure settlements constantly, they receive billions and billions of dollars so that they can stay afloat for long enough to steal your property from you. Do not let them. Do not leave your house. If the police come to steal your house and deliver it to the 1 percent film them and show the world and then join us. If we are not already occupying your city, your town, bring a sleeping bag, a pillow, and contact us. We will help you find food. We will help you sue for shelter. We will find each other. We will grow. We will build - city by city, block by block.
We stand in solidarity with homeowners across the country and the world whose homes are in the process of being stolen by faceless conglomerations motivated only by profit. We are the 99 percent. We will not let you steal our homes. We will not let you deprive us of a basic right, shelter, so that you can buy a home you do not use. We are here. We are growing. And we will not be moved.
We stand in solidarity with Madrid, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Madison, Toronto, London, Athens, Sydney, Stuttgart, Tokyo, Milan, Amsterdam, Algiers, Tel Aviv, Portland, Chicago and Palestine. Soon we will stand with Phoenix, Montreal, Cleveland, Atlanta, Kansas City, Dallas, Orlando and Miami. We're still here. We are growing. We intend to stay until we see movements toward real change in our country and the world.
Posted 13 years ago on Sept. 23, 2011, 8:03 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Occupy Wall Street is elated to announce that, through the efforts of our brothers and sisters in the upcoming October 6th occupation of DC (october2011.org), we have today acquired fiscal sponsorship through the Alliance for Global Justice, a registered 501C3 non-profit (afgj.org).
Over the past month and a half, occupywallst.org has been assisting with the collection of monetary donations for food purchases, spearheaded by the Food Committee. These funds have been collected through wepay.com and to this point have remained inaccessible due to bureaucratic difficulties. Through the generosity of The Alliance for Global Justice and October 2011 we have expedited the process for accessing the funds that we desperately need.
We, the Occupation are touched and eternally grateful for mass outpouring of prepared food donations that we receive daily. Despite our bureaucratic challenges, we have been able to feed our numbers comfortably with what we have on-site. Consequently, it was put forth by this afternoon’s General Assembly, that what is currently the online Food Fund be re-purposed as the General Infrastructure Fund, by which working groups may request funding from the G.A. To oversee these funds and prevent any misappropriation the G.A. supported the formation of a Finance Committee with independent auditors.
It is the utmost importance to this occupation that we remain completely transparent and accountable for our actions, both on location and off-site. We would like to provide anyone who has donated to the Food Fund 36 hours to determine whether they would like to continue to support us, or whether they would prefer to withdraw their donations as is possible via wepay.com.
Now that these funds are being made accessible to us, we would like to clarify that we are still in desperate need of donations. Your support keeps the occupation going strong – it keeps us warm, it keeps us fed, it keeps us healthy. Any contributions are much appreciated and will be used soon! Please check in at www.occupywallst.org for a direct donation link via Alliance for Global Justice- COMING SOON!
Separately, we are weak, but together we are the 99 percent and together we are unstoppable.
We are now able to receive packages. The UPS store 118A #205 New York, New York 10038 RE: Occupy Wall Street. Money orders only please, cannot cash checks yet. Non-perishable goods only. We can accept packages of any size. We are currently low on food.
Posted 13 years ago on Sept. 23, 2011, 4:11 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
At 10 a.m. yesterday morning, activists involved in #OCCUPYWALLSTREET paid a visit to a Sotheby's art auction. Last year Sotheby's made record profits, enough so that their CEO Bill Rupprecht awarded himself a 125 percent raise. At the same time the company decided to use union-busting tactics, demanding over 100 concessions to the IBT 814 Art Handlers Union Contract. With their unionized workforce currently on lockout, Sotheby's continues to operate using scabs and a non-union subcontractor and wants all new hires to have no collective bargaining rights, no health benefits and no job security.
Today's auction was held on the seventh floor of Sotheby's Upper East Side auction house—a sterile atmosphere, ripe with the stench of expensive perfume. The activists staggered their entrances and planted themselves in the crowd of businessmen and women, all gathered to witness the sale of artwork, with prices ranging from the average salary of a working American to the average cost of an American home. The first of the activists took the room by surprise, disrupting the auction and announcing that “Sotheby's made $680 million dollars last year but then they kicked their art handlers out on the street!”
While making a call for security, the auctioneer read a prepared statement kept on her podium for just this sort of demonstration. “Thank you for your patience, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “I hope that is the last interruption we have today.”
However, nine surprise demonstrations disrupted the two-hour auction. One protestor shouted “This is disgusting! Art is about truth.” Another, in sunglasses and a "Greed Kills" T-shirt attested that the “greed in this building is a direct example of the corporate greed that has ruined our economy.” The #OCCUPYWALLSTREET activists were there to show solidarity with the art handlers in their struggle for worker's rights and to warn of a coming increase in direct protests against the top 1 percent of New York City's economic food chain.
“In addition to auctioning off these fine pieces of artwork,” said Mary Clinton, one of the demonstrators, “today Sotheby's is auctioning off the American dream.”
All nine were escorted from the premise by security, shouting, “End the lockout!” and “Occupy Wall Street!” Sotheby's auctions epitomize the disconnect between the extremely wealthy and the rest of us. These are the same financial elite who were bailed out in their moment of need and who now refuse to pay their fair share in taxes.
This is the sixth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.
On September 22nd, 2011, sixteen cities from around the country and the world stood in solidarity with us, protesting the disparity of power and wealth that exists in our society. In Liberty Square, no such disparity exists. Everyone's needs are taken care for, food, medicine, water. The only need, the only right, that we cannot take care of is shelter, though this is not our choice. Mayor Bloomberg said that he would give us a space to protest but at every moment he attempts to erode us. He uses absurd police tactics – arresting protesters for using chalk on sidewalks, for wearing masks on the back of their heads in violation of a law that is a century and a half old, for... what, exactly? He uses the tactics of media suppression only available to a billionaire with a media empire. It has not worked. It will not work. We are growing. Each day more cities join us. Each day our movement grows. We demand real change. We will see it.
As organized by our labor working group and outreach working group, we stood in solidarity with Teamsters local 814 and picketed Sotheby's. We are joined and will act in solidarity with the Professional Staff Congress, a union of 20,000 employees from the City University of New York.
As always, our General assembly and work groups kept busy maintaining and securing our space and our freedoms.
Tonight we were joined by a protest against the for-profit legal lynching of Troy Davis. We are all Troy Davis. If Troy Davis had been a member of the 1% he would still be alive. Together we numbered nearly a thousand strong and marched on Wall Street. The police arrested six of us and attempted to incite violence by splitting the march and boxing in protesters, in spite of this, we remained true to our principles of nonviolence. After the police arrested our members we marched on their First Precinct as phone calls from supporters flooded in, urging the police to release the jailed peaceful protesters.
We are unions, students, teachers, veterans, first responders, families, the unemployed and underemployed. We are all races, sexes and creeds. We are the majority. We are the 99 percent. And we will no longer be silent.
As members of the 99 percent, we occupy Wall Street as a symbolic gesture of our discontent with the current economic and political climate and as an example of a better world to come. Therefore we invite the public, our fellow 99 percent, to join us in a march on SATURDAY AT NOON, starting from LIBERTY SQUARE (ZUCCOTTI PARK) at LIBERTY & BROADWAY.
This is a call for individuals, families and community and advocacy groups to march in solidarity.
We stand in solidarity with Madrid, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Madison, Toronto, London, Athens, Sydney, Stuttgart, Tokyo, Milan, Amsterdam, Algiers, Tel Aviv, Portland and Chicago. Soon we will stand with Phoenix, Montreal, Cleveland, Atlanta, Kansas City, Dallas, Seattle and Orlando. We're still here. We are growing. We intend to stay until we see movements toward real change in our country and the world.
We speak as one. All of our decisions, from our choice to march on Wall Street to our decision to continue occupying Liberty Square in spite of police brutality, were decided through a consensus based process by the group, for the group.
