from Kevin Gosztola's
trenchant analysis on the opposition to "Occupy Wall Street":
"[Journalist John] Avlon is an example of why many Americans do not support Occupy Wall Street. They understand that Occupy Wall Street wants to have an impact on the system and force the system to respond to the occupation’s demands, but they see protesters do not want to work within the system and lobby members of Congress and sign petitions and find out what piecemeal reforms representatives and senators think they can manage to deliver without jeopardizing their re-election campaigns. They are afraid of people power or “too much democracy.”
Compounding the contempt for grassroots struggle in America is the unwavering confidence in the myth known as the American Dream. The American Dream rests upon the idea that all Americans can prosper if they try hard enough. In its most perverted form, it cons Americans into believing they could not only prosper but be rich one day. This was discussed on “Real Time w/ Bill Maher” Friday night too
MAHER: Do [Americans] really think everyone can be rich? How can that really work? Who would do the things for rich people that allow them to be rich people if we are all rich?
MOORE: 400 Americans have more wealth than 150 million combined
HARMAN: I don’t think we can all be rich. I agree with that. But look at who is rich and how young people who are colossally inventive can become the billionaires?
MAHER: So anecdotal.
HARMAN: Have polices that promote innovation and enterprise in this country.
AVLON: This is part of the American character. Right, this is the idea. It’s not just anecdotal. It’s Google. It’s the guys behind Google. There’s dozens and dozens and hundreds — This is the story of America. There are two things going on here. One, eighty percent of Americans always think they are middle class and that’s a good thing. The problem is we have seen the middle class get squeezed for around four decades now. And the average CEO’s salary is around $9.6 million while the average family of four still makes 50 [thousand?] …
Avlon concludes, “You can’t dismiss the idea of the American Dream because people live it every day and that’s what animates our country.” But, as Moore responded, “That dream is a nightmare for most people” these days
from
Glenn Greenwald in Salon:
"It's unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street. Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists. That's just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges. As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it's going to provoke.
Nor is it surprising that much of the most vocal criticisms of the Wall Street protests has come from some self-identified progressives, who one might think would be instinctively sympathetic to the substantive message of the protesters."
Finally,
unconfirmed reports that 100 New York City Police Department officers refused to participate in suppressing the activists:
"Today we received unconfirmed reports that over one hundred blue collar police refused to come into work in solidarity with our movement. These numbers will grow. We are the 99 percent. You will not silence us."
"The news was released shortly after the identity of Deputy Inspector ..was revealed after he allegedly pepper sprayed a deaf woman."
