Occupy Lives, and Changes Lives

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/441-occupy/14701-focus-occupy-lives-and-changes-lives

I know what it's like to be hounded by bill collectors. And regardless of how I feel about the Tea Party's politics, if they spearheaded an initiative to abolish the $6,000 in medical debt I had racked up in Houston, Texas, after breaking my elbow with no health insurance, and if they did the same with thousands of others' debt out of sheer desire to do good, I would feel radically different about the Tea Party. And if they led a disaster recovery effort that was on the ground in affected communities long before governments and well-funded relief organizations were able to provide help, I might even think about joining them. Occupy Wall Street, the populist economic justice movement the corporate-owned media and corporate-owned political class has been declaring as "dead" for months now, has been doing all of the above.

When the camps were evicted, the media breathlessly reported about the official death of the movement and blamed nonviolent protesters for the city governments squandering millions of tax dollars on constant and overwhelming police presence and re-seeding grass in parks (that somehow costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to do). And after more than 30,000 marched through New York City on May Day, the media gleefully announced the death of Occupy Wall Street, since the ragtag populist movement didn't succeed in getting 100% of Americans to take off work to participate in the general strike. By the time #S17 came around, the weekend of Occupy Wall Street's 1-year anniversary, there were tens of thousands of people in the streets of New York, and the NYPD arrested hundreds of nonviolent protesters (including me), yet the media coverage was scant and inconsequential, and garnered just a passing glance.

Yet despite the Occupy funeral dirge that's been played in dozens of headlines, the movement has flourished in its post-encampment phase. Occupy Sandy has become a full-scale military-style operation that has developed a highly-efficient means of training and deploying volunteers, storing and transporting goods, feeding the hungry and putting clothes on those who have none. Police who were arresting protesters on #S17 weekend are now handing bags of clothes down assembly lines, side by side with those same protesters.

[silverweb]

1. One of the comments is very important.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]She wrote:

[font color="black" face="Arial"]I don't know how many on here belong to Change.org, but a Romney group is trying to buy them up. I already signed the petition and told them to remove my name and account if they are going to be rightwinger group. Here is the link to the petition if you are interested:

http://signon.org/sign/changeorg-reinstate-the?source=s.em.mt&r_by=473944

They are trying to keep us from knowing.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I participate in Change.org and didn't know about this, so I signed the petition and am trying to help spread the word. Tell Change.org to reinstate this whistleblower and to back off their jolt towards the right wing -- or lose our support and participation!

http://signon.org/sign/changeorg-reinstate-the?source=s.em.mt&r_by=473944

[Lady Freedom Returns]

2. I know the Occupy movement made a difference to me.

I know I have shared my story before so I won't go over it again. But when I saw that all those people coming with coats and food down the street to give to the shelter, that they wanted to help me because I was a person. They didn't do it to get a tax write off. They did it because they saw kids with thin coats waiting for school buses. they saw the pictures of the empty shelves in the community pantry, They did it because we were people to. So many times I felt like I was less than human, but all those people just wanting to help picked me up in a way that I can not explain, not then and not now.

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. ...