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The Occupy movement has had enormous successes in the short time since September when activists took over a square near Wall Street. It has attracted hundreds of thousands of active participants, spawned occupations in cities and towns all over North America, changed the national dialogue and garnered enormous public support. It's even, on occasion, gotten good press!
Now we are wrestling with the question that arises again and again in movements for social justice—how to struggle. Do we embrace nonviolence, or a 'diversity of tactics?' If we are a nonviolent movement, how do we define nonviolence? Is breaking a window violent?
We write as a trainers' collective with decades of experience, from the anti-Vietnam protests of the sixties through the strictly nonviolent antinuclear blockades of the seventies, in feminist, environmental and anti-intervention movements and the global justice mobilizations of the late '90s and early '00s. We embrace many labels, including feminist, anti-racist, eco-feminist and anarchist. We have many times stood shoulder to shoulder with black blocs in the face of the riot cops, and we've been tear-gassed, stun-gunned, pepper sprayed, clubbed, and arrested,
While we've participated in many actions organized with a diversity of tactics, we do not believe that framework is workable for the Occupy Movement. Setting aside questions of morality or definitions of 'violence' and 'nonviolence' – for no two people define 'violence' in the same way – we ask the question:
What framework can we organize in that will build on our strengths, allow us to grow, embrace a wide diversity of participants, and make a powerful impact on the world?
'Diversity of tactics' becomes an easy way to avoid wrestling with questions of strategy and accountability. It lets us off the hook from doing the hard work of debating our positions and coming to agreements about how we want to act together. It becomes a code for 'anything goes,' and makes it impossible for our movements to hold anyone accountable for their actions.
The Occupy movement includes people from a broad diversity of backgrounds, life experiences and political philosophies. Some of us want to reform the system and some of us want to tear it down and replace it with something better. Our one great point of agreement is our call for transparency and accountability. We stand against the corrupt institutions that broker power behind closed doors. We call to account the financial manipulators that have bilked billions out of the poor and the middle classes.
Just as we call for accountability and transparency, we ourselves must be accountable and transparent. Some tactics are incompatible with those goals, even if in other situations they might be useful, honorable or appropriate. We can't be transparent behind masks. We can't be accountable for actions we run away from. We can't maintain the security culture necessary for planning and carrying out attacks on property and also maintain the openness that can continue to invite in a true diversity of new people. We can't make alliances with groups from impacted communities, such as immigrants, if we can't make agreements about what tactics we will employ in any given action.
The framework that might best serve the Occupy movement is one of strategic nonviolent direct action. Within that framework, Occupy groups would make clear agreements about which tactics to use for a given action. This frame is strategic—it makes no moral judgments about whether or not violence is ever appropriate, it does not demand we commit ourselves to a lifetime of Gandhian pacifism, but it says, 'This is how we agree to act together at this time.' It is active, not passive. It seeks to create a dilemma for the opposition, and to dramatize the difference between our values and theirs.
Strategic nonviolent direct action has powerful advantages:
We make agreements about what types of action we will take, and hold one another accountable for keeping them. Making agreements is empowering. If I know what to expect in an action, I can make a choice about whether or not to participate. While we can never know nor control how the police will react, we can make choices about what types of action we stand behind personally and are willing to answer for. We don't place unwilling people in the position of being held responsible for acts they did not commit and do not support.
In the process of coming to agreements, we listen to each other's differing viewpoints. We don't avoid disagreements within our group, but learn to debate freely, passionately, and respectfully.
We organize openly, without fear, because we stand behind our actions. We may break laws in service to the higher laws of conscience. We don't seek punishment nor admit the right of the system to punish us, but we face the potential consequences for our actions with courage and pride.
Because we organize openly, we can invite new people into our movement and it can continue to grow. As soon as we institute a security culture in the midst of a mass movement, the movement begins to close in upon itself and to shrink.
Holding to a framework of nonviolent direct action does not make us 'safe.' We can't control what the police do and they need no direct provocation to attack us. But it does let us make clear decisions about what kinds of actions we put ourselves at risk for.
Nonviolent direct action creates dilemmas for the opposition, and clearly dramatizes the difference between the corrupt values of the system and the values we stand for. Their institutions enshrine greed while we give away food, offer shelter, treat each person with generosity. They silence dissent while we value every voice. They employ violence to maintain their system while we counter it with the sheer courage of our presence.
Lack of agreements privileges the young over the old, the loud voices over the soft, the fast over the slow, the able-bodied over those with disabilities, the citizen over the immigrant, white folks over people of color, those who can do damage and flee the scene over those who are left to face the consequences.
Lack of agreements and lack of accountability leaves us wide open to provocateurs and agents. Not everyone who wears a mask or breaks a window is a provocateur. Many people clearly believe that property damage is a strong way to challenge the system. And masks have an honorable history from the anti-fascist movement in Germany and the Zapatista movement in Mexico, who said "We wear our masks to be seen."
But a mask and a lack of clear expectations create a perfect opening for those who do not have the best interests of the movement at heart, for agents and provocateurs who can never be held to account. As well, the fear of provocateurs itself sows suspicion and undercuts our ability to openly organize and grow.
A framework of strategic nonviolent direct action makes it easy to reject provocation. We know what we've agreed to—and anyone urging other courses of action can be reminded of those agreements or rejected.
We hold one another accountable not by force or control, ours or the systems, but by the power of our united opinion and our willingness to stand behind, speak for, and act to defend our agreements.
A framework of strategic nonviolent direct action agreements allows us to continue to invite in new people, and to let them make clear choices about what kinds of tactics and actions they are asked to support.
There's plenty of room in this struggle for a diversity of movements and a diversity of organizing and actions. Some may choose strict Gandhian nonviolence, others may choose fight-back resistance. But for the Occupy movement, strategic nonviolent direct action is a framework that will allow us to grow in diversity and power.
From the Alliance of Community Trainers, ACT
Lisa Fithian
Lauren Ross (or Juniper)
An Open Letter from Buddhist and Yoga Teachers and Leaders in Support of the Occupy Movement
Posted on November 6, 2011
As teachers and leaders of communities that promote the development of compassion and mindfulness, we are writing to express our solidarity with the Occupy movement now active in over 1,900 cities worldwide.
We are particularly inspired by the nonviolent tactics of this movement, its methods of self-governance, and its emergent communities founded in open communication (general assemblies, the human microphone, the inclusion of diverse voices, etc). These encampments are fertile ground for seeing our inherent wisdom and our capacity for awakening. We encourage all teachers, leaders, sanghas and communities that pursue awakening to join with these inspiring activists, if they have not already done so, in working to end the extreme inequalities of wealth and power that cause so much suffering and devastation for human society and for the ecosystems of Earth.
This movement has given voice to a near-universal frustration with the economic and political disenfranchisement of so many. It offers a needed counterbalance to a system that saps the life energy of the overwhelming majority –– the so-called 99% –– generating vast profits for a tiny handful, without maximizing the true potential for widespread wealth creation in our society. While our practice challenges us to cultivate compassion for 100% of human beings without villifying an "enemy," our practice also calls on us to challenge a system that causes such clear harm and imbalance.
We share in the thoughtful calls to address massive unemployment, climate change, the erosion of social safety nets, decaying infrastructures, social and education programs, and workers' wages, rights, and benefits.
Moreover, the current legal structure of large corporations compels individuals to act with shortsighted greed, acts for which they are not held personally accountable. If we aren't encouraged to act with awareness of our connection to the seven billion humans who share our global community, the social fabric of our society is torn apart by legalized acts of selfishness and fear. These acts are performed in human society, by nonhuman entities, oddly granted the legal and political status of people, which have no ability to adequately perceive or react to the negative repercussions of their choices. The whole planet pays the price.
Most importantly, we believe that individual awakening and collective transformation are inseparable. For members of spiritual communities, mindfulness of the situation before us demands that we engage fully in the culture and society we inhabit. We do not view our own path as merely an individualistic pursuit of sanity and health, and we believe it would be irresponsible of us to teach students of mind/body disciplines that they can develop their practice in isolation from the society in which they live. We are inspired by the creative and intellectual work of the Occupy movement as an essential voice in facilitating a more compassionate and ecologically grounded basis for practice.
The Occupy movement has re-ignited our belief that it's truly possible to build a culture of non-harm, honesty and respect for all creatures. We recognize our human failings and know that we'll fail ten thousand times in our efforts to awaken. We now vow to bring our practices and methods of teaching more into alignment with our deepest values.
The structural greed, anger and delusion that characterize our current system are incompatible with our obligations to future generations and our most cherished values of interdependence, creativity, and compassion. We call on teachers and practitioners from all traditions of mind/body awakening to join in actively transforming these structures.
Letter Signed, Ethan Nichtern, Shastri, New York, Shôken Michael Stone, Toronto
Supporters: By signing this letter we believe we can unite in our commitment to align our practice and values and work together to help our society.
Sharon Salzberg
Stephen Batchelor
Seane Corn
Roshi Joan Halifax
Testu'un David Loy
Dr. Robert Thurman
Jack Kornfield
Zoketsu Norman Fischer
Susan Piver
Dr. Gaylon Ferguson, Acharya
Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara
Tara Brach
Trudy Goodman
David Nichtern
Dr. Judith Simmer-Brown, Acharya
Anne Waldman
Rev. angel Kyodo williams
Adam Lobel, Acharya
Anne Cushman
Eihei Peter Levitt
Sarah Powers
Fleet Maull, Acharya
Ruth Ozecki
Jessica Robertson
Rev. Danny Fisher
Gayle Van Gils, Shastri
Gina Sharpe
Koshin Paley Ellison
Robert Chodo Campbell
Ty Powers
Sarah Weintraub
Dr. Miles Neale
Waylon Lewis
Pamela Bothwell, Shastri
Ted Grand
Maia Duerr
Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey
Ari Pliskin
Seth Freedman
Kate Crisp
Jessica Stickler
Paula Carino
Laura Kuchynka
Elaine Jackson
Rev. Karen Harrison
Kim Stetz
Jessica Li Phillips
Sheryl Lilke
Sherry Sadoff Hanck
Amy Dara Hochberg
Jennifer Musial, PhD
Dominic Tambuzzo
Chap. Mikel Ryuho Monnett, BCC
Elizabeth Gosselin
Roberta Wall
Erica Hamilton
Maria Ciccone
They were chanting "Brokers and Police : standing side by side for the occupation." I took this photo at Occupy Wall Street on October 24th, and it has gone viral. The dialogue in the multitude of comments on my facebook posting of this photo , besides focussing on the question of whether the pic is real or not, (Yes, man, it's real) also opens up a much bigger question: does the 99% really want the 1% to join? And are the police part of the 99%?
From the perspective of Occupy Love, we are clearly 100% love, 100% whole. Notions of separation are simply constructs. We need to welcome the 1% - for their liberation is our liberation. We need to welcome the police - yes even the 'white shirts' - for we are all in this together.
Right now, at Occupy Oakland, the police have been clamping down with brutality. Like the police that brutalized the protestors in the Civil Rights movement, our greatest power is to meet them with Love. Fierce Love. Martin Luther King's teachings to the Civil Rights Movement were very very clear - stay non-violent, fill the jail cells if need be, but always, always love. In South Africa, Mandela famously said that until all blacks are free, whites will never be free.
Eartha Harris commented on the pic, "To those who are mocking this, please read my status from today: I'm sitting inside a cafe across the street from the Bank of America outside Occupy Boston. Its filled with suits who work in the financial district, speaking of how much they love and support the movement. I'm hearing these folks describe an existance that sounds like a soft, grey cage…working 12-16 hour days, crunching numbers under florescent lights, moving only their fingers. Regardless of how much $ one`s making,no one deserves to spend their lives like this, just as no one deserves to be without home, food, or healthcare. Just a nice reminder of how diverse this "99%" is. One reason people have no jobs is because companies have downsized and more than tripled the workloads of those few remaining. They have just as much a right, and reason, to call for change as those without work and money."
Let us not fall into the trap of "Us and Them" ~ keeping us divided is a powerful way of keeping us oppressed. Our freedom, our happiness, our lives are inextricably bound together. So let us invite everyone to join us in this incredible time of awakening. We are all the 1%. We are all the 99%. We are 100% human, and it's time to Occupy Love.
Please join Occupy Love on Facebook.
A beautiful piece by Rebecca Solnit. She has long been an inspiration to me, since the days when I was shooting Scared Sacred my journey to the ground zero's of the world, searching for hope in the darkness. Rebecca shares my view that there is hope to be found in every crisis, and in this article she traces a year of revolution, from the beginning of 2011 until now. I have a personal hope: I hope to interview her for my upcoming feature documentary. All the pics are by me, taken at Occupy Wall Street.
Dear young man who died on the fourth day of this turbulent 2011, dear Mohammed Bouazizi,
I want to write you about an astonishing year — with three months yet to run. I want to tell you about the power of despair and the margins of hope and the bonds of civil society.
I wish you could see the way that your small life and large death became a catalyst for the fall of so many dictators in what is known as the Arab Spring.
We are now in some sort of an American Fall. Civil society here has suddenly hit the ground running, and we are all headed toward a future no one imagined when you, a young Tunisian vegetable seller capable of giving so much, who instead had so much taken from you, burned yourself to death to protest your impoverished and humiliated state.
You lit yourself on fire on December 17, 2010, exactly nine months before Occupy Wall Street began. Your death two weeks later would be the beginning of so much. You lit yourself on fire because you were voiceless, powerless, and evidently without hope. And yet you must have had one small hope left: that your death would have an impact; that you, who had so few powers, even the power to make a decent living or protect your modest possessions or be treated fairly and decently by the police, had the power to protest. As it turned out, you had that power beyond your wildest dreams, and you had it because your hope, however diminished, was the dream of the many, the dream of what we now have started calling the 99%.
And so Tunisia erupted and overthrew its government, and Egypt caught fire, as did Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and Libya, where the nonviolent protests elsewhere turned into a civil war the rebels have almost won after several bloody months. Who could have imagined a Middle East without Ben Ali of Tunisia, without Mubarak, without Gaddafi? And yet here we are, in the unimaginable world. Again. And almost everywhere.
Japan was literally shaken loose from its plans and arrangements by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami, and that country has undergone profound soul-searching about values and priorities. China is turbulent, and no one knows how much longer the discontent of the repressed middle class and the hungry poor there will remain containable. India: who knows? The Saudi government is so frightened it even gave women a few new rights. Syrians wouldn't go home even when their army began to shoot them down. Crowds of up to a million Italians have been protesting austerity measures in recent months. The Greeks, well, if you've been following events, you know about the Greeks. Have I forgotten Israel? Huge demonstrations against the economic status quo there lasted all summer and into this fall.
As you knew at the outset, it's all about economics. This wild year, Greece boiled over again into crisis with colossal protests, demonstrations, blockades, and outright street warfare. Icelanders continued their fight against bailing out the banks that sank their country's economy in 2008 and continue pelting politicians with eggs. Their former prime minister may become the first head of state to face legal charges in connection with the global financial collapse. Spanish youth began to rise up on May 15th.
Distinctively, in so many of these uprisings the participants were not advocating for one party or a simple position, but for a better world, for dignity, for respect, for real democracy, for belonging, for hope and possibility — and their economic underpinnings. The Spanish young whose future had been sold out to benefit corporations and their 1% were nicknamed theIndignados, and they lived in the plazas of Spain this summer. Occupied Madrid, like Occupied Tahrir Square, preceded Occupy Wall Street.
In Chile, students outraged by the cost of an education and the profound inequities of their society have been demonstrating since May — with everything from kiss-ins to school occupations to marches of 150,000 or more. Forty thousand students marched against"education reform" in Colombia last week. And in August in Britain the young went on arampage that tore up London, Birmingham, and dozens of other communities, an event that began when the police shot Mark Duggan, a dark-skinned 29-year-old Londoner. Young Britons had risen up more peaceably over tuition hikes the winter before. There, too, things are bleak and volatile — something I know you would understand. In Mexico, a beautiful movement involving mass demonstrations against the drug war has arisen, triggered by the death of another young man, and by the grief and vision of his father, leftwing poet Javier Cicilia.
The United States had one great eruption in Wisconsin this winter, when the citizenry occupied their state capitol building in Madison for weeks. Egyptians and others elsewhere on the planet called a local pizza parlor and sent pies to the occupiers. We all know the links. We're all watching. So the Occupy movement has spilled over from Wall Street. Hundreds of occupations are happening all over the North America: in Oklahoma City and Tijuana, inVictoria and Fort Lauderdale.
The 99%
We are the 99% is the cry of the Occupy movement. This summer one of the flyers that helped launch the Occupy Wall Street protest read: "We, the 99%, call for an open general assembly Aug. 9, 7:30 pm at the Potato Famine Memorial NYC." It was an assembly to discuss the September 17th occupation-to-come.
The Irish Hunger Memorial, so close to Wall Street, commemorates the million Irish peasants who starved in the 1840s, while Ireland remained a food-exporting country and the landed gentry continued to profit.It's a monument to the exploitation of the many by the few, to the forces that turned some of our ancestors — including my mother's four Irish grandparents — into immigrants, forces that are still pushing people out of farms, homes, nations, regions.
The Irish famine was one of the great examples of those disasters of the modern era that are not crises of scarcity, but of distribution. The United States is now the wealthiest country the world has ever known, and has an abundance of natural resources, as well as of nurses, doctors, universities, teachers, housing, and food — so ours, too, is a crisis of distribution. Everyone could have everything they need and the rich would still be rich enough, but you know that enough isn't a concept for them. They're greedy, and their 30-year grab for yet more has carved away at what's minimally necessary for the survival and dignity of the rest of us. So the Famine Memorial couldn't have been a more appropriate place for Occupy Wall Street to begin.
The 99%, those who starve during famines and lose their livelihoods and homes during crashes, were going to respond to the 1% who had been served so well by the Bush administration and by the era of extreme privatization it ushered in. As my friend Andy Krollreported at TomDispatch, "The top 1% of earners enjoyed 65% of all income growth in America for much of the decade" just passed. "In 2010," he added, "20.5 million people, or 6.7% of all Americans, scraped by with less than $11,157 for a family of four — that is, less than half of the poverty line." You can't get by on less than $1,000 a month in this country where a single visit to an emergency room can cost your annual income, a car twice that, and a year at a private college more than four times that.
Later in August came the website started by a 28-year-old New York City activist, we are the 99 percent, to which hundreds daily now submit photographs of themselves. Each of them also testifies to the bleak conditions they find themselves in, despite their hard work and educations which often left them in debt, despite the promises dangled before them that (if they played the game right) they'd be safe, housed, and living a part of that oversold dream.
It's a website of unremitting waking nightmares, economic bad dreams that a little wealth redistribution would eliminate (even without eliminating the wealthy). The people contributing aren't asking for luxuries. They would simply prefer not to be worked to death like so many nineteenth-century millworkers, nor to have their whole world come crashing down if they get sick. They want to survive with dignity, and their testimony will break your heart.
Mohammed Bouazizi, dead at 26, you to whom I'm writing, here is one of the recent posts at that site:
"I am 26 years old. I am $134,000 in debt. I started working at 14 years old, and have worked Full-Time since I turned 20. I work in I.T. and got laid off in July 2011. I was LUCKY, and found a job RIGHT AWAY: with a Pay Cut and MORE HOURS.
 Now, I just found out that my Dad got laid off last week - after 18 YEARS with the same employer. I have debilitating (SP! Sorry!) O.C.D. and can't take time away from work to get treatment because I can't afford my mortgage payments if I don't go to work, and I'm afraid I'll lose my NEW job if I take time off!!! WE ARE THE 99%."
Some of the people at we are the 99% offer at least partial views of their faces, but the young IT worker quoted above holds a handwritten letter so long that it obscures his face. Poverty obscures your face too. It obscures your talents, potential, even your distinctive voice, and if it goes deep enough, it eradicates you by degrees of hunger and degradation. Poverty is a creation of the systems against which people all over the planet are revolting this wild year of 2011. The Arab Spring, after all, was an economic revolt. What were all those dictatorships and autocracies for, if not to squeeze as much profit as possible out of subjugated populations — profit for rulers, profit for multinational corporations, profit for that 1%.
"We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers," was the slogan of the first student protest called in Spain this year. Your beautiful generation, Mohammed Bouazizi, has arisen and is bringing the rest of us along, even here in the United States.
The People's Microphone
Its earliest critics seemed to think that Occupy Wall Street was a lobbying group whose chosen task on this planet should be to create a package of realistic demands. In other words, they were convinced that the occupiers should become supplicants, asking the powerful for some kind of handout like college debt forgiveness. They were suggesting that a dream as wide as the sky be stuffed into little bottles and put up for sale. Or simply smashed.
In the same way, they wanted this movement to hurry up and appoint leaders, so that there would be someone to single out and investigate, pick off, or corrupt. At heart, however, this is a leaderless movement, an anarchist movement, catalyzed by the grace of civil society and the hard work of the collective. The Occupy movement — like so many movements around the world now — is using general assemblies as its form of protest and process. Its members are not facing the authorities, but each other, coming to know themselves, trying to give rise to the democracy they desire on a small scale rather than merely railing against its absence on a large scale.
These are the famous Occupy general assemblies in which decisions are made by consensus and, in the absence of amplification (by order of the New York City police), the people's mike is used: those assembled repeat what is said as it's said, creating a human megaphone effect. This is accompanied by a small vocabulary of hand gestures, which help people participate in the complex process of a huge group having a conversation.
In other words, the process is also the goal: direct democracy. No one can hand that down to you. You live direct democracy in that moment when you find yourself participating in civil society as a citizen with an equal voice. Put another way, the Occupiers are not demanding that something be given to them but formulating something new. That it involves no technology, not even bullhorns, is itself remarkable in this wired era. It's just passionate people together — and then Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, text messages, emails, and online sites like this one spread the word, along with some print media, notably the Occupied Wall Street Journal.
The beauty and the genius of this movement in this moment is that it has found a way to define its needs and desires without putting limits on them that would automatically exclude so many. In doing so, it has spoken to nearly all of us.
There is the terrible rage at economic injustice that is shared by college students looking at a future of debt and overwork, as well as those who couldn't afford college in the first place, by working people struggling ever harder for less, by the many who have no jobs and few prospects, by people forced out of their homes by the games banks play with mortgages and profits, and by everyone the catastrophe that is healthcare in this country has affected. And by the rest of us, furious on their behalf (and on our own).
And then there is the joyous hope that things could actually be different. That hope has been fulfilled a little in the way that an open-ended occupation has survived four weeks and more and turned into hundreds of Occupy actions around the country and marches in almost 1,000 cities around the world last Sunday, from Sydney to Tokyo to Santa Rosa. It speaks for so many; it speaks for the 99%; and it speaks clearly, so clearly that an ex-Marine showed up with a hand-lettered sign that said, "2nd time I've fought for my country, 1st time I've known my enemy."
The climate change movement showed up at Occupy Wall Street, too. What's blocking action on climate change is what's blocking action on all the other issues that matter: it would cut into profits. Never mind the deep future, not when what's at stake is quarterly earnings.
A dozen years ago, after the wildly successful revolt against neoliberal economic policy in Seattle, the slogan that stuck around was: "Another World Is Possible." I was never sure about that one because in crucial places and ways that other world is already here. In a YouTube video of the New York occupation, however, I watched an old woman in a straw hat say, "We're fighting for a society in which everyone is important." What a beautiful summation! Could any demand be clearer than that? And could the ways in which people have no value under our current economic regime be more obvious?
What Is Your Occupation?
Occupy Wall Street. Occupy together. Occupy New Orleans, Portland, Stockton, Boston, Las Cruces, Minneapolis. Occupy. The very word is a manifesto, a position statement, and a position as well. For so many people, particularly men, their occupation is their identity, and when a job is lost, they become not just unemployed, but no one. The Occupy movement offers them a new occupation, work that won't pay the bills, but a job worth doing. "Lost my job, found an occupation," said one sign in the crowd of witty signs.
There is, of course, a bleaker meaning for the word occupation, as in "the U.S. is occupying Iraq." Even National Public Radio gives the Dow Jones report several times a day, as though the rise and fall of the stock market had not long ago been decoupled from the rise and fall of genuine measures of wellbeing for the 99%. A small part of Wall Street, which has long occupied us as if it were a foreign power, is now occupied as though it were a foreign country.
Wall Street is a foreign country — and maybe an enemy country as well. And now it's occupied. The way that Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay for 18 months four decades ago and galvanized a national Native American rights movement. You pick some place to stand, and when you stand there, you find your other occupation, as a member of civil society.
This May in Ohio, a group of Robin Hoods literally lowered a drawbridge they made so they could cross a "moat" around Chase Bank's headquarters and invade its shareholders' meeting. Forty Robin Hoods also showed up en masse last week in kayaks for a national mortgage bankers' meeting in Chicago. Houses facing foreclosure are being occupied. Foreclosure is, of course, a way of turning people into non-occupants.
At this moment in history, occupation should be everyone's occupation.
Baby Pictures of a Revolt
Young man whose despair gave birth to hope, no one knows what the future holds. When you set yourself afire almost ten months ago, you certainly didn't know, nor do any of us know now, what the long-term outcome of the Arab Spring will be, let alone this American Fall. Such a movement arrives in the world like a newborn. Who knows its fate, or even whether it will survive to grow up?
It may be suppressed like the Prague Spring of 1968. It may go through a crazy adolescence like the French Revolution of 1789 and yet grow beyond its parents' dreams. Radiant at birth, wreathed in smiles, it may become a stolid bourgeois citizen as did such movements in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the reunited Germany after civil society freed those countries from totalitarianism.
It may grow up into turbulence as has the Philippines since its 1986 revolution ousted the kleptocracy of the Marcos family. Revolution may be assassinated young, the way the democratic government of Mohammed Mossadegh was in Iran in 1953, that of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and President Salvador Allende's Chilean experiment on September 11, 1973, all three in CIA-backed military coups. On behalf of the 1%.
Whether a human child or a child of history, we can't know who or what it will become, but it's still possible to grasp something about it by asking who or what it resembles. What does Occupy Wall Street look like? Well, its siblings born around the world this year, of course, and perhaps in some way the American civil rights movement that began in the 1950s.
There was a national uprising in the United States no less spontaneous in its formation during the great depression of the 1870s, but the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was violent, while the Occupy movement is deeply imbued with the spirit and tactics of nonviolence. The last Great Depression, the one that began in 1929, created a host of radical movements, as well as the Hoovervilles of homeless people. There are family resemblances. The marches and actions against the coming invasion of Iraq on February 15, 2003, on all seven continents (yes, including Antarctica) are clearly kin. And the anti-corporate globalization movement is a godmother. And then there's a sibling just a decade older.
Cousin 9/11
Zuccotti Park is just two blocks from Wall Street, and also just a block from Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 attack. On that day, it was badly damaged. This September 21st, my dear friend Marina Sitrin wrote me from Occupy Wall Street: "There are people from more diverse backgrounds racially, more diverse age groups, including not just a few children here with their parents, and a number of working people from the area. In particular, some of the security guards from the 9.11 memorial, a block away have been coming by for lunch and chatting with people, as has a local group of construction workers."
If the Arab Spring was the decade-later antithesis of 9/11, a largely nonviolent, publicly inclusive revolt that forced the Western world to get over its fearful fantasy that all young Muslims are terrorists, jihadis, and suicide bombers, then Occupy Wall Street, which began six days after the 10th anniversary of that nightmarish day in September, is the other half of 9/11 in New York. What was remarkable about that day 10 years ago is how calmly and beautifully everyone behaved. New Yorkers helped each other down those dozens of floors of stairs in the Twin Towers and away from the catastrophe, while others lined up to give blood, desperate to do something, anything, to participate, to be part of a newfound sense of community that arose in the city that day.
There was, for example, a huge commissary organized on Chelsea Piers that provided free food, medical supplies, and work equipment for the people at Ground Zero and also helped find housing for the displaced. It was not an official effort, but one that arose even more spontaneously than Occupy Wall Street, without leaders or institutions — and it was forcibly disbanded when the official organizations got their act together a few days later. Those who participated experienced a sense of democracy amid all the distress and sorrow, a tremendous joy in finding meaningful work and deep social connections, and a little temporary joy, as they often do in disaster.
When I began to study the history of urban disaster years ago, I found such unexpected exhibitions of that kind of joy again and again, uniting the generative moments of protests, demonstrations, revolts, and revolutions with the aftermath of some disasters. Even when the losses were terrible, the ways that people came together to meet the occasion were almost always inspiring.
Since I wrote A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, I have been asked again and again whether economic crisis begets the same kind of community as sudden disasters. It did in Argentina in 2001, when the economy crashed there. And it has now, in the streets of New York and many other cities, in 2011. A sign at Occupy San Francisco said, "IT'S TIME." It is. It's been time for a long time.
No Hope But in Ourselves
The birth of this moment was delayed three years. Argentinians reacted immediately to the 2001 crisis and to long-simmering grievances with an economy that had ground so many of them down even before the government froze all bank accounts and the economy crashed. On the other hand, our economy collapsed three years ago this month to headlines like "Capitalism is dead" in the business press. There was certainly some fury and outrage at the time, but the real reaction was delayed, or decoyed.
The outrage of the moment did, in fact, result in a powerful grassroots movement that focused on a single political candidate to fix it all for us, as he promised he would. It was a beautiful movement, a hopeful movement, much more so than its candidate. The movement got its lone candidate into the highest office in the land, where he remains today, and then walked away as though the job was done. It had just begun.
That movement could have fought the corporations, given us a real climate-change policy, and more, but it allowed itself to be disbanded as though one elected politician were the equivalent of ten million citizens, of civil society itself. It was a broad-based movement, of all ages and races, and I think it's back, disillusioned with politicians and electoral politics, determined this time to do it for itself, beyond and outside the corroded arenas of institutional power.
I don't know exactly who this baby looks like, but I know that who you look like is not who you will become. This unanticipated baby has a month behind it and a future ahead of it that none of us can see, but its birth should give you hope.
Copyright 2011 Rebecca Solnit
Rebecca Solnit is an activist and the author of many books, including:Wanderlust: A History of Walking, The Battle of The Story of the Battle in Seattle (with her brother David), and Storming The Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics. Her most recent book is, A Paradise Built in Hell, is now available. She is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine.
Here's a moving submission from Patrica Arias… thanks Patricia!
From a third world mother heart weary of witnessing the cold machine of cruel materialism crush our families, our hopes and our kids future…I thank you.
Once I wrote 'mothers of the world lets awaken those we love , these ones that pseudo-live in a sleepy mood narcotized by the system…lets rekindle the ancestral fire where women have gathered since the dawn of time lets awake them in our kitchens our living rooms our bedrooms…'
Ah! you have awakened and joy fills the heart .
The echoes of your brave stand resound like joyful bells throughout all our Americas, from the cold forests of north america to the deserts and forests of our south america…
we the people are awakening, we have found our voice and the call is clear, ding dong each of you, find your vibrational tone and sing for all humanity.
At the darkest hour of this cultural night you are the Light bearers that dispell denial … the newborn culture of Love peace and understanding is birthing…morning is breaking at last… the eyes of the world are on you and it is already a better place because of you. Thank you !!!
~ Patricia Arias
On twitter: @mepa29
Here's a lovely submission from Maia Duerr. Thank you!
I spent this morning at Occupy Santa Fe.
Among the hundreds of people who were there to march to the Round House (our capital building) and then peacefully assembled on the lawn there, about 15 of us offered a meditative presence. This was the first "official" Liberated Life Project event, cooked up with a number of people from my spiritual home, Upaya Zen Center, as well as other kindred spirits who joined us. Our banner read, "Occupy the Present Moment." And we had a great time.
Two days ago, I wrote an article with Roshi Joan Halifax. We ended the article with this reflection : "Can Occupy Wall Street succeed? It can, if it continues to place generosity and compassion before greed, and to recognize the power of interdepen dence, causality and selflessne ss."
Based on everything I saw this morning in Santa Fe and have heard coming out of NYC and other parts of the world (with the exception, perhaps, of Rome where things got violent), chances of success are looking very good.
This is perhaps the only major demonstration I've been part of (and I've been in dozens, centered on issues like labor rights, ending the war in Iraq, and nuclear disarmament) where our meditation actually felt a bit redundant. Certainly not unnecessary, because everyone who took part in it expressed appreciation for a space in which to find our center and return to our breath. But redundant in the sense that among the larger crowd we were part of, everyone had already tuned in to a vibe of peacefulness, joy, and nonviolence.
It became abundantly clear to me that this movement is based in a real honor and respect for kindness, for making sure every voice is heard, and that needs are addressed as best as possible.
A quote from Arundhati Roy has been very much on my mind the past week:
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
The other quote that kept coming to me today was one from Mother Teresa:"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."
This collective of people — all around the globe — is remembering that truth. We're waking up to it, to use a Buddhist phrase. We are changing the story… we are no longer believing that we are beholden to corporations, but rather to each other. We are creating rather than merely consuming.
Something magical is happening here… it's impossible to say where this will all lead, but keep an eye on it, for sure. And better yet, get involved.
I, for one, am headed back there right now. I hear Food, Not Bombs, will be serving dinner to the crowd.
Integrity, to Buckminster Fuller, represented the degree to which any design or system actively enhances the regenerative processes that support life on Earth. Thirty years ago, he wrote the cautionary tale Grunch of Giants to warn of the immediate dangers posed by the lack of integrity within the "invisible, abstract, and completely ruthless" empire of corporations that control the world's finances. Dubbing this corrupt system theGross Universal Cash Heist (GRUNCH), he argued that, as a non-living entity, it was incapable of recognizing how its legal mandate to maximize monetary gains by socializing risks and privatizing profits were in direct opposition to the long-term requirements for human survival.
The expanding occupations and protests around the world directed towards the global economic system testify to the prescience of Fuller's critique concerning the lack of integrity within manufactured scarcity. The myriad of issues driving unrest reflects a rising awareness that the challenges facing humanity cannot be effectively addressed in isolation. They are in fact interconnected symptoms of a dominant socio-economic environment that is not designed to adequately support 100% of humanity.
Fuller argued that we must begin to transform this dysfunctional system by recognizing that it confuses money with wealth. He maintained that money is "a medium of exchange and a cash accounting system," while wealth is the "organized technological capability to protect, nurture, educate, and accommodate the forward days of humans" that arises from supporting the integrity of living systems. Based on his calculations of world resources, human trends and needs, he demonstrated that it would be possible to support all of humanity at a better standard of living than ever before if the production capacity and technical know-how of global society were properly applied. Instead of fighting to tear down the existing system, he sought to harness its technological and economic forces to shift "from weaponry to livingry" through the problem-solving approach he called comprehensive anticipatory design science.
~ David McConville, President of the Board, Buckminister Fuller Society
The following piece was submitted to Occupy Love by Shannon Harris. Thanks Shannon! I've edited it to fit the ethos of this page. One thing I would like to note - we are actually the 100%. There is no us and them, so it's important to recognize that the 1% is also us. We are 100% love. One way to look at this that might be helpful, is this: consider that there are parts of yourself that are greedy or confused at times, angry or contracted, etc. etc. You don't need to hate those shadow parts of yourself - love them, and bring them into consciousness, so you can heal. It doesn't help to deny or repress them. So let's love the 1%, so they can be liberated too. We're all evolving together here. ~ Velcrow Ripper
If you can't make it to a protest, the following is something you can do from home or work to help.
How to Defeat the Fear Mongers with Love
1. First, get rid of fear you're carrying. Imagine a tube like a garden hose at your tailbone that sends any negative energy you carry to the Earth's centre, where it can be healed. Send all energy that is not yours down the cord into the Earth. This is called grounding.
2. Fill your space with the energy that connects us all. Imagine it pouring through the top of your head.
3. Get a feeling of love – the big vast love— going in your heart. Remember a time when you felt open to Love (not a sexual moment). Focus on your heart area – it's not your physical heart, but the region of the body called the heart chakra. Just a little to your right of the physical heart.
4. Imagine your heart is full, and you're releasing a stream of love towards your "target" (like taking the cap off of a fire hydrant). You can send it to police, you can send it to other protestors, you can send it to a person across the aisle from you on the subway.
That's it! Sending love is completely non-violent. The power grows when people do it together. Give it a whirl with your friends, family, and even pets.
Love really knows no distance – you can send it across the world just like you're sending it to someone in the same room. If you're watching a livestream of a protest from home, you can help by sending love!
Please feel free to copy and share. This is info that has been passed down — I've only arranged the words. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. - Shannon Harris
It's time to
rock the nation,
rock this occupation.
It's time for people to peacefully fight back.
Tell Congress and the media we' re taking the mic back.
Tell the jaded it's that long-awaited revolution.
Put away the pepper spray and re-read the Constitution.
These cops are paid to go crazy, yo.
But we' re peaceful.
Don't tase me, bro.
We came to incite insight,
unite and discuss this.
We came to hang, and to bang the drums of justice.
Let's occupy
with our love and our light.
Let's occupy
the earth and the sky,
and live with all beings
as a planet-wide tribe.
Occupy the divine mind residing inside.
See, I'm the type writer
that's known to light fires
and prone to inspire
the moment's own higher desire.
'Cause history knows it's the time
for resisting the team at the scene of the crime.
Tell your friends I ll meet 'em there at Freedom Square.
They can't stop us, from Seattle to Chiapas.
It's our mission to envision
what comes after the catastrophe.
How do we move past
the capitalist disaster?
Our communities need us.
We are all leaders.
How could we ask for anything less than the future?
—Drew Dellinger
(October 13, 2011)
As soon as I saw Michael Angelo Bosch, I knew I had to interview him. He was clearly a big tough dude with an equally big heart.
"I believe this Occupation is not only to bring to light the injustice about corporate greed here in America, and the lack of understanding or regard about people's needs by our politicians, but also solidarity to what is happening around the world: the injustice to humanity. We're here to have a global awakening, and inform the powers that be that enough's enough. This is why we are out here. Because what you see here is a new paradigm shift - a people's revolution."
"What's love got to do with it?"
"Love can transform and change your life. People want change, but they don't want to change themselves. But it's individual people that have to change morally, mentally, physically and spiritually. I'm totally a believer in the power of love. And I love you people!"
"Thanks for what you are doing."
"It's soldiers like you and I, soldiers of Agape Love, that can help transform this country. This is not just happening in America people, this is a global awakening, this is everybody waking up. They're fed up, disgusted, some are confused, they don't know which way to go, or how this will turn out, but if we utilize our people power, utilize the power of love, through kindness humility and respect to everybody on this planet, we'll find solutions, we definitely will."
"They want to put this into a box. The media are always saying 'angry protestors' - but we have to transmute the anger into love, because anger is going to burn us out."
"If these were angry protestors you'd have a lot of militant groups out here, or anti-government militia types. You'd have all these types of organizations that would want to take advantage of the situation. But there are brothers and sisters in there that diffuse the situation before it gets out of hand. We don't want racists or people that want to start trouble, that want to come in here and break this up. And as soon as we see that, using caution and proper judgement, etiquette and respect, we surround them, we talk to them, and we get them out of the park. This is not about that."
"Sometimes people think love is weak, or love is wimpy, but you are clearly a tough guy. For the dudes out there, can you tell them that love is actually strong?"
"Absolutely! I received a transformation because of some of things that happened in my life. I do security - I do security for the Park (Occupy Wall Street), and I also do security professionally. I'm a big man, and I know how to take care of myself. But I also know that under kindness and humility, the power of love can open up the true person you are."
Let this movement breathe….
"we need to go beyond having a critique/counter analysis/alternate systemic plan for society – we have to actually DO everything differently, aligned with a different set of core principles for existence."
especially our movement building.
how do we LIVE compassion, justice, love, accessibility, in alignment with this planet and with the people on it? how do we live our values?
as we are, so it (our work, our movement) will be.
for the majority of us, myself included, this means VAST ongoing transformation from how we are currently living and being. and as we transform, we see more things that need transformation, within ourselves and the world.
it is so important to cultivate our patience, our thoughtfulness, our willingness to slow down and seek the wisdom of those not already part of our movements – not to get them in step with our point of view, but because we need their lived experiential wisdom to shape solutions that will work for the majority of living beings.
it is imperative to regenerate our curiosity, our genuine interest in different opinions, and in people we don't know yet – can we see them as part of ourselves, and maintain curiosity, especially when we want to constrict and critique?
can we each take our little spark from the fire that has started and truly let it breathe enough to grow?
~ Adrienne Brown"—http://adriennemareebrown.net/blog/?p=2059
"I love you.
And I didn't just say that so that hundreds of you would shout "I love you" back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.
Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: "We found each other." That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can't be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful."
~ Naomi Klein
It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped. In fact, we are witnessing America's first true Internet-era movement.
Occupy Wall Street is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion, creates as many questions as it answers, aims to force a reconsideration of the way the nation does business and offers hope to those of us who previously felt alone in our belief that the current economic system is broken.
It models a new collectivism, picking up on the sustainable protest village of the movement's Egyptian counterparts, with food, first aid, and a library. ~ Douglas Rushkoff"—http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/opinion/rushkoff-occupy-wall-street/index.html
Professor Cornel West, one of my heroes, recently addressed the General Assembly at Occupy Wall Street. His words were amplified using the "people's mic" - in which each line is chanted by the group so everyone can hear. Cornel is aligned with the tradition of that great activist of love, Martin Luther King Jr.
CORNEL WEST: There is a sweet spirit in this place.
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: There is a sweet spirit in this place.
CORNEL WEST: I hope you can feel the love and inspiration…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: I hope you can feel the love and inspiration…
CORNEL WEST: Of those Sly Stone called every day people…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Of those Sly Stone called every day people…
CORNEL WEST: Who take a stand with great courage…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Who take a stand with great courage…
CORNEL WEST: And compassion…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And compassion…
CORNEL WEST: Because we oppose…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Because we oppose…
CORNEL WEST: The greed of Wall Street oligarchs…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: The greed of Wall Street oligarchs…
CORNEL WEST: And corporate plutocrats…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And corporate plutocrats…
CORNEL WEST: Who squeeze the democratic juices…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Who squeeze the democratic juices…
CORNEL WEST: Out of this country…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Out of this country…
CORNEL WEST: And other places around the world…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And other places around the world…
CORNEL WEST: I am so blessed to be here…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: I am so blessed to be here…
CORNEL WEST: You got me spiritually break-dancing on the way here…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: You got me spiritually break-dancing on the way here…
CORNEL WEST: Because when you bring folks together…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Because when you bring folks together…
CORNEL WEST: Of all colors…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Of all colors…
CORNEL WEST: And all cultures…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And all cultures…
CORNEL WEST: And all Genders…
GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And all Genders…
CORNEL WEST: The elite will tremble in their boots…


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text: Since 2007, a group of dedicated individuals has put together an Earth Day event for the Pikes Peak region. The first few years were 1-day festival events held at Palmer High School, Colorado College, and Doherty Middle School. 2012 brought a new initiative that became Pikes Peak Earth Month. We continue in this direction for 2013 and hope you enjoy the many fabulous events in our Pike Peak region! From the April 6th Kick-off event to the Finale Veda Fashion for the Forest event at Stargazer's Theater, we have April events to keep you engaged!


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Metro East Man Charged With Molesting 4 Year Old
October 25, 2011 8:22 AM
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BELLEVILLE, Ill.(KMOX)–A 33 year old Metro East man is jailed in Belleville, charged with sexually assaulting a four year old boy on a school parking lot last Friday.
According to police, David Harris was found in a car with the victim on the parking lot of Abraham Lincoln School on Royal Heights Road about 2:30 p.m. He was immediately taken into custody and charged with Predatory Criminal Sexual Assault.
Harris remains jailed in lieu of $500,000 bond.
Police say Harris was a friend of the victim's mother.
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Photo of the DayWinter is Closing In and Initial Forecasts Look GOOD Posted: 09.19.14 10:36 AM
Winter is only a few months away, meaning forecasts are starting to trickle out. Highly renowned and respected meteorologist Joe Bastardi of WeatherBELL is predicting a cold and snowy winter ... click here for more
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text:
2013 dating scene be like
@harry_styles aha um hey my friend over there @nicki_moore thinks you're totes cute and was #giggle wondering.. if you'd marry her??
You commented on my power point and I am so sorry if I offended you. I added in the description a link telling everyone it was a joke. Please don't hate me, it was only a joke and I'm so sorry. x
Oh no I didn't mean to sound offended at all - quite the contrary. I would rather commend your efforts in jokingly trying to lift the bar for standards in this somewhat shambolic fandom. I understand that it is a joke, but I much prefer to view it in all seriousness. As I mentioned in my comment below the post, everything you have mentioned is at least somewhat true, though some may be difficult to admit by many, or all.
So there's clearly no reason to be sorry. I believe you raised important issues, and executed them well - though not in my preferred style (thus "not my favourite", but it's still way up there :)). I'm curious to know your reaction to my reply.. I have indeed read your text post regarding the joke, but come on, was it really? Because I seriously can not be the only one who actually agrees, to some extent, with most, if not all, of the things in your post.
I'm obviously looking far too deeply into this, forgive me. I just have this sort of moral obsession to keep the fans in check. I know right? Who the hell am I to think that such a frivolous duty is mine?? Neither do I - it's just how I am, I guess. I simply hate it when people forget that the boys are not only human beings, but young adults who are still developing their own personal identities. Yes, anybody has the right to dream about the boys on the stairs, but it is within the boys' own rights to be allowed who they want to be - and for the fans not to tell them who they think they should be.
I could go on forever. Maybe I might even do a full on RE: powerpoint in response or based on yours and others I have read. The thing is, though, I've said it all before on my blog. Just, nobody really pays attention when they see a long text post on their dash. I did begin to tag them with "advice", I think, toward the end of my time as an Updates blog, so if people snoop around, they'll definitely turn up here and there.
and like what happened to grimmers like weren't they like best mates i never see anything about them anymore
and people losing their shit about caroline flack
and every other blonde harry was found in the same photograph of. or car. or hotel.
and and and okay that's enough one direction for today bye
liam could literally save a baby from a burning building and people would talk about harry's outfit that day
(via larrysmint)


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Brig. Gen. Donald MacWillie answers questions Friday about the impact of federal budget cuts on Army operations at Fort Riley, Kan. The base commander said cuts in defense spending will impact soldier training schedules and could result in the furlough of 2,700 civilian employees beginning in April.
Photo by Associated Press /Chattanooga Times Free Press .
published Friday, March 8th, 2013
Stories this photo appears in:
WASHINGTON — Most Americans want government austerity, but they also want increased spending on a host of popular programs.


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Depending on the cause of your hair-loss, there are a couple of remedies that can help you, more or less. Just browse the web and you'll find them.
It's like in school, you get what you bring. If you're confident about it then you'll have more chance to make it a success.
Well, a "remedy" I'm actually trying at the moment is yoga. Why yoga ? why not ? I'm just trying.
Yoga is just something like a "science of your body and mind". If there is still someone who thinks that the mind and the body are separated then you should give "Little Buddha" a second chance.


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There are not currently any yard sales posted in reeder, nd this week.
But there have been 8 yard sales, garage sales, estate sales, and tag sales posted in reeder, nd since we started!
So check back frequently.
Also, bookmark (type "CTRL + D") this page, or share it:
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back street in KolkataThis photo was shot on film. Taken by gocchin with a Lubitel 166+ (available in our Online Shop) loaded with Fuji Velvia film in Kolkata, India. These tags describe this photo: travel and lubitel166+. This photo can also be found in the album INDIA-KOLKATA by LUBITEL166+.
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"Momma," Aerin hadn't even heard her daughter come in before the sweet angel voice spoke to her. "Can't sleep." A smile crossed Aerin's face as she moved towards her daughter to pick her up.
"Would it help if you had your nap in here with me on the big bed?" She asked snuggling her daughter close. Penelope nodded a little, her eyes heavy but her mind stubborn on wanting to have her nap with her mom. "Alright Cupcake, just this once," and with that said Aerin walked towards the bed laying both her daughter and herself down. Penelope cuddled in close to her mom and quickly she could no longer hold herself awake : the little girl slipped away in to a world of dreams while staying safe in her mothers arms in reality.
There! I finally finished them all after having had the last couple of days just waiting to be edited :)


text:
3927 Bikini Drive has a Walk Score of 42 out of 100. This location is a Car-Dependent neighborhood so most errands require a car.
This location is in San Antonio. Nearby parks include Wilshire Terrace Park, James Park and Cole Stadium.
Nearby schools include Eisenhauer Rd Baptist School, George Gervin Academy and Wilshire Elementary School.
The closest grocery stores are Brookes Pecan, H-E-B and Boricua Food Market.
The closest coffee shop is Starbucks. Nearby restaurants include Jamaica Jamaica Cuisine, The Big Bib and Jamaica Jamaica Cuisine.
3927 Bikini Drive is near CC Media Holdings Headquarters, University of the Incarnate Word and Trinity University.
There are good bike lanes and the terrain is flat as a pancake. 3927 Bikini Drive is somewhat bikeable, there is minimal bike infrastructure.


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Giant Weta
The World's Biggest Grasshopper
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How large is the giant weta? This enormous grasshopper weighs about as much as three full-grown mice and grows to be 4 inches (10 cm) long! These long-legged insects are so heavy that they can't jump like other grasshoppers. Instead, they walk or crawl to move around. These are just some of the surprising facts children will discover as they explore the fascinating world of these giant grasshoppers. In Giant Weta: The World's Biggest Grasshopper, eye-popping color photos paired with simple, grade-appropriate text will engage children as they learn about the natural habitat, physical characteristics, diet, life cycle, and behavior of this supersized animal. A comparison diagram is also included to show readers the animal in relation to a familiar object.
Authors: Lunis, Natalie
Title: Giant weta
the world's biggest grasshopper
the world's biggest grasshopper
Publisher: New York, New York :, Bearport Publishing,, [2013]
Characteristics: 24 pages :,color illustrations ;,22 x 27 cm.
Content Type: text
Media Type: unmediated
Carrier Type: volume
Contents: A giant grasshopper
Island homes
Rat attack
Hiding out
Nighttime meals
Moving around
Hatching from eggs
Getting bigger
More to learn
More big insects.
Island homes
Rat attack
Hiding out
Nighttime meals
Moving around
Hatching from eggs
Getting bigger
More to learn
More big insects.
Audience: 6-9.
Statement of Responsibility: by Natalie Lunis
Copyright Date: ♭2013
Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (page 24) and index.
Subject Headings: Giant wetas Juvenile literature. Grasshoppers Juvenile literature.
Topical Term: Giant wetas
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text: Looking for something to do today? Agenda's got you covered: Girl Walk//All Day, an Internet video inspired by the mashup music of Girl Talk, has a proper screening at Stage 773 in Lakeview. At the Greenhouse Theater Center in Lincoln Park, Kiss Kiss Cabaret hosts a benefit for the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Chicago's ever-evolving hip-hop scene will have a banner evening at Reggie's Rock Club when Pacewon & Mr. Green, Matlock, Pugs Atomz, Water, and 40oz Kingz hit the stage. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader's daily Agenda page. do it today Chicago Girl Talk Kiss Kiss Cabaret Pugs Atomz 40oz Kingz Matlock Pacewon & Mr. Green pugsatomz likes thisbureau36 likes thispazdean likes thispugsatomz reblogged this from chicago-readerchicago-reader posted this


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On this date we remember the Tuskegee Syphilis study. This African-American episode is part of the recurring chapter of racism against blacks in the United States.
In 1932, the American government promised 400 men, all residents of Macon County, Alabama, all poor, and all African American, free treatment for Bad Blood, a euphemism for syphilis which was epidemic in the county.
Treatment for syphilis was never given to the men and was in fact withheld. The men became unwitting subjects for a government-sanctioned medical experiment, The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. The Tuskegee Study, which lasted for 4 decades, until 1972, had nothing to do with treatment. No new drugs were tested; neither was any effort made to establish the efficacy of old forms of treatment.
It was a non-therapeutic experiment, aimed at compiling data on the effects of the spontaneous evolution of syphilis on black males. What has become clear since Jean Heller broke the story in 1972 was that the Public Health Service (PHS) was interested in using Macon County and its black inhabitants as a laboratory for studying the long-term effects of untreated syphilis, not in treating this deadly disease. [Continue reading at the African American Registry.]
For further reading and research, see also:
Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, New and Expanded Edition by James H. Jones.
Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy (John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture) by Susan M. Reverby.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington.
Miss Evers' Boys starring Alfre Woodard and Laurence Fishburne.


text:
©1995. By Carol Stock Kranowitz, M.A.
Children need room to move around, but unfortunately there are many times when space is not available. Think of the many different times children have to spend in small cramped spaces; while riding in cars, when traveling, in doctor's and dentist's offices, the grocery store, waiting in line, being sick or just being stuck at home.
You'll find great projects for every imaginable small space parents and children encounter. Activities like:
These fun ideas will help satisfy a child's need to touch, move, play, and think, and the activities are grouped into specific categories, including: art and carpentry; music and sound; food and cooking; hands-on activities; movement; and dramatic play. Included is a description of what you need, what to do, and additional helpful hints. Also included is the appropriate age range and learning value for each project.
When you have a small space and a restless child, you need 101 ingenious solutions. This book is full of easy to implement, creative fun ideas that help children develop different skills and abilities while entertaining themselves and interacting with others. The imaginative activities will occupy restless three to seven year olds while turning tough moments into teachable and terrific times.


text:
Hornets offense comes alive in win
By Jeremy Stafford - email@example.com
WINCHESTER -- There was no rhythm, there was no flow. Neither the Shenandoah Hornets nor the Methodist Monarchs could establish any sort of control in their USA South clash Sunday afternoon.
To some extent, it was complete and utter chaos.
Both teams heaved up shots from wherever they pleased, and more often than not, those shots fell. Methodist shot precisely 50 percent from the 3-point arc, on 28 attempts, while Shenandoah scored more points than it had in 115 games.
But in a game during which runs were rare and defense was nonexistent, it was Shenandoah, thanks to a mild second-half spree, which edged out Methodist, 113-98.
This game was only the fifth in SU coach Rob Harris' 10-year tenure in which the Hornets have scored 100 points; their 63.8 percent shooting percentage is a school record.
The 98 points Shenandoah (7-12, 4-2 USA South) gave up is also a season-high.
"We still we gave up 49 points in two halves," Harris said. "As a coaching staff, I think we're sitting here trying to scratch our heads to figure out what we need to do.
"...We need to do some different things and go back to the drawing board and make sure our guys understand what we're looking for as far as perimeter defense."
Early in the first half, Methodist's (0-17, 0-5 USA South) 3-point shooting ballooned to 75 percent, largely behind a 6-for-10 performance by Ross Diachenko. Though the Monarchs' deep-shooting eventually leveled out, Diachenko's four 3-pointers through the first 12 minutes helped Methodist establish a 33-25 lead.
Not until Shenandoah senior Wayne Washington, who scored a team-high 29 points, led a 12-0 run midway through the second half did Shenandoah establish control over the game.
After Kevin Kline and Brandon Bryan both hit buckets for Shenandoah, Washington scored on three consecutive Hornet possessions to put SU up 69-57, ending a tit-for-tat battle which saw 10 different lead changes and 10 ties.
Washington capped his seven-point spree with a twisting, coiling up-and-under layup. He capped his Sunday performance with a backboard-pounding block on Methodist guard Devonne Blackshear, followed by another score seconds later.
"I didn't feel like I had to shoulder the load, [I just took] the shots that were there, I didn't feel like I was forcing anything," said Washington, who paused, then chuckled. "Maybe in the second half, but I was just trying to stay aggressive because we've got other guys that can score the ball, too."
Indeed, Shenandoah saw five players score in double-digits: Washington, Kline (25 points), Bryan (20), Kenny Robertson (12), and Chris Schrader (11). But what was perhaps most impressive for Harris and the Hornets was how well they performed at the free-throw line.
Coming off an 11-for-28 performance in a loss to Greensboro on Saturday, Shenandoah went to the line an astounding 43 times Sunday, converting 31 times.
And the Hornets, as it turned out, needed most every one.
"We knew coming in that Methodist isn't really known to play defense, especially this year, but we didn't play defense at all either tonight," Kline said. "I felt like we moved the ball real well, found our shooters and they knocked them down tonight."
Shenandoah travels to Christopher Newport on Wednesday to start the back end of their USA South schedule. With both teams tied for second in the conference, Wednesday's game has something of an added importance for Shenandoah.
"Every game is important, especially when you win," Harris said. "I just told our guys, when you win, every game becomes more magnified. ... I think they understand what's in front of them and we're gonna do our very best."


text:
Sow/Gilt Management
Add Cracker Barrel to the list
On Thursday, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store joined the growing list of food companies that want their pork supplies to come from systems that do not use gestation-sow stalls. The restaurant chain announced that it will begin formulating plans to source its pork from such operations. FULL STORY »
Sow housing costs from a lenders' perspective
Speaking from a lender's perspective, Mark Greenwood, senior vice president AgStar Financial Services, pointed out there are concerns regarding financing, costs and return on investment associated with converting gestation-sow housing from stalls to a group system. FULL STORY »
Kroger turns up the heat on gestation housing
The United States' No. 1 traditional grocery chain, Kroger Co., has announced its commitment to sourcing pork from suppliers that eliminate the use of gestation-sow stalls. FULL STORY »
McDonald's allows 10 years to end gestation stall use
Getting in under the wire of its May deadline, McDonald's USA announced on Thursday the company will give its pork suppliers 10 years to phase out gestation-sow stalls. McDonald's says its plan was developed with input from suppliers, pork producers and animal welfare experts. FULL STORY »
Sow seminars set for June 12 and 13
Two seminars will offer ideas and guidance on managing the sow herd. Specifically, an Advanced Swine Reproduction Seminar will help pork producers review and revise their management strategies when it comes to preparing the sow and farrowing space, knowing when/how to assist farrowing sows, managing sows to maximize feed intake and more. FULL STORY »
HSUS files SEC complaint; Tyson responds
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has filed a legal complaint with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) asserting that Tyson Foods is making deceptive public statements related to animal well-being. Tyson officials report that they have not seen nor been informed of any such filing. FULL STORY »
Denny's wants gestation-sow stalls off its menu
Denny's restaurants announced that the chain will begin to require its suppliers to provide pork from systems that do not use gestation-sow stalls. However, the company did not offer a timeline for implementation. FULL STORY »
New program sets course for 30 PSY
Land O'Lakes Purina Feed, LLC has rolled out a new industry initiative – the "Feeding for 30 Program," as part of its ongoing commitment to animal nutrition. The program builds on the industry goal of achieving 30 pigs per sow per year (PSY). FULL STORY »
Actions shown on WPF video, 'indefensible'
The verdict is in from the Animal Care Review Panel regarding the actions shown on the undercover video released on Tuesday, which was shot at a Wyoming Premium Farms' (WPF) sow unit near Wheaton, Wyo. The panel of three animal well-being experts, called the animal mistreatment "unacceptable and indefensible." FULL STORY »
HSUS releases video shot at Wyoming Premium Farms
Capitalizing on the attention of Safeway announcing its new directive regarding gestation-sow housing, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) released an undercover video on Tuesday that was shot at Wyoming Premium Farms (WPF) in April. Investigations are underway, and the industry responds. FULL STORY »
NPPC responds to Safeway's gestation-stall decision
Following Safeway's announcement that it will require its pork suppliers to stop using gestation-sow stalls in the production process, National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) President R.C. Hunt, who is a pork producer from Wilson, N.C., offered this statement. FULL STORY »
Visipork Grow-Finish Software
The most complete, cloud based, user friendly grow - finish production software on the market today. Visipork is designed from ... Read More
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text:
Did you know you could earn money simply by completing surveys on the internet? Making money by filling out questionnaires is not new. For a while the concept has been around. In recent years with the popularity with the internet rising, quite a few companies are now making use of online surveys as a crucial aspect in their advertising and marketing research strategies.
A major raise in the amount of corporations whom offer online surveys has taken place. Commercials concerning surveys are posted all around the internet, in the form of advertisements on websites, sponsored backlinks and video clips. An example of this might be earn free cash online sponsored website link. In addition to surveys, Get Paid To sites and sweepstakes sites have also become popular.
So why are folks being compensated by these companies fill out easy surveys? Marketing and advertising analysis has normally been a significant part of effective enterprises. Online surveys assist companies in bettering their services and products to meet the needs and wishes of customers. Therefore, the consumers are compensated for the time invested sharing their thoughts.
Nevertheless, the majority of organizations don't pay customers directly, but they seek the services of research companies alternatively. These survey web sites play a very important role in connecting organizations and consumers. Therefore, becoming a member of a survey web site will be the starting point to getting paid for filling out online surveys. There are many survey websites readily available, which may easily be discovered by utilizing a search engine.
Filling out online surveys can be a great way to generate additional income or even turn into a full-time job. Just how much time you expend on the surveys is entirely your choice. By signing up for multiple survey sites you will have access to extra online surveys, that will result in a more substantial revenue opportunity. Sweepstakes and rewards are other kinds of reimbursement that some survey sites offer for their participants.


text:
Standing against big government and for the people!
By Bob Unruh
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
Attorneys for a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraqi War say they have filed a petition to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a federal district judge ruled it is fine for the U.S. government to fund commercial enterprises that promote the indoctrination of Shariah religious law inside the United States.
The decision came from Judge Lawrence Zatkoff, who changed his perspective on the issue and said just last week that he would dismiss a constitutional challenge brought by Kevin Murray against the U.S. government's bailout of AIG, the insurance giant.
That company used more than "$100 million in federal tax money to support Islamic religious indoctrination through the funding and promotion of Shariah-compliant financing. … SCF is financing that follows the dictates of Islamic law," said officials at the Thomas More Law Center.
TMLC is representing Murray in his challenge to the use of federal tax money to promote Islam in the United States.
And its chief, Richard Thompson, warned of the precedent.
"Judge Zatkoff's ruling allows for oil-rich Muslim countries to plant the flag of Islam on American soil," he said. "His ruling ignored the uncontested opinions of several Shariah experts and AIG's own website, which trumpeted Shariah-compliant financing as promoting the law of the prophet Mohammed and as an ethical product and a new way of life."
The TMLC, and co-counsel David Yerushalmi, immediately filed a notice of appeal to the 6th Circuit.
"[Zatkoff's] ruling ignored AIG's use of a foreign Islamic advisory board to control investing in accordance with Islamic law," Thompson continued. "This astonishing decision allows the federal government as well as AIG and other Wall Street bankers to explicitly promote Shariah law – the 1,200-year-old body of Islamic canon law based on the Quran, which demands the destruction of Western civilization and the United States."
He warned it is the same law "championed by Osama bin Laden and the Taliban; it is the same law that prompted the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks; and it is the same law that is responsible for the murder of thousands of Christians throughout the world. The law center will do everything it can to stop Shariah law from rearing its ugly head in America."
The lawsuit, Murray v. Geithner et al., was brought because Murray, as a taxpayer, alleges he is being forced to contribute to the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Shariah law, which he says is hostile to his Christian religion.
Among those who submitted statements in the case were two noted experts in Islamic law and terrorism: Stephen C. Coughlin and Robert Spencer.
Coughlin, a lawyer and decorated Army Reserve officer, is a leading Pentagon expert on the link between Islamic law and jihad. He explained that by engaging in Shariah-compliant financing, AIG and the federal government – which owns 79.9 percent of AIG – are engaging in the religious practice of Islam.
Islam teaches hostility and discrimination against Jews, Christians and anyone who doesn't accept the Quran as the "word of Allah," he said, explaining that the indoctrination stems from the same law that motivated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
As WND reported, Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has studied Islamic theology and history for 30 years. He is author of "Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns...," "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades" and eight other books dealing with Islam. He has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the U.S. Central Command, the U.S. Command and General Staff College, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the U.S. intelligence community.
Spencer explained that by offering Shariah-compliant financing, AIG is promoting religious behavior that teaches hatred and discrimination against Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims.
The TMLC said it is challenging the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 that allows $70 billion in taxpayer money to fund and financially support the federal government's majority ownership interest in AIG, which is considered the market leader in SCF.
The company uses its assets to subject certain financial activities to the dictates of Islam.
"In this case, the United States government has a majority interest in AIG. AIG utilizes consolidated financing whereby all funds flow through a single port to support all of its activities, including Shariah-compliant financing," TMLC explained.
"Pursuant to the EESA, the government has injected AIG with tens of billions of dollars, without restricting or tracking how this considerable sum of money is spent. At least two of AIG's subsidiary companies practice Shariah-compliant financing, one of which was unveiled after the influx of government cash. . . . Finally, after the government acquired a majority interest in AIG and contributed substantial funds to AIG for operational purposes, the government co-sponsored a forum entitled 'Islamic Finance 101.'
"These facts, taken together, raise a question of whether the government's involvement with AIG has created the effect of promoting religion and sufficiently raise plaintiff's claim beyond the speculative level," the TMLC said.
During the discovery portion of the case, TMLC said it obtained "thousands" of documents supporting its claim.
"The circumstances of this case are historic, and the pressure upon the government to navigate this financial crisis is unfathomable. Times of crisis, however, do not justify departure from the Constitution," the organization said.
Views: 97
There was a time in immigration (when I was a very young man) that immigrants were admitted based upon what they could do for our country, what they were capable of contributing to the general good by way of education, experience, etc.
John F. Kennedy gave his famous speech, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Those words were taken to heart by most Americans in the day.
Nowadays, it seems that anyone can get by the INS, qualifications to becoming an American minimal. There should be NO dual citizenship, but there is. That is a failing of the State Dept. in order to placate foreign governments. We didn't worry about that before! But now?
Who ever dreamed of people holding American passports being qualified to vote in foreign elections? They now do!
Therefore, a vision of a "One-World Government" was taking shape right under our noses, long before Obama verified that vision to us.
As long as we remain apathetic, too busy for vigilance, and let the good times roll, there are people who're out there who'd make deals with the devil, while we sleep and don't raise a fuss.
You do understand this CULT, I have also spent days studying the Quaran and Sharia Law. We are in terrible trouble and everyone is to afraid to stand up and do something about it???
After all my studying, I have research back to the 1500's, We are in Holy War, but like other Nations, won't know it's until to late. They don't show their true intent until all of their ducks are in a row and they are ready to over power. In the mean time they infiltrate our Government, Courts and Laws. They are financed with money from contributions to get into place until ready to show their power. Does anyone know? How is it they are able to get into America? Visas or illegal immigration? I have not researched that, but who is letting them come in or giving them citizenship. We need to follow the money and access
© 2014 Created by Grassfire Nation.


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Subject: Don't Miss Steven Johnson, Keynote Speaker at AUTM 2015 Annual Meeting
By Claire T. Driscoll
Dear AUTM Colleagues,
BP , Chevron , ExxonMobil , GE Oil & Gas , and Shell – these are just some of the...
The goal to eliminate the university-industry innovation gap is something that we all strive towards as members of the...
1. Customize your profile and preferences.
2. Adjust your subscription settings.
3. Start a conversation - post a message in one of the discussion groups.
4. Start networking - go to the Directory and find a member to connect with.


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