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About 1,000 protesters kicked off Occupy San Diego — a movement against what organizers called corporate greed — Friday as they marched from Children’s Park to Civic Center Plaza downtown for a rally, chanting “We got sold out. They got bailed out.”
The demonstration, which is planned to last indefinitely, reflects similar protests that have occurred across the country in other cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Seattle. The protests have been roused by the Occupy Wall Street movement that started in New York City several weeks ago.
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Joe Tirabassi, of Vista, said he is supporting the movement and participating because “we are all part of the 99 percent here, and corporations/the top 1 percent need to release their grip on our economy.”
The loan processor said that although he and his wife have been fortunate and not lost their jobs, they are $200,000 upside down on their home. When they asked the bank, not for a discount, but simply to switch their adjusted rate mortgage to a 30-year fixed, they were told they did not qualify because they faithfully make payments on their loan.
“There is going to be a time when my family is going to be in more need than we are now,” said Tirabassi, 32. “We need to start supporting each other. It’s fair that if I’m paying 25 percent in taxes, everybody else should be paying 25 percent in taxes. The trickle down is not working, equality is the fairest thing for everybody.”
Police did not require the group in San Diego to get a permit, according to the department.
“We have been in contact with the organizers and we’re expecting it to be a peaceful demonstration,” said Lt. Andra Brown. “We will have officers monitoring the event to make sure that it is a peaceful demonstration, that their constitutionally protected rights to peacefully demonstrate are upheld and also to make sure that they maintain their obligation and peacefully demonstrate.”
A police officer watching the crowd march by said as long as the protest stayed peaceful “I’m with them. I’m part of the 99 percent, too.”
This is not going away.
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It will go away when this goes away:
Agreed. Erin Burnett can mock it all she likes, it will still be going strong when she’s done.
’bout fucking time. We’re doing Occupy Springfield (MA) on 10.17 if anyone in #westernma wants to join us. Why is it taking us so long? I have no idea. Maybe the corn harvest.
The term “99%” may be the most brilliant political framing ever. Everybody’s in, unless they say they’re not, and who would do that?
*raises beverage of choice in toast to TBogg*
Student (reading the local paper): I wish they’d stop talking about taxing rich people. Why would anybody want to make money if they just take it all away?
Me: They don’t take all your money. Just a small percentage after you make a certain amount. Like, they take 10% after you make a million.
Student: Oh. I don’t know about that.
Me: Why do your student fees keep going up every year while taxes for millionaires keep going down?
Student: It just doesn’t seem fair to people who want to make money.
Me: Really, it’s not like you’re going to stop earning money. Besides, don’t you want to just do what you love, and the money is just an extra benefit?
Student: Hmmm. Yeah. By the way, can I have an extension on my paper? My daughter is in day care and I had to pick her up early because my Mom was busy and I had to drop her off at my sister’s before I went to work. Is that ok? And can I borrow a pen?
Me: Sure.
I’d like to believe that dialogue was made up, but depressingly, I suspect not.
My fave part of this post:
Police did not require the group in San Diego to get a permit, according to the department.
“We have been in contact with the organizers and we’re expecting it to be a peaceful demonstration,” …. “We will have officers monitoring the event to make sure that it is a peaceful demonstration, that their constitutionally protected rights to peacefully demonstrate are upheld…”
No permit! The cops are protecting the demonstrators’ constitutional rights!
Can we send the SDPD leadership to talk to some of the Republican Congressional (cough, choke) “leadership” please? Some of them seem to have a little trouble remembering that right to peacefully assemble.
m
My Feefees are definitely not hurt. Is this it? And will it be televised?
Remember being young and full of ‘Vin & viger’?
Whoo hoo!
Let’s roll snarksters!
Same thing happened in Portland, Ore. There was no permit for the march and it was supposed to be just on the sidewalks. The city re-evaluated the situation and gave us the streets with police providing traffic control.
We had a little more than 1,000 though, estimates were anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000.
Occupy Portland marches
Reports from Philadelphia is that the 1st amendment is read to the police before their shift starts.
But then there was this, Portland Police surround and hold child at Occupy Portland.
A police officer watching the crowd march by said as long as the protest stayed peaceful “I’m with them. I’m part of the 99 percent, too.”
saw a comment from the another city’s police chief working with ows and noting they weren’t the nypd.
this is encouraging … if the cops can be turned, things could get very interesting once the word has come down to put the kibbosh on these protests. clearly the big boyz are getting nervous — see eric cantor’s lying denunciation of ows.
oh, and that photo reminds me — did you know people are being arrested for wearing facemasks. the nypd is employing some law from the 1800s to take people into custody.
I have mixed feelings about that Guy Fawkes mask. Pro: It looks cool, it evokes V for Vendetta and, hence, Natalie Portman. Con: It evokes V for Vendetta (a movie about which I have mixed feelings), and it is the face of a guy who wanted to blow up Parliament. Not sure that’s the “face” one wants to put on a mass demonstration intended to be peaceful.
Then again, very few of the people wearing it, and none of those condemning the Occupations, know this. So never mind. Carry on.
Cue Villager pearl clutching….”the peasants are revolting!”
Re Eric Cantor: if he didn’t give a crap about Occupy Wall Street, he wouldn’t have said a word. Since he deems it a threat, or inappropriate, or class warfare, or something, it’s obviously ringing his bell. Therefore more of this, please. If the honorable Cantor would be so kind as to wear a Nascar style jacket showing who his corporate sponsors are, perhaps we could understand his unease – all I can see are Americans peaceably assembling to petition for a redress of grievances.
If it was the San Diego Sheriff’s Department they probably would have rioted…the sheriff’s deputies that is.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/dem-congressional-candidates-event-raided-by-san-diego-sheriffs.php
Yes you and tejanarusa nailed it must be some smart Police Officer in SD.
I’ve said it elsewhere but here it is again: I’d love to see these protests morph into “Fix it or fuck you; we won’t pay back our debts.” I think that’s the underlying fear here – the fact that the only guarantee the banksters and the others who own us have that we’ll pay them back is our goodwill. If we all decide to default, what are they gonna do? The collection agencies, courts, credit rating agencies, etc. lack the capacity to collect on 50 or 75 million people simultaneously.
The bottom line is we are owned only with our own approval. If we rescind that approval, they basically have no recourse. Though it’s been ingrained in most of us that paying our debts is a point of honor, the problem now isn’t on our side of the equation. We (most of us, the ones who have the capacity) have upheld OUR end of the bargain; it’s the banks and their owners who haven’t. And as we all know, if one of the parties to a contract breaks it, they can no longer hold the other party to its terms. We’re the other party; they’re the party that broke the contract.
They’d best wrap their heads around giving in on some kind of fix to even up the score or they’ll find themselves wishing they had.
I can’t find that police officer’s “with them” quote in the linked article…
Interesting. If you Google-search for the quote, it returns the article that no longer has it. I did find the whole thing here: http://sandiegonews.info/san-diego-top-stories/occupy-san-diego-is-on.html
Thanks! Much appreciated.
I declared bankruptcy this year after years of asking for a reduction in my interest rate on my credit cards. Got up to 29.99%. Even gave one of the a $9,000 payment out of my 401K and they refused to reduce. Once I got past the “shame” of not paying I finally realized that I was acting in my economic self interest, just like investors, traders and bankers do. I wish I had done in a couple of years ago, but what finally allowed me to do it with a clear conscience was the systemic mortgage fraud. I’d tell you all not to be afraid to pull the plug.
I can imagine how stressful all of that must have been for you. The beauty of a collective default would be that it would remove the onus from you and others like you. If everyone, or half of everyone, or even a quarter of everyone, tells their creditors to fuck off, it changes the whole equation w/r/t “a good credit rating”; businesses will either have to stop placing much stock in it, refuse to do business with 1/3 or 1/2 or whatever of all potential customers, or shut down. We all know it will be Door #1.
I’m not discounting the ill effects such an action would have: credit would go back to what it was in the 1970s – something most people don’t have. But IMO, the psychological effect it would have on the former debt-slaves would so outweigh it as to make it an afterthought. People in this country are so cowed by “authority” that is only “authority” because they agree to treat it as such. Getting in the habit of telling huge corporations to go fuck themselves would do us all a world of good.
200+ at the Thursday gathering here in Huntsville, Alabama. Not bad, I’d say. The goal for the next gathering: convince some members of the local Tea Party group to attend. I like mockery and snark as much as anyone, but we’ll never win this thing without getting both sides involved.
Blessings on them all. This should NOT go away…
m
Send some of them to NYC. Constitutionality doesn’t seem to be a part of the NYC police plan.
Instead of downtown, shouldn’t they be marching in La Jolla (and Romney’s wannabe west coast White House)?
my new sign:
USA
All Check$
No Balances
God bless the protestors. They aren’t necessarily anti-capitalist or anti-corporation per se. They are anti the current system. The system that they have no influence over and yet controls their lives. The system that has seen average real wages remain flat for decades while inflation slowly exacts its insidious costs. The system that pushes forward fake politicians with movie star smiles, populist rhetoric and polished speaking styles, whose sole mission once elected is to maintain the status quo for the wealthy individuals and corporations that got them elected. The system that prints out of thin air and borrows from third world China and elsewhere trillions of dollars to bail out the wealthy while sending the bill the average taxpayer. The system that will produce, for the first time in the history of the United States of America, a current generation of young citizens who will be worse off than their parents were before them.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi
awesome photo btw. wow.
That’s SD County — not the city. In my experience on several anti-war marches I found the city police to be extremely friendly, helpful and reasonable.
It’s pretty funny that the MSM enablers can’t figure out what this is all about. 99% of the pop (well make that 90%) know for sure.
Just shows how stupid MSM allows itself to be in the service (bend over, spread your cheeks) of the 1%ers.
Hopefully wrong side of history.
Dang TBog I just Watched V for Vendetta this afternoon and it surely is Prophetic as what needs to be done in this country!! But instead of Parliament in London it has to be Wall Street that gets destroyed!!!! V! V! V! for the people of OUR country!!!
I hope that this continues to pick up steam. I got quite jaded about the utility of protests in general after the war in Iraq started. I didn’t think this one would amount to anything that the media couldn’t ignore or marginalize. I am happy to be proven wrong.
Suggestion for small towns (pop 5000 here). Go to the post office on Saturday morning & chat up your neighbors.
Gargantuan efforts over very long times to achieve small steps is my current mantra.
Zinn reports that “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today” in Lafayette Park drove him nuts. Nixon was obsessed (same source) by antiwar movement, according to tapes.
TINA (acronym courtesy of Maggie Thatcher, lol: There is no alternative).
There is also no guarantee that this will have the intended outcome.
http://www.policeone.com/Crowd-Control/articles/3361291-The-Madison-Method-for-crowd-control
More at the link. Item #1 really says it all: the point of public safety is first and foremost to ensure the safe and unfettered exercise of civil liberties — not to deny them to free citizens.
I hope and pray you are correct.
And they wear yellow, the color of sunshine and smiley faces!
The Guy Fawkes masks appear like 1 of every 200+ protesters. Not an issue on the ground. They seem more prevalent due to presence on the Internet.
The April 5 Movement in Egypt credit the movie “V for Vendetta” for giving them the idea of setting a specific date in the future as a point of reference. When I heard them speak, they were very clear that they used everything from twitter and Facebook to making sure the taxi drivers knew what was going on.
It get even better. From Occupy Portland.
In North America, people don’t get pay raises, they get credit limit increases. It’s INSANE.
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Sorry to spoil the buzz, but-
The cops will (mostly) be decent(excluding NYC where they are being paid by the Wallstreet masters), realizing they are part of the 99% and the protesters are peaceful. The Wisconsin cops were mostly cool because they knew they were next on the union-busting schedule. If the OWS protests continue to gather more people & news-time, the powers that be will get nervous & retalliate. One of the common methods used to discredit a protest & the participants is to pay a few agent provacateurs to incite violence. Then the talking heads on the teevee can run endless loops of the 10 people & not have to do any commentary about the reasons the peaceful thousands are protesting.
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Feds hire moles for RNC
Pastor appreciation Scriptures that tells why and how we should show pastor appreciation gifts: http://www.pastor-gifts.com/pastor-appreciation-poems