I don't have much time this morning. I'm getting as much as I can before I need to go.
Here's the news for today.
-- Zucotti Park has been raided and cleared. There were over 70 arrests. There are reports from Occupiers of pepper spray and excessive force being used by police. Hundreds of protesters have moved to Foley Square to decide what to do next. There were reports that some people had chained themselves to trees, and were cut free and then arrested by police.
-- Occupy El Paso's permit expired on Police issued 13 citations to protesters who remained. They plan on asking for a new permit.
-- While Occupy Oakland was raided yesterday morning, by mid-afternoon, over 40 tents and a kitchen had sprung up in a park across the lake. The mayor's legal adviser, Dan Siegel, resigned over her decision to clear the camps, and later in the afternoon, so did the Deputy Mayor, Sharon Cornu.
-- Seattle City Council has voted to "recognize the peaceful and lawful exercise of the First Amendment rights by Occupy Seattle and others." The resolution includes plenty of language from the Declaration of Independence, and demands cures to many of the nation's problems.
-- Occupy Eureka was raided again yesterday morning. 33 people were arrested, including one juvenile. They were given no warning, and were hit with nunchaku-like weapons, according to Occupy Eureka's email. The city says it will probably put up a semi-permanent fence to keep the protesters out.
-- Occupy Chicago is declaring a victory. Condoleeza Rice was scheduled to speak at University of Chicago, and Ocupiers planned to Un-Welcome the group on arrival. University of Chicago cancelled the visit, citing "unforeseen scheduling conflicts."
-- Occupiers are possibly planning to converge on Berkeley today, in an attempt to help Occupy Cal set up an encampment again.
-- Yesterday, a judge in Tennessee dismissed over 55 citations from Occupiers and demanded their records be expunged.
Occupy Movements around the world have come under threat within the past few days, in a much more major way than we have previously seen. Police are attacking unarmed and peaceful civilians with harmful and potentially fatal weaponry. The Criminal Justice System in this country has a monopoly on brute force, and I believe we are just beginning to see how willing they are to use it. Police are circling banks to protect them from the people, when in reality, it should be the opposite. It doesn't really make any sense when you see a police officer shoot a man with rubber bullets because he was sitting in a tree, or pepper spray a woman when she was standing on the sidewalk.
Freedom of press is disappearing as we see reporters being threatened and arrested, or reporting what their bosses tell them to, rather than real news. Everyone has a bias, and this is a fact. This fact does not mean that we cannot fight biased reporting. It is entirely within our power to get the information we need, as long as we continue looking for it. The items I have up today were all from mainstream media, due to time constraints.
The video that I posted yesterday on my blog is extraordinarily important. It shows the major hypocrisy we can find in our lives today. Until we realize what is really going on... Until we learn that we can fight it... Until we understand that we are the cure...
Solidarity.
"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."
The Preamble of the Declaration of Independence.
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