With Occupy Wall Street making its May Day comeback, what did the corporate media have to say? Take a look at the New York Times story (5/2/12), which was stuffed in the Metro section and focused on… well, take a look at the headline:
About half of the article is focused on arrests, “occasionally bloody clashes” and the like.
Before the protests even started, there were warnings about what was to come. On ABC‘s Good Morning America (5/1/12), Josh Elliot warned viewers:
We’re gonna begin with what’s shaping up to be a potentially brutal morning commute, particularly in major cities across the country.
Elliot went on to link OWS with some scary mailings at several banks:
Demonstrators here in New York and across the country, as you just saw, threatening now to block bridges, tunnels and ferries, all to protest corporate America. And already a big scare, white powder sent to several major banks.
Early in the day (5/1/12), Reuters television correspondent Conway G. Gittens filed a report headlined “Occupy Wall Street Resurgence a Dud.” Several hours–and thousands of protestors–later, Reuters was telling peopleon Twitter:
Live coverage of #MayDay protests show Occupy Wall Street resurgence far from being a dud
What about on liberal-leaning MSNBC? The channel didn’t seem to have much to say. Here was host Ed Schultz:
Today, Occupy Wall Street staged May Day protests around the world. It’s another reminder of which candidate supports the 1 Percent and which candidate is with the 99 Percenters.
Given Occupy Wall Street’s longstanding aversion to electoral politics–not to mention criticism of the Obama administration’s Wall Street connections–this sounds like partisan wishful thinking.
I don’t think the Democratic leadership and their allies in the media and mainstream organizations quite know how to deal with Occupy.
Do they ignore it, while local gummints and federales across the nation bash heads, infiltrate and try to discredit it?
Or do they attempt to coopt the “brand”, as MoveOn and other fellow travelers are attempting with “The 99% Spring” ™?
Being the faithful followers of Machiavelli that they are, it appears they’ve opted for both, doesn’t it?
(“White powder” …
Jesus, Mary and Joseph.)
Does a contradiction exist in a person’s mind if he knows only one thing?
If all one knows is that Democrats are the good guys, does any other information have any meaning at all?
So when “Obama bails out the banks and sells out the people” is heard by his true believers, is this information even comprehensible to those who know only that one special thing about him?
In Oakland a similar thing occurred. There was a 3000-4000 person march from Fruitvale district in Oakland to downtown Oakland. This march was the largest thing to happen all day. In the SF chronicle and a view other papers they almost exclusively focused on events happening in downtown Oakland between insurrectionarists and the police… It seems that there is something dangerous about showing working class families demanding jobs and an end to Obama’s immigration crusade.
As you all know I am a tea party member.So you would think I have nothing good to say for any of this taking for granted the perceptions out there.Yet I actually had hopes for this movement. I always thought that the move on demonstration would “move on” from the mess it was when it started, to a very focused discussion/protest against problems we all should be discussing.How bailouts were carried out.The future realities of again doing such things.Adding to the serious informed discussion of taxation laws,and so on.What we got is this movement has been co opted by its worst impulses.The gimme gimme crowd.Revolutionaries without a clear idea of what it is they are swinging at.Illegal acts by non contributing morons who want “fairness” and restitutions to their perceived slights.This mess has a year later -degenerated into a mess of cluster F*CK proportions.
Ps……May day?Big Communist day.Could they not of picked another day?Am I missing something?
@Michaell e…May Day started in America…read this:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Workers'_Day#_
Michael, May Day is in honor of labor and started in America in memory of the Haymarket incident of violence precipitated in a peaceful protest for fair wages and safe work places. The perception that Occupy is the gimme crowd shows too much watching of faux news and not enough talking with occupiers in your neighborhood. When the Koch T-partiers went out armed and nasty, no police attacked them, but the rank and file did have a reason to be in the streets, actually the same ones that the Occupiers have. It is just that the corporations are not supporting the Occupation and sic the police and the rite wing pundits on them. Almost all the people I know in the 99% movement are nonviolent and very clear in what they want, but the media is not able to understand, or won’t understand. We are very clear that we know that a corporation is not a person and money is property, not speech. We make it clear that we want the banks to repay the bailout that the people have funded and stop foreclosing on people who have lived in their homes for years and have been hurt by the financial powers resource grab; and that salaries of workers should be in sync with the wealth we have produced. But if you look at the profits and CEO salaries climbing off the chart and the salaries of working people flat lining it is very clear why people are upset. It just can’t be any clearer than that.
Some in the OWS movement have shown support for my jobs fair for the Nation idea of a National Hiring Day. That would shift the spotlight from police skirmishes of the protestors to corporate responsibility of every corporation in the US.
National Hiring Day – This is a day that corporations are encouraged to hire new employees. Corporations are called on to put patriotism first and help their country in
hard times. Those corporations that cannot hire, are asked to stop firing for that month.
http://wp.me/p5S9X-nv
The day that MSNBC is “Liberal Leaning” is the day that the Koch Brothers give up a day of oppressing the Middle Class to bring meals and friendly conversation to poor black and Latino families. MSNBC is just barely centralist, not even the least bit left-leaning. To imply that it is in any way “liberal” is a vile insult to liberals around the world.
“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”—Howard Zinn
I like to call May day Americanization day.A name tried by veterans of foreign wars to move it away from the ties to socialism and communism.Workers of the world unite and all that rot.As if people who are not unionized don’t work.Im not in any union.I went to school till I was 30 working sometimes 3 jobs along the way.Now i work 14 hour days,with ton of stress,six days a week.But i don’t WORK do i?.Know what i noticed?Lots of folks want my earnings.But few would want to go through what i did to get here.Fewer still would want my hours.Know when they end?They don’t.Im on round the clock.My taxes would turn your hair white.
Elizabeth
Occupy are not a gimme bunch.Truthfully I have not figured out what they are.When they do i will tell you.So you are a part of the 99%ers huh?Why not make it the 99.165%ers?I don’t believe in that 1% nonsense or your boogie man the corporate myth.Every person I know who runs a business is incorporated.Including a girl i know who silk screens T shirts.It is people.
Banks have repaid the bailout.The government has not.They never will.
As far as what CEOs make….They make what any free company wants to pay them,and thats no bodies business.Your comparison of those mean and nasty T party demonstrations(to me they damn near were like a family picnics) to the great pee party revolt is just a lie plain and simple.See I was there in New york.Filth filth filth.Destruction of property .Interference of business.I could go on.Look the great thing about this land is we get to choose.You chose Obama.I understood that.Bush dropped the ball.He failed.Well now Obama has failed.I wonder if you will understand people electing Mitt?
Lets look at the biggest difference in unequal pay.Hollywood -that leftist home front.Now a grip makes couple hundred a week While Brad Pitt may make 30 million for his work on the same movie.Now is it the governments job to tax Brad to the point that he and the grip make the same salary?
May Day commemorates world’s first national general strike for the 8-hour day by workers in America, many of whom were immigrants. It wasn’t just Chicago that struck May 1, 1886, workers all over the country did. It is fitting that the recent revival of May Day as a workers’ holiday began in 2006, when the immigrant rights movement surged with enormous May Day protests from coast to coast, millions of immigrants in the streets against the bill to make undocumented status a felony. Organizers knew the significance of May 1 for Mexicans and other Latinos. Thanks to Occupy Wall St. for continuing this revival and for expressions of solidarity with the immigrant workers.
Maybe this can light that fire and burn away some of the confusion.
————-
There has been a whole lot of talk about how the thousands of brave protesters occupying Wall St. have no clear demand. Funny, since this is just one more installment of a global movement for democracy that has taken over the entire planet — you’d think the press would have caught on by now.
Almost a year ago, a revolution began in Tunisia and sparked a domino of uprisings across the Middle East. Their call was simple: end the dictatorship, usher in accountable government. Through occupation and all out war, countries in the Middle East attempted to topple leaders who clung to power despite representing the interests of the richest and most powerful to the detriment of the public good.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emma-rubysachs/what-occupy-wall-street-w_b_996412.html
michael e, what makes you think that all Hollywood actors are liberal?
What makes you think that most actors are wealthy?
michael e
“Workers of the world unite and all that rot.As if people who are not unionized don’t work.”
With “14-hour days … six days a week,” head full of a jingoist “great thing about this land,” and the self-justifying delusions you inhale in your 5 minute stroll around New York, it’s not surprising you can’t recognise that “non-unionised workers” and “unionised workers” are all Workers, nor that there’s no comparison between an incorporated small business and an international corporation.
as noted communist, er republican, abraham lincoln told congress in 1861 “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. “
“Banks have repaid the bailout.”
not so…. in late april the special inspector general for tarp, christy l. romero wrote to congress: “Taxpayers are still owed $118.5 billion (including $14 billion written off or otherwise lost).”
http://tinyurl.com/7757gsx
Michael e:
It’s a figment of your victimhood that people don’t think you work if you’re not in a union. Unions and the union movement advocate for ALL workers. Unions have made working better and safer for all workers, not just union members.
>>”I went to school till I was 30″<< -michael e
You didn't graduate from junior high until you were 30? Wow. Maybe you'll learn to write by the time you're 40.
“Now is it to the governments job to tax Brad to the point that he and the grip make the same salary?”
What are you talking about? No one is suggesting that, the same way that no one is arguing that a Wall Street CEO be taxed to the point that he and some guy in the accounting department make the same salary.
P Ness
Well hell than IM SUGGESTING IT!So how can it ever be FAIR – if some people make so much more than others?It cant be.Isn’t the idea to lower the top ,and raise the bottom so everyone is in the middle?By force if need be?Or do you think if Brad(or the CEO) pays a bit more,that that will satisfy the libs?IN A PIGS EYE.Anyone who works hard and does well- is enemy number one in your world.Paying 87% of the taxes has not changed that, and neither will paying 100%.
Jamie H.Thanks for that info.I never knew that the union movement advocates for all workers.Including the so called 1%ers who have worked their asses off to get where they are?Including the CEOs of huge corporations?I feel better now.
Loyd H.Thanx for finally stating who the real enemy is.Multi national corporations.Now is it everyone who works for them?Just their lawyers?Rank and file?Or just the top 2 guys in each one?We really need to identify these scoundrels.So it is quite literally this time “the guy on the OTHER side of the hill”?Boogie men Loyde.Boogie men.
Jamie H Funny guy JAMIE.So your the brilliant liberal man and Im slow conservative eh?Where did you go to school,and how is your cash flow(job)?Go on impress me.Im sure that I would be astounded at your resume.
Woodward Truly the banks have paid the government back,and what a sweet deal it was.Government made a fortune on their investment.
“Woodward Truly the banks have paid the government back,and what a sweet deal it was.Government made a fortune on their investment.”
while the treasury department say they did, the tarp i.g says the program is still in the red.
here’s bret baier from fox news on this.. “A government watchdog agency is pushing back against a Treasury Department forecast that said taxpayers would make a profit on the troubled asset relief program known as TARP.
The special inspector general dismisses that prediction in a new report to Congress.
Writing — quote — ‘It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit. The most recent cost estimate for TARP is a loss of $60 billion.’
However, Treasury is sticking by its original estimate telling Huffington Post most of the remaining projected cost is related to a different aid program that it admits was never intended to be recovered.”
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report/2012/04/27/grapevine-colombia-rejects-associations-sex-industry#ixzz1uU7JC2KN
click here for the highlights from the inspector general’s letter to congress
http://dailycapitalist.com/2012/04/30/the-big-lie-tarp-made-money/
I wasn’t able to read a FAIR Blog email from May 4. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t open. This was only a few days ago, but I was able to open other emails that were on that same date earlier. I wonder if this was a government/corporate conspiracy to censor my email(maybe because the corporate advertisers of AOL/ATT didn’t like the email). I tried to call AOL last night, and while I reset my browser as the help person recommended, it only caused more problems. Plus, when I tried to open the email on another computer, I had the same problem. I tried to call AOL again, but they never answered. They probably just want to censor my email anyway.