Occupy Wall Street 3: Now What?

wtf

what happened btw her and Chase?

here are some details & a quick summary of the story behind the eviction

http://storify.com/Sara_Jeans/dawn-butler-s-eviction-oohdc-occupydc?awesm=sfy.co_13Nt&utm_campaign=&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=storify-pingback

in short--dawn was a renter. her landlord was foreclosed on after his cancer treatment bills put him behind on payments. dc renters have 'right of first refusal,' but jpmc sold the house to freddie mac anyway. the court allowed it, and dawn was--as i understand it--appealing. but jpmc decided to move in today.

as the 'servicer' of the loan, it was jpmc's apparent 'responsibility' to cleanse it.

i see--yesterday the court denied dawn's claim that she was a legal tenant on the property. so this today.

Horrible.

However, unfortunately, I googled around a bit and it looks like foreclosure may be an exception to the tenant right-of-first-refusal law in DC:

http://content.knowledgeplex.org/kp2/cache/documents/1834/183436.pdf

There are other, less common exceptions to TOPA. For example, TOPA is not triggered by the transfer of a decedent’s estate to members of the decedent’s family if there is no consideration for the transfer. Another exception is a transfer by foreclosure, tax, or bankruptcy sale.

Still makes no sense that a bank is not willing to work with a person like this who could assume the mortgage. The sick irony is that it would probably be better for the bank to have a smooth transition to another payor on the mortgage rather than go through the trouble of foreclosing and then IDK reselling or renting it to someone.

Although perhaps that has been changed since? I'll look around more when I get a chance.

That explains the judge's thinking. I'd been a bit confused--thx.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6S7qA9lvik&feature=player_embedded

watching this again makes me really, really angry

like, i want to go fight with somebody

so what was everybody's fave Occupy obit in the MSM last week?

the wash examiner had a nice one on us--michelle bachmann even retweeted it with "#TeaParty going strong. #OccupyDC crowd all but disappeared"

and also that douchey stooge Bill Maher.

Daniel Berrigan showed up last week to denounce Trinity Church for prosecuting occupiers:

http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/06/ows-presents-a-fracture-of-good-order-for-trinity-church/

http://www.nationofchange.org/america-s-street-priest-1339484278

ahhh berrigan <3 <3 <3

me and my radio producer spent a minute last night arguing the likelihood of someone smoking bill maher out at the park in the fall

FOIA documents point to Homeland Security coordination of crackdowns on Occupy

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/14/did-the-white-house-direct-the-police-crackdown-on-occupy/

well duh

evidence is always nice

evidence for what? dhs hasn't charged anyone w/ a crime, what do they need evidence of?

I mean evidence of the fed coordination.

oh i see what you're saying

http://www.reuters.com/video/2012/06/13/protesters-disrupt-opening-of-jamie-dimo?videoId=235959001&videoChannel=117764

my fuckin people, including deborah harris, the paramedic jp morgan is currently trying to kick out of her house

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/599481_3570652861903_861569282_n.jpg

when photos of rob like this one come out the running joke is "MY WHITE RAGE IS THE ONLY AUTHENTIC FORM OF PROTEST"

LOL "panic time"

http://l.yimg.com/ho/api/res/1.2/e0ZIIWWli1559oqaWmDEMQ--/Zmk9Zml0O2g9OTAwO3c9OTAwO3E9OTA7YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NyY2g-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/afp.com/photo_1339617824610-1-0.jpg

this is debbie, and this super makes my heart well up

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/what-do-jamie-dimons-cufflinks-tell-us-about-financial-industrial-complex

Dana Millbank in the W. Post:

Jones, in his speech to the conferees, pleaded with the activists to be as “courageous and determined” as the Occupy movement was, but he needled the left for being soft, comparing today’s activists unfavorably with those of the civil rights era. “They were beaten fighting for change. Some went to jail fighting for change. Some were murdered,” he said. “We’ll quit over a really mean tweet.”

Jones urged them to use their heads, even if their hearts aren’t in it. “If we just support the president, just vote for Democrats, we don’t get what we want,” he said. “But if we don’t, our opponents get power and decimate us. Can we put our thinking caps on now?”

Surely Jones knows that it’s hard to put on a thinking cap when you’re in the fetal position.

danamilb✧✧✧@washp✧✧✧.c✧✧

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-left-feeling-left-out/2012/06/18/gJQAbKzQmV_story.html?hpid=z2

i don't remember which fevered comment box i learned this in but dana milbank is skull & bones

Does not surprise me

yeah he's right, good thing nobody gets beaten or put in jail anymore

short attention spans are getting shorter all the time, apparently. or maybe you just had to be there.

good thing nobody gets beaten or put in jail anymore

yeah the difference isn't that people aren't getting beaten/jailed/killed, it's that it isn't news to the public, and they don't care.

Van Jones merely helped Millbank confirm his pre-determined view

“Elections are something that Occupy needs to continue to avoid. The Obama-Romney debate is not a discussion of the concerns of the American people."

http://www.nationofchange.org/occupy-will-be-back-1340111087

hope they don't mean "voting"

I'm pretty sure he means "as a movement"

Open Assembly/BBQ in Brooklyn's Prospect Park on the 22nd:

http://occupywallst.org/article/join-us-july-22-prospect-park-open-assembly-and-bb/

the national gathering was last week, i'm told lots of good connections were made and things were learned

my friends that occupied the closed franklin homeless shelter in november are on trial this week

freefranklindc.blogspot.com

Zuccotti Park reoccupied

http://my.firedoglake.com/kitoconnell/2012/07/11/live-99-mile-march-sings-dances-in-liberty-square/

The MSM's effort to slime OWS with a murder charge falls apart:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/07/occupy-dna-murder-link-now-thought-be-lab-error/54471/

so, What Is to Be Done Now?

And so while the need for a political vanguard – not necessarily, indeed not ideally, the kind Lenin proposed – is general, the need for something that would serve that purpose in our circumstances is particularly acute. We live in a liberal democracy with a liberal component that remains fairly robust. But, in recent years, the democratic component, never very strong, has receded almost to the vanishing point.

In these circumstances, the electoral road to change and hope – not just for a radically transformed social and economic order, but even just for a more decent order within the framework of existing social, political and economic arrangements — is more than usually out of reach.

This is the real lesson of the 2008 election. Obama may be feckless, and he has certainly disappointed almost everybody who harbored any hopes for his presidency. He could have done much better. But the idea that he could begin to do what some of his supporters imagined he would was illusory from the start. One needn’t be a full-fledged Leninist to know that, but serious readers of “What Is To Be Done?” could hardly fail to notice – or to understand why....

Applying Lenin’s prescriptions mechanically in circumstances very different from the ones he confronted never made sense, though segments of the left went on for decades as if it did. What they ought to have done, and what we can still do, is appropriate the core principles of “What Is To Be Done?” to the conditions that actually obtain.

Then the next time resistance to ruling class aggression or to the outrageous inequalities generated by present day capitalism erupts, there will at least be a chance that enduring and beneficial change will come from it – not the meretricious kind some deluded voters imagined they’d get from Obama, and not the fleeting and largely illusory kind that the Occupy movements produced in their moments of glory, but the real deal.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/27/what-is-to-be-done-now/

Lenin is not useful fyi

some of his principles may be, if one is imaginative.

keep relying on the Democratic Party tho, it's working nicely

I'm more of a Makhno fan

lenin certainly worth reading even if he was a cromwell-esque lunatic -- i read all his major books in college -- but his concerns seem very remote from our own. i'd rather see ppl following the example of robert la follette.

yeah I mean sure's he's fascinating/valid from a historical standpoint but as a reference point for tactics in the present day? gtfo

I'd almost think you hadn't read "Applying Lenin’s prescriptions mechanically in circumstances very different from the ones he confronted never made sense"

otoh "let's improve our system by incrementally making the Democrats less awful" looks like a big GTFO

appropriate the core principles of “What Is To Be Done?” to the conditions that actually obtain

this is super-vague and unhelpful tho, and complicated by the fact that Lenin arguably had no intention of putting core principles in action, but instead developed them exclusively in the interest of consolidating power

and I'm all for jettisoning our current system - it's a mess! I wouldn't miss it. otoh it exists and refusing to deal with it or exploit opportunities to change it strikes me as myopic.