On January 10, the evening of the Republican Presidential primary, loving and committed couples, faith leaders, families and straight allies will gather on Central Square in Keene to stand up for all NH families, asking the NH Legislature to vote NO on HB437 so that the rights and protections of marriage will remain in place for same-sex couples.
For details: http://www.facebook.com/events/297652750281659/
If you live in one of 38 states, the Kochs are trying to influence your and your neighbors’ constitutional right to vote.
Attorney General Eric Holder can stop this.
Sign the petition to protect the Voting Rights Act and defeat the Koch brothers: http://KochBrothersExposed.com/
Spread the word!
This picture has been circulating and I have a lot to say about it.
1. The similarities: capitalism and colonialism. Africa’s thriving societies were destroyed by colonialism, and as the world shifted into global capitalism, the hierarchies constructed by colonialism have been easily maintained. The land has been stripped from resources leaving these people dependent on foreign aid. In the United States, capitalism has served to maintain hierarchies of power (and patriarchy). How many people growing up in an inner city have the opportunities of those raised in suburbia? How many people have to work multiple jobs to feed their children and are then criticized for not being there for their kids? How many hard-scrabble people have to take care of impoverished elders in retirement, thus giving up any time and effort towards bettering their own lives?
Maybe you’re thinking: because Americans came after this continent was colonized, that’s why we don’t have the same problems they have in Africa. Well, if you want to see where capitalism and colonialism have overlapped in the United States, look at our Native American population, their resources, their social statistics. Look at the Trail of Tears. Look at the meager land we “allowed” them to keep. It’s some of the worst, least-fertile land in the nation. We shut down their resources. And now that we’ve found oil on their land, the huge machine that is American capitalism (greed) and colonialism (cruelty) is trying to go back on treaty promises, to rob these peoples of what little they have been allotted.
Capitalism has provided the structure for greed to run rampant in the United States, to fund further colonialism (Iraq, Afghanistan), to rob American citizens of all they have made for themselves, and to maintain hierarchies of power. On a global level, it has maintained a stranglehold over people in America AND elsewhere.
2. A simple reason for those who do not want to think deeply on the issue: just because the average American is better off than starving children, it is NOT a reason to accept the corporate greed and capitalism that will bring America to its knees until WE ARE the starved.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45144941/ns/us_news-life/#.TrKvLXP5aaA
1. I feel like this needs to be better researched - vandals may be planted, like drunks being directed to OWS by NYPD. It’s also possible they were independent vandals, not involved in Occupy.
2. If OOak was indeed involved in rioting, it’s crucial to look at WHERE they did so - DOWNTOWN. The capitalist epicenter of the city. Anger spilled out over the closing of a homeless aid program as well.
LESSON: anger doesn’t come from nowhere unless there’s a mass population of psychopaths. There are REASONS that people act out this way. LOCATION is crucial. Just as OWS didn’t come from nowhere, these specific instances didn’t either.
Statistics indicate that the growing disparity is genuinely overwhelming. In fact, the 400 wealthiest Americans now own more than the “lower” 150 million Americans put together.
Indeed, if you look at the reports it compiles on every country in the world, even the CIA has concluded that wealth disparity is greater in the US than in Tunisia or Egypt.
A New ‘Gilded Age’
In a book published in 2010, American political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson discuss how this “hyperconcentration of economic gains at the top” also existed in the United States in the early 20th century, when industrial magnates — such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan — dominated the upper stratum of society and held the country firmly in their grip for years.
Writer Mark Twain coined the phrase “the Gilded Age” to describe that period of rapid growth, a time when the dazzling exterior of American life actually concealed mass unemployment, poverty and a society ripped in two.
Economists and political scientists believe the US has entered a new Gilded Age, a period of systematic inequality dominated by a new class of super-rich. The only difference is that, this time around, the super-rich are hedge fund managers and financial magnates instead of oil and rail barons.
A Threat to the World Economy
The academics fear this change could have serious consequences for the country’s economic future. As they see it, this extreme inequality threatens to dramatically slow growth in the world’s largest economy. This is part of a development, they argue, that has been under way for years but remained largely hidden in the years of cheap credit, rising real estate prices and excessive consumption — when it seemed everyone was on the way up. And the problems only came to light with the arrival of the financial crisis.
Read more at the link.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/26/scott-olsen-occupy-oakland-review?newsfeed=true
Scott Olsen injuries prompt review as Occupy Oakland protests continue
NOTE: Scott Olsen is not dead (the word “lifeless” is misleading below) - but he was sent to the hospital in critical condition (fractured skull and brain swelling) after being struck in the head by a “nonlethal” crowd deterrent of some sort.
While in most police crackdowns I do not resent the police for following their orders (and we do not face a police state by any definition), this is obviously FAR over the line. It’s too bad that some occupations attract people who are power-hungry and have control issues. Police officer seems to be one of those occupations. And it can result in cruel, cruel events and consequences….
My God…how despicable and enraging!!
Scott Olsen MAY have been hit in the head on accident, though by all legal standards introducing a risk with the chance of injury makes one culpable for the injury even if the end result of an injury is not intended.
But what makes this so profoundly wrong is that a police officer, watching as one person falls lifeless and another nudges him for signs of harm as people rush to his help, makes the concerted decision to throw a tear gas canister into the midst of the crowd of people attempting to aid Scott Olsen. Why is this so disgusting? Because first and foremost it was wholly unprovoked and secondly because tear gas has the primary intent of dispersing crowds. I did not see a single police officer move to aide Scott Olsen. If the goal was to disperse the helpers, who would have been left to help get medical attention? Lastly, because there was a clearly immobilized human being lying on the street in the exact spot that officer aimed that canister.
These police no longer serve us. When the laws cease to serve the People, the People cease to respect the laws. The laws derive their power from the People’s agreement to comply. That is the essence of our social contract. Why serve a system that fails to serve you? We must take back our system and rebuild it as one we can all respect.
Our weapons are our cameras and our voices. We will be heard. The whole world is watching.
We destroy because it creates profits and we refuse to invest in social development or sustaining our environment because it costs too much and pays too little. Costs too much what? Pieces of paper? Resources? What does war cost? Lives, dreams, futures, land, structures.
Don’t buy into the paradigm that only financially profitable things are useful, beneficial, or viable. That defies all logic or notion of sustainability as a species and as a planet. Investing in alternative energy sources, investing in poor people’s educations and futures and health may not return immediate dollars or be a high trade on wall street, but what it provides for humanity and the earth as a whole in incalculably higher than anything we could achieve through war or profit-driven consumerism.
So this person decided to follow me here on Tumblr and their photos and captions just had me really up in arms. I’m scratching my head as to why they bothered to add me.
I would like to think that this page is a hoax and that it’s some stupid anti-Semite posing as Jewish, but I do need to remind myself that just as there are psycho Christians, there are likely to be psycho Jewish people. Though you usually don’t hear about them.
So I blocked 770770 from my followers on Tumblr. If they’ve started following you and you’re also confused, I encourage you to do the same.
Average CEO pay is 350 times average worker pay - the highest ratio of all time. The second largest ratio? Just before the Great Depression!
(via OccupyDesign)
