Federal Reserve, FBI spied on Occupy Wall Street movement, documents show

The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond worked with the FBI to closely monitor the protest activities of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, according to recently released FBI documents.

The documents — obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the progressive Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) — reveal that the FBI coordinated at length with local law enforcement, private financial institutions and other government agencies in their monitoring efforts of the Occupy movement’s activities.

For example, the Federal Reserve of Richmond — headquartered in Richmond, Va. — instructed its personnel to monitor Occupy planning sessions, and reported to the local FBI office about their findings on a number of occasions.

One of the FBI documents — published to PCJF’s site on Dec. 22, 2012 and dated Oct. 4, 2011 — says that the “Assistant Vice President [of the] Law Enforcement Unit of the Federal Reserve Law Enforcement Unit [was contacted] to pass on information regarding the movement known as Occupy Wall Street.”

“This movement has been known to be peaceful, but demonstrations across the United States show that other…

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Source: Daily Caller

FBI documents reveal secret nationwide Occupy monitoring

PCJF exposes documents from FBI spy files

FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests.

The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.

“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).  “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.  These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

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Source: Party for Socialism and Liberation

PSL: When justifying imperialist intervention "goes wrong"

Cruise-missile socialists

By Mazda Majidi

On July 1, an article titled "Libya and Syria: When Anti-Imperialism Goes Wrong" was published on the North Star website, signed by "Pham Binh of Occupy Wall Street, Class War Camp." The article argues that imperialist interventions in Libya and Syria are justified because they are demanded by forces the author calls revolutionary. While claiming to cut against the grain, he formulates what is a common position among liberals, progressives and even some self-proclaimed socialists and anti-imperialists. As such it is important to respond.

When imperialist countries intervene in the affairs of oppressed countries, the justifications do not only emanate from the U.S. government and the corporate media. In each instance, various forces and individuals with liberal and progressive credentials succumb to the imperialist propaganda campaign and put forth pro-intervention arguments, albeit using progressive-sounding analyses and using liberal/left language.

Even if “progressive” arguments for intervention originate far away from the halls of power, and receive no wide audience among the ruling class, they nonetheless play an important role for the imperialist war drives. (Read more)

Source: PSL

Who Is Peta Lindsay?

 Meet the black woman running for president on a platform of socialist revolution.

 
"All revolutions are impossible until they happen; then they become inevitable."
 --Albie Sachs, South African activist and judge (1990)
 
With a knowing chuckle, Peta Lindsay recalls this quote when I ask whether our country could feasibly adopt socialism. Then the 27-year-old, who is running for president of the United States on the Party for Socialism and Liberation ticket, explains why she thinks we can.
 
"With the explosive growth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, people are already struggling against the exploitation of the capitalist system," she told The Root from her Los Angeles home. "People are in motion."
 
For Lindsay, her campaign serves as another front in that movement. Along with her running mate, 26-year-old Colombian native Yari Osorio, and volunteers from PSL branches in 25 states and Washington, D.C., the bubbly African-American activist has been speaking at campuses, handing out flyers at community meetings and planning demonstrations about economic change through the socialist transformation of society.
 
"We're highly organized, and we're used to doing… (Read on)
 
Source: The Root

Free Speech and Occupy Wall Street

By George Reisman

 

The Occupy Wall Street protesters were allowed to remain in New York's Zuccotti Park for two months, against the will of its private owners. They were clearly trespassers, indeed, much worse than garden variety trespassers, who almost always quickly leave. They were there prepared to stay indefinitely. In effect, they were literally attempting to steal the park from its lawful owners.

 

Nevertheless, they were allowed to remain, in the belief that to eject them would somehow constitute a violation of their freedom of speech. They had seized the park in order to denounce capitalism. Ejecting them, would have ended their use of the park for that purpose and thus, according to virtually everyone with a public voice, from New York's Mayor to the lowliest media reporter, would have violated their freedom of speech.

 

A major lesson to be learned from the occupation is that hardly anyone nowadays understands the meaning of freedom of speech. Contrary to the prevailing view, freedom of speech is not the ability to say anything, anywhere, at any time. Actual freedom of speech is consistent with respect for property rights. It presupposes that the speaker has the consent of the owners of any property he uses in speaking, such as the land, sound system, or lecture hall or radio or television studio that he uses.

 

Had the owners of Zuccotti Park invited the protesters to camp on their land and propound their ideas, and then the police had ejected them, the protesters' freedom of speech would in fact have been violated. But that was not the case. The only actual violation of freedom present was… (Read more)

 

Source: Mises.org

City of Boston shuts down Occupy encampment

By Kate Randall
 
At about 5 a.m. Saturday morning, at least 100 Boston police officers swept into Dewey Square to shut down the Occupy Boston encampment, making 46 arrests and removing tents and other equipment. On Thursday, a Boston judge had lifted a temporary restraining order that had barred the city from moving against the group, clearing the way for city authorities to evict the protesters.
 
Protesters project their message
 
The protest in the city’s financial district was one of the largest and longest running of the anti-Wall Street protests still in existence, having begun September 30, not long after the start of the protest in Lower Manhattan. In recent weeks, city administrations across the country have moved against numerous encampments, evicting protesters in often violent assaults by police and making thousands of arrests.
 
The Boston protesters had received a warning that they faced a midnight Thursday deadline for vacating the encampment, but authorities waited until early Saturday morning to act. A crowd of about 1,000 protesters and their supporters gathered in Dewey Square Thursday night in anticipation of the eviction, but the midnight deadline came and went without incident.
 
By the time of the Saturday morning raid, many of the protesters… (Read more)
 
Source: World Socialist Website

Occupy Wall Street, from the viewpoint of Liberty

By Zach Foster

 

Part I: The Parable

 

Recent events have raised such noise, stirred many emotions, spun controversy, spawned heated debates, but most of all such events have caused great confusion regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement and its sister/satellite movements around the country.  In order to fully grasp the nature of the beast it is necessary to begin with a parable.  During the massive protests in Wisconsin early this year, many leftists—principally Marxists—spouted this parable as a metaphor for what they so passionately believe to be the demeaning and destructive nature of capitalism and the creation of wealth.

 

The parable goes as such: A CEO, a worker, and a union representative are sitting around a table.  On the table is a plate with a dozen cookies.  Suddenly the CEO grabs eleven of the cookies and shoves as many of them into his mouth, the rest of what he grabs being jammed into the pockets of his fine tailored coat.  Wiping his mouth, he belches and then turns to the worker.  Pointing to the union representative, the CEO shouts to the worker, “He wants a piece of your cookie!”  This image can faithfully sum up the Marxian perspective of capitalists and laborers.

 

Now, in order to bring a greater understanding of the economic order, let the parable be modified to realistically fit the true economic model of growth and prosperity.

 

The same three are sitting around the same table with the same plate of cookies, yet all three know the same truth: the CEO—a successful businessman and creative entrepreneur—owns the cookie dough, the cookie sheet and the oven whose machinery baked the cookies, as well as the kitchen in which the cookies were baked.  He bought the kitchen and the materials therein, spending a lot of money on them, such money being his own profits made from other ventures in which he invested.  The worker broke the cookie dough on the cookie sheet, placed it in the oven, and pressed the button to start the baking process.

 

The CEO, having already had a contract with the worker, regardless of the fact that his investment in the cookie kitchen has yet to pay itself over, takes eleven of the cookies and passes one to the worker as compensation for putting the dough in the oven.  He then points to the union representative, saying to the worker, “that man who neither split the costs of my investment nor joined you in your labor wants a piece of your cookie, and he wants several pieces of mine as well.”

 

Where does this leave the union representative?  Clearly in this situation he is a leech, though it is not meant to be an indictment of all unions.  Many labor unions have truly made daily life and working conditions better for workers all across America.  Meanwhile, many unions have disguised collective greed with the mask of the plight of the workers.  It all depends on what their demands and goals are, what repercussions would reverberate through the local and national economies, and whether or not the give and take consists of more take than give on the part of the unions.

 

The point of this parable is neither to demonize unions nor to attack workers, and it doesn’t take place in Wisconsin.  The original parable, that shouted by Marxists, was meant to demonize the “capitalist class” for their “oppression” of the working class.  The modified parable more clearly represents the economic model of growth and prosperity on the part of the entrepreneurs and businessmen.  One thing remains abundantly clear: had it not been for the investment of the entrepreneur and his one-cookie-per-dozen labor contract, the workers would not have a cookie.  Furthermore, while the businessman collects the remaining cookies for recuperation of his investment, the worker is saving the cookies he earns over time so that he can one day make an investment of his own.  It will be a very small cookie kitchen at first, but the worker is creative and has secretly been devising ingenious recipes for delicious cookies.  As his small investments begin to yield results in the future, his cookie kitchen will grow and continue to prosper.

Continued in Part II: The Protests

Photo by Dan Smith and used via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. Photo was obtained from Wikimedia Commons

Taking Action for the 99%

It's official - our national conversation has changed in the past month. From endless droning about deficits and austerity measures, now the talk is about the real target: Corporate Greed. The reason we have high unemployment? Corporate Greed. The reason working class wages have stagnated while the top 1% incomes continue to rise? Corporate Greed. The reason the Pentagon budget gets a boost every year while the social safety net gets cut? Corporate Greed. We have the Occupy Movement to thank for changing the conversation in our country. Now it's up to us to take action to make change happen.
 
Action #1 - Continue Unemployment Benefits
Half In Ten, the campaign to cut poverty in half in ten years, has this online action to urge members of Congress to protect jobless benefits. For insight on organizing the unemployed, check out this People's World article titled Chicago unemployment activist’s message of hope.
 
Action #2 - Repair and Modernize America’s Schools
All students are entitled to a safe and healthy learning environment.  We need immediate action to turn crumbling schools into healthy,  high-performing learning environments for students and educators. Please sign this petition to President Obama from the American Federation of Teachers.
 
Action #3 - Support S. 1769, the Rebuild America Jobs Act
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has set up an action to get your senator on board to support S.1769 to put $58 billion dollars of infrastructure spending in areas such as roads, bridges, transit, and aviation.
 
Action #4 - No Cuts to Social Security or Medicare
Progressives United has an online tool that allows you to tell super committee Democrats to say no to any deal that cuts Social Security or Medicare.
 
We Are the 99%!
 
The AFL-CIO has taken another step to embrace the Occupy Movement by creating their own We Are the 99% website. Also, CPUSA Chair Sam Webb has an article on the movement at the People's World: Occupy: embrace the new, build the movement.
 
Economic Indicators
Anyone who wants to understand the enduring nature of Occupy Wall Street protests across the country need only look at the first official data on 2010 paychecks, which the U.S. government posted online last month.
 
Please make sure to visit the People's World online for the best in worker's news!             

In solidarity,            
 
Scott Marshall
Labor Chair, CPUSA
 
Source: E-letter from CPUSA.  Image courtesy of The Rachel Maddow Show.

Jobs and Occupations

It's been over a month since the first Occupy Wall Street protesters took over Zuccotti Park, and the movement continues to grow. The connection between Wall Street's greed and issues like high unemployment are being seen by more and more people every day. Many people have lost their jobs, but they have found occupations!
 
Renew Unemployment Benefits
Millions of hardworking Americans - nearly 2 million in January alone, and over 6 million in 2012 - will be cut off from the emergency lifeline of federal unemployment insurance, unless Congress acts to renew the program before it expires December 31st. Take action now! Also, check out this People's World article on capitalism and unemployment for more on this. And beware of the newest "free trade" agreements (which can all agree are not "free" nor fair) and the jobs at risk due to them.
 
Noteworthy Jobs Bills
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has offered his own $804 billion jobs plan that calls on the federal government to hire the nation’s 15 million unemployed Americans for jobs paying roughly $40,000 each, and bail out all the states and cities facing budget crises. And President Obama's American Jobs Act is gathering support. In Connecticut, an online petition supporting the bill gathered over a thousand signatures the first day, as People's World reporter Art Perlo tells us.
 
Occupy Everywhere
Over the past weekend, "millions protested at more than 950 demonstrations in 80 countries," writes John Wojcik in his latest People's World article. The New York Times reports on where the largest demonstrations in the United States occurred over the past weekend. The Occupy Movement shows no signs of slowing down and could be the catalyst for progressive social change that has been so needed in our country for decades.
 
The 1%
We are the 99% - but who are the 1%? Truthout breaks it down for us here and the AFL-CIO does the math and finds out that the tax breaks the top 5% get cost us $11.6 million every hour of every day. That's a lot of job creating resources going down the drain!
 
Please make sure to visit the People's World online for the best in worker's news!             
 
In solidarity,            
 
Scott Marshall
Labor Chair, CPUSA

Source: E-letter from CPUSA