May 2nd protest at Brooklyn College

Sign the Petition at Takebackbrooklyn.wordpress.com to demand charges be dropped for trying to meet with the Administration along with an end to Tuition Hikes and Over-securitazation of our schools.

From the video description:

On May 2nd, 2012, peaceful students and faculty experienced unnecessary brutality on the Brooklyn College campus. Brooklyn College President Karen Gould ordered for students to be violently removed by campus security from outside of her office in a main academic building; two students were wrongly arrested, spent a night in jail, and face unsubstantiated charges.

Over the next five years, students face a $1,500 tuition increase, and continuous cuts to student services and a continuation of increased securitization on CUNY Campuses-- from the NYPD systematic spying on Muslim Student Associations, to Stop and Frisk racial profiling policies on and off our campuses, to attacks by security guards on peaceful students such as during the Board of Trustees Meeting on November 21st, 2011 at Baruch College. We refuse to allow this to become the future of CUNY.

Petition: To Chancellor Goldstein, President Karen Gould of Brooklyn College and other CUNY Administration, Under your leadership, Chancellor Goldstein, students have seen our tuition dollars diverted from programs that support our needs as student to fund increased securitization of CUNY campuses.

We refuse to pay ever increasing tuition rates for decreasing student services. We refuse to watch our tuition money used to fund campus security measures that target students of color and those exercising their right to freedom of speech. We demand the repeal of NYSUNY2020 Tuition Hikes and an end to the securitization of the City University of New York.

While the video title is "Police use excessive force against peaceful student protesters at Brooklyn College" it doesn't appear that that was the case- unless there were injuries that I am not aware of. I think it's important not to overblow police violence, because when it actually happens, we end up with a "boy who cried wolf" situation.

That said, the police presence certainly escalated things from a bunch of kids sitting down in a hallway, into a frenzied mass. From a tactical standpoint, the police did a really lousy job handling this situation.

Leah Bolger Pleads Guilty to Telling the Truth

More: In 45 Seconds Leah Bolger Did More to Represent the Views of Americans then the Supercommittee Ever Did: Now She Faces Jail

20-Year Veteran to Face Jail Time for Act of Civil Disobedience

Chris Hedges- The Critic, and his Critics

I'll be totally honest, I have not been a big fan of Chris Hedges until recently. I've always found him to be a bit of a defeatist, and his outlook so grim as to be disempowering, apathy-inducing, and just generally depressing.

I've met him on a few occasions prior to September 17th, 2011, and he has always been in a perpetual funk. At the Veterans for Peace 25th annual convention, he shuffled to the stage, read an article about how much everything sucks, and how things in the future are going to end in a MadMax scenario where rich people are shooting poor people from behind their wrought iron fences in their gated communities, and then shuffled back to his seat, looking down at his feet the whole time.

Since Sept 17th, 2011, Chris Hedges has been a brand new man. I've run into him a couple times in DC at Freedom Plaza since OWS started. He's got spring in his step. He's talking about things as though there is hope afterall, and as though we've actually got something worth fighting for.

I have to say, I'm a fan of this new, post-OWS Chris Hedges.

via truthdig:

Truthdig’s Chris Hedges and Kevin Zeese of Occupy DC spoke in Washington in early April to call on Occupiers everywhere to grow the movement through the use of nonviolent tactics.

Hedges enraged members of Occupy’s so-called black bloc contingent in February when he branded protesters willing to commit acts of vandalism and other violence as “cancerous.”

Such protesters make regular appearances at Hedges’ talks. A typical exchange between the author and his detractors appears below. —ARK

Help Dennis Trainor Jr spend 99 days with the 99%

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have a vested interest in seeing that Dennis is able to get funding for this project, as I will likely be hired back, possibly as a camera operator, and quite likely as an editor doing post-production work.

DONATE TO HELP FUND THE PROJECT: https://www.wepay.com/x1jea4b/donate/185351

The Top 1% DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW THE WORLD WORKS

"We have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works." - Alan Greenspan



Toppling the rule of the 1% should be pretty easy.

Why? Because they have no fucking clue about how the world actually works. All we have to do is stop playing their sociopathic game, and wait for them to punch themselves in their own testicles so hard that they puke.

For instance, dozens of photocopied McDonald's job applications were reportedly thrown from the Chicago Board of Trade building and onto Occupy Chicago protestors last week.

Last month, the Board of Trade had signs in their windows saying, “WE are the 1%” followed by a similar flurry of litter being dumped out their windows, peices of paper saying, “We are the 1% who are paying for this.”

Paying for what exactly? Paying for the protesters? How exactly is it that you’re doing that? You assume that all the protesters are mooching? I’ve been down to Occupy DC and Occupy Wall Street for extended periods of time, and trust me, the one thing that is at the heart of this movement is not mooching-- it’s an incredible ability to create something from nothing. The people occupying these parks are not keeping their kitchen full by swiping their EBT card, and the tarps and ground pads that they are using to build shelters are not subsidized by Section 8 housing.

They are recieving donations from those who understand the systemic inequity that our capitalist system creates and relies on to function. The occupiers are dumpster diving, scrapping, recycling, up cycling.

They are using the excesses of capitalism that would normally be tossed out, and taking abundance that would normally be wasted, disposed of to keep it out of the market and keep prices artificially high, and they are sharing that abundance with the community.

And really-- McDonald’s applications? This just shows how out of touch these assholes on the Chicago board of trade really are. There are people who have masters degrees, who can’t find jobs, and are now so desperately looking for work that they ALREADY HAVE applied to McDonald’s in the hopes that they can put that masters degree to use earning minimum wage flipping burgers.

This whole incident just makes it crystal clear that the assholes who run our economy have no fucking clue how things in the real world work.

And when they respond by with stupid shit like this, they’re doing the PR equivalent of punching themselves in the testicles. So keep it up guys.

Stay strong.

SOLIDARITY!