Scott Olsen: Why I Occupy "Voting for either a Democrat or Republican is a wasted vote"

Both the main US parties are working for the same system and taking money from the same people, so choosing between them makes no sense, war vet and Occupy Wall Street icon Scott Olsen told RT.
He added that now OWS is changing its strategies it may not be quite as visible, but he believes the future will be a successful one for Occupy.

RT: You are one of dozens of war veterans who have returned their medals to NATO generals here in Chicago, throwing the medals into the direction where NATO leaders were meeting. What is the reason for this? Do you feel betrayed?

Scott Olsen: I really do. And betrayal is the biggest fact here I think. We have all joined the military for our own reasons. But we joined to help other people, to be part of something bigger than ourselves and to defend our country. And when we went over to Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever our service was, we saw that it just was not true and we are destroying people’s lives. We are not doing good work in Iraq or Afghanistan and that’s why I don’t want these medals. Because they represent something that is not important to me, it is meaningless to me. I am not proud of being part of the system that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. That is not something to be proud of and that is not something to get an award for.

RT: Your injuries at Occupy Oakland clashes with police got people talking about the fact that veterans sometimes really do get injured at home after being injured abroad. Do you think that’s the case?

SO: I don’t think there are more veterans getting hurt here. But there are a lot of veterans getting hurt by the system, in a sense that they come back to a broken system, a system that they feel disconnected from. And that is why we have eighteen veterans a day committing suicide, that’s why we have so many homeless veterans. It is the system hurting veterans.

RT: Why do you think it is that when billions of dollars are being spent on US warfare, as we speak, we are seeing a staggering number of homeless and jobless veterans here in the United States?

SO: Because people are making money out of these wars. They are getting money from our government to buy their toys, to buy their equipment and to fund these wars. That’s how they make their riches. There is always money for war but we never have money for schools.

RT: Do you think the authorities, who recruit soldiers such as yourself to do their bidding for them abroad, are essentially lying to get people to join the military about the reasons behind the wars the US is involved with?

SO: For military recruiters they at least mislead people. They may not lie to you, but they will mislead you, not give you the whole story. That’s why it is so important if you think of joining the military to talk to as many veterans as you can find and get as many points of view as you can.

RT: What do you think the majority of those veterans will say?

SO: I think the majority would recommend against joining. It is a life-changing thing and I wouldn’t take my joining back because it made me who I am, but I would not recommend anyone else to make this mistake.

RT: It is going to be a year in September since the Occupy Wall Street movement kick-started. What stage is the movement at now? What should we be expecting next?

SO: It is not as big now as it should be. It could always be bigger and louder. We are changing to other strategies that may not be quite as visible, working on creating worker-managed businesses that are really going to take the money away from money-borrowing to the corporate system. That is going to be really successful for the future of Occupy.

RT: Some critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement are trying to undermine the substance of what it is all about by saying that it is almost a year on and no unified strong single message. What do you say to those people?

SO: Any time there is a large number of people demanding change and someone feels threatened they are going to attack in any way and every way. We do have a message. Everybody who comes here has their own message. But it is very common, we are working and we are not getting what we really deserve. We are working our asses off. We work more than most other countries in the world. And our salaries have not grown in years, our corporations are making billions every day and our retirement pensions are being cut, our schools are being cut.

RT: One of the things the Occupy Wall Street movement is demanding is the accountability for bankers and CEOs on Wall Street. Do you think it is naïve to expect this several years after the economic crisis? Why still demand this?

SO: I don’t really know if we are going to get the real changes we are looking for just by asking. It has to be forced change. Banks will always find a way to screw us over. They will always find a way to maximize their profits and they maximize their profits without actually doing any work. So by taking that money they take it from somebody else.

RT: Presidential elections in the US are just around the corner and four years after Barack Obama was elected critics are now saying that there is no difference between Democrats or Republicans as they are two sides of the same coin. Are you expecting any kind of change to take place after the elections regardless of which of the parties wins?

SO: Not particularly. Most likely people are either going to vote for Democrats or Republicans and I think both those are wrong choices. They are both working for the same system, they are both taking money from the same people, from the same banks and you can see in their policy that they are rewarding their donors. Voting for the continuing of this policy is not going to change anything at all.

RT: So considering both Democrats and Republicans essentially bring the same thing to the table, what is the alternative? What could be the other option for the United States?

SO: That’s a good question. You can vote for the third party that may not win. You may count voting for the third party as a waste of vote, but I think voting for a Democrat or a Republican is a waste of vote. You are shooting yourself in the foot if you are voting for either of those.

RT: When the Occupy Wall Street movement first started, the mainstream media were trying hard to undermine the protesters. They were saying that it is a bunch of dirty hippies and later trying to say they have no message. There was constant criticism and they could not take the movement seriously. Almost a year on since it has started how do you assess the way the mainstream media has been covering what the movement is all about?

SO: They have covered it more than I was expecting them to. I didn’t expect much of them. And that’s why we come out here and we build our own media that we need. We build websites and do web live stream events for everybody to know and to find out what they are missing out. But it is a shame that the everyday American is not going to see those things. The American who turns on the six o’clock news, they don’t hear about these things, just like they don’t hear about the wars we are still in. Most Americans probably do not really know that we are at war. They aren’t affected by these things.

Whole Food, not Whole Foods: Occupy The Farm Gill Tract

OccupyTheFarm's first day at the Gill Tract in Albany, Ca.

Shot in 720p HD by Nick Xavier. Visit www.greenmanproject.net for more video on Urban Farms, Permaculture, Food Justice issues, Cooking, and much more

Music is Canned Heat - Goin Up The Country and Woody Guthrie - Pastures of Plenty

The Battle in Oakland

The Battle of Oakland from brandon jourdan on Vimeo.

Occupy Oakland Serves people, while Oakland City Hall Slashes Public Services

Oakland Council to Make Deeper Cuts to Vital City Services While Maintaining Enormous Funding Level for Largely Outside Agitator Police Force

Initial Occupy Oakland Research Survey Results Show that Occupy Served The People

OAKLAND, CA - As the Oakland City Council voted Tuesday night to layoff 80 city workers (eliminating 105 positions) and cut $28 million to already less-than minimal City services, the Occupy Oakland Research Working Group released initial survey results that show the Occupy Movement provided food, healthcare, and other social services to Oakland residents in three months.

“Oakland is spending millions to prevent Occupy from providing vital services to Oakland residents when they need it most. These funds should be used to prevent further cuts to schools and social services, instead of being wasted on the violent repression of activists and community members who are trying to fill in the gaps where local government has failed.” said Sarah Thomason, member of Occupy Oakland Research Working Group and graduate student at University of California, Berkeley.

Over the past four years, Oakland has slashed $97 million from its General Purpose Fund, and $34.2 from other sources, cutting transitional kindergarten and adult education programs, reducing library services by one day each week, eliminating the senior shuttle and elderly nutrition programs, among other cuts, and laying off 277 City workers.

Initial survey results from Occupy Research show that:
Three quarters of the respondents obtained food through Occupy Oakland
Almost half of Oakland’s Occupiers are Oakland residents
95% of Occupy Oakland participants are from the Bay Area
Occupy Oakland’s medics have provided basic healthcare for almost a quarter of those surveyed
Occupy Oakland provides literacy programs, film-screenings, book discussion groups, and offers access to dozens of free workshops.
Meanwhile, the City continues to spend $155 million each year, 40% of the City’s general purpose fund, on Oakland’s true outside agitators, the Oakland Police Department. Most of this spending has no positive impact on the city’s local economy because 93% of Oakland’s police officers lived outside of the city.

As of January 23, 2012, the City spent an additional $3 million or $50,000 a week to have 100 officers--20% of the city’s total patrol force--on hand at Oscar Grant Plaza.

According to an email obtained by KTVU from Oakland Police Chief Jordan to Mayor Quan’s office, the crime rate in Oakland fell 19% in the last week of October when the Occupy movement was violently evicted from Oscar Grant Plaza and organizers abused by the police, including Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen. “Not sure how you want to share this good news,” wrote Jordan. “It may be counter to our statement that the Occupy movement is negatively impacting crime in Oakland.”

“Instead of spending millions to police the people, the city should be paying attention to the real outside agitators: the Oakland Police Department. Only 7% of OPD live in our city and yet they abuse our residents when we try to care for our community. It is the police and the interests of the 1% that the city officials should be concerned about,” said Yvonne Yen Liu, a policy researcher at a nonprofit think tank and a member of the Occupy Oakland Research Working Group.

###

The Occupy Oakland Research Working Group is an independent research committee of volunteers dedicated to the self-determination of local communities.
If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with the Occupy Oakland Research Working Group, please call Yvonne Yen Liu at (510) 371-5710 or e-mail us at OccupyResearchOakland@gmail.com or visit: http://occupyresearch.net/oakland.

---

So I got the above press release in my inbox.

I can't help but think of this fable I wrote back before Occupy Wall Street was even an idea, back when things were just starting to get going in Wisconsin:

Occupy Wall Street, meet MoveToAmend.org

via AcronymTV

Oakland Police start shit again: Firing grenades at a peaceful protest

No Sound

more

Journalists kettled and arrested, via FDL's Kevin Gosztola

Photos of Oakland's Move-In Day via Len Tsou

Paramedics remove a pregnant woman from Occupy Oakland after Police Assault her, jabbing her in the kidney with a baton. via Mercury News

RIP broken window

Now, I don't advocate property destruction.
But it is not violence. It's vandalism.
It's still arguably wrong.

But it's not violence.

Shooting somebody in the face with a tear gas canister and sending them into a COMA, as the OPD did... that's violence.
Beating protesters over the head with batons for simply sitting down in a park. That's violence.
Spraying protesters with chemical weapons for sitting down on the sidewalk. That's violence.

Breaking a window? That's property destruction.



Tactically, it's stupid.

It turns people away from the movement. It marginalizes the movement, so that the 99% who don't know that they should be part of this movement, they become more reluctant to join.

We need the drones to wake up and join us, to go on strike, to unionize, to go on wildcat strikes, to stop allowing themselves to be used as mindless gears in a system that grinds the poor like hamburger meat.

Property destruction is not sexy to anybody but the "aesthetic anarchists" -- those who prefer the appearance of anarchy to the substance of it. It's not a good move, as it weakens us and turns people off.

The way forward is through overwhelming love and joy. We have no enemies. We have only two groups of people in our movement-- those are aware that they are part of the movement, and those who are not yet aware that they are part of the movement.

We're still in the nacent stages of movement building. Let's continue recruiting, through joy, exuberance, and taking the moral high ground through non-compliance and non-participation.

The Guards of State must reconsider their position

This is a message to the Police, to the military, to the TSA, to Homeland Security and to members of every other enforcement arm of the government.

via StormCloudsGathering
h/t to Kevin Zeese

[infographic] Pepper Spray: How safe *is* it?

Created by: Online Criminal Justice Degree

OWS is winning: Los Angeles calls on DC to end Corporate Personhood

h/t to Lauren Minis

I just hope that as people start TALKING like populists, that they start ACTING like populists, and that the movement CONTINUES to hold them accountable and call them on their bullshit.

I feel like the idea that this movement is going to take 30 years to acheive our aims is both a good and bad one.

It's good, because it gives people permission to take a break and keep from getting burned out.
It's bad, because it also allows people to get lazy, and to accept half-loaves.

The revolutions in Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Tunisia, et al,; they took decades. Or it only took a week. Depends on how you look at it.

Nobody knows the point of revolution. Nobody knows where we actually are right now. We won't know where the movement is on the timeline of revolution until now becomes the past. So keep fighting like the revolution is tomorrow.

Oakland Police start "The Thanksgiving Potty Police-Riot of 2011"

Police attack Oakland residents at Thanksgiving dinner 2011. Porta-potties were delivered, police prevented them from being unloaded. People had to pee.

While attempting to get the potties unloaded, a police officer attacked one resident dragging him to ground and arresting him.

Later in the video, you can see a cop drawing his taser, and a resident preventing him from discharging his weapon.

Another example of cops creating civil unrest at peaceful gatherings by showing force for ridiculous reasons, such as guarding portapotties, camping, and exercising freedom of speech and assembly.

h/t to Lauren for bringing this to my attention

A message to all police officers by Mike Ruppert

A Message to All Police Officers From Occupy Wall Street from CollapseNet.com on Vimeo.

THE MOST DAMING FOOTAGE YOU WILL SEE of OPD

I have no words to express how I feel.

This is something you would expect to see in some backwards police state like Yugoslavia, China, or Israel.

Why is it that places like Tennessee are letting the protesters occupy, but Oakland California are shooting people in the face with teargas canisters, and lobbing flashbang grenades at medics?

I heard today from "Mommy" from Occupy Boston, that people were having their wrists broken by the police, were held in custody without charge for 24 hours while that wrist was broken, denied medical attention, and then released with a broken wrist. They also arrested medics who were treating people injured by the police.

This use of violence against nonviolent protesters only makes it more clear how illegitimate the state is.

If the government of Oakland, and Boston want to redeem themselves, the officers involved in this brutality must be tried as criminals for assault and battery, or where the use of weapons is clearly intended to maim and injure, as they did Scott Olsen, they should be charged with attempted murder.

Whose Orange Net? OUR ORANGE NET!

I was on this Oakland Solidarity march here at OWS, but the section that I was on was rather uneventful. There were times where I saw some of these conflicts, but from almost a block away. The march also broke into several sub-marches, and it was impossible to know where things were happening, or indeed WHAT was happening.

Here is a jaw-dropping highlights reel of both police brutality, as well as peaceful uprising.



While this paints a dirty picture of how the NYPD reacted, there were also times where they pretty much just gave up, and stopped trying to arrest people.

There was one point where people who were about to be arrested locked arms, and then the NYPD who were trying to arrest them just gave up in the middle of it, and decided, "ah, fuck it" and let them go.

And there was much dancing in celebration of that.

My favourite part of the video above is at 8:02 when the OWS marchers take the police net. The next day, people were wearing strips of that net as arm bands.

Fuck yes.

From the air:

[video] Oakland Police raid #OccupyOakland

Look at these Black Block Anarchists fucking up the #OccupyOakland camp. Throwing trash cans into the street, firing grenades, and acting like they're so badass.

Oh wait. That's the Oakland Police department.


When at least 12 people were maced at the Smithsonian Air & Space museum in DC on Oct 8th, the Smithsonian said only one person was maced. Which was bullshit. I was there. I filmed it. I coughed the rest of the day from the lingering cloud of mace I was exposed to. But the story that only one person was maced was reported by corporate owned media.

The Oakland Police say that the explosions you see here weren't flashbang grenades, a military tool for dispersal and disorientation, we saw employed in Minneapolis during the RNC convention. And it looks like it's being used in Oakland.

But the Police are blaming this on the protesters, saying that they were firing off fireworks. Riiiiiight. I don't buy that for a fucking second.

An Independent response to the letter to #occupyOakland from the City of Oakland