Joe Stringer of ACCE, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment talks about why he is going to Washington, DC to risk arrest at the Department of Justice.
Stringer,in Los Angeles talks about how the foreclosure crisis has decimated his neighborhood in Watts.
It's time for bankers to go to jail!
This may be President Obama's last chance to get justice for the millions of homeowners, taxpayers, and retirees whose homes, savings, pensions and livelihoods were stolen by Wall Street bankers.
Tell President Obama:
1. Prosecute Wall Street bankers for stealing our homes, savings and livelihoods.
2. Keep people in their homes by resetting their mortgages.
It's May Day, and Occupy Wall Street will be acting in force across New York City.
Join us on this day of celebration and agitation for the struggles of workers the world over. As the May Day music video "We Stand For Justice" depicts.
"We stand for justice. We know what it feels like. We stand together, for justice we will fight!"
Indeed, the most important way you can show your support is by joining us in the streets on May Day. But we also need financial and material resources to spread the word and to support actions.
We begin the day early in 2 groups: Uptown (meeting in Bryant Park at 10am) and Downtown (meeting in Union Sq at 11am). After marching with different groups, we’ll meet back at Union Square for more performances, especially game time at 4pm!
The Free University of NYC invites neighborhood organizations, schools, unions, spiritual centers, and other community education-oriented groups to create your own Free Universities this May 1st. The impetus behind this May Day call to education is to encourage local communities to host your own gatherings of free education to ensure they’re directly relevant and empowering on a ground level.
Join immigrants and workers this May Day as we highlight the daily struggles facing immigrants and workers in New York City. We will visit several workplaces in midtown to demand an end to exploitation of immigrant workers, ending at Schumer's office for a speak-out on what real immigration reform looks like.
Join 99 Pickets, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, and allies as we march on employers around Union Square to demand fair pay and justice for all workers. We'll be visiting the offices of Frieze Art Fair to call for a fairer art world, Wendy's to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Travel Channel to support members of the Writers Guild. Gather at 2:30pm in the NE corner of Union Square; we'll leave at 3pm. Look for Rude Mechanical Orchestra!
Everybody Now! is a choir that you join as soon as you start to sing (or whisper or hum). On May Day, we will be sharing this song, "We Stand For Justice", at the beginning of the rally at Union Square, and we would love to you to lift your voice and sing with us! Our goal is to make it as resonant and contagious as possible - ideally everyone at the rally will feel empowered and excited to sing along! Listen to a demo of the song and meet us at the SE corner of Union Square (14th St between Broadway and Lafayette, right across from the Duane Reade) AND THEN SING WITH US IN THE RALLY AT 4 PM!!
Joint rally with the May 1st Coalition; the Alliance for Labor Rights, Immigrant Rights and Jobs for All; immigrant rights groups; and Occupy Wall Street. The rally will be a mix of speakers and entertainment drawing attention to the struggles and victories of labor unions, workers, immigrants and the 99%. Followed by a march down Broadway to City Hall.
This Assembly will be the first in a series of monthly People's Assemblies that will take place on the first Wednesday of each month. What do we have in common, how do our experiences vary, and what can we build together? As the march ends, gather in Foley Square starting at 7pm. We will split into multiple groups based on the struggles, campaigns and people present.
Emphasis on current labor struggles, ending Police Murder and Brutality, stop & frisk, mass incarceration and the War on Black and Brown People, justice for victims of Hurricane Sandy and building Occupy Wall Street to truly reflect and fight for all of the people in New York City.
Matthew Taylor, a former trader who worked at Goldman Sachs in New York from 2005 to late 2007, handed himself in to the FBI in New York on Wednesday morning.
During a brief appearance in a Manhattan court on Wednesday, Taylor pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud.
But, how can it be? A banker facing criminal charges? Well, you see, Taylor didn't just defraud anyone. His "victim" was Goldman Sachs. Make sense now?
District Judge William Pauley released the former trader on a $750,000 (£496,000) bail and set a sentencing date of July 26. The maximum sentence for wire fraud is 20 years in prison.
In November, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) accused Mr Taylor of concealing an $8.3bn position in the S&P 500 futures market that left Goldman nursing an $118m loss.
According to the CFTC, Mr Taylor allegedly bypassed Goldman’s internal system to input trades made on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and used another system instead.
Internal controls at the bank identified the fabricated trades in December 2007 and Goldman said that no customers suffered losses.
Authorities accused Mr Taylor of inputting false figures to conceal the scale of the losses the position was racking up from November to December 2007.
Goldman said it dismissed Mr Taylor for “alleged conduct related to inappropriately large proprietary futures positions in a firm trading account”.
Yet here we wait for a single banker to see the inside of a jail cell after millions of Americans lost their homes to the Big Banks, and we continue to hear that we just haven't sacrificed enough.
Bill Moyers brutally slams the hypocrisy of “justice for all” in a society where billions are squandered for a war born in fraud while the poor are pushed aside. Turns out true justice — not just the word we recite from the Pledge of Allegiance — is still unaffordable for those who need it most. Moyers says we’ve “turned a deaf ear” to the hopeful legacy of Gideon vs. Wainwright, the 50-year-old Supreme ruling that established the constitutional right of criminal defendants to legal representation, even if they can’t pay for it.
Moyers says:
The next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance – “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” – remember: it’s a lie. A whopper of a lie.
...
“Justice for all” is a line item in the budget – sequestered now by the Paul Ryans of Congress and the Fix the Debt gang of plutocratic CEOs who, with a wink-wink from our president, claim, “Oh, we can’t afford that!”
Of the $100 billion spent annually on criminal justice in this country, only two to three percent goes to defend the poor. Of 97 countries, we rank 68th in access to and affordability of civil legal service.
No, we can’t afford it, but just a decade ago we started shelling out $2.2 trillion for a war in Iraq born of fraud.
We can’t afford it, while Dick Cheney’s old outfit Halliburton raked in $40 billion worth of contracts because of that war.
Watch Bill’s conversations with civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson and journalists Martin Clancy and Tim O’Brien for more insight and context on Gideon, as well as in-depth exploration of current inequalities in America’s criminal justice system.
Address:
55th St. and Church Ave.
Brooklyn New York 11203
United States
People in New York: Support Kimani Gray's community and all communities of color besieged by police violence, by coming out for a MASS MARCH SUNDAY THE 24TH. 3 pm, from the site of Kiki's vigil at 55th and Church, marching to the 67th precinct.
WEDNESDAY the 20th, there is a Stop and Frisk Town Hall Meeting (Co-Sponsored by Council Member Williams) 5:30 PM-7:30 PM, 833 Marcy Ave (Concord Baptist Church)
Jose Lasalle of Stop Stop and Frisk has asked people to make this Town Hall about police brutality, not violence amongst kids. There may be a speak-out and planning meeting for the Sunday march as well (for location, check: goo.gl/XjveK).
You have also been invited to come every day at 7 pm to show your support for East Flatbush in its fight against police brutality (55th and Church). Check the WE WANT JUSTICE FOR KIMANI GRAY Facebook page for updates.
Keep in mind that people from outside the neighborhood should come as supporters and take a back seat.
Here are some tips on how to show respect when you arrive (these are tips from OWS, not asked of us by community members):
Do not mic check at these demonstrations. That's for East Flatbush residents and march Organizers to take the lead on. If you do so, and you are not a resident or long-time Organizer in the area, we will know you are not with Occupy Wall Street.
When asked whether people from outside the neighborhood should be coming by, a longtime Organizer had this advice to give: "Come, yes. But don't come if you are not internally organized. Come. Come if you can take a back seat. Come if you plan to develop real relationships and maintain them over the long-haul."
In Oakland there will be a solidarity rally, March 21st at 5pm #OaklandProtest in #solidarity w/ #BrooklynProtest
A Robin Hood Tax on the banks could raise tens of billions to help protect public services, fight poverty and tackle climate change at home and abroad.
This tax has gathered support from dozens of countries, including Germany, France, South Africa and Brazil. Bill Gates, Archbishop Rowan Williams, the Vatican and 1,000 economists have added their support. Yet the U.K. Government is continuing to resist this growing international pressure to introduce a Robin Hood Tax.
It’s simple: the financial crisis and the recession have left a massive hole in the U.K.’s public finances. Jobs and public services are at risk in the U.K. while many other developed and developing countries face a similar struggle.
But there is another way. Thousands of Robin Hood supporters believe that banks, hedge funds and the rest of the financial sector should pay their fair share to clear up the mess they helped create.
In a nutshell, the big idea behind the Robin Hood Tax is to generate billions of pounds – hopefully even hundreds of billions of pounds. That money will fight poverty in the U.K. and overseas. It will tackle climate change. And it will come from fairer taxation of the financial sector.
A tiny tax on the financial sector can generate £20 billion annually in the U.K. alone. That's enough to protect schools and hospitals. Enough to stop massive cuts across the public sector. Enough to build new lives around the world – and to deal with the new climate challenges our world is facing.
As a result of the financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has calculated U.K. government debt will be 40% higher. That 40% equates to £737 billion pounds, or £28,000 pounds for every taxpayer in the country. Having to pay back that debt means cuts in vital services on which millions of people around the country rely.
Total cost to the U.K. of financial crisis in terms of lost output according to the IMF was 27% of 2008 GDP.
So it's time for justice. It's time for justice for ordinary families and businesses. For the one in five British families faced with a choice between buying food or paying the heating bill. For the millions of people around the world forced into poverty by a financial crisis they did absolutely nothing to bring about.
The Robin Hood Tax is justice. The banks can afford it. The systems are in place to collect it. It won't affect ordinary members of the public, their bank accounts or their savings. It's fair, it's timely, and it's possible.
The United States is spending over $200 billion a year on a justice system that locks up more people than any country on earth. We have more prisoners than China. More than Russia. More than anyone. This colossal system is hitting our communities with staggering financial and human costs.
Our prison system is a beast, gobbling resources that should be going to communities. Watch this video to find out why. To get involved and do something, visit http://beyondbars.org.
This photo and song montage, presented by Occupy Wall Street, is "dedicated to every occupier who has been arrested fighting for justice, or who will in the years to come."
Julian Assange makes his first public appearance in two months, ever since he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The WikiLeaks founder was granted political asylum on Thursday -- a decision that ignited a wave of international responses, with the UK and Sweden opposing the verdict and Latin American countries strongly supporting Ecuador's move.
Assange called upon the U.S. to end its 'witch hunt' on wikileaks, and to 'end the war on whistleblowers.'
A full transcript of his remarks follows:
“I am here today because I cannot be there with you today. But thank you for coming. Thank you for your resolve and your generosity of spirit.
“On Wednesday night, after a threat was sent to this embassy and the police descended on this building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it and you brought the world’s eyes with you.
“Inside this embassy, after dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up into the building through its internal fire escape. But I knew there would be witnesses. And that is because of you.
“If the UK did not throw away the Vienna conventions the other night, it is because the world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching.
“So, the next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the Embassy of Ecuador.
“Remind them how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world and a courageous Latin America nation took a stand for justice.
And so, to those brave people. I thank President Correa for the courage he has shown in considering and in granting me political asylum.
“And I also thank the government, and in particular Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, who upheld the Ecuadorian constitution and its notion of universal rights in their consideration of my asylum. And to the Ecuadorian people for supporting and defending this constitution.
“And I also have a debt of gratitude to the staff of this embassy, whose families live in London and who have shown me the hospitality and kindness despite the threats we all received.
Time to Rebel! Five Ways We Can Break the Big Banks' Death Grip on the Economy
Wall Street’s incredible greed and arrogance may have finally handed us the tools and leverage we need. Read it at Truthout.
Court orders Occupy Hong Kong to leave HSBC
Occupy Central in Hong Kong, one of the last outposts of the global protests sparked by the Occupy Wall Street movement, has been ordered to clear its encampment outside one of the world's largest banks.
Credit Card Debt Collection Flawed
Up to 90 percent of cases filed by credit-card companies to collect bad debts may be flawed, according to one New York judge who says he has heard as many as 100 in one day. The problem, say many of the judges who oversee the slew of suits filed by American Express, Citigroup, and other credit-card companies, is that they all follow the same he-said-she-said pattern—companies eager to collect debts try to make their cases with partial records and improper documents, leaving substantial holes in their arguments. The companies disagree, with one American Express spokesman telling The New York Times that the company has “a strong process in place to ensure accuracy of testimony and affidavits provided to courts.”
Occupier Charged With Terroristic Felony
David C. Gorczynski, 22, was charged on Tuesday with attempted bank robbery and terroristic threatening, both felonies, as well as one misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. Police detained him after he walked into an Easton, PA Wells Fargo branch with a sign that read “You’re being robbed” and another that said “Give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob a country.”
Police Take Down Occupy Memphis
Officers with the Memphis Police Department on Friday morning began dismantling the Occupy Memphis camp on Civic Center Plaza in Downtown Memphis, WMC-TV reports.
The effort began around 4 a.m. Friday. City of Memphis CAO George Little told the news station the site has evolved into a homeless encampment.
