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Occupy Seattle protests get permits, Friday march planned from Capitol Hill

With a push from a Capitol Hill business leader, the City of Seattle has backed off on its efforts to clear protesters from downtown’s Westlake Park. Meanwhile, an anti-war demonstration planned for Seattle Central’s plaza Friday afternoon has participants planning to march from Pine and Broadway to meet the Occupy Seattle effort in Westlake.


On Thursday, Mayor Mike McGinn’s office announced that protesters had been granted permits to maintain a presence in Westlake and utilize City Hall property for overnight camping:

  • We are providing a permit for protest activities at Westlake Park which will allow them to have an organizing tent that can remain overnight. As a condition of the permit, protestors will have to allow for cleaning of the park, protect park property, accommodate the other existing permitted events, and protect access to businesses.
  • We are making City Hall Plaza available for those that wish to stay overnight, with reasonable restrictions on the tents so as to allow free use of the plaza during the day. Unlike Westlake, City Hall also has restroom facilities available. Both the permit and the ability to set up tents at City Hall Plaza would last for two weeks, at which point we can assess whether the arrangement is meeting everyone’s needs and should be extended.

“There is real anger about the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power in this country and the inequality it has produced,” the McGinn blog post on the announcement reads. “I share the values and the message of the Occupy Wall Street movement.”

(Image: CHS)

 

On Wednesday, police swept into the park and arrested protesters who refused to leave Westlake. Most of the arrested have been released with the City Attorney reviewing possible charges. The arrests along with a critical essay about the lack of Seattle progressive leadership around the Occupy Seattle events penned by Dave Meinert of the Capitol Hill Block Party, Big Mario’s (CHS advertiser) and the 5 Point preceded the change of heart at City Hall. CHS visited the protest Tuesday night as the group prepared for the threatened arrival of police.

Friday’s protest starting at the Seattle Central plaza at Broadway and Pine is organized by ANSWER Seattle:

 

Afghan War 10th Anniversary-Walk Against the Wars  
Friday, October 07, 2011 4:30 PM
SCCC Pine and Broadway
    END THE WARS!
    
    STOP THE CUTS!
    
    STOP THE ATTACKS ON WORKING PEOPLE!
    
    End All the Wars & Occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Libya, Haiti…
    
    Money for Jobs, Healthcare & Education, Not for Corporations & the Pentagon!
    
    Friday, October 7, 2011 will be the exact 10th anniversary of the U.S./NATO war on the people of Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of Afghani people have been killed, wounded and displaced, and thousands of U.S. and NATO forces killed and wounded. The war costs more than $118 billion per year— $330 million per day—at a time when social programs are being slashed. Jobs and education continue to be cut while the trillion-dollar military budget increases and corporations make record profits. Millions of people can’t find a job. Stand up—Fight Back! Only the people united can make real change!

 

Organizers for Occupy Seattle, in the meantime, are focusing on Saturday in an attempt to draw larger crowds to their efforts at Westlake. You can learn more at occupyseattle.org.

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Carlos
12 years ago

No surprise that City of Seattle backed off it’s attempt to block the protesters, someone might have realized that the money people and the power brokers live in Bellevue.

In Downtown Seattle, the protesters are just providing entertainment for the tourist. No effect on the people running things.

etaoin shrdlu
etaoin shrdlu
12 years ago

At 99 to 1, the numbers are clearly on their side.

Looks like a good day for a walk downtown with ANSWER Seattle this afternoon.

upd
upd
12 years ago

This is kinda of cute to watch. There is no real result that can come of this, besides ‘awareness’? That’s quite tangible. I do wish I had all this free time to march and hold a sign up.

JimS.
12 years ago

After the next round of layoffs coming from corporate greed, you might.

kage3000
kage3000
12 years ago

It is cute, but you have to start somewhere. The first step to finding a solution is recognizing the problem. What is difficult about occupy is that there is no one solution, because there is not only one problem.

umvue
12 years ago

…has anything to do with layoffs.

I’m against corporate greed that…
creates wealth,
creates new technologies (Jobs that corporate iBastard!),
contributes to my 401K,

etaoin shrdlu
etaoin shrdlu
12 years ago

It’s hard to imagine how credit default swaps, competitive mortgage securitization, or futures exchanges

create wealth,
create new technologies,
or contribute to anything.

Yet it’s that kind of “socially useless activity” (in the words of Lord Adair Turner, financial watchdog and former London banker) that obscenely enriches the 1% as it parasitizes the real economy that the 99% create and depend on.

brian
12 years ago

It is cute watching people’s lives get destroyed, watching the rate of poverty soar in America as children go hungry. Really cute. Hope you have a nice view from your penthouse suite. And don’t come down to the march if you can find the free time. They don’t need your kind.

JimS.
12 years ago

People without jobs don’t get 401k’s.
People without jobs don’t have money to buy “new technologies”.
People without jobs don’t share in any “created wealth”.

People without jobs will eventually say “enough” to the bloated plutocrats who systematically, greedily siphon off what little of their money they’ve been able to save, and and they’ll start to fight back.

Could these protests be the beginning of that? Maybe. Maybe not. But eventually it’ll change. The longer that gets put off, the uglier it’ll be when it finally does.

AbstractMonkeys
12 years ago

“there is no one solution, because there is not only one problem”

Wrong, there is only one problem–entrenched corruption through virtually unrestricted lobbying. If some reform of that practice stems from all of this, everybody wins.

BTW, I believe the experts who say we are in Afghanistan to keep the Muslims in Pakistan from nuking millions of Hindus in India. That seems pretty worthwhile to me.

I won’t be joining the protest because I’m kind of disgusted by the mindless entitled bawling of all the spoiled little rich kids who don’t pay any taxes and think they deserve a job even though they are incapable of showing up anywhere on time and can’t even string two coherent sentences together.

AbstractMonkeys
12 years ago

People without jobs buy new technologies they don’t need and know they can’t afford through “no money down, no payments for two years” deals. Predatory lending is one of our worst problems, but you have to address both sides of the equation.

People without jobs can enjoy “created wealth” by using the same infrastructure and enjoying the same low crime rates and free medical care available to everyone, and participate in any number of the government’s generous social programs. The government buys unemployed people more shit than any 401K will every buy you, and by a wide margin.

The way these people say “enough” is to make an effort to understand how things really work and act accordingly, e.g. get a job, learn to manage their money, get an education, participate in their communities and local governments, etc.

Maybe this spectacle gets people to spend some time thinking about and discussing these issues a little bit, so at least that’s something.

JimS.
12 years ago

How smugly presumptuous of you to assume everyone demonstrating is unemployed.
How smugly presumptuous of you to assume it’s “their own fault” that so many people are unemployed.
How smugly presumptuous of you to assume most have borrowed themselves into debt.
How smugly presumptuous of you to assume most buy shit they don’t need.
How smugly presumptuous of you to assume the unemployed are all uneducated.

Go ahead, stay in denial– as long as your job hasn’t been outsourced, off-shored to cheaper labor, downsized, or otherwise eliminated, so corporate profits can soar and average CEOs of a large US Corporation can earn FOUR HUNDRED TIMES what an average worker does. (compared to a multiple of about 40x as recently as 1980, and about 20x in other industrialized countries).

The average CEO’s salary could pay for more than 250 police officers. Regardless of how effective they are, or what their contribution is, do seriously believe ANYONE’s contribution is worth that much? Really?

The fact that you’d defend this kind of gluttonous, piggish greed says a lot about you, and where you see yourself in all this.

CEO
CEO
12 years ago

Yes, to your question.

HarvardGrad
12 years ago

Why do I have a feeling most of these protesters are unemployed? You know if you would have acquired yourself an education, maybe you wouldn’t be in your current state of unemployment. Stop bitching to the world about your problems—your lack of career planning & bad choices is what got you to your current state.

Juno
12 years ago

You educated fool. You are weighed in the balance and are found wanting.

Glasses
Glasses
12 years ago

My name is Liz and I want to ask you to come down to Westlake this weekend and meet your neighbors! We have more in common than you think! If you disagree, I can’t really do anything about it unless you’re willing to come down and meet me. I can understand why people may be skeptical, but I’d ask you to take those critical thinking skills a step further and investigate the Occupy Movement for yourselves. We’re super nice, and no crazier or unemployed-er than the general populace, I swear. I’m 27, from Seattle, employed in the field of my choice and all around a pretty lucky person. I believe in my heart of hearts that we can effect great change if only we are willing to talk to each other across the normal boundaries of age, race, gender, employment status, religion and political party. Call me naive, but I hope my sincerity comes through and you’ll join me at Westlake.

etaoin shrdlu
etaoin shrdlu
12 years ago

“…your lack of career planning & bad choices is what got you to your current state.”

You mean, “ARE what got you to your current state.” It’s a little rule called “subject-verb agreement.”

When are they going to start teaching the English language at Harvard?

Residual
12 years ago

I’m headed down with the family on Saturday!

I’m standing up and being counted for:

1) Meaningful and firm Campaign Finance Reform.
2) Repealing the Bush Tax Cuts for the obscenely wealthy.
3) Closing known tax loopholes used by massive and in many cases multinational businesses to evade paying their fair share of taxes.
4) Investing in America’s Infrastructure, providing jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans who want to work but don’t have jobs, while increasing the quality of life for all.
5) Committing the US Government to make education an obtainable goal for all who want it.
6) Investigate and prosecute those within the finance industry responsible for the criminal malfeasence leading to our current economic crisis.

The best days of my 3 month old daughter’s country (and mine too!) are ahead of us!

See you all down there!

umvue
12 years ago

…is that the probability that any good will come of this is vanishingly small. The two most likely scenarios for this leaderless movement seem to be:
1. Actually coming up with an agenda leading to >50% of interested parties losing interest.
2. Buffoonish demagogue taking the reins and leading the formerly leaderless to someplace awful.

It’s good to be mad and good to let people know you’re mad but effecting change takes more.

Residual
12 years ago

Thanks for the sideline commentary. If you are satisfied with things as they are, do nothing. If not consider joining in these demonstrations. To think nothing can come of it is to ignore the “progress” (regress) the really quite effective tea party political activities have accomplished. I don’t know if you are familiar with the situation that took place this summer when that small band of folks took our entire country hostage. These things work.

traj
12 years ago

Never fear, the democratic party and the union bosses are headed down there tomorrow to give the movement spokespeople, leadership and just generally co-opt the shit out the whole thing. Then everyone mewing about reforming what is, at its root, a horribly inequitable system, can feel warm inside because they took part in a symbolic act of mass resistance.

Hope and Change 2012.

Robert
12 years ago

I thought Seattle was smarter than this. The tea party accomplishments? Wha… ?

umvue
12 years ago

I get Occupy Wall St. But Occupy Seattle? It’s October. Why not Occupy Miami Beach?

Day by day I grow more optimistic that this will achieve the same glorious results as supporting Obama and a vague idea of Change.

calhoun
12 years ago

I’m sure most of the protestors in Westlake are well-intentioned, but I agree that this will have no real influence. I hope, at least, that they focus on one issue and not many semi-related things, as usually happens with such events.

And…I hope things remain peaceful.

Juno
12 years ago

This only the latest part of the growing movement. This continues and furthers the “move your money” that I and millions of others have been doing for the past couple of years.