Here’s the latest from our neighborhood within the neighborhood at the Occupy Seattle camp.
- We’ve received a few notes — and this bird’s eye picture — from people who’ve noticed the Occupy camp at Seattle Central is in transition Wednesday morning. Don’t worry — or don’t get your hopes up — the camp isn’t going anywhere, yet. Friday’s hearing will be the next step in the school’s decision to ban camping. Instead, you’re looking at what an Occupy Seattle media spokesperson tells us are some changes in the camp layout including a “total restructuring” of the camp kitchen to improve problems documented by King County Health and make for a more efficient work area. “Everyone is encouraged to work in kitchen,” a recent entry in minutes from the group’s general assembly notes. “They’re getting very burned-out. Have lost many people because they’re over-worked.”
- The camp’s info booth has also been removed and carted back to Westlake as Occupy says it is re-establishing its presence in the more prominent downtown space:
Beginning Monday, November 28th, Occupy Seattle re-affirmed its visibility at Westlake Plaza with a daily Information tent and a General Assembly in the Park every Wednesday. In an effort to reach out to a broader audience and gain more participation in the movement, Occupy Seattle secured a weekly permit from Seattle Parks & Recreation to establish and maintain an information tent on the south side of Westlake Plaza. The permit will be renewed on a week by week basis. Adding to visibility at Westlake, our General Assembly unanimously approved holding an additional General Assembly every Wednesday at Westlake at 12pm. The first Westlake GA will be Wedsnesday, Nov. 30th.
Formed on October 1, 2011 Occupy Seattle is a leaderless movement of concerned Americans who have taken to occupying public spaces in order to focus our nation’s attention on the undue influence of large corporations on our government, elected leaders and our democracy itself. It is inspired by and modeled after the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The first of the return-to-Westlake general assembly sessions is today at noon. Up twinkles on that?
- The Chancellor of Seattle Community Colleges has had her say about the legal move by Occupy Seattle to try to block Seattle Central’s emergency rule to ban the camp. Here’s part of a post from Jill Wakefield on the maneuver:
Following Wednesday’s board meeting and action, we received a call from Thurston County Superior Court notifying us that one of the protesters had filed a motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against Seattle Central Community College. The hearing on the motion for the TRO is scheduled on Friday, Dec. 2. We agreed that the college will not post the emergency rule prohibiting camping on campus until the hearing.
This has been a challenging time for many of us as we examine our values and the best interests of our students and our community. Many of the messages of Occupy Seattle directly relate to education and to our mission. As you may know, I have devoted my career to the Seattle Community Colleges because I believe in our mission — to provide education and training to everyone who comes to us to prepare for jobs, for transfer to a university, to support their families, and to build a better life. Every day I value the opportunity to work with our faculty, staff, and community to change 52,000 lives at the Seattle Community Colleges.
- The focus for Occupy this week is in Olympia where arrests and taser use have followed protests of the special legislative session.
- The Occupy camp library needs a winter home:
Hello my name is Lindsay Conquest. I am an active member of the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Currently, I am outreaching to our community in regards to the Peoples Library at Occupy Seattle. Our lovely, modest library needs a warm home for the winter. Bonus, it comes with real volunteer librarians! All the volunteers of the peoples library are dedicated, fun, intelligent, and well, just awesome. We would like to keep the library open. The library is a lending library, open to all. We operate on an honor system. Please take a book, bring it back, and leave with another. All of our books have been donated and we are always accepting more. With the impending winter I am asking my community to help find a functional, permanent place to the library and volunteers.
If you can help, drop us a line and we’ll connect you with Lindsay. Or stop by the camp.
- 100s of Garfield High kids are marched in a walkout today.
- Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur writes about Seattle WTO protest documentary Today We Have The Power:
“Today We Have The Power” features former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper, who retired after WTO and retreated to Orcas Island, where he writes and comments on police decisions — his own, and those of other agencies.
“I think we have learned a lot, an awful lot,” Stamper said of Seattle since WTO. “The question is, have we applied it?”
The film screens tonight and Thursday at the Harvard Exit. Tickets are $10.50
Film Sneak Preview & Panel
November 30, 2011, 7 pm, Harvard Exit Theatre, 807 East Roy at Harvard, Seattle
Film Sneak Preview
December 1, 2011, 7 pm, Harvard Exit Theatre, 807 East Roy at Harvard, Seattle
- Here’s our look back at the 1999 WTO riots that we put together for the 10-year anniversary — WTO 10 years later: The battle for Capitol Hill.
Thank God for the WTO. Remember that time they shut down the World Bank and reversed World poverty? That was the best. The Battle for Seattle was a glowing success like the war in Iraq and the war on drugs.
” Have lost many people because they’re over-worked.”
Yeah, that will more than likely be a chronic issue amongst these like minded individuals.
The Republicans are sustaining inequality with a narrow majority in many cases. A huge war needs to be wound down. The poor need permanent camping rights. Show us some wider goals so the rest of us 99%s will deep cheering your successes and sacrifices.
Oh man, you stole the words right off my key board. But I would get tired too if i spent all day doing nothing.
This is happening but not just directly through Occupy Seattle or Occupy Wall Street. OS/OWS are catalysts and flash-points but they represent the tip of the iceberg of larger throngs of people-groups who are getting their voice back and commanding real change into existence.
Westlake Plaza more visible than SCCC.
At this rate they’ll figure out you can’t build a self sustaining community when the members of the community don’t produce anything just a few years into the next century.
Fascinating vid from WTO. Seattle pigs — I mean, “police officers” — were pretty free with the pepper spray back in ’99, eh? Making friends on Capitol Hill.
“The Republicans are sustaining inequality with a narrow majority in many cases….”
Let’s not deny credit where it’s due. The screwing of the American people is a thoroughly bipartisan effort. Even the most cursory review of Obama’s first term reveals the nearly seamless continuity of Bush-era policies, from coddling and further enriching a felonious Wall Street at the expense of the American people and our economy to the readiness to use war as an instrument of foreign policy. Our “constitutional law professor” President has continued Bush’s assault on the Bill of Rights and enlarged the National Security State.
Occupy’s “wider goals” are not a secret to anyone paying the least bit of attention. They want to undo the three-decades-in-the-making corporate coup d’état that has wrested control of the US government from its people and transferred it to its moneyed elites (i.e., the “1%”).
If you want more info about the movement and its goals, just ask your computer. The google is a wonderful thing.
Occupy camps are being evicted/torn down in many cities, because officials in those places are not as “politically correct” as those here in Seattle. Why is the SCCC camp still there?
@etaoin shrdlu
i’m all for assigning blame to our government officials (both sides of the isle) who were more concerned with lining their pockets than protecting the citizenry and those in the financial/banking industry who took our economy to the brink of collapse. but let’s not also forget personal responsibility. we also need to lay blame on those 99%ers who foolishly contributed to the melt-down by taking out loans for houses they couldn’t afford and living off easy credit with high interest rates that, if they lost their job, they’d be unable to pay back.
there’s no one person who we can point to as the “bad buy” here. many people are to blame for the shape that our economy’s currently in.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
That is the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which is the highest law in the nation. Let me direct your attention to the phrase, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” I believe that should answer your question, Calhoun.
It’s important to understand the causes of the ongoing econocataclysm, and contrary to the popular view, subprime mortgage defaults were NOT the most important factor in the meltdown of 2008.
Instead, it was the triggering of DERIVATIVES, based on the likelihood that those borrowers would pay their debts, that caused the crisis. Specifically, the derivative obligations of the insurer AIG caused it to implode when people began to default and housing prices fell. The counter-parties of those derivatives included the biggest banks of Europe and America, who were in for hundreds of billions of dollars.
Had the feds not intervened and covered Wall Street’s bad bets with boxcars full of cash from the American taxpayer, practically all Wall Street banks would have gone bankrupt, followed by many banks in Asia and Europe.
So the “bad guys” were not principally American home owners in over their heads but rather banks and Wall Street irresponsibly gambling with derivatives.
I agree completely with zeebleoop, which by the way is a very intriguing screen name.
Dishonest mortgage-seekers were certainly partly to blame…many lied about their income, and the banks facilitated this by not requiring proof of income….I sure hope the latter is now not allowed. But the banks are also to blame, for packaging and selling off the bad loans to others, who then did the same thing, and on and on…
No, it does not answer the question that I asked.
I would like to remind the Occupy dirt bags that contrary to their statement….. “occupying public spaces in order to focus our nation’s attention on the undue influence of large corporations on our government, elected leaders and our democracy itself.”
We do NOT live in a democracy. We live in a republic. There are key differences to the two, look it up.
Sure it does. It’s still there because in the US, people have the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
At least on paper. And if calhoun doesn’t object.
Serpy, you don’t know shit from apple butter. Asking for the difference between a democracy and a republic is like asking for the difference between a dog and a dachshund. It doesn’t really make sense.
A “democracy” is a government of, by, and for the people. A “republic” as we think of it today is a representative democracy.
So the Occupiers are right to refer to the US as a democracy (at least in principle). BTW, the Constitution uses neither term in reference to the US itself.
Calhoun does indeed object to the SCCC camp, as does the vast majority of those who live on Capitol Hill, because it has nothing to do with an effective redress of grievances.
Etaoin, have you not gotten the message that your views are those of a very, very small minority?
Ha! A “small minority” whose support in recent polls is higher than the Republicans!
Calhoun: Mr. Misinformation.
That’s not saying much…..the Republicans have, like what, about a 2% approval rating?
Etaoin, your replies and opinions are so knee-jerk predictable that attempting any dialogue with you is useless. I will no longer read, or reply to, your posts…and I am quite sure many others have made the same decision.