An Indian, Arun Gupta is the founder Editor of 'Occupied Wall Street Journal' !!!

Arun Gupta, one of the paper’s
 founders  and a senior editor of a free
newspaper called The Indypendent.

 Occupy Wall Street Newspaper Raises $54,000 on Kickstarter

There’s a new newspaper on Wall Street, and it’s targeting a very different demographic than the classic publication. The Occupied Wall Street Journal, a newspaper dedicated to the Occupy Wall Street protests that began on Sept. 17, distributed its first issue on Saturday.

Backers on crowdfunding site Kickstarter have picked up the printing bill for 50,000 copies and have already chipped in enough money for a second issue. The New York Times says that at the time of its first issue, the paper had raised more than its goal of $12,000 using the site. At this point, that number is close to $54,000.

“PLEASE KEEP CONTRIBUTING! We don’t have billions like FOX News nor are we bankrolled by the Koch brothers,” reads an update to the paper’s Kickstarter page. “We only have YOU! You have our tremendous gratitude, but this money will only pay for two issues.”

Resulting pledges have put The Occupied Wall Street Journal in ranks with Kickstarter’s most funded projectsin the writing and publishing category. It’s just $2,000 behind the periodical in the section with the most funding, a website for smart sports writing.

The four-page first issue of the protest’s paper includes profiles of protesters, instructions on how to help the movement, a map of Zuccotti Park (where a group of protesters have been camping out since Sept. 17) and a rundown of the protest’s third week by Arun Gupta, one of the paper’s founders and a senior editor of a free newspaper called The Indypendent.

Arun K. Gupta:A founding editor of The Indypendent, Arun Gupta writes about energy, the economy, the media, U.S. foreign policy, the politics of food and other subjects for The Indypendent, Z Magazine, Left Turn andAlternet. Gupta is a regular commentator on Democracy Now! and GritTV with Laura Flanders. He’s writing a book on the decline of American Empire to be published by Haymarket Books. From 1989 to 1992 he was an international news editor at the Guardian Newsweekly.

Occupy Wall Street Protests Sprout 928 Offshoots On Meetup.com Overnight

Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street which began with a couple hundred protesters in Manhattan’s financial district Sept. 17, has sprouted “Occupy Seattle,” “Occupy San Francisco” and several other solidarity events in more than 200 cities across the U.S.

The independent events, some simply community discussions, have been loosely tracked with Facebook,Google maps and links lists. Now, group meeting platformMeetup.com is assisting the protesters in their grassroots efforts.

“We were contacted by the good people at Meetup.com, who got in touch because they heard we were in need of some technical assistance and advice,” says a blog post on Occupy Together, a site linked by Occupy Wall Street websites and protest publication The Occupied Wall Street Journal‘s Kickstarter page. “Little did we know we’d go from listing 4-5 locations in one night to receiving hundreds of emails in a day. We were slowing the flow of information because us volunteers weren’t able to keep up.”

Meetup previously worked with activist magazine Adbusters, an early organizer of the protests, on a project called “buy nothing day,” according to Meetup VP of community and strategy Andres Glusman. Adbusters made the introduction between Meetup and Occupy Together, which ultimately decided to use the platform’s free organizing tool, Meetup Everywhere.

Instead of continuing to maintain a list of protests, the site now features a Meetup widget showing 928 Meetups in 906 cities across the world, most added since Oct. 5 — and many with 0 participants.

Organizing on Meetup, a platform designed in many ways for grassroots organizing, has thus far been less common for “Occupy” protesters than organizing on Facebook. In most cases, the Facebook Pages trounce the new Meetup pages as far as attending participants go. The Occupy Wall Street Facebook Page has more than 130,000 Likes. It’s equivalent Meetup page has 23 “occupiers.” Similarly, Occupy San Francisco has 8,672 Likes and just 27 occupiers. A website called Daily Kos plotted the Facebook Pages on a Google Map (shown below) to make them easier to find.

Meetup has a couple of advantages from an organizing standpoint: a centralized landing page and a format focused on clear actions. It makes sense both the free platform and the unofficial organizers of protest information found it a good fit for Occupy Wall Street offshoots.

Scott Heiferman, Meetup’s CEO, has tweeted about his own involvement in the protests and is a backer of theThe Occupied Wall Street Journal‘s Kickstarter page.

Truth be told, both Facebook and Meetup are pretty chaotic as organization platforms. It’s hard to tell who, if anyone, will actually show up to any of the scheduled events. But that, according to Occupy Together, is part of the point.

“The GREAT thing about all of this, is that it’s completely in line with the whole idea of this decentralized movement,” the site says. “Any single person can start an action in their area, and where one stands up there will likely be another to join you.”

Perhaps, but at many of the new zero-participant Meetup locations that have been set up in places such as Jerusalem and Bologna, that one person is still lonely.

Bloodied but defiant: 10,000 Greek workers clash with Police

Bloodied but defiant: 10,000 Greek strikers and police in running battles as debt-ridden country starts a 24-hour walkout

Greek riot police have fired teargas at petrol bomb throwing youths and charged them wielding batons as 10,000 public sector workers marched to protest against budget cuts and high taxes.

The country is today in the grip of a 24-hour national strike which has seen flights grounded, schools shut and people on the streets trying to storm the Athens parliament of its bankrupt government. 

Violence broke out as anarchists mixed with the marchers and started attacking more than 1,000 police with any weapons they could find. 

Battleground: A beaten man covered in his own blood after being caught up in today's protests

Anger: Protesters march in front of the parliament during the anti-austerity rally today

This has been the first nationwide walkout in months and marked the start of what campaigners say is the culmination of two years of tax hikes and wage cuts.     

In the chaos hospitals ran on emergency rotas and some state schools closed.

Train services were also halted and more than 400 international and domestic flights were cancelled at Athens airport. 

The thousands of state workers, pensioners and students gathered in central Athens, beating drums and waving banners reading 'Erase the debt!' and 'The rich must pay!' 

Street battle: A Molotov fire bomb explodes as it strikes riot police as anarchists join marchers

Injured: A riot officer desperately tries to put out his flaming uniform as a line of police is hit with a petrol bomb

Despite the cuts demanded by the EU and the IMF, the government was forced to announce this week it would still miss its 2011 deficit target by nearly 2 billion euros, rattling global markets. 

Greeks themselves lack faith in their leaders as polls show nearly four out of five expect the country to default on their massive national debt within months. 

'We want this government out. They deceived us. They promised to tax the rich and help the poor, but they didn't,' said Sotiris Pelekanos, 39, an engineer and one of the striking workers gathered in central Athens. 

'I don't care if we go bankrupt. We are already bankrupt. It's just a matter of the state realising it. We've lost everything.'

Stand-off: A rioter carrying a bat wears a gas mask to cope with tear gas being fired at the hundreds in the streets

A separate group of thousands of communist-affiliated workers marched into the central Syntagma square, carrying red flags and chanting: 'We don't have jobs! We don't have rights! No sacrifice for the bosses!' 

In June, more than 100 people were injured in clashes between demonstrators and police in Syntagma Square. 

Greece's main labour unions ADEDY and GSEE expected hundreds of thousands of people to walk out of work today. 

'They are not trying to save Greece. They are just killing workers,' ADEDY Vice President Ilias Vrettakos said in a speech during the rally. 'They should get the money from the rich, not from us.' 

Attack: Riot police wield there batons and detain a demonstrator during clashes today

Away from the demonstrations, the streets of the capital were calm. Much of the private sector did not participate in the strike but will take part in another strike on October 19. 

Many in the Greek private sector resent the perks of state workers, who make up about a fifth of Greece's workforce and are protected from redundancy by the constitution. 

The reforms have taken on a new urgency this week after the announcement that Greece will miss its 2011 deficit target. 

Storm: People try to break through a a high fence blocking the entrance to the Greek Parliament

The target was written into a 109 billion euro bailout package agreed in July — the second huge bailout in two years — and if its terms need to be renegotiated, European banks that hold Greek debt could suffer a heavier blow. 

EU officials are scrambling to protect banks from a repeat of the crisis that froze the world financial system in 2008. 

They have postponed until mid-November a decision on whether to approve the next 8 billion euro tranche of bailout loans, giving negotiators more time to press the government to enact promised reforms. 

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on Tuesday Greek finances for this year could slip even further if the country failed to rally round the reforms and show 'national cohesion and solidarity'. 

His government has promised to hold a referendum on the fiscal crisis this autumn, although it is not clear what question Greeks would be asked or when it would be held. Parliament debated the referendum law on Wednesday even as the protesters were gathering in the streets outside.

Video: Wall Street protester take a powerful stand

Wall Street protester take a powerful stand

One protester has powerful message to share and he is rate on target! Big banks all over the world this all happening.This guys passion I know you will are realte to!
We live in an area where elected politicians ignore the needs of their constituents, where the judiciary and police institutions will not uphold the rights of citizens, where the media is afraid to report the truth, where lawlessness abounds and ordinary people are left unprotected and defenseless against the rapacity of a few. The answer to our dilemma is for people of courage to actively help each other. Only if we unite can we succeed. That is the only way. There is no other way. People, stand up!

“Occupy Wall Street” has blossomed into global movement !!!

Protesters from Occupy Wall Street walk past the New York Stock Exchange dressed as corporate zombies Monday, in New York. The protests have gathered momentum and gained participants in recent days as news of mass arrests and a coordinated media campaign by the protesters have given rise to similar demonstrations around the country.

 US economy was always built on quicksand !!!


A growth spurt sent the Occupy Wall Street movement sprawling across the US and into other countries. It's showing greater organization and widening appeal. After a weekend growth spurt, the New York financial district sit-in “Occupy Wall Street” has blossomed into not only a national movement, but also a global one.

More than 100 cities have clocked in under the “Occupy” moniker, with more names appearing on the movement’s unofficial cyber bulletin board,occupytogether.org, every few digital minutes.

Large and small towns as well as regions and states are onboard, from Mobile, Ala., to Merced, Calif., toAdelaide (Australia), Cork (Ireland), and Cologne (Germany). The swiftly expanding, loosely organized, and casually affiliated network of protesters is taking over public spaces with sleeping bags, sandwiches, and placards.

These groups are armed with everything from manifestoes ­– their essential grievance is that financial institutions have too much political influence, to the detriment of almost everyone else – to a circulating library staffed with an actual librarian, trash disposal teams, and advice on how to properly safety-pin a dollar bill.

The protesters are predominantly under 30; are communicating via Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and even e-mail; and are sharing grievances, doling advice to newcomers, and self-consciously declining to set out a formal list of demands. They are also showing signs of preparing for a protracted battle.

According to the Occupy website, the movement has emerged from a climate of outrage over perceived economic injustices and is taking inspiration from recent social protests in the Middle East.

“Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions,” reads a statement on the website. “The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent,” the statement says. “We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.”

As the movement spreads, political analysts and social scientists are asking whether this is the sort of social unrest that emerges only in hard economic times and recedes in better days, or is a sign of a new political movement emerging on the American landscape.

While it may be too early to say for certain, David Johnson, an Atlanta-based Republican political strategist, suggests the former.

“It’s drawing in everyone across the political spectrum,” he notes, pointing to the range of voices being heard in the media coverage. “They have everyone from libertarians, to liberals, moderates, socialists, and hard-line conservatives,” he says, adding that this sort of coalition works well for a short period of protest.

“This kind of fractious group won’t hold together for the long run," says Mr. Johnson. "They can do a short protest, but they’re much too disparate to be the beginnings of a long-term movement.”

Irrespective of the group’s fellow travelers, the movement’s origins give a clearer sense of its orientation, direction, and potential for long-term impact, says Villanova University Prof. Matthew Kerbel. Unlike the tea party, which is rooted in the political right, Occupy Wall Street has its roots on the political left, says Professor Kerbel, author of “Netroots: Online Progressives and the Transformation of American Politics.”

The movement was sparked by individuals targeting what they see as the excessive political pull of big banks and the financial sector in contributing to policies they feel are detrimental to the middle class, says Professor Kerbel, a message that echoes “the argument made for several years now by online progressive organizations and blogs.”

“Its organizers have taken advantage of social media and progressive blogs to spread their message, especially when it appeared that the mainstream press wasn’t paying attention,” he says via e-mail.

The movement has also attracted the attention and support of more traditional liberal organizations, such as organized labor, he notes. This group includes the United Federation of Teachers and the Transport Workers Union, some of whose members defied a New York Citypolice request and refused to bus protesters arrested Saturday for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The movement shows signs of readying for the long haul, says Heather Gautney, a professor of sociology at Fordham University in New York.

“In the spirit of the globalization movement, this is a ‘leaderless movement,’ ” she says via e-mail. Occupy Wall Street is now a “movement of movements.”

The groups involved do not seek to replicate the nondemocratic, hierarchical structures of the organizations they oppose, she notes, in part because having a leadership can be dangerous. The police can easily target leaders, and if the movement’s health depends on them, notes Professor Gautney, “it can fall apart more quickly.”

Americans should be prepared to see this movement take hold and spread, says MIT economics professor and lawyer Nicholas Ashford, author of “Technology, Globalization, and Sustainable Development – Transforming the Industrial State: Exploring the Critical Conflicts between Economy, Environment, and Employment.”

It’s not just a matter of people being “mad as hell and not taking it anymore,” he says. “It’s more crucially the dawning realization that the US economy was always built on quicksand, and that our current dismal state is not the anomaly, but the reality.”

“Instead of waiting for the economy to ‘bounce back’ to a previous state of health that was nothing but a sad illusion,” says Professor Ashford, “Washington, Wall Street, and big business need to address a strategy for moving forward from where we are,” not from where they thought we were.

Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street's pockets are beginning to bulge.Cash donations are pouring in from around the globe as the grass-roots campaign for social change enters its third week.

Approximately $35,000  from lower Manhattan , another $30,000 was collected by the fund-raising website Kickstarter, which enabled the group to produce 50,000 copies of a newspaper called The Occupied Wall Street Journal on Saturday.

"The donations are coming from everywhere," said Cooper Union student Victoria Sobel, 21, a core member of the finance committee managing the funds.Protesters say they have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity for their loosely organized movement, which began as a sit-in against corporate greed and morphed into a mass demonstration against social injustice.

The donations come in all sizes - from a few dollars delivered by hand or mail, to one group of 144 people who pooled their money and sent $5,000 online, Sobel said.

The Alliance for Global Justice, a nonprofit with 501c3 status, helped Occupy Wall Street to collect tax-exempt donations and open a credit union account to centralize funds.The Washington-based organization's most recent 2009 tax return has revenues of $843,547, including contributions and grants of $789,509, records show.

Any of the many organizational committees seeking to spend more than $100 - for, say, blankets or food - has to get approval from the hyper-democratic general assembly, the de facto leadership body for the protest. Some money will be used to pay bail for arrested demonstrators.

"We want to make sure we have ways of using the money effectively,We are trying to be transparent about it.", says the organisers.

Jasmine Revolution Sweeps USA, Too !!!

Will the New York City witness an American version of "Arab Spring"? The protest against the corporate greed that began in a small park near Wall Street two weeks ago, is gradually spreading nationwide as similar protests began popping up from Boston to Chicago and Los Angeles.

The Wall Street protest inspired from the Arab Spring movement notably the Tahrir Square protests in Cairo, demands for enactment of economic and judicial reforms on a national scale. 

The protest was originally called for by the Canadian activist group Adbusters. The hacker group Anonymous released a video in which they threatened to launch a cyber-attack against the NYPD in response to the police brutalities. "Beginning from one simple demand - a presidential commission to separate money from politics - we start setting the agenda for a new America. The protest's organizers hope that the protestors themselves will formulate their own specific demands, expecting them to be focused on "... taking to task the people who perpetrated the economic meltdown."

In less than three weeks time, similar demonstrations had been held in Washington, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Miami,[11] Portland, Maine, and Denver.

While corporate greed is what the campaigners are protesting against, other issues like the corporations' right to invest unlimited funds in political campaigns, the government bailouts of big Wall Street institutions, unemployment, student debt etc have been highlighted as the perpetuating factors.

However, the campaign is criticized for lack of leadership and focus. The critics say, "they want to "occupy" Wall Street, not quite sure why." 

Wall Street Protest:"Capitalism is evil"

The collection of people in tie-dyed T-shirts and star-spangled underwear have been camped out in a granite plaza in lower Manhattan nearly two weeks — and show no signs of going away.

They sleep on air mattresses, use Mac laptops and play drums. They go to the bathroom at the local McDonald's. A few times a day, they march down to Wall Street, yelling, "This is what democracy looks like!"

It all has the feel of a classic street protest with one exception: It's unclear exactly what the demonstrators want.

"When all the bailout money was spent on bonuses and stuff everyone was outraged, but no one did anything because no one feels like they can," protester Jesse Wilson, 22, said this week when asked to take articulate the cause. "It's time for us to come together to realize we are the masses, and we can make things happen."

But he couldn't say what, exactly, he wanted to happen. Handmade signs carried by some of the demonstrators — "Less is More" and "Capitalism is evil" — hardly make it clearer.

On Saturday, the group shut down part of the Brooklyn Bridge when they spilled onto the roadway from Manhattan in one of their many marches. Police arrested dozens while trying to clear the road and reopen for traffic.

But does it matter that the protest is vague?

Academics and longtime activists give varying opinions. "A lot of this revolves around economic justice, who gets what in this society, who has a safety net, who doesn't and how much corporate influence exists in Washington," said Bill Dobbs, an activist involved in the 2004 demonstrations at the Republican National Convention, and many others.

Dobbs and others say the group's lack of specificity serves a purpose because it invites outrage over a full spectrum of societal grievances. Indeed, some demonstrators say they are against Wall Street greed, others say they are protesting global warming and still others say they are protesting "the man."

The modern protester also expects an immediate response, thanks in part to technology, said Gabriella Coleman, a New York University professor of media, culture and communication who has studied some of the groups affiliated with the protest. "We are in a cultural moment where people think the dictator will topple tomorrow, after four days of protests, and also the media is going to jump to pay attention," Coleman said.

There has been a growing swell of coverage in mainstream media, but there has been loud complaining the cause hasn't been championed fast enough — or in the way protesters want.

Newspapers, The Associated Press and television stations have covered the protests, and editorials have both poked fun and lauded the effort downtown. National Public Radio, which hasn't aired stories, has fielded angry communiques demanding coverage. "The recent protests on Wall Street did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially clear objective," Dick Meyer, executive editor for news, explained on NPR's website.

But observers say the approach can be difficult for media — and the average person — to digest. "You should have a clear and convincing message, and know who is going to deliver it," said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a longtime civil rights activist who has participated in protests for decades. "One of the reasons to get attention is to deliver the message."

Misinformation has added to the confusion. For instance, a rumor sprang up on Twitter that the New York Police Department wanted to use tear gas on protesters — a crowd-control tactic the department doesn't use. The organizing group that calls itself Occupy Wall Street retracted the claim, one of several such retractions over the past several days. On Friday, it sent out a message that Radiohead would be performing in solidarity for the cause. (The band's management said it wasn't playing.)

Clashes with police have resulted in about 100 arrests. Most were for disorderly conduct. Many were the subject of homemade videos posted online.

One video surfaced of a group of girls shot with pepper spray by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna. The woman claimed they were abused and demanded the officer resign, and the video has been the subject of several news articles and commentary. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said internal affairs would look into whether Bologna acted improperly and has also said the video doesn't show "tumultuous" behavior by the protesters. The Civilian Complaint Review Board is also investigating.

A group affiliated with protest, Anonymous, later posted Bologna's personal details, including where his kids go to school. He has received threatening e-mails, said a police union spokesman, Roy Richter. "Posting the information about a family police officer ... that's egregious and over the line," Richter said.

Coleman explained the move was likely the work of one or two individuals not acting on behalf of the entire movement, since the handle Anonymous is not a collective group that makes decisions together on how to act.

"A tactic like that has been received anywhere from controversy to celebration, because someone took action to the police's action," she said.

A real estate firm that owns Zuccotti Park, the private plaza off Broadway occupied by the protesters, has expressed concerns about conditions there, saying in a statement that it hopes to work with the city to restore the park "to its intended purpose." But it's not clear whether legal action will be taken, and police say there are no plans to try to remove anyone. "We see it as our job to make certain that people can demonstrate peacefully," Kelly said.

Mostly, the protests have been peaceful, and the movement has shown no signs of losing steam. Celebrities like Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon even made recent stops downtown to encourage the group.

Seasoned activists said the ad-hoc protest could prove to be a training ground for future organizers of larger and more cohesive demonstrations, or motivate those on the sidelines to speak out against injustices. "You may not get much, or any of these things on the first go-around," Daughtry said. "But it's the long haul that matters."
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