Foreclosures Another Opportunity for OWS to Confront The System
It’s been a steep learning curve for thousands of brand-new activists that have joined the Occupy Wall Street movement. From the environment to militarism, there’s a sea of misinformation and distractions standing between protestors and their enemies. While the empty rhetoric used to claim that Occupiers “don’t know what they stand for” falls flat to anyone actually paying attention, the ability to identify, isolate, and condemn the 1% for the theft and destruction they are responsible for has been one of the movement’s greatest difficulties.
Now “Occupy Foreclosures” has spread in popularity, with activists setting up eviction blockades and disrupting foreclosure auctions with increasing frequency. While it is a positive step, it contains the same pitfalls as confronting economic injustice. To be sure there is much good that can be done with helping individual foreclosure victims, but ultimately to stop the foreclosure epidemic Occupiers must face up to the same enemy they have so far failed to wholly accuse: Capitalism.
Everyone more or less knows that there is no one or small group to blame for the foreclosure crisis, just as there is no secret cabal that forces us into a never-ending series of wars. There were borrowers who took on loans they couldn’t afford, realtors who signed them up, underwriters who falsely signed off on the loans, and banks who gave the loans that they knew were unlikely to be repaid. Other bank officials securitized the loans, credit rating agencies assigned them false value, investment firms sold these bad securities to investors, and federal regulators failed to stop them. Once the crisis began, municipal, state, and federal government figures, with a few notable exceptions, failed to investigate, prosecute, or otherwise punish anyone who committed these acts. Many public officials passed new laws and regulations to protect these financial criminals and due to lobbying and insider trading even profited off of it themselves. At the same time these acts rendered their own constituents jobless, homeless, and suffering. Lawyers then set about systematically forging paperwork to help banks wrongfully foreclose on millions of people to enormous profit as corrupt and apathetic judges watched. While all of these individuals share blame, Occupiers must accept the bigger picture here.
The true blame for the foreclosure crisis lays at the Capitalist system itself; one that always has and always will exist solely off of the exploitation and destruction of anyone and anything it can affect and while remaining profitable.
The “golden age of free markets” becomes more desirable in these times of suffering but never less mythical; from slavery to the worker’s & civil rights movement to the ever-expanding 21st century empire, Capitalism in America has only ever benefited those lucky enough to be wearing the boot with which they help crush and exploit the rest of the populace.
The fact is we should no more be marking off the entire planet and reselling it back to individuals in the first place than commodifying these lands in order to pad the pockets of the ultra-rich. Federal powers have no more right to wield authority over individual’s lives than to collude in the theft of people’s livelihoods. Occupy Wall Street is evidence that most Americans have been fooled a few times too many by Capitalism’s promise of an “American Dream” for those who are willing to be exploited by it for just awhile longer. Stopping a foreclosure is occasionally quite simple.
Stopping the foreclosure crisis requires imagining a post-Capitalist world where the rich have no more power than the poor and corporations have none at all. One Struggle will continue to show solidarity with the new spirit of resistance in America, and only asks that they never stop short of anything less than a whole new society that calls theft theft and murder murder and holds all perpetrators accountable, no matter who they are or what they possess.
Irish Travelers, residents of the Dale Farm settlement, stand on a tower of scaffolding poles at the entrance to the site near Basildon, England, Monday, Sept. 19, 2011. Irish Travelers built barricades and chained themselves to cars on Monday to stop police and bailiffs moving in to evict them from their home. The conflict over the settlement has raged since 2001, when Travelers bought and settled on a former scrapyard next to a legal Travelers’ site. The local authority waged a long legal battle to remove them, which it finally won at Britain’s High Court last month. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Activists in solidarity with Irish Travelers who live at the Dale Farm travelers site stand on a van and scaffolding erected as part of a barrier at the main entrance at the site near Basildon, 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of London, England, Monday, Sept. 19, 2011. Local authorities are due to begin evicting families from Dale Farm Monday, after winning a decade-long legal battle to move some 86 families who lived in mobile homes on the site without proper planning permission. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Resist attempts to shut down campaigning in Manchester #sept17 #UKuncut #freespeech
“Council officers, backed up by police, disrupted socialists and anti-cuts campaigners in Manchester and confiscated their stalls and materials for the second week running on Saturday.
Manchester’s Market Street is one of the busiest shopping areas in the North West. It is a focal point for trade unionists, socialists, environmentalists and peace activists who regularly set up stalls.
Saturday was a day of action to publicise the TUC demonstration on 2 October when the Tory Party comes to Manchester. Council officers and the police attempted to prevent socialists and other campaigners giving out leaflets claiming that they were “obstructing the highway”.
Our stalls did not impede pedestrians and certainly could not have prevented access by emergency vehicles as was claimed.
As crowds gathered, the stall turned into a protest against the attacks on free speech.
Passersby were disgusted at this attempt to close down opposition to the attack on public services.
Police arrested two activists, including a leading local trade unionist. However, the leafleting continued and the two were later released without charge. In another incident police arrested people in a nearby Top Shop protesting against sexist T-shirts.
Local activists issued a statement, “The Highways Obstruction Act does not affect paper sellers and those handing out campaign materials, and we will defend our legal right to do this. In addition, the Notice of Obstruction was on unheaded paper, and we intend to take this up with Manchester City Council and the local police authorities.”
Manchester City Council has led an expensive, high-profile “Love Manchester” campaign since the recent riots to encourage people to return to the city centre and spend money. In the run up to the Tory Party conference, they want to remove criticism of local and national policies and give street space only to commercial stallholders.
Manchester activists have called a meeting on Tuesday 20 September to defend free speech. We will launch a petition against these attacks and we are encouraging all campaigners to join us on the streets next Saturday to protest.”~All taken from Socialistwork.co.uk you can also click title to reread the article.. from them.
Reblog.. with info:
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Food_Not_Bombs
All taken from http://operationgreenrights.blogspot.com/ «Check it out for more.)
”We fight for Human Rights and against Big Company which destroy Nature and ancient Cultures. We substain Free Green Energy.”
Operation Green Rights
Anonymous began as an idea, an idea that unites the people of the world in the struggle for human rights
and freedom. The same ideals that led to the birth of this new faction of Anonymous.
Operation Green Rights is a summary of our frustration at seeing the human race enslaved god’s money,
for which commits murder, exploit and oppress people and goes against the principles of democracy and
human respect that should be the basis of any modern civilized country. We have seen wars carried out
for the black gold, subject peoples dictatorships convenient for trade agreements, billions spent on
research and nuclear war and cut funding for research on renewable energy and oil tankers sunk that
cause planetary damage.
In addition, global warming, caused by these policies, it is a reality that we must be aware. The glaciers
are melting, tides rise, the ozone hole is growing, the climate changes, changing climatic conditions,
animal species become extinct ..
The current global policies of many large corporations and many governments are trampling on our
rights and those of every other living being, only in exchange for money.
We at Operation Green Rights say stop about this!
Operation Green Rights wants for our children a life in a civilized world that welcomes them with open
arms and show respect for life and nature itself. We want that Mother Earth will continue to live healthy
and promoting life with its beauty. We want the exploitation of peoples and the blood spilled in the
streets no longer in the name of greed.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.
Anonymous Operation Green Rights
Citizens of the World:
Anonymous’ Operation Green Rights would like to call to your attention an urgent situation in North America, perpetuated by the boundless greed of the usual suspects: Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Canadian Oil Sands Ltd., Imperial Oil, the Royal Bank of Scotland, The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and many others.
The Tar Sands oil extraction industry is an environmental disaster.
Also known as the oil sands, Tar Sands are one of the largest remaining deposits of oil in the world. Efforts to extract the resource from a mix of clay and other materials underneath Canada’s Boreal forest have created the biggest, and by the accounts of numerous scientists and environmental groups, the most environmentally devastating energy project on Earth.
On August 20th through September 3rd, activists young and old are gathering in Washington D.C. for ten days of civil disobedience in protest of the tar sands oil industry, and to call out for safer and cleaner alternatives.
Anonymous now joins this international struggle for the rights of the world’s citizens to a clean environment , and against all industries that threaten the future health of the world’s living things.
We stand in solidarity with any citizen willing to peacefully risk arrest to call out corporate abuse. The people of Earth will not stand by idly and let these environmental atrocities continue.
This is not the clean energy of the future that we are being promised.
We will - over the course of the next few weeks - use the powers we posses to spread news about this protest to viral proportions, and to share damning information about the corporations involved.
We all must work together to expose the corruption that we all KNOW is beneath this.
Anonymous will provide air support and lulz as the activists in D.C. confront this dire issue on the streets. We urge you to get involved. Join the protest if you are close enough. Donate money to the organizations involved with the struggle. If you’re not nearby enough to Washington D.C., join us in the IRC listed below to experiment in how we can spread word of this protest, and disobey civilly in our own ways.
The continued development of the tar sands is a major step backwards in the effort to curb the pollution and poisoning of our natural environment. Anonymous will not suffer this without a fight, and Operation Green Rights will always support the rights of the people to live in an unpolluted world and to safeguard it for the future one way or another.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
Expect us.
IRC: irc.anonops.li channel #operationgreenrights
Location of Protest: White House, Washington D.C.
Sign up to protest! http://www.tarsandsaction.org/sign-up/
It’s not too late if you are in D.C. or the surrounding area check out http://www.tarsandsaction.org/ for more info!
(Source: operationgreenrights.blogspot.com)
