Bloomberg: Maybe There Wouldn't Be Any OWS Protests If Schools Weren't So Bad

Seriously - that's what he said:

Earlier today, Mayor Bloomberg was asked what he thought of Rep. Jerry Nadler's desire for an investigation into whether the NYPD used excessive force in getting Occupy Wall Street protesters out of Zuccotti Park.

Hizzoner's short, paraphrased answer: That's a pretty dumb idea, and you have better things to worry about.

"Representative Nadler I know very well. Most things I agree with him. I think [in] this case, that’s ridiculous. If he would spend more time getting us homeland security money, maybe he’d make the streets safer. If he could get more federal monies, maybe we could make our schools better and we wouldn’t have some of the things people are protesting against," Bloomberg said, according to a transcript by our Reuven Blau.

Right - people are protesting all across this country against income inequality, corporate greed, bank bailouts, the Federal Reserve system that allows our government to literally print free money and hand it to Too Big To Fail Banks, mortgage and foreclosure fraud, and a host of many other issues because our public education system has failed.

Uh, no.

People are protesting against income inequality, corporate greed, bank bailouts, the Federal Reserve system that allows our government to literally print free money and hand it to Too Big To Fail Banks, mortgage and foreclosure fraud, and a host of many other issues because greedy assholes like you, Mayor Bloomberg, have enabled a system that works for only a very few other rich assholes like yourself.

And for too long Americans sat by and let this happen - let big money take over politics, let corporations and banks skew laws and taxes and regulations the way they want them in order to screw the rest of us, let the government use 9/11 and terrorism to clamp down on our freedoms and rights.

But now the country is beginning to awaken from its slumber and see the corporate-sponsored mess rich assholes like you, Mayor Bloomberg, have created.

Occupy Wall Street protests exist not because of a bad public school system - they exist because rich assholes like you have decided to turn the country into an oligarchy for your own pleasure and power, have decided to rig the game completely in your own favor.

Occupy Wall Street exists, in part, because of you, Mayor Bloomberg.

Bloomberg Cracks Down On Street Performers

Gee, I wonder if this has anything to do with OWS:

Musicians, artists, and other performers were joined by lawyers Sunday to speak out against the city's recent crackdown on performing in Washington Square Park.

The New York City Park Advocates group is asking Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Parks Department to stop prohibiting performances.

They say the park is a cultural space and their freedom of speech rights are being violated.

"From Zuccotti Park to Central Park, to Lincoln Square Plaza and now to Washington Square Park it appears that expressive activity is a target," said attorney Norman Siegel.

"If I didn't have this platform, I don't know where I actually would be today, in my life," said performer Kareem "Tac" Barnes.

Advocates said the crackdown has resulted in clashes with parks officials and an increase in summonses being issued.

Washington Square Park has been home to thousands of street performers, attracting both tourists and locals.

Work, shop obey - those are the activities you are allowed to do in this city.

You have a fucking problem with that, we'll orange net your ass, pepper spray you in the face and throw you in lock-up for 16 hours until you finally get to see a lawyer.

Baruch Shuts Down Access To CUNY Board Of Trustees Meeting

So much for democracy or public accountability:

Baruch College is postponing a number of afternoon classes tomorrow, ahead of a meeting of the City University of New York's board of trustees.

School officials say all classes in the Newman Vertical Campus that begin after 3:00 p.m. are being rescheduled to Friday.

Friday's classes will be rescheduled to a later date.

School officials say the move is being made to ensure the safety of students, faculty and staff, days after a protest over proposed tuition hikes during a prior board of trustees meeting led to more than a dozen arrests.

Student access will be limited to those completing a class already in progress, and people with an urgent need to be in the building.

In a statement, the school's president says Baruch is determined to avoid any repetition of last week's events.

How dare CUNY students protest the oligarchical order, tuition increases, aid decreases and overall income inequality that is exacerbated by some of the very people at the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting.

You'll take your austerity measures AND LIKE IT, BITCHES!

Occupy.

Disaster Economics

Austerity for the masses, free money for the banksters, or we're all dooooommmmmmmeeeeedddddd!!!!!

So says The Economist.

Frankly the doomed part might be right if the Euro Zone goes under.

Or even if it just hits a deep recession and tilts the rest of the world into the abyss with it.

But it's these same arrogant assholes who are clamoring for bankster bailouts or we're going to see Lehman 2.0 x 2 who caused all this shit in the first place.

How come the austerity comes for the masses, but the banksters and hedge fund criminals who caused all of this stuff get to ride off on huge waves of free, newly minted cash?

I'm not an economist, I'm not a political scientist, I'm just an English teacher with a skeptical nature, but my sense is that these people have no idea what the fuck they're doing, are making things worse rather than better with all these imposed austerity measures, and when the Lehman 2.0 x 2 crash comes, the disorder and chaos that is set to be unleashed is going to make the Great Depression look like the Eisenhower Fifties.

No wonder they're clamping down so hard and heavy on the Occupy encampments and such.

And no wonder they're unleashing all that Homeland Security technology on the Occupy people.

They know, man.

They know.

And they're scared.

Imagine what happens if we get Lehman 2.0 x 2?

People are pissed and living in fear already.

And some are finally waking up to not only how dire the circumstances are, but just who it was who caused this mess in the first place.

People aren't going to put up with this bailout for the banksters/austerity for the masses shit a second time.

And they're going to come looking for the arrogant assholes who caused the disaster.

Work, Shop, Obey

Just follow the rules and conventions of our shallow, empty, consumerist society and everything will be all right.

But if you step outside the lines, WE WILL PEPPER SPRAY YOUR ASS.

And that's the best you can hope for.

We might bring some freedom to you, just like we brought freedom to these Afghan children.

Or these Pakistani soldiers.

Or maybe we'll just stick you in a cell next to Bradley Manning where Obama the Nobel Peace Prize Winner will order you to be tortured.

The point is, you had better follow the fucking rules if you don't want trouble.

Have you got that now?

Especially you lousy dirty OWS hippies in LA and Philadelphia.

You got 'til Cyber Monday before we come for your hippie asses.

Black Friday Shoppers Use NYPD Pepper Spray Tactics

This is one way you can try and make sure you get the Black Friday doorbusters:

Black Friday took an ugly turn at a Los Angeles Wal-Mart when a female shopper -desperate to get her hands on discounted electronics-pepper sprayed a crowd to keep them away from the merchandise she wanted.

At least 20 shoppers suffered minor injuries and police are still looking for the woman.

The melee began shortly after 10:20 p.m. Thursday as shoppers prowling for Black Friday deals were let inside the store.

The suspect began shooting the pepper spray when the coverings of items she wanted were removed, according to police.

"Somehow she was trying to use [the pepper spray] to gain an upper hand," police Lt. Abel Parga said.

Witnesses described the frenzied scene to the Los Angeles Times, detailing how shoppers-gone-wild tore down video game displays, trampled merchandise and shoved each other for the deeply-discounted goods.

"People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray," Alejandra Seminario, 24, told the newspaper.

After the competitive shopper unleashed the chemicals, Seminario said she began to cough and her face began to itch.

"I guess what triggered it was people started pulling the plastic off the pallets and then shoving and bombarding the display of games. It started with people pushing and screaming because they were getting shoved onto the boxes," she added.

Chaos also erupted at a Fayetteville, N.C. mall after gunfire erupted. Police are looking for two suspects. Luckily no one was injured.

Wal-Mart came under the microscope on Black Friday in 2008, when a store employee died after a mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through a Long Island store front and trampled the worker to death.

Despite the mahem in Los Angeles, the store remained opened and those not affected by the pepper spray continued to hunt for bargains.

"I don't care," Nakeasha Contreras, a 20 year old who arrived after the incident, told the Times. "I'm still getting my TV."

It's interesting that the NY Post and other corporate media outlets have described the Occupy Wall Street protesters as "animals" and the tents that housed a library, a medical center and a media center at Zuccotti Park as a "zoo," but somehow don't blink when the greed and bleed that is "Black Friday" sets off these kinds of incidents.

If anything can be described as a "zoo," it's the malls and shopping areas of America on this most evil of days - Black Shop Til You Drop Friday.

And if anybody can be described as animals, it's these people who use pepper spray, gunfire and violence to get the Doorbuster Barbie doll or whatever other piece of consumer crap they're lusting after.

Cathie Black Shows Up At Zuccotti Park

Hard to know if she showed up to support Occupy Wall Street or if she was just on the way back from a Hamptons cocktail party and couldn't quite make it all the way home.

But in any case, it's nice to see the woman who gave tips to the 1% on how to lay members of the 99% off doing what she does best.

And doesn't she look just fabulous in her stylish boots and dress - even the NY Post thinks so!

One thing, though - I thought the cops weren't letting anybody at Zuccotti lay down on the benches?

Shouldn't they be putting orange netting around her or something?

Occupy Thanksgiving

Occupy Wall Street protesters plan to celebrate Thanksgiving in Zuccotti Park today:

Occupy Wall Street protesters plan on marking Thanksgiving with a feast in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan on Thursday.

A volunteer with the demonstrators' public relations group says they will have meals and music for 3,000 people.

The food is being donated by restaurants and individual supporters.

They also say they will be abiding by state Health Department code by wrapping all the plates of food individually.

The music will be acoustic, because protesters do not have a permit for loudspeakers.

There will also be a canned food drive, with donations going to local food banks and pantries.

NY 1 also reports that NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly is warning cops to leave journalists alone during anti-OWS actions, citing the police crackdown 0f journalists (including the arrest of five of them) during last week's Zuccotti Park raid as a problem:

Police officers are being ordered to back off the media after several journalists were arrested at Zuccotti Park.

In a letter to station houses, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says officers should not unreasonably interfere with media access during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

He says those who do not follow the rule will face disciplinary action.

The police department came under fire for arresting several journalists and blocking others from gaining access to the park when it was being cleaned out.

This is a joke on the face it.

Kelly led the police action during the raid - you can be sure that HE WANTED the media shut out, shut down, kept away and otherwise unable to witness for themselves or take video and photos of the brutality the police planned to engage in to move protesters out of the park.

Kelly (and his boss, the mayor) are trying to shift blame from themselves to cops in the ranks or mid-level brass for the media crackdown.

But cops in the ranks and mid-level brass didn't order a total shutdown of the subways, a no-fly zone over Zuccotti Park (which kept helicopters from both the CBS and the NBC affiliates from flying over the park and taking pictures from above), and a two block barricade away from the park that kept journalists out of sight of the raid.

Kelly ordered these things, or his boss, the mayor, did.

Either way, the point is the same - Ray Kelly is full of shit on the media crackdown stuff.

His boss, the mayor, a media mogul who owns a major business TV and radio network as well as a major business magazine, understands that they don't want to antagonize the media people too much on this OWS stuff.

After all, the corporate media has so far most dutifully reported the OWS protests using the frame the establishment wants - they're no-good, down and dirty unemployed hippie scum who need to take baths and get jobs and stop making the city spend so much money on overtime and pepper spray.

Just witness how the coverage of the Day of Action last Thursday went.

But the mayor knows that in order to keep the media people on his (and thus, the establishments' side), they have to at least pay lip service to respecting journalists and the job they are supposed to do.

That's all this Kelly declaration is - jive ass bullshit meant to fool people into thinking these fascists won't engage in another media blackout when the chips are down and their cracking heads in.

But you can be sure they won't think twice of repeating any of what they did back at the Zuccotti raid.

Hackers Target Cop Who Pepper-Sprayed Protesters

I bet Lt. Pike didn't envision this when he calmly and methodically pepper-sprayed a bunch of peaceful protesters sitting on the ground last Friday:

The UC Davis police officer filmed casually pepper-spraying passive student protesters is the latest target of the computer hacking collective Anonymous.

A new 10-minute video attributed to the shadowy "hacktivist" group threatens the officer directly and makes public his personal contact information - including his cell phone number and an alleged home address.

The voicemail on the working cell number for Lt. John Pike was full Tuesday.

"Dear Officer John Pike, we are Anonymous. Your information is now public domain," a computer-generated voice narrating the Anonymous video states.

"Expect our full wrath," the voice continues as viral video of the Friday incident plays in the background. "Anonymous seeks to avenge all protesters…We are going to make you squeal like a pig."

The ominous message, which ends with a photo of Pike and the sounds of shrieking pigs, makes no excuse for exposing Pike to potential reprisals.

"We have no problem targeting police and releasing their information even if it puts them at risk because we want them to experience just a taste of the brutality and misery they serve us on an everyday basis," it says.

The message I would send to Lt. Pike is this:

Lt. Pike, your methodical, cold-blooded pepper spraying of peaceful, non-violent protesters seated on the ground who posed no threat to you or your colleagues clearly shows that you are a sociopath who is unfit for police duty.

You need to be stripped of your badge and your gun immediately and fired from your job.

You should be arrested for your violent behavior.

In addition, the protesters you harmed should sue you personally in order to hold you accountable for your actions.

You need to defend yourself in court before a judge and jury.

It is only by holding violent cops who engage in acts of brutality accountable for their crimes that we will stop additional acts of police brutality from occurring.

OWS Protesters Heckle Obama

Now THIS is change I can believe in:

Hecklers occupied some of President Obama's time Tuesday during a speech about the state of the economy.

As the President began his remarks in front a crowd packed into a Manchester, N.H., high school gym, Occupy Wall Streeters could be heard chanting, "Over 4,000 peaceful protesters have been arrested while 'banksters' continue to destroy the American economy."

Obama's water carriers in the crowd quickly chanted louder than the OWS protesters, but even Obama had to acknowledge the OWS message:

"Listen, I'm going to be talking about a whole range of things today," he said. "I appreciate you guys making your point. Let me go ahead and make mine, all right?"

As the 2012 campaign goes on, it is vital that Obama be made to face his failures and sellouts on jobs, the economy, the bank bailouts, the trade agreements and the rest that has helped make income inequality the worst it's been since right before the Great Depression.

I would love to see OWS people show up at both Obama and Romney events and disrupt the proceedings, but I think it is particularly important that Obama not get to play populist or progressive this time around.

He is a corporatist president who has run a corporatist administration.

Make him defend that.

Shame At UC Davis

That's UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi doing the walk of shame past UC Davis students after hiding in her office for three hours after giving a press conference at which she defended her use of armed police to disperse Occupy UC Davis protesters from a tent city they had set up next to an academic building to protest tuition hikes and police brutality at UC Berkeley.

Police, dressed in stormtrooper gear straight out of Star Wars and brandishing machine guns like U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, first destroyed the tent city students had erected, then ordered students to leave the area or face arrest.

Students calmly sat on the ground, arms linked, heads bowed, in civil disobedience of the police order.

Here is what happened next:



The police atrocities did not end there, as Assistant Professor of English Nathan Brown described in his letter to the chancellor calling for her to resign:

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

Katehi defended her use of armed police on the campus at a press conference held in an administrative building on the UC Davis campus. Students were not allowed to attend this press conference and gathered outside the building to protest. The Davis Enterprise picks up the story:

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi remained inside Surge II for nearly three hours Saturday after hundreds of protesters surrounded the building, interrupting her news conference about the pepper-spraying of protesters by campus police the day before.

Protesters showed up minutes after the 4 p.m. conference began. Their voices could be heard within the building.

Many of those who had gathered outside said they believed Katehi did not give the UCD community sufficient notice and that the choice of venue was unfair because it did not permit the general public inside.

“After what happened yesterday, everyone is really, really angry,” said Steve Cox, a UCD graduate student. “It’s kind of unfair for her to hold a press conference in a really small venue with very short notice to try to exclude the student body. We have just as much of a right to be there as anybody and she needs to answer to us.”

The press conference was cut short as a result of the student protest outside, but Katehi refused to leave the building, trying to make it look like students were holding her hostage even though they had cleared a path for her to leave:

The protesters formed lines leading away from the building, leaving a pathway to permit the chancellor’s exit, but the chancellor did not leave immediately following the conference.

“It didn’t seem like we would be allowed to leave,” said Mitchell Benson, assistant vice chancellor for university communications. “There was quite a loud, and I would hazard to say, hostile crowd outside both of the doors of the building and it didn’t seem that she would be able to get out in a safe manner, so she stood put for a couple of hours.”

While protesters chanted outside for, among other things, her resignation, Katehi stayed inside.

“I didn’t have a sense that it was an appropriate atmosphere or an appropriate environment to walk out of the building at that time,” Mitchel continued. “There was no rush to leave.”

Here is a photo of students clearing a path for Katehi and other administrators to leave:

Doesn't look like Katehi is being held hostage by students.

Rather, it looks like she feared to face them on her way out.

And no wonder - when she not only ordered armed police to disperse protesters but even defended their use of force against students in order to keep the campus safe before video surfaced showing very clearly that the students were not aggressive in any way and force didn't need to be used, well, why would she want to walk by them?

She has to know, despite her public refusal to step down or acknowledge that she did anything wrong, that her days are numbered at UC Davis and she has now become one of the faces of brutal repression in modern America.

This atrocity at UC Davis will go down in American history as one of the more egregious examples of Police State Clampdown.

The bravery of the students who endured the pepper-spraying, the restraint the rest of the students showed in the face of this brutal act, indeed, the restraint the students showed outside Katehi's press conference and the breath-taking video of Katehi doing the SILENT WALK OF SHAME by them, it really puts the official state response to the OWS protests into stark contrast with the "official story" that the corporate media has been telling about them.

These are not violent, aggressive criminals that police can only corral by using extreme force.

These are seated students engaged in passive civil disobedience, the kind that Gandhi and Martin Luther King engaged in.

It is very difficult if not impossible for ANYBODY to defend this brutal act or the lack of accountability that Katehi is showing by not immediately resigning in disgrace.

This woman should not only lose her job at UC Davis, she should never be allowed to work in any position connected to young people, or even adults, ever again.

Clearly she has neither the ethics nor the judgment to be in any position of authority.

As for the police, one of the officers who sprayed students has been identified as Lt. John Pike.

There is another officer doing some spraying here, although I have yet to see this one identified.

Others are reported to have held students down while officers pepper sprayed their mouths.

In a day and age when teachers are subject to having their names and teacher data reports published in the newspapers as a way to hold them accountable for performance, I cannot see how the police officers who engage in these brutally repressive acts can remain nameless and faceless behind their THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK helmets and pepper spray fire extinguishers.

And yet, other than the this instance with Lt. Pike and a few other instances, so far they have.

Even in cases where they have been identified, as in the case of Tony Bolonga in NYC, there has been little to no punishment of the police brutality.

Bologna, for instance, lost 10 vacation days and was transferred from Manhattan to Staten Island, where he lives.

Gee, how awful - now he has a shorter commute to work.

But these acts of police violence and state oppression are really adding up, as Garance Franke-Ruta details here in The Atlantic.

The pepper spraying of four women already corralled in orange netting on Broadway, the kettling of hundreds of protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge, the shooting of an Iraq war veteran in Oakland with rubber bullets that put him into a coma, the pepper spraying of an 84 year old woman, the pepper spraying of a pregnant woman, the brutal beatings administered at Zuccotti and the Wall Street area, the police brutality at UC Berkeley and now the atrocity at UC Davis.

This is the official response to the OWS protests.

It won't be long now before there is a Kent State-like atrocity wherein some sadistic police goon opens fire on protesters.

That is unfortunate, but you can see that it is coming.

The police brutality is getting worse with each of these incidents, not better.

They are not being held accountable AT ALL for any of this.

And as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out more than once, they are outfitted with paramilitary equipment, ostensibly to fight terrorism, that they're now itching to use against OWS protesters.

So it goes.

The shame of UC Davis.

The shame of a nation.

Welcome to 2011 America.

Beware the pepper spray, police batons, tear gas and orange netting.

Somebody From The City Smashed OWS Laptops With Bats

This is what some of the laptops the NYPD confiscated from OWS protesters last Tuesday look like.

The mayor says OWS protesters can pick their stuff up at a Sanitation Department facility on West 57th Street up until Tuesday.

Gothamist reports what one protester who went to pick up some computer equipment found:

A reporter followed Isaac Wilder, a member of OWS' Signal Corps, which was charged with providing Wi-Fi in Zuccotti, as he entered the Sanitation building to collect his property taken in the raid: a backpack, a nine-foot tall tower containing wireless routers, and $5,000 in cash. No press are allowed in the building, and Wilder describes the mound of personal affects as "a large heap of damp, mangled, cat-piss smelling stuff." He finds all the broken computers, laid out in a row.

A Sanitation rep tells Motherboard that he's "not surprised" that the laptops are damaged, and neither are we considering that witnesses to the raid described the "crunching" sound of the contents of Zuccotti Park being dumped into truck beds. Wilder didn't end up finding any of his property; it appears to be lost along with the items from the library, medical tent, and other portions of the park that accrued two months worth of resources.

Such a nice respectful nighttime raid by the NYPD goons.

And thanks, Mr. Mayor, for saving their stuff.

See you in court, asshole.

This Is What Fascism Looks Like

Some Words Of Wisdom From Big Bird

The oligarchs declared victory against Occupy Wall Street this week.

With OWS raided out of their home at Zuccotti Park and with the corporate news media having turned Thursday's "Day of Action" into a "OWS Attacks the 99% and Keeps Them From Getting To Work", they think they've got this protest thing wrapped up solid.

The key is always to get the 99% back to fighting each rather than fighting the oligarchs.

And they're very busy doing that right now.

In some cases, they've been quite successful.

At least if you read the tabloids and watch the corporate news media.

But Juan Gonzalez has some words of wisdom on the movement:

They aren’t going anywhere.

During a long and turbulent day of street protests, the ragtag rebels of Occupy Wall Street served notice that their two-month-old movement against the nation’s big banks and corporations is now stronger than ever.

Sure, Mayor Bloomberg and the police arrested hundreds of them this week and evicted their tents and sleeping bags, their computers and their books, from Zuccotti Park.

But no one can stifle the burning belief among so many of these young people that America has lost its way — or that it is up to them to change things.

Critics who label them slovenly misfits, troublemakers and drug addicts, have not bothered to take the time to engage them.

Nor do those critics understand that social movements are never neat and tidy or easy to decipher — not at the beginning.

Even in the midst of an unprecedented police presence in lower Manhattan, with dozens of checkpoints set up and cops demanding IDs for anyone getting near the Financial District, new supporters of the protest kept finding their way to Zuccotti.

With more austerity measures to come, with the sovereign debt/banking crisis continuing to sweep through Europe and threatening to bring about real collapse of the financial system just four years after the last near collapse, with more layoffs looming and Social Security and Medicare cuts counted on as the solution to the country's economic problems, you can bet more people will find their way down to Zuccotti.

The NY Times reports today that one out of every three people are living below the poverty line or just barely above it.

That's 100 million people.

After a lost decade of flat wages and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the findings can be thought of as putting numbers to the bleak national mood — quantifying the expressions of unease erupting in protests and political swings. They convey levels of economic stress sharply felt but until now hard to measure.

The Census Bureau, which published the poverty data two weeks ago, produced the analysis of those with somewhat higher income at the request of The New York Times. The size of the near-poor population took even the bureau’s number crunchers by surprise.

“These numbers are higher than we anticipated,” said Trudi J. Renwick, the bureau’s chief poverty statistician. “There are more people struggling than the official numbers show.”

Bloomberg and Murdoch and Zuckerman and and the rest of the oligarchs want you to go back to meekly obeying your corporate masters, running the machines and the offices more productively for less pay, taking on debts you'll never pay off to educate yourself, and buying, buying, buying the newest latest must have gadget and consumer trend with money you don't have so you can distract yourself from just how badly you're getting fucked by a system that threw you overboard thirty fucking years ago.

They think they can put the lid back on the unrest with force and lies and deception and distraction.

But these numbers don't lie and the despair in the country is real and that cannot be erased with lies and deception and distraction.

Even Big Bird knows where the problem lies.

FOX NEWS Lies About Subway Shutdowns

All day yesterday, students asked me if the OWS protesters were planning on shutting down subways.

No, I said to them, all that is happening is protesters are going to stand at some subway stops and tell their stories.

I kept checking the Internet to see what was going on as the day progressed and I kept seeing the same thing - no subway shutdowns, just mic checks and the like.

But the fear the kids had about not getting home grew all day.

Then an announcement was made that the DOE was saying protesters were trying to shut down the subways and there might be substantial delays getting home.

Again, I checked the Times and NY1 - no alerts about that.

In fact, at 3:42 PM, the Times City Blog reported that there were no subway shutdowns.

Yet by that time, the damage had been done - 1 million school kids and their parents had been told by the DOE and Chancellor Walcott that the dirty fucking hippies were trying to shut down the subways and wreck the evenings of millions of NYer's just trying to get home.

And whither did this misinformation come from about the OWS protesters trying to shut down the subways?

Why, FOX NEWS, of course.

And who dispersed that information late in the day even though they knew there were no news reports about subway shutdowns and even the NYPD was saying everything was fine?

Why, Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education, of course.

I went down to my local C/E stop to find half a dozen protesters on one side of the street, about 10 on the other. All were holding OWS signs, none were actively bothering people trying to get on the subway.

I asked a cop at the station if there were any delays on the trains.

He laughed and said, "No - it's very quiet down there right now. Not like downtown at all."

I headed down to Chambers Street and asked another officer if there were any slowdowns on the subways. He, too, shook his head and said no.

It took me 12 minutes to get from my stop to Chambers Street - a few minutes quicker than usual.

So much for the substantial subway delays.

But all those kids in the New York City schools and their parents know is, the chancellor said the dirty fucking hippies were trying to shut down the subway and keep them from getting home.

Despite the reality that OWS was not trying to do this, I wonder how many of those people have now turned against the movement?

One thing I don't wonder - if that was the intent of either the NYCDOE or FOX NEWS.

The answer to that is, of course it was.

Foley Square: Occupied

Bloomberg - The Face of Corporate Villainy

The villain Occupy Wall Street has been waiting for - Michael Bloomberg.

Many of us in public education have long known the evil that this man does, all in the name of "market efficiency" and corporate greed - from closing hundreds of public schools and reopening them as privatized charter schools to demonizing teachers to turning education into nothing more than one big test prep factory to slashing classroom budgets to the bone while paying corporate consultants hundreds of thousands of dollars each to overcharge the city for computer projects or commit out and out fraud.

It is good, however, that Bloomberg has shown his true colors to the rest of the world and has now become the face of the opposition to Occupy Wall Street - the villain this movement needs.

I can't think of a better villain to crystallize all that is wrong with modern America - the hypocrite Bloomberg who allowed crooks to steal $600 million in the City Time Project, $43 million in the Judith Hederman/FTA scandal at the NYCDOE, another $3.6 million to Willard Lanham in another DOE scandal, and wasted $363 million on the NYCAPS project, another $15.3 million on the Sanitation and FDNY GPS boondoggle, another $36 million on the NYCHA computer system nightmare, is spending $550 million on additional outside computer consulting contracts at the NYCDOE without any oversight, yet claimed he needed to lay off school aides making $10 an hour for fiscal prudence.

Nothing like handing out $180,000 a year to a crooked computer consultant while laying off a school aide making $10 an hour, is there?

Bloomberg is an evil, evil man with a greedy heart, a boundless ego and an empty soul.

Even the "philanthropy" this man engages in always comes with strings attached and the name/logo BLOOMBERG emblazoned on every charity dollar.

You can bet he wouldn't give a dime to anybody without that logo, BLOOMBERG, emblazoned across the check (and the contract) or without the strings attached.

And let us not forget how he used all the past philanthropy to call in the chips when he needed to overturn term limits.

We are the "little people" to him and he doesn't give a shit about us.

He is without shame, without a clue.

All he wants is power, all he wants is attention.

Well, he's getting attention now.

He is now the official face of modern corporate villainy in America for all of history.

Hey, Mike, you got your legacy.

Want To Get Governor Cuomo's Ear?

Hire a fucking lobbyist.

Otherwise he doesn't want to know from you.

Time to Occupy.

Occupy Wall Street Day of Action

"Day Of Action" Schedule

"Shut Down Wall Street" — 7:00 a.m.
Protesters will gather at Liberty Square to "confront Wall Street."

"Occupy The Subways" — 3:00 p.m.
Protesters will gather at subway stations across the five boroughs and rally on trains.

• Bronx
- Fordham Rd
- 3rd Ave, 138th Street
- 163rd and Southern Blvd
- 161st and River - Yankee Stadium

• Brooklyn
- Broadway Junction
- Borough Hall
- 301 Grove Street
- St Jose Patron Church,185 Suydam St, Bushwick

• Queens
- Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Ave.
- Jamaica Center/Parsons/Archer
- 92-10 Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights

• Manhattan
- 125th St. A,B,C,D
- Union Sq. ("Mass student strike")
- 23rd St and 8th Ave

• Staten Island
- St. George, Staten Island Ferry Terminal
- 479 Port Richmond Avenue, Port Richmond

"Take the Square" — 5:00 p.m.
"Tens of thousands" of protesters will gather at Foley Square.

Wasted Away In Cuomoville...

...Looking for my lost millionaire's tax...

Some people claim, government workers are to blamed...

But I know it's all the 1%'s fault...

And Cuomo's doing their work for them.

Nice to see the Occupy Albany pointing this out.

Time to Occupy Albany.

Time to Occupy the Capitol.