OCCUPY WALL STREET

[AtLast]

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/occup...ry?id=14691330

[Mr.Nobody]

[T4Texas]

Originally Posted by AtLastHome

http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...ayor-says.html

II have been thinking about how these deomstrations are not on college campuses but the financial centers and willbe much more disruptive. But, I don't see how the protestors can make their point any other way and finally be heard.

Banking is out of control. You have to fall into a very narrow window anymore to have a good credit score. I believe there is something fundamentally wrong with a banking system that will penalize you or even foreclose on you for paying your mortgage early or making your credit card payments on time and still giving you a bad credit rating. The banks have made a lot of bad investments over the years as shown by the numbers of bailouts. Now they are trying to squeeze their customers in order to recoup some of their losses. Credit is a vicious cycle. I filed bankruptcy in the 1980s and learned a valuable lesson about managing credit. Credit cards lure you in with high credit limits and low payments bringin on a debt you can never get paid. The fact that I could not manage credit caused me to go on a cash basis with everything and it truly simplified my life and probably saved me thousands of dollars in fees. Of course not everyone can do that. If you want a house or other big ticket items you need a credit score and you need a bank.
I believe that government, lobbyists, banking, pharmacuetical companies and insurance companies totally challenge our lives. All of them have their hands in each other's pockets and the ones who usually suffer for all this are the regular folks. All of these things have brought about the suppression of the average citizen. The government lies to us and tells us things are looking up, jobs are on the horizon, when no such thing is happening. They say unemployment is down . They play with the numbers, but fail to tell you that those numbers do not include people who are off the unemployment rolls because they have maxed out, but still have no jobs. These things are much worse than we think and as was previously mentioned, we ARE in a depression/recession, make no mistake about it. We have been for quite some time, but the middle and upper classes fail to acknowledge it because it had not affected their daily lives in such an adverse way. Now its in your backyard and the situation is different. I beleive that until the people of this country stand up and say they are finished with this, shake up their political representatives and DEMAND social and economic change, nothing is going to change and we will continue in the downward spiral that we are apparently already in. We also need to start from the top of the pile. Obama has given us a lot of empty words and a handshake.Remember this is an upcoming election year, and the president will be telling you everything you want to hear. CEOs sit quietly atop their empires, knowing that if the country revolts, they will lose their cushy (and undeserved) salaries. And lets not forget the media. Another subservient to politics. I mean honestly, the media reports on everything, even the last shark that washed up on the beach, but have you seen a lot of media coverage of the wall street protests? Makes me think someone is telling them to keep it low key. Opinions on that? We truly need to see more of the type of WAll Street action and not let it slip away from us. The French did have the right idea.

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

1. The Top 1 Percent of Americans Owns 40 Percent of the Nation’s Wealth
2. The Top 1 Percent of Americans Take Home 24 Percent of National Income
3. The Top 1 Percent Of Americans Own Half of the Country’s Stocks, Bonds and Mutual Funds
4. The Top 1 Percent Of Americans Have Only 5 Percent of the Nation’s Personal Debt
5. The Top 1 Percent are Taking In More of the Nation’s Income Than at Any Other Time Since the 1920s

Link:

http://www.alternet.org/economy/1526..._of_americans/

Thank you for this AtomicZombie!!!

I like how people often do not internalize the ramification of distribution of wealth as it occurs landlocked in the top 1% of those who earn this type of wealth. And that's just it: They didn't earn it all on their own merit.

I'll give everyone an example of what I am saying, in case it's not clear to others.

Let's take Steve Jobs.

People are deifying this man as if he accorded all his wealth on his own. Yes, he was a vehicle that changed technological use. Yes, his company Pixar produced stellar movies. Did he do that all on his own? No. I have a good friend, from years past (when I practiced hair in the Hawthorne dist of Portland) who drew, animated and provided the logisitical framework for the characters of that movie. Was he compensated for his tremendous talent? No. But Steve Jobs capitalized on it. I understand that many people revere this man for the landmark technology that revolutionized how users now communicate across the digital divide; and it's that particular division, fissure, in society and how people (Steve Jobs, in particular) have capitalized on it.


I know my statement is provocative by nature, but I have never cared for how Steve Jobs capitalized on social need (dare I say, dependency on technology) or failed to treat his collaborative business partners equitably, with what seems to me as an elitist mindset.

~D

[theoddz]

Gotta love Bernie Sanders!!!


and....


~Theo~

[Cin]

If luxury items are flying off the shelves and this isn't the first article I've read that talks about the hugely incredible amounts of money the wealthy are throwing around why do they need more tax cuts? It's like they are not even interested in toning down the spending in the interest of discretion; they prefer to flaunt it in our faces. After all what can we do about it anyway.
The time for allowing people to possess this kind of obscene wealth has passed.


$39,000 For a Backpack? Luxury Items Flying Off the Shelves

October 7, 2011 |

If you wanted to sum up what people mean when they toss around phrases like “class war” and “the 99 percent” and “WTF,” you might put it all down to this: $39,000 backpacks. Sold out.

It’s been four years since the entrepreneurial Olsen sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley, launched their luxury fashion line, the Row, and three months since they debuted their stylish and exorbitantly priced black crocodile bag. But it was the news this week that at the Paris launch of the handbag line, Ashley Olsen bragged that the backpack “was the first thing that sold off the shelf” that really took the let-them-eat-cake. Olsen added that luxury brands do well in hard times, noting that “During our last economic crisis in the U.S., the only thing that went up was Hermès,” before, in the words of Women’s Wear Daily, “returning to sip Champagne with guests including Michelle Harper and Christian Louboutin.” As a commenter on CNN observed of this news, “This is what’s wrong with America. The income inequality in this country is outrageous, we are well on our way to becoming a 3rd world country.” Or, as another more aptly expressed it, “That’s cray cray.”

Of course, it’s not as if piles of supple ostrich skin are flying off shelves like some end-of-days scene out of the Missoni for Target debacle. For perspective, it should be noted the New York Daily news reported last summer that a whopping two people had pre-ordered the bags. And back then, Barneys fashion director Amanda Brooks told Fashionista.com that “They truly are classic bags – and I think you also might be the only one who has it.” I happen to think that if you’re paying almost 40 G’s for something 7-year-olds usually carry their lunch to school in, it had better be unique. I also think it should come with the deed to a house in the Catskills inside of it.

The rich will always be with us. There will always be big diamond rings and oversize mansions and $10 million weddings and impossibly priced accessories. Times are not equally tough on everybody, and Ashley and Mary-Kate are not the ones responsible for this economic pickle we’re now in.

But it takes a special kind of out-of-touchness to boast, while sipping champagne, of selling out of an item that costs about as much as a year’s tuition at an Ivy League university. To blithely say, as Amanda Brooks has, that “If you were ever going to spend $39,000 on a bag, that’s the bag you should buy,” when the average American annual income is, coincidentally, $39,054.62. If you’re going to spend $39,000, you could also employ a person for a whole year! Wealth does not equal social obligation. And you can spend thousands on your purses and still be a decent, generous person. But these are not times for ostentatious displays of having, when far too many have not. And if you think the bag is so classic, you could always get it in the leather version. It’s only $3,900.

[AtLast]

http://www.racialicious.com/2011/10/...y-wall-street/


..SO REAL IT HURTS: Notes on Occupy Wall StreetBy Guest Contributor On October 3, 2011
Guest Contributor Manissa McCleave Maharawal, originally published on her Facebook page


I first went down to Occupy Wall Street last Sunday, almost a week after it had started. I didn’t go down before because I, like many of my other brown friends, were wary of what we had heard or just intuited that it was mostly a young white male scene. When I asked friends about it they said different things: that it was really white, that it was all people they didn’t know, that they weren’t sure what was going on. But after hearing about the arrests and police brutality on Saturday and after hearing that thousands of people had turned up for their march I decided I needed to see this thing for myself.

So I went down for the first time on Sunday September 25th with my friend Sam. At first we couldn’t even find Occupy Wall Street. We biked over the Brooklyn Bridge around noon on Sunday, dodging the tourists and then the cars on Chambers Street. We ended up at Ground Zero and I felt the deep sense of sadness that that place now gives me: sadness over how, what is now in essence, just a construction site changed the world so much for the worse. A deep sense of sadness for all the tourists taking pictures around this construction site that is now a testament to capitalism, imperialism, torture, oppression but what is also a place where many people died ten years ago.

Sam and I get off our bikes and walk them. We are looking for Liberty Plaza. We are looking for somewhere less alienating. For a moment we feel lost. We walk past the department store Century 21 and laugh about how discount shopping combined with a major tourist site means that at any moment someone will stop short in front of us and we will we bang our bikes against our thighs. A killer combination, that of tourists, discount shopping and the World Trade Center.

The landscape is strange. I notice that. We are in the shadow of half built buildings. They glitter and twist into the sky. But they also seem so naked: rust colored steel poking its way out their tops, their sides, their guts spilling out for all to see.

We get to Liberty Plaza and at first it is almost unassuming. We didn’t entirely know what to do. We wandered around. We made posters and laid them on the ground (our posters read: “We are all Troy Davis” “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “Tired of Racism” “Tired of Capitalism”)

And I didn’t know anyone down there. Not one person. And there were a lot of young white kids. But there weren’t only young white kids. There were older people, there were mothers with kids, and there were a lot more people of color than I expected, something that made me relieved. We sat on the stairs and watched everyone mill around us. There was the normal protest feeling of people moving around in different directions, not sure what to do with themselves, but within this there was also order: a food table, a library, a busy media area. There was order and disorder and organization and confusion, I watched as a man carefully changed each piece of his clothing folding each piece he took off and folding his shirt, his socks, his pants and placing them carefully under a tarp. I used the bathroom at the McDonalds up Broadway and there were two booths of people from the protest carrying out meetings, eating food from Liberty Plaza, sipping water out of water bottles, their laptops out. They seemed obvious yet also just part of the normal financial district hustle and bustle.

But even though at first I didn’t know what to do while I was at Liberty Plaza I stayed there for a few hours. I was generally impressed and energized by what I saw: people seemed to be taking care of each other. There seemed to be a general feeling of solidarity, good ways of communicating with each other, less disorganization than I expected and everyone was very very friendly. The whole thing was bizarre yes, the confused tourists not knowing what was going on, the police officers lining the perimeter, the mixture of young white kids with dredlocks, anarchist punks, mainstream looking college kids, but also the awesome black women who was organizing the food station, the older man who walked around with his peace sign stopping and talking to everyone, a young black man named Chris from New Jersey who told me he had been there all week and he was tired but that he had come not knowing anyone, had made friends and now he didn’t want to leave.

And when I left, walking my bike back through the streets of the financial district, fighting the crowds of tourists and men in suits, I felt something pulling me back to that space. It was that it felt like a space of possibility, a space of radical imagination. And it was energizing to feel like such a space existed.

And so I started telling my friends to go down there and check it out. I started telling people that it was a pretty awesome thing, that just having a space to have these conversations mattered, that it was more diverse than I expected. And I went back.
On Wednesday night I attended my first General Assembly. Seeing 300 people using consensus method was powerful. Knowing that a lot of people there had never been part of a consensus process and were learning about it for the first time was powerful. We consens-ed on using the money that was being donated to the movement for bail for the people who had been arrested. I was impressed that such a large group made a financial decision in a relatively painless way.

After the General Assembly that night there was both a Talent Show (“this is what a talent show looks like!”) on one side of the Plaza and an anti-patriarchy working group meeting (which became the safer-spaces working group) on the other. (In some ways the juxtaposition of both these events happening at once feels emblematic of one of the splits going on down there: talent shows across the square from anti-patriarchy meetings, an announcement for a zombie party right after an announcement about the killing of Troy Davis followed by an announcement that someone had lost their phone. Maybe this is how movements need to maintain themselves, through a recognition that political change is also fundamentally about everyday life and that everyday life needs to encompass all of this: there needs to be a space for a talent show, across from anti-patriarchy meetings, there needs to be a food table and medics, a library, everyone needs to stop for a second and look around for someone’s phone. That within this we will keep centrally talking about Troy Davis and how everyone is affected by a broken, racist, oppressive system. Maybe, maybe this is the way? )

I went to the anti-patriarchy meeting because even though I was impressed by the General Assembly and its process I also noticed that it was mostly white men who were in charge of the committees and making announcements and that I had only seen one women of color get up in front of everyone and talk. A lot was said at the anti-patriarchy meeting about in what ways the space of the occupation was a safe space and also not. Women talked about not feeling comfortable in the drum circle because of men dancing up on them and how to change this, about how to feel safe sleeping out in the open with a lot of men that they didn’t know, about not-assuming gender pronouns and asking people which pronouns they would prefer.

Here is the thing though: I’ve had these conversations before, I’m sure a lot of us in activist spaces have had these conversations before, the ones that we need to keep having about how to make sure everyone feels comfortable, how to not assume gender pronouns and gender roles. But there were plenty of people in this meeting who didn’t know what we were doing when we went around and asked for people’s names and preferred gender pronoun. A lot of people who looked taken aback by this. Who stumbled through it, but also who looked interested when we explained what we were doing. Who listened to the discussion and then joined the conversation about what to do to make sure that Occupy Wall Street felt like a space safe for everyone. Who said that they had similar experiences and were glad that we were talking about it.

This is important because I think this is what Occupy Wall Street is right now: less of a movement and more of a space. It is a space in which people who feel a similar frustration with the world as it is and as it has been, are coming together and thinking about ways to recreate this world. For some people this is the first time they have thought about how the world needs to be recreated. But some of us have been thinking about this for a while now. Does this mean that those of us who have been thinking about it for a while now should discredit this movement? No. It just means that there is a lot of learning going on down there and that there is a lot of teaching to be done.

On Thursday night I showed up at Occupy Wall Street with a bunch of other South Asians coming from a South Asians for Justice meeting. Sonny joked that he should have brought his dhol so we could enter like it was a baarat. When we got there they were passing around and reading a sheet of paper that had the Declaration of the Occupation of Wall Street on it. I had heard the “Declaration of the Occupation” read at the General Assembly the night before but I didn’t realize that it was going to be finalized as THE declaration of the movement right then and there. When I heard it the night before with Sonny we had looked at each other and noted that the line about “being one race, the human race, formally divided by race, class…” was a weird line, one that hit me in the stomach with its naivety and the way it made me feel alienated. But Sonny and I had shrugged it off as the ramblings of one of the many working groups at Occupy Wall Street.

But now we were realizing that this was actually a really important document and that it was going to be sent into the world and read by thousands of people. And that if we let it go into the world written the way it was then it would mean that people like me would shrug this movement off, it would stop people like me and my friends and my community from joining this movement, one that I already felt a part of. So this was urgent. This movement was about to send a document into the world about who and what it was that included a line that erased all power relations and decades of history of oppression. A line that would de-legitimize the movement, this would alienate me and people like me, this would not be able to be something I could get behind. And I was already behind it this movement and somehow I didn’t want to walk away from this. I couldn’t walk away from this.

And that night I was with people who also couldn’t walk away. Our amazing, impromptu, radical South Asian contingency, a contingency which stood out in that crowd for sure, did not back down. We did not back down when we were told the first time that Hena spoke that our concerns could be emailed and didn’t need to be dealt with then, we didn’t back down when we were told that again a second time and we didn’t back down when we were told that to “block” the declaration from going forward was a serious serious thing to do. When we threatened that this might mean leaving the movement, being willing to walk away. I knew it was a serious action to take, we all knew it was a serious action to take, and that is why we did it.

I have never blocked something before actually. And the only reason I was able to do so was because there were 5 of us standing there and because Hena had already put herself out there and started shouting “mic check” until they paid attention. And the only reason that I could in that moment was because I felt so urgently that this was something that needed to be said. There is something intense about speaking in front of hundreds of people, but there is something even more intense about speaking in front of hundreds of people with whom you feel aligned and you are saying something that they do not want to hear. And then it is even more intense when that crowd is repeating everything you say– which is the way the General Assemblies or any announcements at Occupy Wall Street work. But hearing yourself in an echo chamber means that you make sure your words mean something because they are being said back to you as you say them.

And so when we finally got everyone’s attention I carefully said what we felt was the problem: that we wanted a small change in language but that this change represented a larger ethical concern of ours. That to erase a history of oppression in this document was not something that we would be able to let happen. That we knew they had been working on this document for a week, that we appreciated the process and that it was in respect to this process that we wouldn’t be silenced. That we demanded a change in the language. And they accepted our change and we withdrew our block as long as the document was published with our change and they said “find us after and we will go through it” and then it was over and everyone was looking somewhere else. I stepped down from the ledge I was standing on and Sonny looked me in the eye and said “you did good” and I’ve never needed to hear that so much as then.

Which is how after the meeting ended we ended up finding the man who had written the document and telling him that he needed to take out the part about us all being “one race, the human race.” But its “scientifically true” he told us. He thought that maybe we were advocating for there being different races? No we needed to tell him about privilege and racism and oppression and how these things still existed, both in the world and someplace like Occupy Wall Street.

Let me tell you what it feels like to stand in front of a white man and explain privilege to him. It hurts. It makes you tired. Sometimes it makes you want to cry. Sometimes it is exhilarating. Every single time it is hard. Every single time I get angry that I have to do this, that this is my job, that this shouldn’t be my job. Every single time I am proud of myself that I’ve been able to say these things because I used to not be able to and because some days I just don’t want to.

This all has been said by many many strong women of color before me but every time, every single time these levels of power are confronted it I think it needs to be written about, talked about, gone through over and over again.

And this is the thing: that there in that circle, on that street-corner we did a crash course on racism, white privilege, structural racism, oppression. We did a course on history and the declaration of independence and colonialism and slavery. It was hard. It was real. It hurt. But people listened. We had to fight for it. I’m going to say that again: we had to fight for it. But it felt worth it. It felt worth it to sit down on the on a street corner in the Financial District at 11:30 pm on a Thursday night, after working all day long and argue for the changing of the first line of Occupy Wall Street’s official Declaration of the Occupation of New York City. It felt worth it not only because we got the line changed but also because while standing in a circle of 20, mostly white men, and explaining racism in front of them: carefully and slowly spelling out that I as a women of color experience the world way differently than the author of the Declaration, a white man, that this was not about him being personally racist but about relations of power, that he needed to, he urgently needed to listen and believe me about this, this moment felt like a victory for the movement on its own.

And this is the other thing. It was hard, and it was fucked up that we had to fight for it in the way we did but we did fight for it and we won. The line was changed, they listened, we sat down and re-wrote it and it has been published with our re-write. And when we walked away, I felt like something important had just happened, that we had just pushed a movement a little bit closer to the movement I would like to see– one that takes into account historical and current inequalities, oppressions, racisms, relations of power, one that doesn’t just recreate liberal white privilege but confronts it head on. And if I have to fight to make that happen I will. As long as my people are there standing next to me while I do that.

Later that night I biked home over the Brooklyn Bridge and I somehow felt like the world was, just maybe, at least in that moment, mine, as well as everyone dear to me and everyone who needed and wanted more from the world. I somehow felt like maybe the world could be all of ours.

Much love (and rage)

Manissa

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by T4Texas

Banking is out of control. You have to fall into a very narrow window anymore to have a good credit score. I believe there is something fundamentally wrong with a banking system that will penalize you or even foreclose on you for paying your mortgage early or making your credit card payments on time and still giving you a bad credit rating. The banks have made a lot of bad investments over the years as shown by the numbers of bailouts. Now they are trying to squeeze their customers in order to recoup some of their losses. Credit is a vicious cycle. I filed bankruptcy in the 1980s and learned a valuable lesson about managing credit. Credit cards lure you in with high credit limits and low payments bringin on a debt you can never get paid. The fact that I could not manage credit caused me to go on a cash basis with everything and it truly simplified my life and probably saved me thousands of dollars in fees. Of course not everyone can do that. If you want a house or other big ticket items you need a credit score and you need a bank.
I believe that government, lobbyists, banking, pharmacuetical companies and insurance companies totally challenge our lives. All of them have their hands in each other's pockets and the ones who usually suffer for all this are the regular folks. All of these things have brought about the suppression of the average citizen. The government lies to us and tells us things are looking up, jobs are on the horizon, when no such thing is happening. They say unemployment is down . They play with the numbers, but fail to tell you that those numbers do not include people who are off the unemployment rolls because they have maxed out, but still have no jobs. These things are much worse than we think and as was previously mentioned, we ARE in a depression/recession, make no mistake about it. We have been for quite some time, but the middle and upper classes fail to acknowledge it because it had not affected their daily lives in such an adverse way. Now its in your backyard and the situation is different. I beleive that until the people of this country stand up and say they are finished with this, shake up their political representatives and DEMAND social and economic change, nothing is going to change and we will continue in the downward spiral that we are apparently already in. We also need to start from the top of the pile. Obama has given us a lot of empty words and a handshake.Remember this is an upcoming election year, and the president will be telling you everything you want to hear. CEOs sit quietly atop their empires, knowing that if the country revolts, they will lose their cushy (and undeserved) salaries. And lets not forget the media. Another subservient to politics. I mean honestly, the media reports on everything, even the last shark that washed up on the beach, but have you seen a lot of media coverage of the wall street protests? Makes me think someone is telling them to keep it low key. Opinions on that? We truly need to see more of the type of WAll Street action and not let it slip away from us. The French did have the right idea.

We are in complete agreement- my comment is about this protest movement going to the "source." Sorry, my post wasn't clear- I was thinking that it could very well get attention in Congress because, unlike most of (not all) the
social protest movement in the 60's & 70's were on college and university campuses.

[Dominique]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1001539.html


"I'm tired of sticking my hand in my pocket and getting only my leg".....OMG ! I loved it.

[SoNotHer]

[QUOTE=Yellow band;433934]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1001539.html


Good stories in this, SB. Many are involved and getting involved and coming to it for different reasons.

[Dominique]

[quote=SoNotHer;433954]

Originally Posted by Yellow band

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1001539.html


Good stories in this, SB. Many are involved and getting involved and coming to it for different reasons.

Yes, there have been several articles posted today talking about how the crowds have changed. I'm anxious to hear from snow and weatherboi.

[JAGG]

Originally Posted by Yellow band

JAGG insists she has empathy, then posts something like this Corkey. I guess Katrina and all of those Elderly folks
stuck on top of their roofs, many of whom died. That was their fault. Poor choice, ya know.........

The reason for the stars is because corkey did exactly what I said someone would do. Take what I said and come up with some story that isn't even remotely related to the point I'm trying to make.

[JAGG]

Originally Posted by weatherboi

Most people in this country who are under water or are in foreclosure are so because of criminally over inflated market values, predatory mortgages and unethical credit card companies. All mostly directed by banks, mortgage companies, and their regulators. People were given the illusion that they were living within their means by people throwing misinformation in their faces about the state of our lands market values. I bought my house at peak market value in foreclosure. It is now worth less than that foreclosure price. That is under water and a bad investment on the banks part...not mine. I love my house but if I am overpaying for it what is the point??? The market may never bounce back to what it was. Many other fiscally responsible people have chosen to walk away because of this and I think about it too.

Sucks weathrboi. I know they are working on trying to set up some sort of lump sum rebate type thing, and maybe even a new loan for what the fair market value of your home actually is now. Some pretty powerful entities are involed in it too. So there is hope but congress and the senate would have to vote on it, so who knows. I'm sure you already know this, just in case you didn't.....

[Diva]

This past Thursday, I went to the Occupy Austin rally with my "pretty sign". (That's what a young woman called it.)

I didn't stay long.....I had never "protested" in my life and it was an odd sensation for me, but I will go back. I was sad that I had missed the march to the downtown Bank Of America, as my sign says "Bank of America: You have less money today....I just closed my account!" I'm sorry they missed that!

I have never been heckled before, but I was on Thursday ~ well not me individually, but You know what I mean. "GET A JOB!" I heard someone scream from their car. It was like a knife in my heart.

It's a sad day when a laid~off teacher inquires about another teaching job, only to hear from a school district, sorry, we're not hiring any music personnel for next year, don't bother to apply.

I'm one of the fortunate ones. I own my home. But I can't afford health insurance and some months, I have to juggle bills. I have 2 part~time jobs at this point, as well as my art.

All of that to say, I am really not complaining......I know ~ I KNOW! ~ I am one of the fortunate members of the 99%. But there are some months that are scarier than others.

EVERY situation is different. So until someone has walked in my shoes ............. or until **I** have walked in someone ELSE'S shoes........ it's best to do the very best I can and just friggin' keep out of the judgemental business. Compassion is a flower that is so often crushed under someone's foot.

I hope that made sense.

[Corkey]

Originally Posted by JAGG

The reason for the stars is because Corkey did exactly what I said someone would do. Take what I said and come up with some story that isn't even remotely related to the point I'm trying to make.

Had everything to do with your point, you used the analogy of a person and a hurricane, you just forgot that it was reality for many people, which my point proved.

[tapu]

So I talked to individuals today who were part of the 99%, or however they identified themselves, protest. The signs the group held were mainly directed at stripping the corporation of the legal fiction "personhood."

I got a pointer to this documentary:




I haven't watched this yet, but I remember from Linguistics classes that the metaphor "The corporation is a person" is what allows, for example, a corp to make certain contributions to a political candidate or issue, same as a person. Interesting stuff.

[Sachita]

Originally Posted by AtLastHome

For the life of me, I don't understand why banks don't do exactly what you are talking about- do whatever it takes to keep people in their homes. They are losing so much more in the long run with foreclosures that, many (not all) of which could be "re-tooled" and the bank could break even. So many of the people in foreclosure situations do whatever it takes to get back on track with a reduced house payment because they can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, they have to be re-employed, if the main reason they are in this situation is due to job loss, but many people do and will continue to take jobs at less pay in order to save their homes. Eventually, they most likely will either go back to the areas of prior employment or re-train to get ahead in an employment areas that show better promise of a future.

My main thoughts on this actually further than the foreclosure and to the cumulative effects of how seriously the great numbers of foreclosures impact so much more in an already weak economy.

If I had the "magic wand" of forecloserdom, it would be my choice to to put something together for mortgagees that in the end, helps stabilize our economy. In the long run, this stabilization is imperative.

Obviously, I am not an economist! However, there is such a domino-effect when one economic hardship triggers another and when such large numbers of people are having these difficulties at the same time.

actually banks have no choice then to restructure mortgages even for people who didnt qualify or make the deadline for Home Loan Modification programs. In the haze of everything my mortgage company who had just acquired my mortgage mine, after 6 months of screwing up my paperwork and deadlines, defaulted me and tried to get away with it. But luckily for me they record ALL conversations and I kept all documentation. To make a very long story short and threats to sue the fuck out of them they took 20K off my principal and restructured my loan at %5 bringing my payment down $$400.00 a month and this new payment included taxes and insurance! I was one of the lucky ones but that could have gotten away with it had I not fought back. Some people don't fight or understand how to go about it.

In some cases its better to walk away and many did,

[Dominique]

Originally Posted by Diva

SNIP/SNIP
I didn't stay long.....I had never "protested" in my life and it was an odd sensation for me, but I will go back. I was sad that I had missed the march to the downtown Bank Of America, as my sign says "Bank of America: You have less money today....I just closed my account!" I'm sorry they missed that! WAY TO GO DIVA, I HOPE MORE DO THE SAME!

It's a sad day when a laid~off teacher inquires about another teaching job, only to hear from a school district, sorry, we're not hiring any music personnel for next year, don't bother to apply. As my extreme sport type neighbor, heavily tattooed, year round cargo shorts and van shoes, and I have been painting lawn signs about cuts in education. He is very very disturbed about this. And HE will be at Pgh's version of OCCUPY WALL STREET with me. Anyhow, getting to the point. I was not aware that band was eliminated. BAND (?) Parents are keeping marching band alive by selling everything in the world to raise money, they have two students working on Master Degrees from local universities willing to teach for not much money but the costs are astronomical. It's been decades, I realize this, but BAND. That was a wonderful wonderful opportunity for us, in my high school days, and of course, stage band (concert band) is also gone and this will start all over for him and all of the other parents.
I don't know about you other folks, but BAND was where the fun was at all of the
High School events. Cutting band and Music straight across the board. What Next?

I am one of the fortunate members of the 99%. But there are some months that are scarier than others. You've worked Diva, too long, too hard, to be reduced to saying I'm fortunate to be one of the 99%
This is why it's imperative that we be heard. there are other ways to be heard, as have been listed in this thread. Start closing those accounts, write letters and tell the banks Kiss my ass. Start writing letters to the politicians, tell them you will not re elect them, you'll change parties....(eeeewww, that will get thier attention)

EVERY situation is different. So until someone has walked in my shoes ............. or until **I** have walked in someone ELSE'S shoes........ it's best to do the very best I can and just friggin' keep out of the judgemental business. Compassion is a flower that is so often crushed under someone's foot.

I hope that made sense.

Loud and clear! Thanks Diva, and thank you for *Trying* with your pretty sign, Occupy Wall Street.

[Dominique]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders


Enjoy!

[UofMfan]