May162012
abokononist: occupyallstreets: NYPD Loses OWS Trail After Video Evidence Proved They Made False Arrests Hundreds have been arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests, but photographer Alexander Arbuckle’s case was the first to go to trial – and after just two days, the Manhattan Criminal Court found him not guilty. Arbuckle was arrested on New Year’s Day for allegedly blocking traffic during a protest march. He was charged with disorderly conduct, and his arresting officer testified under oath that he, along with the protesters, was standing in the street, despite frequent requests from the police to move to the sidewalk But things got a little embarrassing for the NYPD officer when the defense presented a video recording of the entire event, made by well-known journalist Tim Pool. Pool’s footage clearly shows Arbuckle, along with all the other protesters, standing on the sidewalk. In fact, the only people blocking traffic were the police officers themselves. His lawyers said the video proving that testimony false is what swayed the judge, and the verdict a clear indication that the NYPD was over-policing the protests. Read More Weird. WE SEE YOU

abokononist:

occupyallstreets:

NYPD Loses OWS Trail After Video Evidence Proved They Made False Arrests

Hundreds have been arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests, but photographer Alexander Arbuckle’s case was the first to go to trial – and after just two days, the Manhattan Criminal Court found him not guilty.

Arbuckle was arrested on New Year’s Day for allegedly blocking traffic during a protest march. He was charged with disorderly conduct, and his arresting officer testified under oath that he, along with the protesters, was standing in the street, despite frequent requests from the police to move to the sidewalk

But things got a little embarrassing for the NYPD officer when the defense presented a video recording of the entire event, made by well-known journalist Tim Pool.

Pool’s footage clearly shows Arbuckle, along with all the other protesters, standing on the sidewalk. In fact, the only people blocking traffic were the police officers themselves.

His lawyers said the video proving that testimony false is what swayed the judge, and the verdict a clear indication that the NYPD was over-policing the protests.

Read More

Weird.

WE SEE YOU

(via stfuconservatives)

technology may be our savior yet 

May142012
“Slowly I began to understand fully that there was no place in academe for folks from working-class backgrounds who did not wish to leave the past behind. That was the price of the ticket. Poor students would be welcome at the best institutions of higher learning only if they were willing to surrender memory, to forget the past and claim the assimilated present as the only worthwhile and meaningful reality.”

bell hooks (via wretchedoftheearth)

And if you don’t abide by this, you basically get the cold shoulder from academia. You have to fight to defend your work more than the average student because your perspective as a marginalized person is one that was meant for a study, a dissertation, or some other academic publication. It’s not so appealing when the subject of the study is giving you their perspective firsthand instead of having it pre-chewed and spoon-fed to you by someone who will never fully understand what you’ve been through because they’ve most likely never been there to begin with. 

(via sinidentidades)

(via stalebis)
April292012

Oh.

abellandapomegranate:

mappingindiana:

It’s springtime. Of course I am compelled to bloom.

Can’t stop the springtime any more than you can hold back the winter, hon.  Springtime asserts itself inexorably.

I know. You’re right. (you are always right about these things)

April242012
“So labor unions have by now been virtually wiped out in the United States, in part by a huge amount of business propaganda, running from cinema to almost everything, and through a lot of other techniques as well. But the whole process took a long time. I’m old enough to remember what the working class culture was like in the United States: there was still a high level of it when I was growing up in the late 1930s. It took a long time to beat it out of workers’ heads and turn them into passive tools; it took a long time to make people accept that this type of exploitation is the only alternative, so they’d better just forget about their rights and say, “Okay, I’m degraded.” Noam Chomsky (via arielnietzsche)

(via stfuconservatives)
April182012

Entmoot.: stfuconservatives: anticapitalist: libertarians-and-stoya:...

stfuconservatives:

anticapitalist:

libertarians-and-stoya:

anticapitalist:

blame the minimum wage laws

I agree.

If they were higher, the working class would have more disposable income that they could spend on buying things like guitars. Increased aggregate demand for guitars would cause greater employment at guitar center.

Instead, the shitty minimum wage law allows employers to pay workers stupidly low wages, so that the working class can’t buy any thing fun, and thus guitar center can’t hire very many people.

The problem with your argument is the fact that employers cannot supply those jobs at higher wages artificially.  Wages rise with time - employers do not have means to hire everyone at those higher wages.

They’re too busy paying themselves 375 times more than the average working class citizen. They could reduce their own pay to pay for more workers.

Unless there was some way to instantly grant employers the money to demand those jobs, they won’t be able to.

Employers already have the money, the monopoly on capital, and the support of the state. But they still need MORE before they stop exploiting people?

It’s like saying “Oh if you give a Mafia boss more guns then he’ll stop shooting people”. 

Employers don’t need more money or capital. They need to start paying their workers more, and they need to stop exploiting the shit out of the workers. 

Eliminating minimum wage and allowing employers to create sweatshops will increase employment, but the working class would still be fucked over.

“Wages rise with time”

Too true! CEO wages increased 27% in just ONE YEAR! Average worker pay increase in that time period? 2.1%. Oh. Hmmm. Seems like we’ve granted these people plenty of money to hire people at higher than the minimum wage. Tell me, wise Libertarians: how much do we have to pay CEOs before we can make a living wage?

-Jess

here are some good thoughts on capitalism (and some stupid thoughts on capitalism)

Erica is right, that is what these are.

It’s time for a semi-heartening story, kids. Y’all know I work at a bakery, yeah? The owner is the baker. She’s at that bakery something like eleven hours a day. It’s about a ten-person operation, counting every single employee and her. She’s a minority, and makes it a point to hire people (like me) who may well not be hired elsewhere. We are a tight, tight team.

She doesn’t pay herself. She does own her own home. I do not know the details of her financial situation, but I do know that she pays us as much as she can manage. Whatever profit comes from the bakery goes right back into the employees. Still, we are all making just barely over minimum wage.

I know how lucky I am, but I still work another job aside from the bakery in order to make ends meet. I have roommates and next to no expenses and still, this lady that pours everything into doing what she loves and taking care of the people that work for her— still, she can only give us so much.

This is the happiest possible outcome in the current system.

Which is really why we’re so upset.

(PS: General strike, May First. I’ll be at work, because my boss is not The Man we are opposed to. But most are.)

April162012

barackobama:

“Tonight, Senate Republicans voted to block the Buffett Rule, choosing once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few Americans at the expense of the middle class. The Buffett Rule is common sense. At a time when we have significant deficits to close and serious investments to make to strengthen our economy, we simply cannot afford to keep spending money on tax cuts that the wealthiest Americans don’t need and didn’t ask for. But it’s also about basic fairness—it’s just plain wrong that millions of middle-class Americans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than some millionaires and billionaires. One of the fundamental challenges of our time is building an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules. And I will continue to push Congress to take steps to not only restore economic security for the middle class and those trying to reach the middle class, but also to create an economy that’s built to last.”

——President Obama in a statement on today’s vote

Thanks Obama. I know you’re trying. I worry, though, about what you mean when you say “middle class.” I am not middle class. My friends are not middle class. My people are not middle class.

We are Poor. That has become a dirty word, these days, but it is true. And I hope that there is room for us in your America, us tired, us poor, our huddled masses. We got here and still we yearn to breathe the freedom we were promised. We shuffled in beside the natives and the lot of us fell short of the moon at which we aimed.

But I think

You’ve got the right idea

And I appreciate that.

7PM

a{topographical}study: a few nights back i went to a tattoo parlor

mappingindiana:

and i got a bullring. it is healing now, a staple hidden in the center of my face, and i feel it when i breathe. it hardly hurt; the piercer was a delight.

now, there is a history around bullrings. they are done for a purpose. a bullring is a device of control, a symbol of ownership, and it’s that way for livestock as well as for humans. a bullring is a device with which a very large, very strong animal may be led about safely and sweetly.

there is nobody standing at the end of my bullring but me. while now, these days, this current life, i am learning to lean on other people, i am also learning the strength in my own feet, my sharp hands and my bad knee. i am tired often; this job keeps me running and my diet sometimes suffers the surroundings. but i am learning. i am growing.

i have acquired funds with which to move forward, but first i wish to step back. soon i will visit my home in oklahoma and water my roots.

my mother has requested that i shave my goatee.

i will not.

This is me also. If I am to be whole, if the personal is political, then the things I face as a human are relevant to the things we all face as humans.

Also I am motherfucking thrilled with this bullring, you guys

April22012
“Extreme poverty is the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time and a fundamental contributing factor to 21st century terrorism and insurgency. I’ve discovered that it is controversial to make this claim, so don’t take my word for it. Brilliant people of our time have also made this connection, and are attempting to shake our generation from its slumber and catalyze global action in the fight against extreme poverty. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “You can never win a war against terror as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate — poverty, disease, ignorance.” Former U.S. Secretary of State General Colin Powell stated, “We can’t just stop with a single terrorist or a single terrorist organization; we have to go and root out the whole system. We have to go after poverty.” Linking Extreme Poverty and Global Terrorism  (via hobbitdragon)

(via hobbitdragon)
March282012
no but really guys

no but really guys

(Source: robrogers, via unoriginaljack)
March192012
sinidentidades: Trayvon Martin’s mother: Shooter ‘responding to the color of his skin’ The mother of a black Florida teen who was gunned down by a neighborhood watch vigilante in February blames the incident on racial profiling. Sabrina Fulton told NBC’s Matt Lauer on Monday that her son, Trayvon Martin, was only shot and killed by neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman because he was an African American. “He was reacting to the color of his skin,” Fulton explained. “[Martin] committed no crime. My son wasn’t doing anything but walking on the sidewalk. And I just don’t understand why this situation got out of control.” As head of neighborhood watch for The Retreat at Twin Lakes, Zimmerman had called police to report Martin as a suspicious person, but by the time the police arrived the young man was already dead. According to reports, police said Martin had been returning from a local store with Skittles and an iced tea. Zimmerman claimed he had been forced to use his 9mm handgun shoot Martin in self-defense. Tapes from 911 dispatchers later revealedthat Zimmerman had been told not to pursue Martin. While the teen did not have a criminal record, Zimmerman had been charged in 2005 with “resisting arrest with violence and battery on an officer.” Those charges were later reduced to simple battery, and a plea deal allowed him to carry a concealed weapon. A profile by The Miami Herald described Zimmerman as someone who was “fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.” He had called police at least 46 times since January 1, 2011. Attorney Ben Crump told Lauer that although Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law” makes it legal to use deadly force without first retreating, “Zimmerman has no legal recourse” in this case. “He was not at his home, he was on a sidewalk — a common area,” Crump explained. “Trayvon Martin was 70 feet from the back door. He was almost home. Zimmer got out of his car, did not listen to the police and chased this kid. You can’t chase somebody and then claim self defense. Trayvon Martin had a bag of Skittles, Matt. [Zimmerman] had a 9mm gun. He was almost 80 pounds more weight than Trayvon Martin.” “Everybody in America is asking, ‘When are they going to arrest Zimmerman for killing this kid in cold blood?’” he added. Today in American news

sinidentidades:

Trayvon Martin’s mother: Shooter ‘responding to the color of his skin’

The mother of a black Florida teen who was gunned down by a neighborhood watch vigilante in February blames the incident on racial profiling.

Sabrina Fulton told NBC’s Matt Lauer on Monday that her son, Trayvon Martin, was only shot and killed by neighborhood watch leader George Zimmerman because he was an African American.

“He was reacting to the color of his skin,” Fulton explained. “[Martin] committed no crime. My son wasn’t doing anything but walking on the sidewalk. And I just don’t understand why this situation got out of control.”

As head of neighborhood watch for The Retreat at Twin Lakes, Zimmerman had called police to report Martin as a suspicious person, but by the time the police arrived the young man was already dead.

According to reports, police said Martin had been returning from a local store with Skittles and an iced tea.

Zimmerman claimed he had been forced to use his 9mm handgun shoot Martin in self-defense.

Tapes from 911 dispatchers later revealedthat Zimmerman had been told not to pursue Martin. While the teen did not have a criminal record, Zimmerman had been charged in 2005 with “resisting arrest with violence and battery on an officer.” Those charges were later reduced to simple battery, and a plea deal allowed him to carry a concealed weapon.

A profile by The Miami Herald described Zimmerman as someone who was “fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.” He had called police at least 46 times since January 1, 2011.

Attorney Ben Crump told Lauer that although Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law” makes it legal to use deadly force without first retreating, “Zimmerman has no legal recourse” in this case.

“He was not at his home, he was on a sidewalk — a common area,” Crump explained. “Trayvon Martin was 70 feet from the back door. He was almost home. Zimmer got out of his car, did not listen to the police and chased this kid. You can’t chase somebody and then claim self defense. Trayvon Martin had a bag of Skittles, Matt. [Zimmerman] had a 9mm gun. He was almost 80 pounds more weight than Trayvon Martin.”

“Everybody in America is asking, ‘When are they going to arrest Zimmerman for killing this kid in cold blood?’” he added.

Today in American news

(via rodentistry)
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