HEY MONEYMAN

the crowd is outside. The past, the future and the now is outside. The teachers and cooks and the drop-outs too. Word on the street is they looking for you…

HEY MONEYMAN

they saying whats the score? And how much b lood have y ou spilled on the butcher shop ﬂoor? Those numbers keep running but what they running into? The crowd is outside and they asking of you…

HEY MONEYMAN MONEYMAN

the mayors’ on the phone. He says he wants to know if all those people went home. Those momma’ s and poppa’ s and students and cooks. Those teachers and preachers, one second I’ll look…

HEY MONEYMAN MONEYMAN

the tents are still up, the songs are still singing and the coffee’s in cups. The nights due to fall and the sun’s going down but its still a whole mess of good folks hanging round... They eyes are wide and their voices are loud. Its white and black and colorless pr oud. The signs are big and the smiles are bright. By heaven I reckon its gone be one hell of a night!

HEY MONEYMAN POOR MONEYMAN

you should slip out the back. Cuz the forces of greed are under attack. No bombs or bullets or rocks or guns. Just hashtag’ s and voices at the t ops of their lungs! And Moneyman Moneyman I wont need a ride. But if you need me… Yo u can ﬁnd me outside .

BY

WASALU

‘

LUPE

FIASCO

’

JACO

I

f there is one thing I know, it’s that the 1% loves a crisis.

When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish-list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the eco- nomic crisis, this is happening the world over . Tere is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99%. And that 99% is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.” Tat slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and ﬁnally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began . “Why are they protesting?” ask the baﬄed pundits on V. Mean- while, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.” Many people have drawn par- allels between Occupy Wall Street and the so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world atten- tion in Seattle in 1999. Tat was the last time a global, youth-led, decen- tralized movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been part of what we called “the movement of movements.” But there are important diﬀer- ences too. For instance, we chose summits as our targets: the World rade Organization, the Interna- tional Monetary Fund, the G8. Summits are transient by their nature, they only last a week. Tat made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disap- pear. And in the frenzy of hyper patriotism and militarism that fol- lowed the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely , at least in North America. Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a ﬁxed target. And you have put no end date on your presence here. Tis is wise. Only when you stay put can you grow roots. Tis is crucial. It is a fact of the information age that too many movements spring up like beauti- ful ﬂowers but quickly die oﬀ. It’s because they don’t have roots. And they don’t have long term plans for how they are going to sustain them- selves. So when storms come, they get washed away. Being horizontal and deeply democratic is wonderful. Tese principles are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead. I have great faith that this will happen. Something else this movement is doing right: You have commit- ted yourselves to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken windows and street ﬁghts it craves so desperately. And that tremendous disci pline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we just saw more of Wedn esday night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom. But the biggest diﬀerence a decade makes is that in 1999, we were taking on capitalism at the peak of a frenzied economic boom. Unemployment was low, stock port- folios were bulging. Te media was drunk on easy money. Back then it was all about start-ups, not shut downs. We point ed out that the deregu- lation behind the frenzy came at a price. It was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to envi- ronmental standards. Corporation s were becoming mor e powerful than governments and that was damag- ing to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries. en years later, it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. P eo- ple who got rich looting the pub- lic wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world. Te point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfet- tered greed has trashed the global economy . And it is trashing the nat- ural world as well. We are overﬁsh- ing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drill- ing, turning to the dirtiest forms

NEW YORK TURNS OUT TO OCCUPY WALL STREET:

Labor unions and student walkouts brought tens of thousands to Foley Square on Oct. 5. After dusk, crowds ﬁlled lower Manhattan around Zuccotti Park, re-named Liberty Square by the occupation. Despite high spirits among the protesters and no incidents of violence or vandalism, NYPD ofﬁcers arrested numerous people. Pepp er spray and batons were also deployed.

PHOTO: Jen Ross

T

he lords of ﬁnance in the skyscrapers surrounding Zuccotti Park, who toy with money and lives, who make the political class, the press, and the judiciary jump at their demands, who destroy the ecosystem for proﬁt and drain the U.S. reasury to gam- ble and speculate, took little notice at ﬁrst activists on the street below them three weeks ago. Te elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible. What signiﬁcance could a young woman named Ketchup, who worked in a Chicago theater cooperative and paid her bills as a waitress, have for the powerful? What could she and those in Zuc- cotti Park do to them? What threat can the weak pose to the strong? Tose who worship money believe their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million J.P. Morgan Chase gave last week to the New Yor k City Police Foundation, can buy them per- petual power and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace, blinded by their self- importance, impervious to human suﬀering, bloated from unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught the folly of hubris. Even now, three weeks later, the elites and their mouthpieces in the press continue to puzzle over what we want. Where is the list of demands? Why don’t they present us with speciﬁc goals? Why can’t they articulate what they need? Te goal to us is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word — REBELL ION. W e have not come to work within the system. We are not pleading with the Con- gress for electoral reform. We know electoral politics is a farce. We have found another way to be heard and exercise power. We have no faith in the political system or the two major political parties. And we know the corporate press will not amplify our voices which is why we have a press of our own. We know the economy serves the oligarchs. We know that to survive this protest we will have to build non-hierarchical communal systems that care for everyone. Tese are goals the power elite cannot comprehend. Tey cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. Te elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the cor- porate state is extinguished. It will not stop until the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tort ured in our blac k sites, stops. It will not stop until foreclo- sures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no lon- ger have to go into massive debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our rela- tionships with each other and the planet are radically reconﬁgured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in serious trouble. Tat is why they keep asking what the demands are. Tey don’t know what is happening. Tey are deaf, dumb and blind.

BY

CHRIS

HEDGES

THIS REBELLION WILL NOT STOP

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MONEYMAN

$$$$$

The Most Important Thing in the World

Continued on back page

AUTHOR

NAOMI KLEIN SPEAKS

TO THE

OCCUPIERS

o Te Sept. 17 Occupiers,

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

UNAFRAID:

Despite 700+ arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1, crowds surged in the following days. PHOTO: Adrian Kinloch