I love people almost as much as I love unicorns.
Which is a lot.
Posts tagged: ows
The statistics on student loan debt are really, really bad.
But they’re nowhere near as bad as this widely circulated (guilty!) chart makes it out to be:
Fact-check your charts, people.
(from here)
One of Occupy Seattle’s outspoken activists who blogs under the name Ian Awesome has a post up this afternoon about the pregnant woman who was hit in last Tuesday’s pepper spray attack by Seattle police:
On the 20th, Jeniffer Fox received news that she has miscarried, and alleges the miscarriage is due to the injuries she received during the police action on the 15th.
“It hurts. It’s upsetting. I was ready to have a kid, because my family was going to support me in taking care of the child. Her name was going to be Miracle.”
UPDATE: Jennifer Fox, 19, spoke to The Stranger at the Occupy Seattle encampment at Seattle Central Community College. Fox begins by saying that she was three months pregnant last Tuesday evening when she joined an Occupy Seattle march that stopped at the intersection of 5th Avenue and Pine Street.
“I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” she says. “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.’” At that point, Fox continues, a Seattle police officer lifted his foot and it hit her in the stomach, and another officer pushed his bicycle into the crowd, again hitting Fox in the stomach. “Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut,” she says.
Fox asked for medical attention—the now-famous photo by Josh Trujillo of her being carried to the ambulance is here (click to the third photo)—and was rushed to Harborview Medical Center, she says, where doctors performed an ultrasound and said that they “didn’t see anything wrong with the baby at the time.” Fox says she had also seen a physician at Harborview for prenatal care about five week before.
“Everything was going okay until yesterday, when I started getting sick, cramps started, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” Fox says.
A friend called for an ambulance near the community college campus. (Fox says she has been camping with Occupy Seattle since it first began in Westlake Park. She is homeless and says, “I don’t have a place. This is the place I call home.”) When she arrived at Harborview at 11:00 a.m., she says, a doctor told her that “there was no heartbeat” from the baby. “They diagnosed that I was having a miscarriage. They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too.”
As for joining the protests, she says, “I was worried about it, but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know that a cop would murder a baby that’s not born yet… I am trying to get lawyers.”
I asked Fox if she had any medical records that confirm the miscarriage or that the clash with police officers caused it. She did not have copies but says she asked her case worker at Harboview to provide her with records (I’ll follow up if and when Fox provides those records). Harboview officials say they cannot provide any information, of course, except that medical records would mention those details. The Seattle Police Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.
THIS ISN’T FUCKING FUNNY
how the fuck do we get ahold of the Seattle PD? Does anyone have a number?
This woman deserves fucking justice! Fuck, she deserves her fucking child!
Contact: Ashley Mushnick 202-225-3001
Though several amendments aimed at overturning Citizens United have been introduced in recent weeks, Rep. Deutch’s OCCUPIED Amendment is the only proposal that:
- Makes clear that free speech and other constitutionally protected rights are those of natural persons and not corporations or entities formed to promote their business interests.
- Reaffirms that corporations are formed under the laws of Congress and the States and are thus subject to laws enacted to protect the environment, ensure public health, and other safeguards for the people.
- Overturns Citizens United by ending corporations’ ability to spend unlimited amounts of their general treasury funds in elections.
- Sets the stage for real campaign finance reform by reasserting the authority of Congress to regulate all election contributions and expenditures, including those of individuals and groups funneling money anonymously to influence elections.
The introduction of Congressman Deutch’s amendment was applauded by several public interest leaders dedicated to stopping corporations from buying elections to pad their profits
“[T]he same factors that rendered this police crackdown inevitable will also ensure that this protest movement endures: the roots of the anger are real, profound and impassioned. Just as American bombs ostensibly aimed at reducing Terrorism have the exact opposite effect — by fueling the anti-American sentiments that cause Terrorism in the first place — so, too, will excessive police force further fuel the Occupy movement. Nothing highlights the validity of the movement’s core grievances more than watching a piggish billionaire Wall Street Mayor — who bought and clung to his political power using his personal fortune — deploy force against marginalized citizens peacefully and lawfully protesting joblessness, foreclosures and economic suffering. If Michael Bloomberg didn’t exist, the Occupy protesters would have to invent him.”
By JEFFREY D. SACHS | nytimes.com
The first age of inequality was the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century, an era quite like today, when both political parties served the interests of the corporate robber barons. The progressive movement arose after the financial crisis of 1893. In the following decades Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson came to power, and the movement pushed through a remarkable era of reform: trust busting, federal income taxation, fair labor standards, the direct election of senators and women’s suffrage.
The second gilded age was the Roaring Twenties. The pro-business administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover once again opened up the floodgates of corruption and financial excess, this time culminating in the Great Depression. And once again the pendulum swung. F.D.R.’s New Deal marked the start of several decades of reducedincome inequality, strong trade unions, steep top tax rates and strict financial regulation. After 1981, Reagan began to dismantle each of these core features of the New Deal.
Following our recent financial calamity, a third progressive era is likely to be in the making. This one should aim for three things. The first is a revival of crucial public services, especially education, training, public investment and environmental protection. The second is the end of a climate of impunity that encouraged nearly every Wall Street firm to commit financial fraud. The third is to re-establish the supremacy of people votes over dollar votes in Washington.
Reading this made me realize that Americans, in general, have a very short memory and a very large lack of knowledge about our own history, including the variety of factors that lead to the exact type of situation we are in now, and the methods that were used to get out of said situations…
When you live in a nation and time when such a great amount of people believe it when a person with no qualifications tells them what date and time the world is going to end in rapture, it doesn’t come as a great shock that people aren’t particularly interested in the truth.
I haven’t seen a tweet this beautiful in a very long time.
A police officer steps on the head of a demonstrator affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement as another assists in arresting him Nov. 17, 2011, in New York.
(Credit: AP Photo)
If you have seen or know this man, he has attacked an innocent photographer. NYPD was informed multiple times of the attack but refused to act.
Demand he be brought to justice.
84-year-old Occupy Seattle participant Dorli Rainey, pictured above after being pepper sprayed by Seattle Police on November 15th.
She later wrote about the incident:
“Something funny happened on my way to a transportation meeting in Northgate. As I got off the bus at 3rd and Pine I heard helicopters above. Knowing that the problems of New York would certainly precipitate action by Occupy Seattle, I thought I better check it out. Especially since only yesterday the City Government made a grandiose gesture to protect free speech. Well free speech does have its limits as I found out as the cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd and simultaneously pepper sprayed the so captured protesters. If it had not been for my Hero (Iraq Vet Caleb) I would have been down on the ground and trampled. This is what democracy looks like. It certainly left an impression on the people who rode the No. 1 bus home with me. In the women’s movement there were signs which said: “Screw us and we multiply.’”
What a heroic woman, and a severely disappointing action by the Seattle Police.
