Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Occupying the 1st Amendment

Cenk Uygur of Current TV's The Young Turks reports on the current state of freedom of speech and assembly in American plutocracy, with particular reference to New York City's billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Occupy Wall Street (Why Bloomberg Fights Occupy Wall Street YouTube date 11/15/2011):



Robert Reich characterizes the situation this way (Occupiers Occupied: The Hijacking of the First Amendment 11/15/2011)

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.
There appears to have been nationwide coordination in Monday's clearing of various Occupy sites across the country. Enough of the peasants grumbling about the 1%. RJ Eskow asks, State of Siege USA: Why Would They Want to Shut the #OWS Movement Down NOW? C&L 11/16/2011. He looks at how both Democrats and Republicans, despite being shaken by the success of Occupy's democratic moment, continue on the same march to austerity economics and immunity for the 1% from all responsibility for their deeds and misdeeds.

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1 comment:

Ed thurston said...

Right, just because people assembled on the streets doesn't have money and power don't mean that they don't have the right to express their beliefs and demand reform in the government. Not all the people assemble in the movement are anarchists and arrestables.