2011-09-30 Occupy Los Angeles on October 1st!

There was a spirited 3 hour meeting Thursday evening in Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles that was attended by about 200 activist to plan Occupy Los Angeles which will begin 10:00am Saturday morning, October 1st with a peaceful occupation at the Los Angeles City Hall. This was the latest in a series of planning General Assemblies that have been meeting in the park regularly at 7:00PM to plan the Los Angeles movement in solidarity with the Occupy Wall St. action against corporate greed and the many other occupations that are taking place around the world that also include Occupy Boston, Occupy Chicago, Occupy Denver and dozens of others right here in the United States. Minutes for the four previous GAs can be read here. The last pre-occupation General Assembly will take place at Pershing Sq. Friday, September 30th and all who are interested are invited to attend.

This is the official Occupy Los Angeles website. Look here for all kinds of info about the protest in LA. Staring Saturday morning you will be able to see streaming video of the protest at City Hall here also. You may follow Occupy Los Angeles on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and Delicious.

Like a preview of coming attractions, several hundred people showed up to "welcome" President Obama to Los Angeles on Monday and tell him what they thought. A General Assembly of Occupy LA took place after the rally.

VFP member mike chickey made this video OBAMA VISITS WEST HOLLYWOOD.

LA Activists Protest the Obama fundraisers outside the House of Blues, on the Sunset Strip and the Fig and Olive restaurant near Melrose in West Hollywood / Monday Sept. 26th 2011

Music: Talking Heads
"Burning Down the House (Live)" on: iTunes, AmazonMP3

For Your Information:

This is the Anonymous Operations website with lots of info and videos from Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Chicago among other things.

While Anonymous has come down from cyberspace to lead and support this struggle in the streets, they have continued to promote the struggle on the Internet as well. Yesterday they exposed the identity and history of the cop who sprayed pepper spray into the eyes of four women who were peacefully protesting on Wall Street:

The Anonymous activist collective today released personal information about a New York police officer who is believed to have sprayed pepper spray on women protesters on Wall Street.

The group released a phone number, addresses, names of relatives, and other personal data for a New York police officer that numerous Web sites identified as Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, as well as photos that appear to show him at the protest and a close-up of his badge.

Bologna was identified as the officer in a slow-motion video who sprayed pepper spray directly in the faces of a handful of women who had been penned in behind police netting at Wall Street protests on Saturday. The video shows no evidence of provocation on the part of the sequestered protesters.

Anonymous also release a statement about the incident:

"As we watched your officers kettle innocent women, we observed you barbarically pepper spray wildly into the group of kettled women. We were shocked and disgusted by your behavior. You know who the innocent women were, now they will have the chance to know who you are. Before you commit atrocities against innocent people, think twice. WE ARE WATCHING!!! Expect Us!"

This gave the NY Times something to report about Occupy Wall St.

On Tuesday, they did more than occupy Wall St, they cracked Wall St. cybersecurity and released personal data on Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein:

The document, posted to the Pastebin Web site, includes the CEO's age, recent addresses, details of litigation he has been involved in, as well as registration information for businesses, but no sensitive information such as financial data.

WLCentral has been building these events since March when it was called US Day of Rage. [USDOR]

One thing that Occupy Wall St. has already accomplished is showing the bankruptcy of the major media in the United States again. For the first week of the protest they have imposed a virtual news blackout on the protest. The best coverage has come from the foreign press, like this piece from the Guardian. Keith Olbermann slammed this media blackout on Countdown.

The MSM may be ignoring the Wall St. occupation but state security isn't. @anonymousIRC tweets "FBI surveillance of OWS run from 26 Federal Plaza, overseen by courts at 500 Pearl St, with detention cells at 150 Park Row."

Glenn Greenwald has a great article in Wednesday's Salon:

What's behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?

It's unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street. Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists. That's just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges. As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it's going to provoke.

Also Wednesday, Politics and Computers reports that journalist John Farley was arrested after trying to interview protesters on Wall St:

The actions of the NYPD in policing the Occupy Wall Street protests have again been called into question, after journalist John Farley claimed he was arrested when he tried to talk to female protesters who had been maced.

In a Metro Focus post titled Observations of a jailed journalist, Farley recounts how he was arrested while trying to conduct the interview, despite wearing a ‘WNET – New York Public Media’ badge.

But the #OccupyEveryTownUSA movement is continuing to grow and gain traction in spite of the police repression and media blackout. MikeElk tweets "seems like tide is turning on prog support for #occupywallstreet a lot of progressive starting to speak up in support." and Michael Moore, who visited Occup Wall St. Monday night said:

"This is literally an uprising of people who have had it," Moore says. "It has already started to spread across the country in other cities. It will continue to spread. ... It will be tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people ... Their work ahead is not as difficult as other movements in the past ... The majority of Americans are really upset at Wall Street ... So you have already got an army of Americans who are just waiting for somebody to do something, and something has started."

Join us starting Saturday, October 1st @ Los Angeles City Hall. It has a nice lawn and we aim to make use of it!