View Full Version : Who's Behind the Wall Street Protests?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/13/us-wallstreet-protests-origins-idUSTRE79C1YN20111013
Reuters) - Anti-Wall Street protesters say the rich are getting richer while average Americans suffer, but the group that started it all may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men.
There has been much speculation over who is financing the disparate protest, which has spread to cities across America and lasted nearly four weeks. One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans. Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda.
Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street. Moreover, Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground.
"I can understand their sentiment," Soros told reporters last week at the United Nations about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, which are expected to spur solidarity marches globally on Saturday.
Pressed further for his views on the movement and the protesters, Soros refused to be drawn in. But conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh summed up the speculation when he told his listeners last week, "George Soros money is behind this."
Soros, 81, is No. 7 on the Forbes 400 list with a fortune of $22 billion, which has ballooned in recent years as he deftly responded to financial market turmoil. He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies.
Like the protesters, Soros is no fan of the 2008 bank bailouts and subsequent government purchase of the toxic sub-prime mortgage assets they amassed in the property bubble.
The protesters say the Wall Street bank bailouts in 2008 left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from Washington. They contend that the richest 1 percent of Americans have amassed vast fortunes while being taxed at a lower rate than most people.
BANKING LIFE SUPPORT
Soros in 2009 wrote in an editorial that the purchase of toxic bank assets would, "provide artificial life support for the banks at considerable expense to the taxpayer."
He urged the Obama administration to take bolder action, either by recapitalizing or nationalizing the banks and forcing them to lend at attractive rates. His advice went unheeded.
The Hungarian-American was an early supporter of the 2008 election campaign of Barack Obama, who will seek a second term as president in the November, 2012, election. He has long backed liberal causes - the Open Society Institute, the foreign policy think tank Council on Foreign Relations and Human Rights Watch.
According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.
Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.
Aides to Soros say any connection is tenuous and that Soros has never heard of Adbusters. Soros himself declined comment.
The Vancouver-based group, which publishes a magazine and runs such campaigns as "Digital Detox Week" and "Buy Nothing Day," says it wants to "change the way corporations wield power" and its goal is "to topple existing power structures."
Snip
Paragrouper
10-13-2011, 10:51
He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies.
A $22 Billion stimulus plan that doesn't cost taxpayers money...cool!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/14/donny_deutsch_occupy_wall_street_needs_a_kent_stat e_moment.html
If this banter keeps up, we will be re-visiting Penn's Martial Law (http://professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22589&highlight=martial+law) topic.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/10/figures-nazi-party-throws-support-behind-occupy-wall-street-movement/
Peregrino
10-16-2011, 11:24
Soros gets richer by exploiting failure and instability. Of course he is (or his people are) involved. What's not to understand?
USANick7
10-18-2011, 12:11
http://culpeperrepublican.com/2011/10/17/tea-party-invades-dc-explicit/
You got to love it!
THe Hawk'll put a stop to these shenanigans. :)
Didn't know Bill Ayers had a brother.......the darkside runs deep in that family it does.
Former Weather Underground terrorist leader, and long time colleague of president Barack Obama, Bill Ayers is actively supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement, in his home town of Chicago – while his education activist brother Rick Ayers wants to see the movement extended to the nation’s schools.
In an October 16 interview with Chicago Sun-Times journalist Laura Washington, Bill Ayers described the” Occupy” movement as a “North American Spring,” akin to the “Arab Spring” still playing out in North Africa and the Middle East.
Said Ayers:
“These kinds of movements expand our consciousness of what’s possible…Every revolution seems impossible at the beginning, and after it happens, it was inevitable.”
Ayers’ support took a more practical form October 19, when the retired UIC professor led a “teach-in” with Occupy Chicago protesters on “ non-violent direct action” at the group’s HQ (in front of the Federal Reseve Bank at Jackson and LaSalle).
Ayers detailed the tactics and history of the Civil Rights movement, drawing analogies to the group before him. “You created power where there was none,” the famed agitator said.
Ayers spoke naturally to the crowd of 40, who sat in rapture, registering their approval by lifting silent fingers.
“It’s critical that you maintain your independence,” Ayers told the crowd – warning them not to be co-opted by labor unions or the Democrats. History, Ayers told the assembled activists, shows his preferred approach to political power. “Martin Luther King didn’t go begging for a meeting with Lyndon Johnson,” Ayers said. “Lyndon Johnson begged for a meeting with Martin Luther King.”
The protesters seem to have already followed Ayers’ advice. The group turned down Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposition for a meeting, demanding the misdemeanor charges from last Saturday’s arrest of more than 170 activists be dropped first.
Writing from San Francisco, Bill Ayer’s brother Rick, a Professor in Teacher Education at the University of San Francisco, has called for the “Occupy” movement to reach into America’s schools.
Rick Ayers, an activist in his own right and a long time collaborator with his brother Bill in the Rethinking Schools movement, wants to see the OWS tactics “applied to schools”.
Writing in the Huffington Post, Rick Ayers praised OWS for its militancy:
“Occupy wall Street is action. We have had talk, talk, talk for years, decades even. The right — the think tanks, big media outlets, politicians, foundations — thunders its dogma on a regular basis. The left – community organizers, unions, educators, activists — refute their arguments, though with a much smaller voice and very few dollars. But it has all just been a conversation.
Now action obliterates the deadlock. Whatever we have been waiting for — Obama, common sense, karma — we realized it was never coming to help us and it is time for action. Action creates facts, and facts are essential — they create possibilities and new words, fresh vocabularies. The silenced majority, the 99%, has finally been pushed so far that it is pushing back. Every movement is improbable until it happens; after the fact it so clearly was inevitable.”
Rick Ayers went on to say:
The same type of bold action could be applied to schools. The privatizers, those who would strip down our schools to being test-prep factories training only for compliance and passivity, have made their case with all the volume that billions of dollars can buy…
But so far it has only been a conversation. It does not matter if we defeat their arguments over and over. They still have the purse strings, the foundations, and the big megaphone. The time has come for action. Take over these schools. Occupy them. Sit in. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We built these schools with our taxes, our labor, our commitment to students and communities. They are not just playthings for overfed business dilettantes. Instead of taking marching orders from Wall Street, we need to take these schools and make them institutions of liberation.
With students, community members, and teachers in these buildings, imagine the possibilities. Poetry workshop in one room; free clinic in another; science lab in a third. Food production. Critical pedagogy class. Strategy meetings. A kind of education that embraces deep meaning, knowledge for people’s needs, and participatory democracy. Watch these young people step up. In a liberated space, the bored and resistant students in the back of the room will be transformed. You will see them taking responsibility for their education, demonstrate their desire for ethical action, for sacrifice for the common good, and for a future they can believe in.
Can we do this? At one site? At a hundred? You can be certain that this is a discussion popping up all over the country. This is the kind of action that would trump the endless, and ultimately losing, debate we have been locked in over the past years. We can’t talk our way out of the problems in education. But we can act, together, because another world is possible.”
Is the “Occupy” movement a passing phase that will wither when the first blasts of winter hit Chicago and New York and Milwaukee? Or is this the beginning a much more significant, and dangerous period of US history?
The involvement of veteran activists like the Ayers brothers indicates that this is no mere passing explosion of youthful anarchist outrage. The “mature” left is backing OWS for a reason. They’ve been waiting for this for a long time. They knew it would come. After all, their Marxist creed tells them that revolution is inevitable. Its only a matter of time.
http://biggovernment.com/tloudon/2011/10/25/the-ayers-brothers-connection-coaching-occupychicago-calling-for-school-occcupations/
greenberetTFS
10-25-2011, 16:29
The big "O" is going to have a very real big time problem when this shit crashs and burns...........:mad:
Big Teddy :munchin
The big "O" is going to have a very real big time problem when this shit crashs and burns...........:mad:
Big Teddy :munchin
Maybe, but O is good at instigating and avoiding the repercussions. He also has the reigns of POWER, the DHS, the DOJ, the TSA, a Hit List for trouble makers, etc...
Just twenty or so years ago, Barack Obama wouldn’t just have supported the Occupy protests.
He would have organized them.
Occupy Chicago 1988 (http://biggovernment.com/jpollak/2011/10/25/barack-obama-led-occupychicago-circa-1988/)
Maybe, but O is good at instigating and avoiding the repercussions. He also has the reigns of POWER, the DHS, the DOJ, the TSA, a Hit List for trouble makers, etc...
Just twenty or so years ago, Barack Obama wouldn’t just have supported the Occupy protests.
He would have organized them.
Occupy Chicago 1988 (http://biggovernment.com/jpollak/2011/10/25/barack-obama-led-occupychicago-circa-1988/)
Good post. Sickening truth.
"Earlier this week, a protester at Occupy Wall Street proposed to his girlfriend. His exact words were, 'Will you occupy my parents' basement with me until I get a job?'" -Conan O'Brien
"Yesterday the CEO of Citigroup said that he can understand why all these Occupy Wall Street protesters are so frustrated. In fact, he felt so bad for them, he gave himself a $10 million sympathy bonus." –Jimmy Fallon
"I don't know what they are protesting at Occupy Wall Street but I'm on their side. But 10,000 protestors and one Porta Potty?" –David Letterman
"I love the protests. And if you think about it, what better way to send a message to Wall Street than by sitting in a pup tent banging on a drum." –David Letterman
"This Occupy Wall Street movement is now in 1,500 places all around the world. I was at the Occupy Beverly Hills today. It's two Jews at Starbucks complaining that the scones aren't fresh, but still it's a start." –Bill Maher
"Now there's a pushback movement (against Occupy Wall Street). There's a group called the 53%. These are the people who say 47% don't pay any federal taxes (yeah, because they're f**king broke). The 53% say they barely get by, but they don't blame the banks. Their slogan is, 'Let's bend over and take it, America!'" –Bill Maher
"There's so many protestors now they are going to move them out of the park and put them in a pothole. You know, that one over on 8th Avenue." –David Letterman
"The Occupy Wall Street protesters gathered outside Rupert Murdoch's house chanting, 'What do we want?' Murdoch interrupted saying, 'I already know, I hacked your phones.'" –Craig Ferguson
"The Occupy Wall Street protests continue to grow. They've started to attract a very unsavory element — celebrities." -Craig Ferguson
"The Occupy Wall Street protesters traveled around New York to stand outside the mansions of the most wealthy people in New York. Is that protesting or tourism?" –Jimmy Kimmel
"It's the 24th day of the Occupy Wall Street protests, also known as the largest homeless slumber party in the world." –Jimmy Kimmel
"Some protesters brought their kids to the demonstrations. Some of the kids got bored and decided to occupy Sesame Street instead." –Jimmy Kimmel
"Over 700 people who were part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations were arrested this past weekend in New York when they tried to block traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. Because there's nothing people on Wall Street hate more than not being able to get to Brooklyn." –Seth Meyers
"The 'Occupy Wall Street' movement has basically been a four-week downtown Manhattan live-in, which has spread to cities all around the country, causing the media to move its coverage dial from 'Blackout' to 'Circus.'" –Jon Stewart
"The Occupy Wall Street protests continued in New York City. Today the protests have been going on for four weeks now. That's longer than most NBC sitcoms last." –Jimmy Kimmel.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/president-obama-hollywood-meeting-253151
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/26/obama-to-announce-plan-to-reduce-student-loan-payments/
Baht Dog
10-26-2011, 07:32
Who's behind them? IMO, the same old crowd of Leftists, Marxists and their ilk that we have fought against - by proxy or otherwise - for decades.
Based on what "OWS" always has been, and is further devolving into… what with child molesters, perverts, foot sniffers, rapists, thieves, rioters, defecators and other worthless scum, serial trespassers and assaulter’s of Law Enforcement - yeah...the same old crowd of Leftists that has always had the goal of the destruction of Capitalism and imposing a USSA under Marxist rule.
"Share the wealth, misery and poverty". Yeah! The dictatorship of the Proletariat. But hey, it's the Stalinist way. Great for the select few inside the upper echelons of the political apparatchiki, and the life of impoverished Bolsheviks for the rest.
I'll take laissez-faire capitalism, American freedom, independence and exceptionalism.
Latest overnight news out of Berekley is OWS has already devolved into violence as predicted with multiple volleys of tear gas and running street “skirmishes” with the police.
Peruse the Left Wing blogs and there is all kinds of talk about how if Obama and his political machine loses the next election – the Left wants’ to have a violent revolution and overthrow of the government. LOL, if only…
IMO, this whole OWS thing is based on the fact that they know they are going to lose the next election and they are preparing and gearing up for mass riots and actually think they can make an Arab model work here to overthrow and then install their long dreamed about Marxist “ Utopia.
Just my two cents. Political opinions and mileage may vary.
Badger52
10-26-2011, 11:01
LINK (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/26/exclusive-acorn-playing-behind-scenes-role-in-occupy-movement/)
EXCLUSIVE: ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role in 'Occupy' Movement
By Jana Winter
Published October 26, 2011 | FoxNews.com
The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com.
The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.
NYCC’s connection to ACORN isn’t a tenuous one: It works from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, uses old ACORN office stationery, employs much of the old ACORN staff and, according to several sources, engages in some of the old organization’s controversial techniques to raise money, interest and awareness for the protests.
Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities – paying some of them $100 a day - to attend and support Occupy Wall Street. Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said.
At least some of those hired are being used as door-to-door canvassers to collect money that’s used to support the protests.
Sources said cash donations collected by NYCC on behalf of some unions and various causes are being pooled and spent on Occupy Wall Street. The money is used to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses for the ex-ACORN members brought to New York for the protests.
In one such case, sources said, NYCC staff members collected cash donations for what they were told was a United Federation of Teachers fundraising drive, but the money was diverted to the protests.
Sources who participated in the teachers union campaign said NYCC supervisors gave them the addresses of union members and told them to go knock on their doors and ask for contributions—and did not mention that the money would go toward Occupy Wall Street expenses. One source said the campaign raked in about $5,000.
Current staff members at NYCC told FoxNews.com the union fundraising drive was called off abruptly last week, and they were told NYCC should not have been raising money for the union at all.
Sources said staff members also collected door-to-door for NYCC’s PCB campaign — which aims to test schools for deadly toxins —but then pooled that money together with cash raised for the teachers union and other campaigns to fund Occupy Wall Street.
“We go to Freeport, Central Islip, Park Slope, everywhere, and we say we’re collecting money for PCBs testing in schools. But the money isn’t going to the campaign," one source said.
"It’s going to Occupy Wall Street, and we’re not using that money to get schools tested for deadly chemicals or to make their kids safer. It’s just going to the protests, and that’s just so terrible.”
A spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers told FoxNews.com, "The UFT is not involved in any NYCC fundraising on the PCB issue.”
Multiple sources said NYCC is also using cash donations through canvassing efforts in New York’s Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods for union-backed campaigns to fund the Wall Street protests.
“All the money collected from canvasses is pooled together back at the office, and everything we’ve been working on for the last year is going to the protests, against big banks and to pay people’s salaries—and those people on salary are, of course, being paid to go to the protests every day,” one NYCC staff member told FoxNews.com.
Those who contribute don't know the money is going to fund the protests, the source said.
“They give contributions because we say if they do we can fix things - whatever specific problem they’re having in their area, housing, schools, whatever ... then we spend the contributions paying staff to be at the protests all day, every day. That’s where these contributions - the community’s money – is going,” the source said.
“They’re doing the same stuff now that got ACORN in trouble to begin with. And yes, we’re still ACORN, there is a still a national ACORN.”
Another source, who said she was hired from a homeless shelter, said she was first sent to the protests before being deployed to Central Islip, Long Island, to canvass for a campaign against home foreclosures.
“I went to the protests every day for two weeks and made $10 an hour. They made me carry NYCC signs and big orange banners that say NYCC in white letters. About 50 others were hired around my time to go to the protests. We went to protests in and around Zuccotti Park, then to the big Times Square protest,” she said.
“But now they have me canvassing on Long Island for money, so I get the money and then the money is being used for Occupy Wall Street—to pay for all of it, for supplies, food, transportation, salaries, for everything ... all that money is going to pay for the protests downtown and that’s just messed up. It’s just wrong.”
Neither Kest, NYCC executive director, nor his communications director returned repeated email and telephone requests for comment, nor did his communications director. A Fox News producer who visited the Brooklyn office on Tuesday was told, "The best people to speak to who are involved with Occupy Wall Street aren't available."
In a phone interview on Tuesday, Harrison Schultz, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, said he knew nothing about NYCC’s involvement in the Occupy movement.
“Haven’t seen them, couldn’t tell you,” he said.
He said he couldn’t comment on the Occupy the Boardroom website’s relationship to the movement and to NYCC.
“It’s a horizontal organization, a leaderless organization, it’s difficult to explain it,” Schultz said, “difficult to explain it to people who haven’t worked in this, who haven’t been part of it.”
Kest publicly threw his organization’s support behind the movement in a Sept. 30 opinion piece on HuffingtonPost.com. But top ex-ACORN staff members and current NYCC officials have been planning events like the Occupy Wall Street protests since February, a source within the group told FoxNews.com.
That’s when planning began for May 12 protests against Chase bank foreclosures, which were followed by the formation of the Beyond May 12 campaign, targeting Wall Street and big banks. That campaign was rolled out by a coalition of community groups and unions and led by the revamped former ACORN group.
“What people don’t understand is that ACORN is behind this — and that this, what’s happening now, is all part of the May 12 and Beyond May 12 plans to go after the banks, Chase in particular,” a source said.
Sources said NYCC was a key player behind a series of recent Occupy Wall Street events, including the Oct. 11 Millionaires March, which brought protests and union and community groups on walking tours of Upper East Side homes of wealthy New Yorkers; and the launch of the “Occupy the Boardroom” website, registered to Kest, which encouraged protesters to contact high-profile bankers, among others.
Fox News’ Shira Bush contributed reporting.