Sorting out the Differences between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party Movementnt

Matthew Desmond at Addicting Info has put together 15 differences between the Occupy Wall Street protests and the Tea Party movement.

1. Occupy Wall Street is a grassroots movement, funded by people around the world, without  corporate sponsorship.
The Tea Party is an AstroTurf  movement, receiving most of its funding from corporate sponsorship, and Fox News and its supporters.

2. Occupy Wall Street wants less corporate influence over our Government.
The Tea Party wants less Governmental influence over corporations.

3. Occupy Wall Street didn’t receive mainstream media coverage until several weeks after it began.
The Tea Party held rallies across the country sponsored by Fox News, and even small rallies with minimal turnout received attention from other media outlets.

4. Occupy Wall Street protesters are unarmed.
The Tea Party protesters openly carried a large variety of guns, including assault rifles.

5. Over 1,000 Occupy Wall Street Protesters have been arrested.
Zero Tea Party Protesters have been arrested.

6. Occupy Wall Street doesn’t endorse either political party.
The Tea Party actively endorsed the Republican Party.

7. Occupy Wall Street protests have sparked similar protests around the world.
The Tea Party protests were ridiculed around the world.

8. Occupy Wall Street protests have more than 50% approval from the general public.
The Tea Party protests peaked at 18% approval from the general public.

9. Occupy Wall Street protesters represent the poor, the disenfranchised, and the people who don’t feel like they have a voice in our Government.
The Tea Party protesters represented the wealthy, the elite, and the corporations who already have too much influence in our Government.

10. Occupy Wall Street doesn’t want politicians to co-opt their movement.
The Tea Party protests regularly featured speeches from conservative political figures like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

11. Occupy Wall Street protesters signs are spelled correctly.
Many Tea Party protest signs featured glaring spelling and grammatical errors.

12. Occupy Wall Street is supported by the youth in this country.
A majority of the Tea Party’s support came from middle-age citizens and people 65 and up.

13. Occupy Wall Street represents the 99% of Americans who aren’t millionaires and billionaires, and who don’t have a voice in our Government.
The Tea Party represents the wealthiest Americans, and wants the Government to stop trying to tax them.

14. Occupy Wall Street protesters are setting up camps across the country, to get attention from the media and to show that they’re serious.
The Tea Party went home as soon as their corporately sponsored rallies were over.

15. Occupy Wall Street has received endless criticism from the right-wing.
The Tea Party received endless and unconditional praise from the right-wing.

But Jon Stewart has summed up the differences between the Occupy Wall Street protests and the Tea Party movement in his own inimitable way. WATCH:

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They Remember...

...You should remember too! 
  ~  On Nov 6th...Remember, Don't Vote Republican

A Big Bad Bully

FREEdom Of Speech is a blog by Travon Free who is a stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. He wrote "An Open Letter To Newt Gingrich From A Black Kid Who Grew Up In A Poor Neighborhood" in response to Newt Gingrich's comments about the poor, the black and the kids. It is a must read.

Dear Newt Gingrich,

I recently saw you stand up in front of a group of people and allow some of the most idiotic, unfounded, racist, and ignorant words pass your lips that I’ve ever heard from a member of a group of the most unqualified presidential candidates America has ever seen.

To have the audacity to say that poor kids, and let’s be clear that’s republican speak for black and brown kids, “have no habits of working and nobody around them who works” is not only an insult to me as black man who grew up in one of those “really poor” neighborhoods you spoke of, but it’s an insult to my mother. And it’s an insult to many other black, brown and white children, adults, and hard working parents(often single parents) who get up every single day to try to provide a better life for their children in poor neighborhoods.

As a child who grew up in Compton in the early 90′s, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America at that time, I watched my mother work tirelessly, sometimes juggling multiple jobs to provide for myself and my sister. Day in and day out like many other parents in poor neighborhoods, she did what she had to do in order to provide for us. You know what that turned into Mr. Gingrich?

A son who received academic and athletic scholarship offers from three Ivy League schools and countless other universities, a son with a college degree in Criminal Justice who graduated with honors from every school he attended, and a daughter who not only attended a Gifted and Talented Education high school, but is one year away from completing a degree at UCLA.

This is not just the case for my family. I know I speak for many other hard working black, brown, and poor white families who have the same experiences in the poor neighborhoods you look down upon from your elitist 1% out of touch pedestal. To say that an entire community “literally has no habit of showing up on Monday” or “they have no habit of staying all day” I say that is a load of shit.

Millions of poor children watch their parents show up Monday and many of them sometimes have to suffer from the fact that their parents have to stay at work ALL DAY.

And lastly, you suggest that to remedy this “problem” as you so blindly see it is to make poor kids assistant janitors and pay them to clean the restrooms? Your solution is child labor. Degrading young children by suggesting they clean toilets while painting all union workers as lazy leeches. It’s a shame they don’t have the work ethic of hard working Americans like Kim Kardashian who worked so hard in her sex tape before we crowned her a role model for young girls and showered her with money and adoration or Paris Hilton who was forced to clean so many toilets as a teen to learn “work ethic” before her parents handed over the millions.

This not only echoes the depth of your ignorance, but just how truly unqualified you are to ever be president of this country. Your assumption that poor people have no ingrained work ethic and “have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal” is not only dangerously ignorant but it proves you have no connection with the true heart of this country.

I believe I speak for most if not all of “poor” America when I say Mr. Gingrich you have no habit of performing, thinking or speaking in a manner that warrants becoming the leader of the free world and the 45th president of these United States of America. You represent a party of greedy, selfish, out of touch, wealth protecting, non tax paying, destroyers of the middle class. You know nothing about us. But your words in your
speech in Des Moines told us everything about you.

Which is why I hope you win your party’s nomination. So that poor and impoverished families can at least experience four more years of a man working diligently to help them and the communities they call home that you have proven to know nothing about. president number 44.

PS. You look like someone poured mashed potatoes into a suit

[Update 12/14/11] This is for all the “how is that racist” and “he’s not talking about black people” comments. Click the link in the middle to watch the video(No Flash on WP blogs sucks.) Nobody does it better than Team Stewart.

[Update 12/13/11] First and foremost, thank you all who have read, shared, and commented on this post. I try to respond as often as I can and as soon as I see the comments but cant get to them all due to time spent working on other projects. As a note to future commentators in defense of Newt, please read my response comments below. I also want to acknowledge that I am well aware of the excessive amount of poor white Americans(I mentioned above) and I support your struggle and triumph just as aggressively as that of my own community. However, the reason the letter has a more black/brown focus is because this was a product of directly defending my mother who is a black woman and I grew up around black and brown poor people. Thank you so much for reading!!

Also, the mashed potatoes line is only a joke. I am a stand up comic and I leave a little humor in everything I touch. Consider it a little mental palate cleanser to remove the dirty taste of Newt in your minds!

Newt is nothing but a bully pretending he is your friend.

'Tis the Season for Bickering

There are some on the cable news show who have decided and perceive that there is another war that needs to be fought. It is a war that all Christian Americans must fight against those who are infidels. In December, 2010, Jon Stewart addressed this very issue in:

Jon Stewart Lampoons The 'War On Christmas' - WATCH

Today, the fight against religion, that is Christianity, is still on the minds of those cable news guys and gals. Once again, Jon Stewart addresses the continuing 'War on Christmas' in 2011 with:

Tree Fighting Ceremony - War on Christmas - WATCH




And two days later, Bill O'Reilly fires back...and so did Jon Stewart in:

War on Christmas - Bill O'Reilly Fires Back - WATCH

Occupying Wall St.

An NYPD officer looks with scrutiny at the photographer taking his picture during the
Occupy Wall Street protests, 09/24/11. (photo: Peter Harris)

This is a protest against Corporate Greed. Have you heard about the "Occupy Wall Street protest?" Probably not. The mainstream media has had limited coverage this protest. Is this the start of a new social movement? Is this the start of a revolution? Is this the frustration of a society where the rich get richer, the poor and middle class get the shaft, the control of monetary policies are in the hands of large corporations, the politicians are being bought for the corporate good not the people's needs and the banks and money makers are the new Robber Barons?

A report from a front that may soon be shut down.

Before you read on, watch this: a video from the base camp of the #OccupyWallStreet protest that is now in its seventh day. It's called "Nobody Can Predict the Moment of Revolution." (The video was produced by Martyna Starosta and her friend Iva.)

Danny Schechter from Supported News reports that this is a 2011-style protest.

These are the faces of a wannabe revolution, more than a protest but not yet quite a major Movement. The spirit is infectious, perhaps because of the sincerity of the participants and their obvious commitment to their ideals.

Occupy Wall Street is more than a protest; it is as much an exercise in building a leaderless, bottom-up resistance community with a more democratic approach to challenging the system where everyone is encouraged to have a say.

But saying that also leads to a conflict between my emotional identification with the kids that have rallied in this small park/public space on Liberty Street to exercise some liberty, with a despairing analysis that wishes this enterprise well but harbors deep doubts about its staying power and impact.

This privately-owned park, devastated by debris on 9/11 and then rebuilt by a real estate magnate who named it after himself, is also a place that is under 24-hour surveillance from a hostile New York City Police Department which has put up a fence on one side of the park, brought down a spy tower from Times Square to track the participants from on high, and sprinkled infiltrators into the crowd.

By the time I left, late on Saturday afternoon, the police had arrested 70 people who had joined a march that went from Wall Street to Union Square, New York's traditional gathering place for political rallies for nearly l00 years.

You can watch it all on a live stream.

In many ways this is a 2011-style protest modeled after Tahrir Square in Cairo. It is non-violent, organized around what's called a "General Assembly" where the community meets daily to debate its political direction and discuss how it sees itself. There are no formal leaders or spokespeople, no written-down political agenda and no shared demands. They focus on using social media. Twitter is their megaphone.

They have no sound system. When participants want to make an announcement, they yell "Mic Check," which is repeated by the whole crowd. They also repeat the announcement a few words at a time so everyone can hear it.

This bottom-up anarchist sensibility and ideology conflicts with the mass mobilizations of old where an organization issues a call and a coalition of groups carries it out.

I ran into some of yesterday's movement leaders: Leslie Cagan, who ran United for Peace and Justice and organized the massive anti-Iraq War protests and marches in New York and Washington before and after. She was as intrigued as I was about this gathering of the committed. She found the focus a bit vague, but seemed willing to give it a chance to grow and learn by making its own mistakes.

Other 60s activists like Aron Kay, known as the "pie man" for all the famous and infamous people he pied in the face to protest their crimes and misdemeanors - including Andy Warhol for dining with the Shah of Iran - was also showing his solidarity by turning up and squatting in the park.

Lower Manhattan on a Saturday is usually a Mosque-less Mecca for tourists visiting Ground Zero, a crime scene if there ever was one. It is a symbol of a national failure to defend this country as well.

It's also the place where the 911 Truth Movement shares its findings weekly with visitors about what "really happened."

Just a few blocks away is another crime scene: Wall Street, which symbolizes an ongoing economic failure. In this past week, access has been limited and in this free country of ours protestors could not parade in front of the NY Stock Exchange, another privately-run financial institution. That led Yves Smith of the Naked Capitalism blog to opine, "I'm beginning to wonder whether the right to assemble is effectively dead in the US."

Many banks like Chase doubled their security forces and put up fences to protect themselves from the people the NY media have labeled "kids and aging hippies."

The panic in the exchange is mirrored in the insecurity in the streets where surveillance cameras, private police forces and NY cops defend the bastions of privilege.

The police went on the offensive Saturday with mass arrests of activists. Scott Galindez filed this report on Reader Supported News, "While the live feeds were up I witnessed a very powerful arrest of a law student whose parents were recently evicted from their home. He dropped to his knees and gave an impassioned plea for the American people to wake up! There are reports of police kettling protesters with a big orange net, at least five maced, and police using tasers."

There were also reports of the use of mace, tear gas and pepper spray which hit two old women. We are so used to these storm-trooper tactics that most expect them. There had been fewer arrests last week, although the police seem to now have identified key organizers and are singling them out.

On Saturday, police gave out a notice saying that it is now illegal to sleep in the park. They then put up a sign on a park wall. I watched a member of the police command, a "white shirt" named Timoney, march into the park and gruffly order the communications team that spends most of its time tweeting out the latest news to take down some large umbrellas the activists were using to protect their computers from rain.

The police consider these "structures" and prohibit them. Earlier in the week, they arrested people for using tarps to protect their gear. (They don't see the irony in that term given the way the TARP law bailed out the banksters.)

Many of the people in the park believe the end may be coming with the police eager to end what they see as a Woodstock on Wall Street, complete with topless teens and long-haired militants. This assemblage clearly affects their macho Identity as upholders of law and order as they define it. The probably agree with the right-wing Red State website that calls the protesters a "menagerie."

I wouldn't rule out mass arrests once a provocation, theirs or the protesters', provides the pretext.

Will the Occupy Wall Street collectives be able to continue to occupy a zone that has been occupied for years by the greedsters of the finance world?

More importantly, will the issues they are trying to draw attention to, however symbolically, be taken up by others?

Will it take more cracked heads, or even a police killing, to move New Yorkers to support a campaign to rein in Wall Street?

Where are the unions and New York's progressive democrats and organizations? Why aren't they in the streets?

Why don't they realize that economic justice issues are essential to transforming this oligarch-driven country?

I have been calling for years for more protests on Wall Street to put the issues of Wall Street crime on the agenda. But with media barely covering this "occupation," with the activists being denigrated for their youth and inexperience, will this one have the impact I was hoping for?

It seems unlikely.

The reality is that the so-called "grass-roots" movement of the Tea Party was actually a well organized corporate funded operation which began with Anti-Tax Tea Party rallies in many states across this country on April 15, 2009. It's message of no more taxes was identifiable to numerous people. There was a cohesive message and a united front that was picked up by the media. The NYC protest, although extremely important, is disheveled in organization. It has no visible leader. It has no cute tag lines. It has little momentum. It's message is against the influence of corporate money in politics. This protest is not picking up people momentum.

The Wall St. Journal observed that "Wall Street has survived much worse than some ragged protesters trying to occupy it."

CNN Money stated that "Occupy Wall Street is a "leaderless resistance movement" spearheaded by activist magazine Adbusters. Organizers want people to swarm into lower Manhattan on September 17 and set up camp for two months, then "incessantly repeat one simple demand."

On the other hand, Allison Kilkenny of The Nation is extremely critical of a New York Times article about the protest in her article, "Correcting the Abysmal 'New York Times' Coverage of Occupy Wall Street." Kilkenny criticizes the depiction of the protestors as "scatterbrained, sometimes borderline psychotic transients" while not reporting the "more serious aspect of the protest—the “scores of arrests” that occurred and the fact that protestors were maced.

Michael Moore on Keith Olbermann acknowledging that people across this nation need to go out and protest. He suggested that people all over the country need to bring the Occupy Wall Street movement to their communities. WATCH:

A man interviewed in the Olbermann video, stated the obvious: "This is a difficult story to tell...and that it's still an unfolding story. And, I think, until there is a compelling narrative of why people have decided to peacefully occupy Zuccotti Park, I think it is very hard to communicate that story to everyone else., I think it is very hard to communicate that story to everyone else."

Is it Funny or Pathetic?

A lack of empathy and aversion to facts were shared by of the eight Republican Party candidates and the audience attending the recent GOP Presidential debates. Cheers for the death penalty, executions and the death of a hypothetical uninsured man in recent debates have stunned liberals and left them wondering whether there are any moderate Republicans remaining in the GOP.

Bill Maher enlisted the help of Keith Olbermann to "try to use facts to get through to a "typical GOP voter" who was, in fact, sitting in a plastic bubble." WATCH:

Chicken Little, The Sky is Falling

"Chicken Little" is folktale about a chicken who believes the sky is falling when an acorn falls on his head. There are many versions of the tale but basically Chicken Little, a not too bright chick, retells his story to the other animals including Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey, Cocky Lockey and Ducky Lucky. One of the animals, Foxy Loxy, takes advantage of the hysteria and reinforces the erroneous message that the world is coming to an end. Of course the beliefs that caused the hysteria were based on supposition and ignorance which led to fear and hysteria. Which brings us to FOX News and the messages they repeat.

The Fox and Friends crew spent yesterday morning working tirelessly to reveal the anti-American cultural agenda of the Obama administration. After re-hashing President Obama’s mythical war on Easter, hosts Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and David Briggs set their sites on one of Obama’s most devious allies: Nickelodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants.

In July, the Department of Education invited children from Washington, DC to its “Let’s Read! Let’s Move!” series in which they were “treated to free books” including one from Nickelodeon’s “The Big Green Help” series entitled “Spongebob Goes Green! An Earth-Friendly Adventure.” Carlson saw fit to point out that the books “blamed man for global warming, but they did not tell kids that that is actually a disputed fact. Oops!” Doocy determined, “Clearly, Nickelodeon is pushing a global warming agenda”:

DOOCY: The Department of Education invited a bunch of DC kids in and they had this festivity andthey handed out these particular Nickelodeon books where clearly Nickelodeon is pushing a global warming agenda. While there’s no disputing the fact that the Earth is getting a little warmer, the big question is is it man-made or is it just one of those gigantic, climactic phases we’re going – for a while we’re cold then we get warmer and then we get colder, warmer, which one is it? There’s science on both sides, there a lot of scientists who say it’s this, others who say its that.

BRIGGS: Right. It’s unproven science and again, this is public education system that we all pay our tax dollars for. And the Spongebob book says that its a man-made problem that requires human intervention.

DOOCY: Right, they’re presenting it as fact.

Watch it, courtesy of Media Matters:

The moral of the Chicken Little story depends on version of the story. Where the ending is happy, the moral is not to be a 'Chicken' but to have courage. Where the ending is not positive, the moral is not to believe everything you are told.

The 1943 version of the Chicken Little story by Walt Disney shows Foxy Loxy as cunning villain who uses psychological tactics to control Chicken Little and change the minds of the other animals to his advantage. WATCH:

The moral of the story: Is it FOX News or the FOXY LOXY Show with Doocy Loocy and Briggs P...??