Mayor Bloomberg Owes Occupy Wall Street An Apology - FDL [View all]

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Last edited Mon Nov 12, 2012, 08:14 PM - Edit history (1)

Mayor Bloomberg Owes OWS an Apology
By: Cynthia Kouril - FDL
Monday November 12, 2012 5:20 am

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Mayor Mike has a lot of egg on his face, so does Ray Kelly. Despite being derided, kettled, pepper sprayed, and generally treated like subhumans by the NYC government, Occupy Wall Street continues to rise above the pettiness that characterizes the behavior and assumptions of “various serious people.”

Continuing to think outside the box, OWS has two new initiatives: Occupy Sandy and Rolling Debt Jubilee.

Occupy Sandy

I live on the North Shore of Long Island, walking distance from the beach, in an area full of very old tall trees and very old overhead wires. Oh, and spotty cellphone coverage. I have been virtually incommunicado for the past couple weeks. No electricity, no internet, no landline phones, no TV, no voice over cellphone and very limited texting over cellphone.

What little information I had access to, came from the car radio, and it told a tale of stranded victims on Staten Island and the Long Island South Shore and Brooklyn, left unaided by the City. No police doing door-to-door searches for the trapped and stranded elderly or infirm, no social service agencies coming to their homes to make sure they had a meal, nadda.

So, OWS called upon its stupendous logistical skills and filled the void left by Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg holds daily press conferences, but for people with no access to mass communication, he was a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. Did it really take him 2 weeks to figure out that squad cars have speaker systems on them and could be deployed like sound trucks?

BTW, Con Ed, LIPA and PSE&G: Would it have killed you to hire some sound trucks to make announcements, since people without power or internet cannot use your hopeless websites?

I digress. OWS did what they do best, rallied compassionate people, started cooking meals and gave them away, just like at Liberty Plaza (it’s hard to get me to call it Zuccotti Park). They organized blankets and flashlights and charging stations (including the Green Peace solar truck and those cool Gilligan’s Island bicycle generators), just as they did at Liberty Plaza. They knocked on doors to ask the stranded residents what they needed. They sent out tweets for “needs of the occupiers” and supporters from all over the world sent supplies, just like at Liberty Plaza. They even improved on that with an Occupy Sandy “wedding registry” on Amazon that helps doors to ship supplies quickly and easily. Genius!

So complete is their logistical competence that they are now holding training for the National Guard troops who have been sent in to help and…wait for it…for the Mayor’s Office representatives. Considering how poorly they have been treated by this administration, they could have refused to aid the government efforts and played tit-for-tat, but their goal is to help by any means.

The press has always had trouble covering OWS because it doesn’t play into their preconceived notions and because there is no self promoting “face” of OWS. So, the story of this movement has been consistently misreported and under reported. OWS transcended the typical media narrative and has left the press behind, left the government behind, and focused on just getting the job done on the ground.

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Much More: http://my.firedoglake.com/cindykouril/2012/11/12/mayor-bloomberg-owes-ows-an-apology/