The March is On!!!

Archimedes once said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the world.” Today he would have pointed to our electric media and said, “I will stand on your eyes, your ears, your nerves, and your brain, and the world will move in any tempo or pattern I choose.” We have leased these “places to stand” to private corporations.

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964

I support the protesters in Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. Why? Because they are right? Yes, but more importantly because they are there. Because they have demanded the right to take a stand for what they believe in. The words they use are important.

"Money for Jobs"

"We are the 99%"

"No More Wall $treet Greed", etc.

But the actions are far more important. The right to assemble is being demanded. The right to free speech is being used, actively, with strength and compassion. Old Hippies and angry, Guy Fawkes mask wearing kids are joining in the streets of NYC to protest the fact that while 1% of us worry about profit margins, the other 99% are scared of not being able to feed our families, of living in a world where the near future could very well look like "RoboCop." A world where a few corporations run the world, a lucky few have jobs, and the government exists to facilitate smooth functioning of business models. A place where cops beat people with sticks, spray them with pepper spray and arrest grandmothers. Think I'm exaggerating? Well, I got two words for you. Open your fucking eyes! And then maybe take a look at yesterday's NY Times.

McLuhan spoke about "private corporations" taking over our "places to stand." In a city as corrupt of New York, where we are ruled, I mean, governed, by one of the Oldboys himself, where the name Bloomberg is itself synonymous with Trading and the Trading Floor technology (see the "Bloomberg Keyboard") where the mayor is someone who made his money serving Wall Street and now maintains his power by sucking up to Wall Street -- in this city, the home of Wall Street, is the escalating police violence really a surprise? The private corporations have taken the city over to the point where the only public space safe for the protesters, Zuccotti Park, is not owned by the city at all, but by the relatively small, Canadian company Brookfield Office Properties. Can you imagine these people camping overnight in Washington Square or Central Park? I can't. Bloomberg would have had them out of there so fast, it would have made our heads spin.

Zuccotti Park has become the Tiananman Square for a movement that is all about American greed, but, also, all about the core American values of Free Speech, Free Assembly and Free Press (the last one pointed out by its absence). The Owners are in control of the Press. A few private corporations have swallowed up an appalling majority of American news outlets. I don't have the figures in front of me, but I will add them when I have the time. I am going to write in the coming days about how the Mass Media is handling this event, now that it has become too big to contain and cover up.