Occupy Black Friday actions planned in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Detroit

I’m torn on the concept of Buy Nothing Day. I love the idea of taking a day to remind ourselves that there’s more to life than blind consumption, but, at the same time, I sympathize with our small, locally owned retailers, who could really use the business. At any rate, I thought that I should mention that before sharing the following links, which pertain to the Black Friday actions scheduled to take place across SE Michigan tomorrow. I encourage you to participate enthusiastically… and then maybe go and spend a few dollars with one of the local businesses that doesn’t have people sleeping out in front of it, hoping to save a few dollars on this year’s “must have” Tickle Me Elmo variant.

Detroit: Two activities will be taking place on Friday. The first is scheduled to run from 9:00 AM until 12:00 PM. Participants are asked to meet in the parking lot of the Dearborn Kroger, at the intersection of Schaefer and Michigan Avenue. Plans will be finalized at that time, and people will then proceed to their chosen locations to, in the words of organizers, “help share awareness with the Metro Detroit Area.”

The second wave will kick off at 1:00 PM from the Kroger in Troy at 1237 Coolidge Highway.

According to the listing on Facebook, both of these events will be, “fun and friendly.” So, if you’re looking for opportunities to smash windows, you might want to look elsewhere.

The following clip, which contains more background on these actions, comes from the Huffington Post.

…More Occupy activism can be expected on the day following Thanksgiving. The Detroit chapter of Occupy the Hood, a wing of the Occupy Movement focused on people of color, is calling for a boycott on Black Friday, the biggest retal sales day of the year that traditionally launches the Christmas shopping season.

“Black Friday is one of the busiest, biggest days for corporations,” said Ife Johari Uhuru, a founder of Occupy the Hood who lives in Detroit.

Occupy the Hood’s request to refrain from shopping joins a long tradition of post-Thanksgiving activism. Adbusters, the magazine that originally called for the Occupy Wall Street protests, has been organizing Black Friday boycotts and pranks for 20 years. They are celebrating this year’s anniversary of the effort, which they call “Buy Nothing Day,” with a new campaign called “Occupy Christmas.”

Uhuru said Occupy the Hood wants to raise awareness about the Occupy movement and to encourage people to both work for social change and to rethink the ways they spend their money.

“We definitely do have economic power. We can’t always just complain only about the 1 percent,” Uhuru said. “When we protest corporations, they need to feel it — not just hear it.”

As part of the boycott, the group plans to visit a local mall. Although the event will mainly focus on educating people outside the shopping outlet with literature and signs, Uhuru said they may take things a step further.

“We may go into the mall and do a mic check,” she said….

Ann Arbor: The folks involved in Occupy Ann Arbor are planning a flash-mob at an as yet to be named big box store. Participants are asked to meet at 10:00 AM at the Veteran’s Park parking lot on Maple, across from Plum Market. From there, protesters will leave at 10:15 AM for their selected store. Ride shares, from what I’m told, will be available. The following comes from Facebook:

…The Action will also bring awareness to shopping local verses supporting major corporations that have not only harmed the economy, but also have poor treatment of their workers…

This will be fun, exciting, and impacting, not only for those who will have the pleasure of witnessing this, but also for those who are involved in the Action itself. It for sure will give people something to talk about.

It is very worthwhile to make sure not to do anything to irritate or inconvenience the employees; this will already be a difficult day for them and it is not their fault that their employer blows…

Ypsilanti: My friend Jeff and I, since downtown Ypsi doesn’t have big box retailers (yay!), will be strolling around with signs like we did a few weeks ago. If you would like to join us, we’d love to have you. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day, and, if it’s any anything like last time, we’ll have great fun talking about local community and waving to people as they honk and give us thumbs-up. We’ll be leaving from the water tower at 2:00 PM… A few more details can be found on the newly launched Occupy Ypsi site.

Here’s hoping no one gets pepper sprayed, and at least a few people are convinced to return home before heading into Target and further running up their credit cards.

[note:The quote at the top of the page comes from Adbusters.]

Posted in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Politics, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving again

I was going to write something new for Thanksgiving this year, but then it occurred to me that I could just reuse what I posted last year, and spend my morning cleaning the house and getting ready for the new baby that’s scheduled to join us any day now instead. (My hope is that, after several years of reposting the same thing, it will become a holiday classic, like the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special.)

So, here it is… Enjoy….

This Thanksgiving morning I’m tempted to get political and say that I’m thankful above all else for things like the fact that a majority of Americans still think of Sarah Palin as being unfit to serve as President, and that former U.S. House majority leader Tom DeLay was found guilty yesterday of money laundering. But, I’m trying to think less about politics today, and the swirling gyre of retardation that is the Tea Party, and focus instead on friends and family. I probably don’t say it here as often as I should, but I’m incredibly thankful for both. Without my family, I wouldn’t be here. And, without my friends, I wouldn’t be the person that am today… Sure, I might be a better, more successful and more productive version of myself without them, but I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. So, before I get started with this post, I’d just like to note that I’m incredibly thankful for everyone that I’m related to, from my grandmother in Kentucky, to my daughter, who is now in the other room, looking at our enormous turkey through the little glass porthole in the oven. There have been some bad times, and we’ve lost some people over the years, but, all in all, I’d say that we’ve been really fortunate as a family. As far as I know, all of us that are alive at the moment, are healthy, happy, employed and have roofs over our heads, which is quite an accomplishment in today’s world. As for friends, the same, for the most part, goes for them. A few are temporarily without partners or between jobs, but, as far as I know, the people in my friendship network (“tribe” sounded too new age) are doing pretty well, and I’m thankful for that. But, what I want to write about today are a few of the less obvious things that I’m thankful for – things that I don’t think I’ve ever shared with you before.

I’m thankful that my friends Dan and Matt, when they’d graduated from college, moved to Ann Arbor to live with me. If they hadn’t, I might never have had the misdirected encouragement I needed to start a band. And, if the three of us hadn’t formed a band, I probably wouldn’t have ever ventured into Ypsilanti, where I met my wife, Linette. There are others that played a role as well, like Ward Tomich, who booked us to play at Cross Street Station that fateful night. Without al of these folks, I’d likely be living in the forest today, sucking nutrients from moss-covered rocks.

I’m thankful for the car crash that my dad had in the late 60’s, which almost tore his arm from his body. If it hadn’t happened, my dad surely would shipped off to fight in Vietnam, with the other men that he’d been training with. Of the dozen or so men in his group, only two returned alive. I cannot imagine growing up without a father.

I’m thankful that my mother encouraged my father to apply for job at AT&T after he was released from the Navy. (He worked at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital after recovering from his accident.) He’d been working highway construction jobs when she talked him into applying for a position at a remote audio relay station of some kind near Monticello, Kentucky. He got that job, flipping switches and listening in on people’s private phone calls, and the rest is history. He steadily climbed up through the ranks, ending his career at the company headquarters in New Jersey – probably one of the few people without a college degree to do so. If this hadn’t happened, I would likely still be in the same small town in Kentucky today, instead of in the worldly sophisticated metropolis of Ypsilanti, Michigan.

While my parents never graduated from college, they did both attend classes as they could, which wasn’t easy with full-time jobs and two kids to raise. I remember pretty clearly my mom studying Spanish late at night at the kitchen table. And I remember them proof-reading class assignments for one another. It made an impression on me, and I’m forever thankful for it. It’ll probably make my mom cry to hear it, but I’m also thankful that they stopped taking me to church at a young age.

I’m thankful that my parents valued education enough to settle our family in a decent school district, instead of closer to where my father was going to be working. My dad, most days, left for work at 5:00 AM to catch the bus, and didn’t return until 7:00 PM or so at night. He did that for over a dozen years straight, and, because of that, I got to attend a great public school, where I met people like Dan and Matt – the guys I mentioned above who moved to Ann Arbor to make noise, drink $1 pitchers of beer, and publish zines with me.

Speaking of sacrifice, I’m also thankful that my distant relatives made the decision to come to America when they did. They did so without knowing if they’d ever see their homelands again. They left everything they knew in England, Sweden, Scotland, and Poland, in order to make a better life for their families. And, it’s because of their sacrifices that I’m here today, not having to work in the fields from sun up to sun down as they did.

Oh, and I’m thankful that, of all the mental illnesses in the world, I got OCD, which kind of has its up-side.

OK, there’a whole lot more I’d like to say, but that’ll have to be it for now, as the buzzer on the oven is ringing.

Happy holidays.

Posted in Mark's Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Newt Gingrich tells dirty OWS hippies to get jobs, take baths

I know that I should’t waste any more effort thinking about the candidacy of Newt Gingrich, as it’s doubtful that he’ll remain at the front of the Republican pack for much longer, but I found the following footage of Gingrich, appearing on-stage in Iowa, so offensive that I couldn’t just let it go without comment…

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And, here, for those of you who can’t bring yourselves to watch the vile Mr. Gignrich say the words himself, is a transcript:

NEWT: The Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park that they didn’t pay for, to go nearby to use bathrooms that they didn’t pay for, to beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for, to obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms, to sustain the park, so that they can self-righteously explain that they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything… That is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country, and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them, go get a job, right after you take a bath…

And I know that I’m just playing into Newt’s filthy, swollen hands by posting this. I know that this comment of his was intended to whip up the Republican base, in hopes that terrified white culture-warriors everywhere might start sending him the cash that he needs to mount a serious campaign in Iowa, in the weeks preceding the primary there. I know that he doesn’t stand a chance unless he starts to generate some buzz that translates to donations, but I can’t help myself. I feel compelled to share it, and push it that much farther into the gaping maw of the American electorate. Try as I might, I can’t just ignore this nonsense, secure in the knowledge that, like Bachmann, Perry and Cain before him, he’ll eventually be rotated out of the frontrunner position, as the Republican base moves on to court another candidate that they hope to like better than Romney. (One suspects that they’ll try a fictional character next, having already exhausted the limits of reality.)

But, as much as I know that this is just Newt’s turn in the spotlight, and that his candidacy will surely implode once people are reminded that he’s the same corrupt, draft-dodging, serial-cheater who handed one of his wives divorce papers as she lay in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery, I just can’t leave it alone. Hearing him speak is like downing a whole bottle of ipecac – I have no choice but to respond.

I get that he’s a conman who will say anything for a dollar, and that I shouldn’t let it bother me, but it kills me to know that this is the kind of person that Republicans want for our leader. (According to a new Quinnipiac survey of likely Republican voters, Gingrich leads the field with 26%, compared to Romney’s 22%.) The irony that the Tea Partying base of the Republican party, for all its talk of dislike for Washington insiders, would rally behind this man, who became a millionaire after leaving office by lobbying for the likes of Freddie Mac, is overwhelming. Of course, in his defense, Gingrich now claims that the reviled seller of mortgage-backed securities just paid him $300,000 to share his knowledge as a “historian” of the U.S. housing market. Can you believe that shit? Are Republicans really so stupid as to believe that Gingrich wasn’t lobbying for Freddie Mac? Is it conceivable that there are people in this world who would believe that this man was paid over a quarter of a million dollars to lecture on the history of housing?

Anyway, I wasn’t prepared to write anything more about Gingrich after sharing his quote yesterday about how we needed to relax child labor laws, but then this came up. It would have been one thing if he just underplayed the importance of the Occupy movement, and said that the people protesting in the streets weren’t representative of the American people at large, but he decided to go all the way back to the 60’s for his inspiration. It reminded me of when Ronald Reagan delivered his famous, ‘looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah,‘ line about the hippies. But, maybe that’s what he was going for. Maybe, when he said, “get a job, take a bath,” he did so with the belief that it would carry those in the audience back to a better, simpler time, when you could yell those kinds of things about hippies out your car window, and feel good about yourself. It was certainly less complex back then, and, as we live in a nation of people that detest complexity, it might well be a winning strategy.

There are countless reasons to detest Gingrich and this quote. It’s cold. It’s heartless. It’s cruel. It stings at a number of different levels. Most obviously, it suggests that there are plentiful jobs out there for the taking, and implies that, if someone can’t find gainful employment it probably has to do with personal hygiene. As we all know, though, that’s not the case. The gap between rich and poor in our country is growing wider, and the opportunities for one to “pull himself up by the bootstraps” through hard work and education are dwindling. Social mobility is stagnating, and wealth, and the power that comes along with it, is concentrating in the hands of a precious few. For Gingrich to paint this as the whining of lazy hippies, who just want to eat free food, and live in a park paid for by others, is not only insulting but factually inaccurate. This movement isn’t about hippies. It’s about the 84 year old grandmothers who are being pepper sprayed, and the retired cops being dragged away in handcuffs. It’s about the American people finally standing up and saying that they’ve had enough. And there’s no amount of lies that can cover that up.

And, here, on that note, is a photo unrelated to Gignrich that I’d like to share. I think it speaks to the scope of this movement, and the fact that, try as they might, our politicians are not going to be able to lie or triangulate their way around it.

The note held by Obama says the following.

“Mr. President: Over 4000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While banksters continue to destroy the economy with impunity. You must stop the assault on our 1st amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.”

Posted in Corporate Crime, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Michael Moore offers the Occupy movement his thoughts on a list of demands

Michael Moore spent this past weekend working with the men and women of Occupy Wall Street, helping them to craft a vision statement for the movement, and come up with a list of outcomes that they would like to see realized. Following are Moore’s thoughts on the subject.

This past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and goals of the movement. It was attended by 40+ people and the discussion was both inspiring and invigorating. Here is what we ended up proposing as the movement’s “vision statement” to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

We Envision: [1] a truly free, democratic, and just society; [2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus; [3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making; [4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others; [5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments; [6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few; [7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings; [8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible; [9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.

The next step will be to develop a specific list of goals and demands. As one of the millions of people who are participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, I would like to respectfully offer my suggestions of what we can all get behind now to wrestle the control of our country out of the hands of the 1% and place it squarely with the 99% majority.

Here is what I will propose to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

10 Things We Want
A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street
Submitted by Michael Moore

1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%).

2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries when that company is already making profits in America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to make more money.

3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about 0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make the rich pay what everyone else pays.

4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks.

5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who committed any crimes.

6. Reorder our nation’s spending priorities (including the ending of all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research that improves our lives..

7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers all Americans all of the time.

8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and gone by the end of this century.

9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at this idea because you think workers can’t run a successful company: Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the world’s leading manufacturing exporter.)

10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots.

b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This amendment should also state that the interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations.

c) A constitutional amendment that will act as a “second bill of rights” as proposed by President Frankin D. Roosevelt: that every American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old age.

Let me know what you think. Occupy Wall Street enjoys the support of millions. It is a movement that cannot be stopped. Become part of it by sharing your thoughts with me or online (at OccupyWallSt.org). Get involved in (or start!) your own local Occupy movement. Make some noise. You don’t have to pitch a tent in lower Manhattan to be an Occupier. You are one just by saying you are. This movement has no singular leader or spokesperson; every participant is a leader in their neighborhood, their school, their place of work. Each of you is a spokesperson to those whom you encounter. There are no dues to pay, no permission to seek in order to create an action.

We are but ten weeks old, yet we have already changed the national conversation. This is our moment, the one we’ve been hoping for, waiting for. If it’s going to happen it has to happen now. Don’t sit this one out. This is the real deal. This is it.

So, what do you think? Is he going far enough? Or, has he gone too far?

Posted in Civil Liberties, Corporate Crime, Other | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Rolling back the minimum wage and child labor laws in order to help the poor

Remember when, not too long ago, Michele Bachmann said, “If we took away the minimum wage—if conceivably it was gone—we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely“? Well, not one to be outdone, Newt Gingrich came out today, declaring that America’s child labor laws are, “truly stupid.” You know… those meddlesome laws that keep people younger than 14 out of our factories, where they could be realizing all of their dreams. Gingrich, in a speech at Harvard today, said that children in our poorest neighborhoods are “trapped in child laws” that keep them from earning the money they could use to change their situations, and make better lives for themselves. (Education might also be a route to that better life, but, if kids take that path, we wouldn’t get the “win-win” that comes with cheap labor.) Poor, inner-city children, in the opinion of Gingrich, it would seem, deserve the right to be in control of their own destinies (except when they’re pregnant, at which point the government should step in). And, how better to do that than working a few ten hour shifts a week in front of a deep frier at the age of 12?… At this rate, can an impassioned plea from Rick Perry concerning the reinstitution of slavery be far behind? After all, as we all know, blacks were better off back then.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 48 Comments

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