This is one of the best videos to capture the ethos of #OccupyWallStreet. Bravo to Alex Mallis and Lily Henderson for telling a very simple and clear story about the people braving the weather to create a powerful space for dissent.

Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.

www.OccupyWallSt.org

Directed by Alex Mallis + Lily Henderson
Cinematography by Ed David
Edited by Lily Henderson + Alex Mallis
Assistant Camera: Andrew McMullen + Diana Eliavoz
Assistant Producers: Dana Salvatore + Jillian Mason
Titles by Jason Drakeford.

www.BrooklynFilmmakersCollective.com

by @sgarbata

Today #OccupyWallStreet had a peaceful march on sidewalks up to City Hall but more than 5,000 people came to the event. So the occupiers did everything they could to follow any NYPD requests; even after the police brutality suffered by many last week, and even after all the harassing demands they have used with them down in Wall Street.

via @NewYorkist

One such of those demands has been their insistence on prohibiting umbrellas at Zucotti Park, were the Occupiers have set up residence. Not content with enforcing the ban on tents, the police has made their lives miserable by forcing them to be exposed to this inclement weather, to the point of also prohibiting the use of chairs, sticks, boxes or anything that could prop up tarps of plastic covers over them they have been promptly undone with threat of arrests by the NYPD.

via @Colin_Jones

The Occupiers have tried to accommodate the increasingly hostile and abusive demands of the New York Police Department. And today was the same. When the marchers were told by the NYPD to go onto the bridge, they did. It was a trap as the NYPD rushed to close both ends of the bridge to entrap them.

Here are records of their entrapment.

via @OccupyWallStreetNYC
First person account:

 read more »

View "How the idea for #OccupyWallStreetEVERYWHERE was born " on culturekitchen

One of the biggest sources of frustration for many who support #OccupyWallStreet is their inability to come to NYC even if it is to bear witness of the occupation. So my very smart tweeps came up with some excellent ideas and "ensmartened" me enough to come up with one of my own: Occupy Wall Street Everywhere.

From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson ("No End In Sight"), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.

If there is just one finance blog I would consider required reading to understand the depth of corruption in Wall Street, it is naked capitalism. It was created by Yves Smith, the author of ECONNED: How Unenlightened Self-Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism.

In her book she describes how going back to the 1970s, there was a push by free-marketeers to use Economics, not Finance, to not just create policy but to develop the trading tools that has created the hydra of the 1980s S&L and the current banking collapse, the sub-prime mortage orgy and the derivatives unicorn and rainbows markets.

Smith is ruthless when it comes to denouncing Economics as a discipline that is not qualified to provide policy advice and she has no problems calling out free-marketeers as looters. To say I deeply admire the breath of her financial knowledge and her fearless activism is to put it mildly.

It's why, when she says a documentary about the crisis is good, I take notice. From naked capitalism - Inside Job: A Movie Wall Street is Sure to Hate  read more »