How You Can Help #OCCUPYWALLSTREET
These patriot occupiers are fighting for 99 percent of us. Those who are unemployed, uninsured, underemployed and totally insecure in the face of ever increasing social and financial inequities. They are standing up for those who cannot be there right now.
Here's the good news – you can help, right now today – no matter where you are.
- Spread the word – there's something going on. People have started a movement – they're occupying Wall Street. Hundreds of people have been camped out in lower Manhattan for four days!
- If you're in New York and can only spare a little time or money: bring American flags, cardboard, markers, water, etc. down to Liberty Park.
- If you're in the New York area and have a day, a morning, an afternoon, go down there. The weather appears to be holding. Take the day off and just go. I know it sounds hard to believe but you will be heard. This is an open general assembly effort and you will get your say and be a real participant.
- If you are a little ways from NYC, organize foursomes to go to NYC for the day. It will cost you the train/bus/car fare. Take nothing but some food and water and your body.
- Too far to get to NYC? Sign this petition and I will read your name and comments in Liberty Park this week, I promise. Break Up Goldman Sachs Now!
- Be subversive against the big money interests wherever you are and encourage others to do the same. Don't give the banksters 4 percent of every purchase you make with a credit or debit card – use cash. See: UseCashMovement
- Be subversive: max out your credit card on large ticket items and return them the next day. (This one is right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.)
- Move your money from a big bank to a credit union.
- Picket a local branch of a bank. When the press asks you what the heck you think you're doing, tell them it's in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.
- Send food to the protesters in Liberty Park through a New York friend or go to the live stream chat for information on local eats that will take your order. (Yes, you'll have to use your credit card, big spender!)
- Do you know anybody who knows anybody who knows a writer, a celebrity, etc. who will show their face at the protest? Get to them now.
*Bonus support idea: Spread the word again, and repeat!
176 comments on the article “How You Can Help #OCCUPYWALLSTREET”
Displaying 61 - 70 of 176
Page 7 of 18
Anonymous
This will be short. I am a senior student at an all boys-Catholic high school. In Canada. Many play football, basketball, and other sports. We are content to drink, smoke and womanize using our parents money. We are imprisoned by our apathy and seek no freedom.
Clearly, your reader/viewer base is not as pure as you might hope. You publish on the same level as Playboy or Guns & Ammo (the latter which I prefer to AdBusters). False words and statistics that are entertaining at best, hidden between layer after layer of gloss and varnish. Pretty pictures of bare-chested women enrapture us in the school library during lunch hour.
#OCCUPYWALLSTREET was destined to fail. No freedom has been wrenched from the hands of the bankers and the brokers. You say your ""march" was "thwarted". This is not the case. Honest men with courage stood in your war, and you stopped like the cattle you criticize. You were not thwarted; you simply did not have the courage to keep walking. You hid behind your Guy Fawkes masks, fearing some petty retribution.
Look at who walk. Certainly not the apathetic, who are too high to "digitally detox" for a week, as you so aspire. Not the majority of your readers, in their cafes and used-bookstores, reading your shining magazine with the money they made working at franchise food stores, or on the MacBook Pros their parents bought for them (I prefer Toshiba). Oh yes, AdBusters. You have long been classified as "hipster". Oh, how consumer.
Look at who walk. The Libyans, with their rifles. They don't fear bullets. The homeless, eking out survival on the streets you stroll down every day. They don't fear your pride. The Nazis, the ANP, protesting for a free future for their children. They don't fear the past. The rapists, the far-right, the ex-cons and the ex-patriots.
They have courage. They will walk. They just can't afford it.
Stop asking for a fucking profit.
Start taking your own freedom.
Anonymous
This will be short. I am a senior student at an all boys-Catholic high school. In Canada. Many play football, basketball, and other sports. We are content to drink, smoke and womanize using our parents money. We are imprisoned by our apathy and seek no freedom.
Clearly, your reader/viewer base is not as pure as you might hope. You publish on the same level as Playboy or Guns & Ammo (the latter which I prefer to AdBusters). False words and statistics that are entertaining at best, hidden between layer after layer of gloss and varnish. Pretty pictures of bare-chested women enrapture us in the school library during lunch hour.
#OCCUPYWALLSTREET was destined to fail. No freedom has been wrenched from the hands of the bankers and the brokers. You say your ""march" was "thwarted". This is not the case. Honest men with courage stood in your war, and you stopped like the cattle you criticize. You were not thwarted; you simply did not have the courage to keep walking. You hid behind your Guy Fawkes masks, fearing some petty retribution.
Look at who walk. Certainly not the apathetic, who are too high to "digitally detox" for a week, as you so aspire. Not the majority of your readers, in their cafes and used-bookstores, reading your shining magazine with the money they made working at franchise food stores, or on the MacBook Pros their parents bought for them (I prefer Toshiba). Oh yes, AdBusters. You have long been classified as "hipster". Oh, how consumer.
Look at who walk. The Libyans, with their rifles. They don't fear bullets. The homeless, eking out survival on the streets you stroll down every day. They don't fear your pride. The Nazis, the ANP, protesting for a free future for their children. They don't fear the past. The rapists, the far-right, the ex-cons and the ex-patriots.
They have courage. They will walk. They just can't afford it.
Stop asking for a fucking profit.
Start taking your own freedom.
anonymous
Libya was a manufactured war, and it still going on. Violence causes suffering is that what you live for ass a catholic schoolboy? playing sports? Fuck this guy, he jerks off to Ricky Martin pictures...
anonymous
Libya was a manufactured war, and it still going on. Violence causes suffering is that what you live for ass a catholic schoolboy? playing sports? Fuck this guy, he jerks off to Ricky Martin pictures...
glen teejay a. ...
The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make do with what is possible.’ The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse. quoted from zizek resistance is surrender
glen teejay a. ...
The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make do with what is possible.’ The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse. quoted from zizek resistance is surrender
Anonymous
YOU SAY:
"The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil"
But what about when the federal reserve/plutocracy creates debt that they know we the people can never repay?
Anonymous
YOU SAY:
"The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil"
But what about when the federal reserve/plutocracy creates debt that they know we the people can never repay?
Myeager2
I'm the last guy in America who got a public fight with a Fed Bank. the Wall Street Journal's Senate political writers almost walked out of their offices above the US Senate, when an article was refused publication by the publisher in DC. (and I mean ALL of them were going to walk) The eventual article led to this 'accidental' testimony at Congress, when some Republican invited me to testify about ways to keep Fed Banks from crushing dairy farmers when those same Fed Banks foreclose on companies that process dairy farmer's milk. Milk sits in the 'pipeline' for a month and a half, then the farmer gets half pay every two weeks. Fed banks paid off congress and now own every gallon of milk in America, GOING BACK, 44 days. (PS Gingrich was all over this theft by US Bank of Washington. To those of you who don't know, it's not 'Washington States' to a Fed Bank, it's 'Region 12', they, the Fed Bankers, don't 'do' States.
(I think the Occupation is Region 1, right?)
His the hearing and the first guy is Gunderson, GOPAC threw him out of the GOP about two weeks after this hearing, because the idiot, in Gingrich's view, had just 'offed' GOPAC, which set up the milk scam in the first place.,,,,,,,,,,
Mr. Gunderson:
Most troubling is the fact that by our count 26 States either have very mini-
mum or no dairy producer security laws at all.
As a result, hundreds of dairy farmers have gone without one or
more monthly checks in the last decade. This has, in turn, forced
many fine dairy fanning families out of business. We will hear
^om one of those farmers whose personal struggle has been fea-
tured in The Wall Street Journal today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barr appears at the conclusion
of the hearing.]
Mr. GUNDERSON. Thank you.
Mr. Yeager.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL YEAGER, DEER PARK, WASHINGTON
Mr. Yeager. My name is Michael Yeager. My wife Ginger and
I ran a dairy farm in northeastern Washington State, and we live
near a small town called Deer Park. It's 35 miles north of Spokane,WA.
We have 2 children, Amanda, 15, and Luke, 14.
I don't have any credentials to cite for you. I am only a citizen.
Over 6 years and no one would stand for us, so today I humbly
try to do so.
I want to thank the chairman for allowing myself and these
other farmers to petition their government, and I feel they earned
that right, and I think their wages have been injustice.
Over these past 6 years, hundreds upon hundreds of State and
Federal agricultural department workers and supervisors have
asked me, "Well, who are you with?" Well, I'm not with anybody.
I'm not with any group, organization, committee, or the like. I am
here with myself. I am the sole representative of the 120 Washing-
ton State dairy farmers who lost $2,700,000 in the 1990 Foremost
bankruptcy.
I should give deep thanks to Mr. Charles Stenholm as well. He
is the only Congressman to call me back in 6 years, and he was
quoted in the big newspapers. He said what the bank did was, "Pitiful."
In June of 1989, the U.S. Bank of Washington, a $23 billion Fed-
eral Reserve regional bank, made a careless loan, an ill-advised
loan, a poor loan. U.S. Bank lent Mr. Michael Cameron, a Florida
investor, $24 million with which he purchased the milk processor
to whom we shipped our milk. Unknown to the dairy farmers who
shipped to that processor, Mr. Cameron had just dodged fraud
charges by selling a company called Southern Bakeries in 1987.
Mr. Cameron had owned a number of companies all financed by
down payment loans from his father-in-law, a wealthy man whom
the bank had hoped to do business with. U.S. Bank lent the $24
million to Mr. Cameron's corporation KMC Group, which would
have held the stock of the company had it actually existed. There
was no corporation. Clearly, the Federal bank should have known.
Mr. Cameron's down payment worked out to about 2% percent
down after loan arrangement fees of $1. 2 million. Mr. Cameron
took the company over, and he and his wife melted credit cards.
Soon, and as one would expect, the loan was in trouble just short
of 11 months later. The farmers would pay with their livelihoods
for the Federal bank's blunder. A sealed Washington State court
proceeding in June of 1990 allowed the bank to start a foreclosure.
None of the farmers that I represent knew of the risk to their in-
come because we were blindfolded by the court there.
Mr, Cameron moved away and the bank took over running the
company with an accountant they had requested to be a receiver.
The accountant knew nothing of dairy processing, and the bank
would have been better advised to consult with some of the panel
members here on how to run a dairy processor. Under the account-
ant's and U.S. Bank's guidance, the company was run into the
ground.
Knowing that Federal law forced the farmers to wait 45 days to
be paid, the bank, now running the company, waited and I call this
"the wait." The wait started October 1, 1990. U.S. Bank watched
the farmers work for the next 45 days. They watched us labor and
kept totals on our milk. On the 44 th day of the wait, they seized
our income, on the day before Thanksgiving in 1990.
There were 15 farmers in Montana. Two of those are left today.
And there were near 20 in my county. I think only three of them
remain. Their State refuses to submit figures. No one there will re-
spond.
So we're left here, then, pondering this new Federal legislation
in an effort to prevent similar callous financial destruction. We're
left with these dairy farmers who have no government, and well
fix it for the future but we have to leave them behind. And I sup-
pose that's fitting.
So I support the legislation, despite the fact that these people are
ruined and left without recourse. They stand there, they are ru-
ined, and they are abandoned by their Government.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Yeager appears at the conclusion
of the hearing.]
Mr, GuNDERSON. Thank you very much.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
further Committee conversation,,,,,,
Mr. GuNDERSON. Well, my problem is I have four organizations
sitting next to you that all oppose that.
Mr. Yeager. Well, I mean, I don't mean to be insensitive to their
views, but I don't see anybody here that milks cows.
Mr. GUNDERSON. I don't disagree with you on that, but it's my
job to pass laws, not milk cows. And I don't know how I can get
this passed without more consensus than exists today.
Mr. Yeager. Well, so then I guess that's democracy. It's 4 to 1.
I lose.
Mr. GUNDERSON. Well, I hope that's not your definition of democ-
racy, although I could understand that from the experiences that
you've gone through. I happen to be one of those people who be-
ieves it's the responsibility of those of us in Government to try to
find a compromise. I'm one of the people in this town who doesn't
believe "compromise" is a dirty word and that we ought to see if
there is some kind of a middle ground that can achieve your needs
within the realms that the other individuals in this panel, frankly,
can accept.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. GUNDERSON. Obviously, Mr. Yeager, if I can't figure out a way to get some
consensus in the industry, I can't move this out of committee.
You've heard my colleagues in the committee speak here this morn-
ing. You heard your colleagues in other parts of the dairy industry
speak from your table this morning.
There's no secret since 1984 that I would like to do something.
But in the political process, we have to have a consensus and a
compromise in order to do that. So I'm committed to trying to
achieve that. I don't know whether it is or is not doable.
Any final comments?
Mr. Yeager. Well, the discussion here is the cost. The processors
don't want to pay the banks that benefit more than anybody else.
And you notice they're not here. Who benefits more than the bank
industry? And they're not even here.
So you wouldn't look at a bank and say, "Well, you lend to proc-
essors. You benefit from the interest. You benefit from the loan to
the farmer. You benefit everywhere. You pay nothing either," We
wouldn't even consider asking the bank industry, "Well, here you
prey on this, but you pay nothing."
So Mr. Barr, if I can understand his position, he's saying, "Well,
I run this company. I've got to keep it vibrant. I see this cost to
my company. Well, I can't do that."
And then here I thought this legislation, I thought this might
happen. I thought you might really just do it. So I see that's not
going to happen.
So I'm thinking, "Well, we're all broke. Then we can't let a per-
son own what he labors for now." So I'm thinking, "Where's there
some money that we could do this with?"
And I've looked through all the different companies. I understand
how it works. I'm not trying to be offensive here, but if we took the
combined amount of money that each of these companies, groups,
if we took all the money alone in a year that they put into cam-
paign finance and you add that total up, if you put us all together,
let's say we didn't pay for campaigns for 2 years and we just took
what we had paid out the year before, each of us, that would be
a substantial amount of money that would at least begin a fund.
Maybe a few guys would have a couple of less yard signs. I don't
know. But I'm just suggesting that there's a pile of money. That
would work. So there's a way.
Mr. GUNDERSON. Mr. Dooley.
Mr. Dooley. Mr. Barr, maybe you might know and you might,,,,,,,,,,
Myeager2
I'm the last guy in America who got a public fight with a Fed Bank. the Wall Street Journal's Senate political writers almost walked out of their offices above the US Senate, when an article was refused publication by the publisher in DC. (and I mean ALL of them were going to walk) The eventual article led to this 'accidental' testimony at Congress, when some Republican invited me to testify about ways to keep Fed Banks from crushing dairy farmers when those same Fed Banks foreclose on companies that process dairy farmer's milk. Milk sits in the 'pipeline' for a month and a half, then the farmer gets half pay every two weeks. Fed banks paid off congress and now own every gallon of milk in America, GOING BACK, 44 days. (PS Gingrich was all over this theft by US Bank of Washington. To those of you who don't know, it's not 'Washington States' to a Fed Bank, it's 'Region 12', they, the Fed Bankers, don't 'do' States.
(I think the Occupation is Region 1, right?)
His the hearing and the first guy is Gunderson, GOPAC threw him out of the GOP about two weeks after this hearing, because the idiot, in Gingrich's view, had just 'offed' GOPAC, which set up the milk scam in the first place.,,,,,,,,,,
Mr. Gunderson:
Most troubling is the fact that by our count 26 States either have very mini-
mum or no dairy producer security laws at all.
As a result, hundreds of dairy farmers have gone without one or
more monthly checks in the last decade. This has, in turn, forced
many fine dairy fanning families out of business. We will hear
^om one of those farmers whose personal struggle has been fea-
tured in The Wall Street Journal today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Barr appears at the conclusion
of the hearing.]
Mr. GUNDERSON. Thank you.
Mr. Yeager.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL YEAGER, DEER PARK, WASHINGTON
Mr. Yeager. My name is Michael Yeager. My wife Ginger and
I ran a dairy farm in northeastern Washington State, and we live
near a small town called Deer Park. It's 35 miles north of Spokane,WA.
We have 2 children, Amanda, 15, and Luke, 14.
I don't have any credentials to cite for you. I am only a citizen.
Over 6 years and no one would stand for us, so today I humbly
try to do so.
I want to thank the chairman for allowing myself and these
other farmers to petition their government, and I feel they earned
that right, and I think their wages have been injustice.
Over these past 6 years, hundreds upon hundreds of State and
Federal agricultural department workers and supervisors have
asked me, "Well, who are you with?" Well, I'm not with anybody.
I'm not with any group, organization, committee, or the like. I am
here with myself. I am the sole representative of the 120 Washing-
ton State dairy farmers who lost $2,700,000 in the 1990 Foremost
bankruptcy.
I should give deep thanks to Mr. Charles Stenholm as well. He
is the only Congressman to call me back in 6 years, and he was
quoted in the big newspapers. He said what the bank did was, "Pitiful."
In June of 1989, the U.S. Bank of Washington, a $23 billion Fed-
eral Reserve regional bank, made a careless loan, an ill-advised
loan, a poor loan. U.S. Bank lent Mr. Michael Cameron, a Florida
investor, $24 million with which he purchased the milk processor
to whom we shipped our milk. Unknown to the dairy farmers who
shipped to that processor, Mr. Cameron had just dodged fraud
charges by selling a company called Southern Bakeries in 1987.
Mr. Cameron had owned a number of companies all financed by
down payment loans from his father-in-law, a wealthy man whom
the bank had hoped to do business with. U.S. Bank lent the $24
million to Mr. Cameron's corporation KMC Group, which would
have held the stock of the company had it actually existed. There
was no corporation. Clearly, the Federal bank should have known.
Mr. Cameron's down payment worked out to about 2% percent
down after loan arrangement fees of $1. 2 million. Mr. Cameron
took the company over, and he and his wife melted credit cards.
Soon, and as one would expect, the loan was in trouble just short
of 11 months later. The farmers would pay with their livelihoods
for the Federal bank's blunder. A sealed Washington State court
proceeding in June of 1990 allowed the bank to start a foreclosure.
None of the farmers that I represent knew of the risk to their in-
come because we were blindfolded by the court there.
Mr, Cameron moved away and the bank took over running the
company with an accountant they had requested to be a receiver.
The accountant knew nothing of dairy processing, and the bank
would have been better advised to consult with some of the panel
members here on how to run a dairy processor. Under the account-
ant's and U.S. Bank's guidance, the company was run into the
ground.
Knowing that Federal law forced the farmers to wait 45 days to
be paid, the bank, now running the company, waited and I call this
"the wait." The wait started October 1, 1990. U.S. Bank watched
the farmers work for the next 45 days. They watched us labor and
kept totals on our milk. On the 44 th day of the wait, they seized
our income, on the day before Thanksgiving in 1990.
There were 15 farmers in Montana. Two of those are left today.
And there were near 20 in my county. I think only three of them
remain. Their State refuses to submit figures. No one there will re-
spond.
So we're left here, then, pondering this new Federal legislation
in an effort to prevent similar callous financial destruction. We're
left with these dairy farmers who have no government, and well
fix it for the future but we have to leave them behind. And I sup-
pose that's fitting.
So I support the legislation, despite the fact that these people are
ruined and left without recourse. They stand there, they are ru-
ined, and they are abandoned by their Government.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Yeager appears at the conclusion
of the hearing.]
Mr, GuNDERSON. Thank you very much.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
further Committee conversation,,,,,,
Mr. GuNDERSON. Well, my problem is I have four organizations
sitting next to you that all oppose that.
Mr. Yeager. Well, I mean, I don't mean to be insensitive to their
views, but I don't see anybody here that milks cows.
Mr. GUNDERSON. I don't disagree with you on that, but it's my
job to pass laws, not milk cows. And I don't know how I can get
this passed without more consensus than exists today.
Mr. Yeager. Well, so then I guess that's democracy. It's 4 to 1.
I lose.
Mr. GUNDERSON. Well, I hope that's not your definition of democ-
racy, although I could understand that from the experiences that
you've gone through. I happen to be one of those people who be-
ieves it's the responsibility of those of us in Government to try to
find a compromise. I'm one of the people in this town who doesn't
believe "compromise" is a dirty word and that we ought to see if
there is some kind of a middle ground that can achieve your needs
within the realms that the other individuals in this panel, frankly,
can accept.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. GUNDERSON. Obviously, Mr. Yeager, if I can't figure out a way to get some
consensus in the industry, I can't move this out of committee.
You've heard my colleagues in the committee speak here this morn-
ing. You heard your colleagues in other parts of the dairy industry
speak from your table this morning.
There's no secret since 1984 that I would like to do something.
But in the political process, we have to have a consensus and a
compromise in order to do that. So I'm committed to trying to
achieve that. I don't know whether it is or is not doable.
Any final comments?
Mr. Yeager. Well, the discussion here is the cost. The processors
don't want to pay the banks that benefit more than anybody else.
And you notice they're not here. Who benefits more than the bank
industry? And they're not even here.
So you wouldn't look at a bank and say, "Well, you lend to proc-
essors. You benefit from the interest. You benefit from the loan to
the farmer. You benefit everywhere. You pay nothing either," We
wouldn't even consider asking the bank industry, "Well, here you
prey on this, but you pay nothing."
So Mr. Barr, if I can understand his position, he's saying, "Well,
I run this company. I've got to keep it vibrant. I see this cost to
my company. Well, I can't do that."
And then here I thought this legislation, I thought this might
happen. I thought you might really just do it. So I see that's not
going to happen.
So I'm thinking, "Well, we're all broke. Then we can't let a per-
son own what he labors for now." So I'm thinking, "Where's there
some money that we could do this with?"
And I've looked through all the different companies. I understand
how it works. I'm not trying to be offensive here, but if we took the
combined amount of money that each of these companies, groups,
if we took all the money alone in a year that they put into cam-
paign finance and you add that total up, if you put us all together,
let's say we didn't pay for campaigns for 2 years and we just took
what we had paid out the year before, each of us, that would be
a substantial amount of money that would at least begin a fund.
Maybe a few guys would have a couple of less yard signs. I don't
know. But I'm just suggesting that there's a pile of money. That
would work. So there's a way.
Mr. GUNDERSON. Mr. Dooley.
Mr. Dooley. Mr. Barr, maybe you might know and you might,,,,,,,,,,
Pages
Add a new comment