In October, Cleveland police arrested Occupiers for refusing to leave their downtown camp after the city's curfew. Last night, the Cleveland City Council last night passed a resolution in support of Occupy Cleveland (h/t @TheBeautyVault).
The Cleveland Scene sounds half-impressed:
[N]ot a lot gonna happen really.But it's another peaceful move forward for Cleveland's well-intended Occupiers, who are way better at not coming off like jackasses than just about everybody from Wall Street to Oakland. So we've got that going for us.
The vote was 18-1. Maybe part of what changed the tenor in Cleveland is that the Occupiers moved into foreclosure defense, camping out at the home of Elizabeth Sommerer and her two kids. Coming to the aid of your neighbors makes a difference for them and your movement, both.
That story's very different from what's happening in this report from Seattle. What the TV station describes as an "Occupy splinter group" has moved into an abandoned home in a Seattle neighborhood, across the street from a school, and announced that they're opening a homeless community center. "What kind of messages are you telling the kids?" one neighbor asks. "That it's OK to be homeless once you graduate, and just take over properties?" #PRfail for whichever group this, Occupy Seattle or otherwise.
This is the big day of action kicking off Occupy Our Homes, a campaign to "stop and reverse" evictions. Salon reporter Justin Elliott says 500 or so people are marching in Brooklyn now. @Laukani recommends the livestream from Occupy Atlanta, one of the first places to do eviction defense.
Leave a Comment:
"What kind of messages are you telling the kids?" one neighbor asks. "That it's OK to be homeless once you graduate, and just take over properties?" #PRfail for whichever group this, Occupy Seattle or otherwise.
I say if you are the parents and you let that message in with out telling them whats what. then it is you who are not sending the right message or educating your KIDS!
The resident's statement is preposterous. It is OK to be homeless now. What person wants to be voluntarily homeless? Taking over vacant properties is the way OWS can do what towns and cities cannot afford to do. The resident is more concerned about his property values and that it may happen in his neighborhood. But a vacant building occupied means one less place for criminals to use or kids to vandalize.
The 1% take over homes illegally on a massive scale and nothing is done.
The banks have been foreclosing on homeowners with out due process across the country. The one agency that could protect the people is called the Consumer Protection Agency. The 1% hate this idea since it would slow down the theft of homes by the banks.
I haven't seen any bankers go to jail for their continuing foreclosures but I'm sure the Occupiers will be behind bars shortly.
Fair only works if you have enough money to buy the politicians.
Perhaps she could have said she didn't want children exposed to homeless and the potential risks that brings. While there are many who have become homeless because of the current economic condition, there is an undercurrent of drug and alcohol abusers - witness Zaccardi Park.
Abandoned homes have no utilities. How long will it take to turn this into an unsanitary cesspool.
That person's statement is worse than that. It's immature. It shows that this individual's moral reasoning is stuck at the stage which sees right and wrong only in formal rules or laws. The more abstract and fluid notions of social justice, which laws can only hint at, are beyond this person's comprehension.
100% impressed with the Cleveland City Council Resolution # 1720-11!!
Ditto.
Brutalizing people that did not chose to be unemployed or homeless ignores the fact that anybody could be in that situation.
Cleveland is doing the right thing.
http://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/simple
Wall Street Bail outs 926 recipients/Little Guy - Bupkis
maybe it's not ok to just 'graduate' and 'occupy' a vacant house - but maybe, despite Rick Santorum's opinion (bad decision making by poor) - maybe, just maybe, you don't have any choice.
Any society that places profit over people, that tolerates homelessness in the midst of millions of vacant homes, that allows its children to starve and that redistributes income from the workers to the capitalist parasites does not deserve to survive. Sorry folks but when the pursuit of an artificial construct like profit create not only human misery but threaten the survival of the species its time to put humanity ahead of the luxury of the power elite.
Well said.
We have been arguing over whether the Democrats or Republicans are right, maybe we need to consider that both choices are wrong.
We have enough housing for all the homeless, enough food for all the hungry and enough money to care for all the sick but we can't figure out how to get it distributed.
I'm grateful that a major city has made a positive step toward ending the OWS dispute peacefully.
When OWS gets organized, there will be a propaganda backlash at the voting booth.
Job creators are not wealthy people.
Think about it. $10 billion in gold sitting in a bank vault creates zero jobs.
Job creators are consumers. People that buy things create jobs.
The US economy is needs about 7 million more consumers to create enough jobs.
Our birth rate is less than the death rate, so our population is shrinking without immigration.
Unemployed people need more immigration to create the consumer demand.
Immigration is one of the reasons the economy has not improved.
People just don't want to come to the US anymore because of high crime and hostile immigrant policy.
The GOP is so full of BS they have become flammable, and it looks like OWS is the match.