Monthly Archives: October 2011

Breaking story -- ABC News ticker informs protesters at Times Square in New York City on Saturday, Oct. 15 that the #Occupy movement has gone global. Photo by Eric Francis.

Dear Friend and Reader:

On Saturday, I went to a big rally in Times Square that was part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Around the world in an estimated 1,500 other cities, similar protests were happening. This was one day after Mayor Michael Bloomberg wisely chose to not clear out the movement’s base camp in Zuccotti Park, in New York’s financial district. I arrived a little early, wondering what would happen. By 5 pm, the stated time of the protest, Broadway was packed from 42nd Street north up to 47th Street. A small ocean of friendly, sincere people had come out to make their presence known to the world — not to celebrate New Year’s Eve but rather to state their objection to greed.

For many years, we have all watched the injustices mount against the American people. I’ve long wondered when we were going to hear an objection, and this event was something of a miracle. A decade of war, years of economic decline, jobs being shipped overseas, people with enormous college debt unable to find work — the silence was deafening and disturbing. Suddenly I was standing in Times Square, surrounded by people aware of the problem and choosing to join together as one voice. As the crowd gathered, the news ticker above ABC studios delivered the message, “Occupy Wall Street Movement Goes Worldwide.”

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Dear Friend and Reader:

With the Moon waxing toward full [see Planet Waves coverage of tonight’s Full Moon] the Occupy Wall Street protests spread to many cities and states around the country. All weekend, an Occupy Sesame Street spoof was running loose on the Internet, a clue that the movement has gone mainstream, as protests turned up in many cities across the country. It was fun listening to Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe (the network’s token Republican program) rant about how people were even demonstrating in Alaska, with the implied message: pay attention because this is meaningful. Brzezinski is the reporter who, live on the air, once shredded the script for a story about Paris Hilton being freed from jail, refusing to broadcast the piece, so it makes sense that she might notice.

One theme of this Full Moon is relationships. The Sun and Moon strike a pose across the Aries-Libra axis, stirring up all kinds of tension between the sign of ‘I am’ (Aries) and the sign of ‘we are’ (Libra). There’s usually some exciting tension between these concepts, though the presence of many minor planets aligned with the Full Moon emphasizes the point. There the feeling of restlessness, even fierce independence (Moon, Uranus, Bienor, Eris in Aries), is contrasted with the need for a tight, well-maintained container for fertility (Sun, Saturn, Haumea in Libra).
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Dear Friend and Reader:

Monday morning I picked up my local paper, attracted by the headline, “Wall Street Protest Grows; Demonstrators Vow to Hang In.” The occupation of a small plaza in the midst of New York City’s financial district has entered its third week and is showing no signs of letting up. The plaza, called Zuccotti Park, is owned by a private real estate development company, not the city, so police cannot raid the protest without the permission of the property owner.

Zuccotti Park in New York City, home of the Occupy Wall Street protest. The vibes were mellow, friendly and introspective. Photo by Eric Francis.

Meanwhile, the police choosing to trap and arrest 700 mellow demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday afternoon sent the story rippling out around the world and gave lots of other people the idea to have a protest of their own. In the game of ‘cops make hippies, hippies make cops’, it’s a lot easier for the cops to make the PR gaffes that stoke the movement. Showing their power, they purchased Occupy Wall Street an international advertising campaign as a gift. A lot of people can relate to what the protesters are concerned about: jobs; financial rip-offs by banks, brokers and traders; bailouts going directly to bonuses; people’s homes being illegally foreclosed. It is a protest against the corporate system, but it’s also a protest to point out the need for basic fairness.

Society’s institutions, or more accurately, the people running them, have failed us. These demonstrations are about creating something new. But that something new is an ethic. There is a message about the need for people to take care of one another. Contrast that with the Tea Party protests of 2009-2010, where you had a lot of people saying, ‘Health insurance for me and not for you!’
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