Flood Wall Street

Polymathic

Polymathic

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NEW YORK – Monday morning, thousands of protesters are expected to descend on Wall Street and conduct mass civil disobedience to protest what organizers describe as the economic engine behind climate change. This demonstration, called Flood Wall Street, will consist of a mass sit-in near the New York Stock Exchange, emulating the tactics and some of the rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street.

Flood Wall Street takes place just one day after the People’s Climate March occurred several dozen blocks north in Midtown Manhattan. That march was by far the single largest environmental rally to occur in history, drawing an estimated 310,000 people from all over the world, according to organizers. Police did not confirm or deny the turnout. Whereas that march was designed to appeal to the broadest slice of potential supporters possible, Flood Wall Street is more overtly radical in both its rhetoric and tactics.

“Stop Capitalism. End the Climate Crisis,” is Flood Wall Street’s official slogan, and participants are expected to include many longtime activists and luminaries on the radical left. Former Occupiers are among those to be risking arrest, and journalist Naomi Klein, author of the recent book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, will speak before the sit-in.

“[Flood= Wall Street] is about trying to take this energy and take the people, the activists that have come to town, and try to put them in the way of business as usual for Wall Street,” said Eric Verlo, an Occupy Denver activist who came from Colorado to participate in both Sunday and Monday’s actions. For Verlo and other participants in Flood Wall Street, Monday’s sit-in is all about targeting the major financial institutions that allegedly pour money into carbon polluting industries.

PHOTO ESSAY: People’s Climate March Draws Massive Crowd

“Runaway climate change and extreme weather events, such as the extreme flooding that we saw here in New York City with Hurricane Sandy, are fueled by the fossil fuel industry,” said one of Flood Wall Street’s organizers, Michael Premo, in a statement. “We are flooding Wall Street because we know that there’s no greater cause of runaway climate change than an economic system that puts profit before people – and before the planet.”

While former Occupy activists and other Flood Wall Street supporters are explicitly seeking to combat climate change by disrupting capitalist institutions, the march’s less radical participants are also continuing to mobilize. May Boeve, executive director for the environmental group 350.org, promised in a statement that “the demand for action will only grow.”

“This march is just the beginning,” Boeve said. “Today we marched, tomorrow we organize.”

The People’s Climate March even received shows of support from a couple of politicians often closely identified with the financial industry. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. – who is often jokingly referred to as “the senator from Wall Street” – attended the protest. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who recently fielded a left-wing primary challenge in part due to anger over his perceived coziness with Wall Street, issued a proclamation during the march in which he declared this week to be “Climate Week.”

But according to Naomi Klein and other Flood Wall Street supporters, averting disaster may require doing more than Wall Street and its allies would ever willingly do.

“The fact is, if we’re going to respond to this crisis, we need to break a whole bunch of the free market rules that these guys hold very dear,” she said during an appearance last week on msnbc’s All In with Chris Hayes. “We need to regulate. We need to get in the way of the fossil fuel companies.
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http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/after-historic-climate-march-supporters-flood-wall-street
 
The democrats and Republicans are pretty much both to blame in this for perpetuating the status quo... and these protestors will go on happily voting for them.
 
Garyvdh said:
The democrats and Republicans are pretty much both to blame in this for perpetuating the status quo... and these protestors will go on happily voting for them.
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Dont blame them.Its a matter of what choices you have. They in essence have a choice between 2 parties who have such a strong hold on power that the whole system is skewed to prevent a change to the status quo.
 
imranpanji said:
Dont blame them.Its a matter of what choices you have. They in essence have a choice between 2 parties who have such a strong hold on power that the whole system is skewed to prevent a change to the status quo.
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There are Independent parties in the USA.
 
Garyvdh said:
There are Independent parties in the USA.
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Independent parties who can gain no traction at all because of the dominance of the other 2. From consistent gerrymandering, lots of special interest groups flooding the campaign funds to corporate driven media....no one else stands a chance.

Who would you vote for in that situation? A party who will have no influence at all and will fail or the lesser of 2 evils?

If you look at the history of this, the last time an independent won an elector in an electoral college was John Hospers a libertarian in 1972. He won 1 out of 530+. Ross Perot (rich bastid) failed twice to even get that. So did Ralph Nader (consumer activist who talked a lot of sense to be honest)
 
imranpanji said:
Independent parties who can gain no traction at all because of the dominance of the other 2. From consistent gerrymandering, lots of special interest groups flooding the campaign funds to corporate driven media....no one else stands a chance.
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What? People can get together and protest something but they can't vote an independent? Oh wait... perhaps they're a minority who think their voice should carry more weight than the average joe.
 
Arthur said:
More proof that our civilisation is sunk. Protest climate change ... hoo, boy. They might as well protest gravity.
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They are protesting big companies lack of desire to do anything about climate change.
 
mmmig said:
They are protesting big companies lack of desire to do anything about climate change.
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Why take to the street when they can just boycott the companies and their products?

Or would that actually require some sacrifice as opposed to rabble rowsing?
 
mmmig said:
Does he work for the petroleum industry?
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Not at all. I'm a keen environmentalist who runs his house and business on renewables. I use low-energy devices wherever I can. I passionately believe in living in harmony with Nature.

I wonder why you'd think a person's views on this or any other issue are coloured by their employment ... are yours? Do you work for a solar PV company? The thought wouldn't even occur to me, frankly.
 
ShaunSA said:
Why take to the street when they can just boycott the companies and their products?

Or would that actually require some sacrifice as opposed to rabble rowsing?
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I think they thought they were already gathered for the UN climate summit to show that climate change is a major issue for normal people they might has well march down to Wall Street since they are in the neighbourhood
 
Bizkit87 said:
+ accelerated by our reckless Carbon emissions and poisoning of the ocean, right !?
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According to currently fashionable theories.

I'm of the view that the A and AGW will be abandoned when we understand climate better, much like the erstwhile scientific consensus on Steady State was abandoned for the upstart Big Bang hypothesis. I have a deep confidence and philosophical investment in science. Scientists are another matter entirely, as history amply shows.
 
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