A college student’s first protest takes him directly into the big leagues

By Connor Miller

The Occupy Wall Street movement and subsequent protests that are continuing across the United States have drawn world-wide attention. Our correspondent, a college freshman, participates in the first demonstration of his life. Here is his point-of-view of Occupy Wall Street.

Before I went to Occupy Wall Street, I did some research to see what I was protesting. I went to Occupywallst.org which told me the time and location of the occupation, but not much more. “The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%,” claimed the site. I felt like I could buy into this cause, so I got a couple of people from my college dorm just outside New York City come with me to Manhattan in the tradition of protesting college students.
. We were going to go down in history, just like the kids from the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the Paris spring of 1968, and Tiananmen Square. Hopefully not just like Tiananmen Square.

Go "here" to the Facebook group for the WNY bus.

All of us have a reason to go to New York City on September 17th: to occupy Wall Street. As of October 2008, over two million quality jobs were outsourced between 2004 and now; racial economic disparities mirrored policing disparities; as of 2001 we have a 700 plus strong (and expensive) network of military bases and a Global War on Terror; and pollution has firmly established itself as a cause of disease among poor communities. This one action will not resolve all of these problems at once yet, like Egypt it will be a political breakthrough moment, or like in Spain tens of thousands of citizens did begin a direct-democratic process to build a new movement for social justice. Where the earlier alter-globalization (a.k.a. anti-globalization) movement left off, we will pick up the slack with a flourishing new movement of movements.

The demands are numerous and over reddit, facebook, twitter, and via email, activists and disenfranchised people are having a virtual assembly 24 hours a day to cite each abuse of this economic system. In this conversation, every progressive measure that is neccesarry to fix our county- and our world is on the table: ending corporate personhood, community control of localized economies, collecting corporate back taxes, community banking, progressive taxation, and a new deal-style stimulus plan.

Disclaimer: In the following article, neither the hosts of the film screening, the attendees, or I are advocating terrorism, acts of economic sabotage, or violence of any kind. I, as a writer, am reporting on this event and discussing some of the themes in the film.

"We are the burning rage of a dying planet", is a fitting description for the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Last night (Thursday, July 21), at 420 Connecticut (the future site for "Burning Books Bookstore" an independent, community based, progressive bookstore) the house was packed during the 7:00pm and 9:00pm screenings of "If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front". The 2011 documentary was created to examine the ELF away from the corporate media's branding of the group as terrorists/ eco-terrorists, but in their entirety through the eyes of a few of their members.

Animal Allies of Western New York completed its picket today of Universoul Circus, which ran from July 7th to the 10th. Animal Allies was there to address concerns of animal rights organizations of abuse by Universoul's handlers towards animals.

Recently in 2010, Boston's Northeastern University canceled Universoul Circus' performance after reviewing a formal letter from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to the U.S. Department of Agriculture which states which criticized the circus for providing inadequate veterinary care, ill-maintained transport vehicles, and inadequate medical record. Before that, Universoul Circus has been cited numerous times according to the animal rights organization and public authorities for mistreatment of animals. Nevertheless, it is not Universoul itself but, due to a lack of licensing to keep animals, the circuses who they acquire the animals from are legally liable for the treatment of the animals.

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An NFTA (transit) Police officer threatenedand swore at me while I was making a video of the aftermath of a fight at Thursday at the Square in Buffalo NY.

From the end:
"If you take my picture again I'm gonna F***ing break your face."

"We can either be our own liberators, or we can be apart of our own oppression" stated one participant at the "Know Your Rights" workshop at Canisus College today. The workshop was organized by Animal Allies of WNY, an animal rights organization. The workshop was led by two veteran national environmental activists. This workshop taught activists and community members about direct action, civil disobedience, cooperation, and security culture, all in the face of very real repression of civil liberties.

The workshop began by defining violence vs. non-violence. One reoccurring theme that defined violence vs. non-violence was, harm vs. non-harm in various formations. This was critical in the discussion in order to clarify the validity and the non-violent nature of civil disobedience, versus popular caricatures of civil disobedience and direct action as violent acts carried out by delinquents.

There were few ground rules, one of which was pursuant to an important lesson on "security culture" which we would discuss later on. Our first lessons, in classic form, were designed to create group cohesion and exercise patience within the group. One particularly frustrating but, useful exercise in patience and horizontal discussion was the "15 game", whereas we were charged to count to 15 under three conditions: 1) we couldn't count in any specific pattern; 2) we couldn't count in succession individually; 3) everyone had to participate.