Minneapolis, MN – With the theme of “People before profits” and inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, a similar occupation will start on Friday, Oct. 7 at 9:00 a.m. in Minneapolis. The Minneapolis occupation will be at Government Plaza (300 South 6th Street, downtown Minneapolis). The Occupy MN movement has already renamed it “People’s Plaza.” This is one of many ongoing occupations that have sprung up around the country since the Wall Street occupation began on Sept. 17.
On Sunday, Oct. 3, the Greek Cabinet voted on a new budget proposal for 2012 that includes 6.5 billion euros ($8.5 billion) in spending cuts and tax hikes, including cutting 30,000 government jobs. This budget will go to the Greek Parliament on Monday, Oct. 4, in hopes of getting another 8 billion euros ($10.5 billion) from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in order to pay back German, French and other European banks that own large amounts of Greek bonds.
New York, NY – In a city of nine million people, protesters aren’t supposed to shut down a major traffic artery on a Saturday afternoon. But on Saturday, October 1, Occupy Wall Street did just that, blocking the Brooklyn Bridge and sending a loud message to the bankers and politicians from Wall Street to Washington D.C. to California that a new day is at hand.
Problems with the government debt of Greece threaten the European Union. The United States would most likely be drawn in if the financial crisis gets big enough.
The Greek predicament exposes root problems of capitalism. Production is a highly organized process. It embraces the whole of society. Yet the means of production are privately owned. The aim is profit. There is no overall plan of development. Production leaps ahead here and falls apart there; it is uneven. The outcome is frequent crisis. The Greeks have a word for it – chaos.
On October 1, Occupy Wall Street continued to grow and attract support from new sectors. Thousands marched, and the NYPD arrested more than 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge. These photos show some of the spirit of the occupation and the march, before the NYPD's mass arrests. All photos by Carolyn Riccardi.
Fight Back! interviews Joe Iosbaker, the Chicago spokesperson for the United Anti War Coalition, on the protests that will coincide with the NATO/G8 Summit that is scheduled for May, 2012.
San José, CA – On Sept. 13, the Census Bureau released their annual report on income, poverty, and health insurance in the United States. The report said that the number of people below the official poverty line rose from 14.3% in 2009 to 15.1% in 2010. This meant that 2.6 million more people fell into poverty last year, and the total of 46.2 million poor was the largest number in more than 50 years of records. Worst hit were African Americans (27.4% below the official poverty line), Latinos (26.6%), and children (22.0%).
_Working people need to fight back against austerity _
The U.S. economy continues to stagnate with almost no economic growth or job creation more than three years after the great financial crisis of 2008 and more than two years after the recession officially ended in 2009. The official unemployment rate is still over 9% nationally, and millions of workers who have stopped looking for work are not included in this count. Even worse, the Obama administration projects unemployment to stay above 8% for all of 2012, which would be four years of near double-digit unemployment.
San José, CA – In a sign that the economy is on the edge of another downturn, the Labor Department reported on Sept. 2 that there was no gain in jobs in August. Not counting last summer when there were large layoffs of temporary Census workers, this is the worst jobs report since February of 2010. The Labor Department also revised down the job gains for June and July, so that average job gain over the last three months was only 35,000 net new jobs per month. This is far below the 200,000 or so jobs that a normal recovery would be generating at this stage of an economic expansion.
