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FDL’s Kevin Gosztola, Jon Walker and Ryan Cook will be livestreaming the #OccupyDC march from Freedom Plaza to the State Department today starting at 12:50 pm. The protesters plan to join the Keystone XL pipeline protesters for the final public hearing on the matter before deciding whether to allow construction to proceed. I’ll be liveblogging the protest here.
Opposition to the pipeline is trans-partisan. Nebraska ranchers are being threatened with eminent domain seizure of their land by TransCanada, a foreign corporation. Meanwhile, the State Department has “farmed out critical agency functions regarding the environmental review to a private contractor that also contracts with TransCanada” as Scarecrow reported last week.
2:26: Kevin, Ryan and Jon going back to the Reagan building where hearings should be concluding.
2:21: Marchers were mis-directed past the State Department hearing to the Martin Luther King memorial, so people don’t know why they’re there and seem confused about what they’re doing.
1:53: A good contingent of people from Wisconsin here for the march.
1:38: Per Scarecrow, photo of the sleep-in at the State Department taken earlier.
1:35: Hundreds of #OccupyDC protesters with drums and banners heading for State Department hearing. Signs indicate the protesters are well aware this is Obama’s/Clinton’s decision and theirs alone.
1:31: Banner: “Obama: Yes You Can” (stop the Keystone XL pipeline).
1:21: Hearing goes until 2pm at the Reagan Building, according to people scheduled to testify.
1:14: The Energy Action Coalition held a sleep-over at the State Department that began last night at 8pm. They carried a giant mock pipeline to the State Department.
1:09: #OccupyDC Protesters at Freedom Plaza begin march to State Department.
Chip in $10 to our OccupyWallStreet coverage fund and help us do what the mainstream media won’t do.
59 Comments
Loving these livestreams.. thanks Ryan, Jon and Kevin for being there
Here’s another fun link, on all the crony capitalism links between Hillary’s State Dempartment and the lobbyists for Keystone XL and Tarsands developers.
This graphic put together by Oil Change, Friends of the Earth, DeSmog Blog, and the Other 98%.
http://priceofoil.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/KXLinfographicFINAL.jpg
Pic from insude State Department taken earlier:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/energyactioncoalition/6219093307/sizes/m/in/set-72157627711966767/
Photo by Josh Lopez.
An abundance of riches.
Man, do the marchers in DeeCee have some props, or what. They didn’t just put that stuff together yesterday.
The scariest words in the English language ” We are from the bought and paid for government and we are here to help you” Corollary to RR’s famous quote.
Love that globe. I’m going to dig my earth flag out of the closet.
1% pardons the 1%.
Mitigate is a funny word. Not all risks can be mitigated.
Mitigate is a word prolly invented by a corporatist.
hey jane!
we were talking late night about clarence thomas and his conflict of interest with the citizens united decision
thomas needed to recuse himself and if one of the messages of the wall street movement is thomas and that recusal, we could force the issue and get that decision reversed retroactively
citizens united is a uniting issue, just about everyone but republican politicians know and understand the damage of that decision, if we could thomas’s conflict of interest known we could possibly force his hand or get him impeached
‘Mitigate’ and ‘crude risk to aquifer’ = oxymoron.
Obama is busy pretending there’s no protest. And if there is a SMALL one, it’s all DFH’s.
If they’d let you march past the WH, he might have seen you and his carefully constructed facade would have collasped.
Boxturtle (Maybe not, though. The SS likely has him in the bunker to protect him from you)
We’re all DFHs now *g*
There are so many grievances to air and so many possible locations to “march”. State Department *should* be occupied, but I’d love to see people picketing outside NSA, too.
But the U.S. State Dept has always been the twister of arms abroad on behalf of U.S. Corps, so why would anyone be surprised they’re doing the same thing wrt the pipeline.
Ditto CIA.
My personal faves were the Dulles brothers, with John Foster at State and Allen at CIA, marching all over the globe at the behest of U.S. corps. Don’t know as State does anything other than that. Think working for U.S. corps’ interests might be their only job.
BTW, what IS a U.S. corp anymore? One that is registered in Delaware and one that buys U.S. politicians but all other parts of its operations take place outside U.S. borders?
This just in – Eric Canter is pissing his pants over the OWS.
Next time the bozo’s come to arrest some portestors, everybody should start shouting “I am Sparticus!”.
Boxturtle (Yeah, I know. The Bozo’s might not be smart enough to get it)
Ditto Mayor Mike.
This young man is a good speaker. I’m so glad to see people protesting the “wars”.
Really?
Considering he is an R, he’s probably only practicing a fetish. *smirk*
OWS a worthy cause
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/166957_10150852956240716_902865715_21297144_2105418537_n.jpg
ha!
I assume you don’t have anything else to do today.
To all the Wall Street Protesters
Please don’t get side tracked into a side issue, like the Keystone pipeline. Is the pipeline a bad idea, of course it is, and I would surely like to see it get killed. The pipeline is just a symptom of the problem. The only thing that should be radar screen is the mega banks. They need to be busted up. Don’t let this movement get hijacked into going after the symptom that ails our society, go after the cancer that is eating us alive. THE BANKS. To paraphrase Jame Carville, who isn’t real high on my like list, It’s the banks stupid.
The Nobel Peace Prize awarded today supports the Occupy movement and the protest movement worldwide. It also condemns President Obama’s Murderous policies in Yemen:
http://my.firedoglake.com/normanb/2011/10/07/nobel-peace-prize-to-tawakkul-karman-for-resisting-obama-saleh-massacres-of-peaceful-protesters-premeditated-murders-democracy-suppression/
I can multi-task.
That’s a fair point.
But…there are so many legitimate issues to be mad about right now that it is better to just #occupy. Whatever your issue is, just #occupy. Occupy, occupy, occupy. Now is the time for airing grievances and growing the movement. When and if there is critical mass, then specific issues can be a focus, but right now, just #occupy.
As I type at least once/day recently, this is what used to be called, back in the quaint old days when there was a feminist movement, the consciousness raining phase.
I agree, but I can’t remember any potentially large demonstration that has not been joined by other unrelated groups. It’s something that’s hard to stop unfortunately.
Do you have the one of the kids blown apart in Afghanistan with appropriate labels Rayathon, lockhead martin and all the killer corporations or are the body parts too small to label ?
There seem to be a lot of folks that don’t have anything else to do lately.
Did you bring that up at a GA of a occupy near you ?
That’s the country’s policy isn’t it ?
#Occupy is a movement that has developed and grown organically. IMO trying to put too much thought in planning and implementing strategies of very dubious effectiveness drawn from the past will not benefit the movement.
Let whatever develops develop organically. This is new.
O/T But not really. I am going to an Occupy St. Louis event tonight at 6pm. If they don’t confiscate my camera I will have some video and pics to share.
Yeah! We want posts and pictures!
Go Popyeye.
When we were marching back in the 60′s and 70′s against Vietnam, the reason we finally won, was we had ONE thing and only one thing we were after, and that was to stop the war. We never got side tracked by anything else. You have to make the banksters the focal point of everything. If you don’t they will win, because we will have thought we won something, when we win on some small thing relative to the big idea.
If we don’t bust up the banks, no matter how many skirmishes we win, the banks will continue to screw this country every way they can for a dollar.
Maybe a diary is in order. Thanks for the inspiration. This is for my kids and all the 99%.
Agreed, but all these issue are related and boil down to money and influence. first you need to deal with money. End the fed, restore glass steagal, get banks back to banking, end fractional reserve, etc. then we get work on getting its influence out of everything else
no. Feel free to throw that one together.
How many FDL boots you got on the ground, now? Rock on, Jane.
NY, DC, LA, Austin, St. Louis.
More places getting in to the planning stages.
Ya wanna hava Revolution, well,….you know…
We are not living in the sixties or seventies. The past 40 years have been disasterous for progressives in the USA, and much of what progressives have attempted to do grew from strategies of the civil rights and anti-war movements.
The PTB have developed a systematic way to vilify and discredit everything we are trying to accomplish — they learned from their experiences in the past. We have to adapt. Every last non violent person needs to participate before we will begin to be heard.
It may not be televised, but thanks to FDL it sure as hell will be livestreamed.
I say follow the kids who are leading us into the streets and take their lead. They have done more in the last 20 days than we’ve done in 40 years. Just sayin.
second that
Do YOU have the one of the kids blown apart in Afghanistan with appropriate labels Rayathon, lockhead martin and all the killer corporations or are the body parts too small to label ?
OccupyMN says police have been VERY cooperative. Police say if there is a march, they would like to join it and keep it safe! Go Mayor Rybak and the MN Police Dept!.
Let’s hope it pans out that way!
NO. Feel free to throw that one together.
I was in DC yesterday and was very impressed with the movement. It’s not your father’s protest by a mile .
It made my heart soar and I’m proud of these citizens taking a new approach to our ongoing disaster.
I also meet quite a few lurkers to the lake walking around w/ my Firebagger tee shirt.
Rock on till it’s done.
OccupyMN to march on the MN Federal Reserve at 2pm! (That is a block from me! I know they have a rifle range and armed guards. I hope the guards stay inside!).
..and where do we go from here…which is the way that’s clear…
rock on
livestream is back up
It is probably impolite to burst your bubble, but the protests did not win: North Vietnam won, by making the cost of continued prosecution of the war too high. Part of that cost was the protests, to be sure, but the big cost was the continual loss of American soldiers in battle. Short of nuking the North or bombing the dams and flooding the great river basin in the North, which would have killed millions of people and probably brought in China, the United States could not win that war. We lost it the old-fashioned way, on the field.
Corporations should feel absolutely free to make stuff, that’s not the problem.
It’s when they start making government policy, have our military secure their hegemony with the blood and guts of our soldiers, suck on tax dollars for welfare, and create revolving doors to further that end that the problems occur.
And how many of those products are made by Americans in the US? A good chunk of the revenue from those made-everywhere-except-the-US products goes to subvert government at all levels. That’s the issue.
republicans are fully aware of the consequences of Citizens United, only they don’t see it as damage but rather as a windfall.
I am trying to get to DC this Sunday…
Dood, that sh!t is all made in China. Do they even *allow* corporations in China?
As a matter of fact, yes I did.
Yes, the North Vietnamese won on the battlefield, but only after the U.S had drawn down their forces greatly and tried to turn the war over to the Vietnamese. Sound familiar??? It was a stalemate, and the reason I say the protesters won, was the draw down occurred from the pressure of our demonstrations. It’s akin to what’s going on in Afghanistan, an unwinnable war. If there was actual pressure from the citizens of this country, the draw down would be occurring right now, and yes we would lose on the battlefield just like Vietnam. This will happen in Afghanistan whether we pull out today or in 10 years, it doesn’t matter.
As long as we are being held hostage by corporate America, aka bankers, the Afghan war will continue, because of the profits of business is at stake.