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Firefighters hose down cops in Brussels

By Saki Knafo

03/01/2012

Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

In cities around the country today, hundreds of Occupy protestors gathered for what the movement described in a release as its “largest coordinated action this year.”

Since a wave of nationwide evictions effectively ended the movement’s tent-city phase three months ago, Occupy activists have been trying to regain momentum. It’s unclear whether today’s event lived up to those expectations, but its organizers presented it as an important step forward.

In Washington, D.C., police arrested between eight and 12 people outside the headquarters of agriculture company Monsanto, according to protesters. In California, protestors blocked the entrance to three Walmart distribution centers. In New York, about 100 people demonstrated outside of Pfizer and gathered in Bryant Park for a talk by journalist Matt Taibbi. There were smaller demonstrations in cities from Albany, N.Y. to Tulsa, Okla to Seattle, WA.

A hundred people doesn’t approach the movement’s turnouts at its height between September and November, but the New York event differed from earlier protests in several ways that could prove important for the movement’s future.

Remember when the main knock against the Occupy movement was that it didn’t have clear goals? While it’s true that the movement still lacks a cohesive message, its participants lately have focused on a host of specific issues. Today’s event wasn’t a spontaneous angry outburst at the 1 percent or Wall Street greed; it was a carefully planned attack on the reputation of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a non-profit organization that unites corporations and legislators to shape policy.

Last summer, two months before the first protesters showed up in Zuccotti Park, the Center of Media and Democracy obtained copies of ALEC’s “model” bills and published them on the website, ALEC Exposed. David Osborn, one of the organizers of today’s events and a participant in Occupy Portland, said he hoped today’s events would draw attention to ALEC, which he described as a “particularly potent symbol of the failed system that we have in which profit and greed have become more important than everything else.”

He considered today’s events a success. He spoke from Portland, Ore., where he said 500 or 600 people were marching and “talking to everybody on the way,” and noted anticipatory coverage of the event in the New York Times and on NPR. Today, a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine accompanied the marchers, said Osborn. “We’ve brought ALEC out of the shadows and into the light,” he said.

Over the past few months, media coverage has clearly dwindled, and so have the crowds. For a movement that once measured crowds in the thousands, today wasn’t great.

The weather was partly to blame. Protestors in D.C., New York and Portland had to contend with the sort of cold rain that has people using profanity when referring to February. Considering the conditions, protesters said they felt encouraged.

“Clearly it’s not the numbers we had, but we’re building here,” said Jeffrey Brewer, an organizer of the New York gathering.

Although the plans originated in Portland, activists in other cities quickly joined in, coordinating the protests through a conference-call network used to plan several national events in recent months. Many activists said they hope to use this network to plan more nationwide protests in coming months, especially during the upcoming Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., and the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla.

Joan Donovan, an activist with Occupy LA who helps run the network, said activists nationwide are starting to work together to ensure their protests “are bigger and much more amplified.”

But Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at Columbia University who is writing a book on the movement, said he wasn’t sure such efforts would succeed.

“There may not be a unitary Occupy Wall Street in a year,” he said. “There are so many moving parts. It’s a huge and sprawling and not altogether visible beast.”

Massive demonstrations across Europe have taken issue with the austerity measures adopted by the European governments against economic adversity.

The protests were held on Wednesday in the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Belgium, and Spain against government economic reforms aimed at dealing with the unprecedented debt crisis plaguing the European Union.

Trade union leaders gathered outside the European Council in Brussels, Belgium to demand an end to austerity measures.

In Spain, protests turned violent as police clashed with anti-austerity protesters in the country’s the second largest city, Barcelona. Police in riot gear beat the protesters with batons and a number of arrests were made.

Students have staged demonstrations and sit-in protests across the country to demand an end to Madrid’s austerity measures, labor market reforms, and police violence.

Thousands of Czech university students rallied in the capital Prague, slamming the country’s Education Ministry for introducing tuition fees and boosting the number of government representatives in academic bodies.

The Czech government says the reforms are necessary to boost educational standards and secure more funding.

In France, main unions gathered forces for a day of protest action against austerity measures being imposed across the European Union.

In Greece, unions staged nationwide walkouts hours after the parliament approved new spending cuts to secure a new EUR 130 billion (USD 170 billion) bailout package promised by international lenders and meant to prevent the country from going bankrupt.

The Greek and French protests are part of a day of action called by European labor organizations to pressure the leaders of the 27-member EU into adopting pro-growth measures when they gather for a summit in Brussels over Thursday and Friday.

The eurozone economy is heading into its second round of recession in just three years. The bloc’s last recession was in 2009, when its economy contracted by 4.3 percent.

The Europe plunged into financial crisis in early 2010.

Amid the debt crisis, the European Commission has predicted that the eurozone currency bloc faces double-dip recession while the wider EU economy stagnates in 2012.