Occupy Wall Street gears up for a big day: Thursday, November 17

[Video Link, via occupywallst.org] Josh Harkinson in Mother Jones:

At 7 a.m. tomorrow Occupy Wall Street will attempt to live up to its name. Hundreds of activists will converge upon the Street's most famous address—the New York Stock Exchange—in a coordinated attempt to shut it down. The blockade will be the first protest in a long day of carefully-planned demonstrations to mark what would have been the two-month anniversary of the occupation of Zuccotti Park.

• [Douglas Rushkoff]

  Fingers crossed.

• [technobach]

  The secret to flash mobs is that only they mobbers as supposed to know in advanced.

• [Seth Eag]

  I’m going to try to be there and bring some of my other up-to-this-point-apathetic friends. My guess is NYPD will try to do what they did in ’04—just arrest everyone and deal with it later. They’ve literally had days to plan and, as we’ve seen, they’re pretty good at making plans. If anything, I would suggest everyone dress nice (i.e. button down, khakis, tie, etc.) so the cops can’t tell the banksters from the pranksters.

• [coffee100]

  Something people seem to overlook in these discussions is the rule of law.  It is a violation of the law to infringe on anyone’s right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.  There is no authority in this nation apart from a Constitutional amendment with the power to tell any protester they can’t protest.

  It is also a violation of the law for the government to deprive anyone of liberty or property without due process of law.  The Supremacy clause of the Constitution means it overrules ALL other procedure, including city ordinance, county ordinance, state and Federal. These people have an inalienable right to do what they are doing and all governments have a Constitutional duty to yield.

  People who advocate the violent repression of these protesters are advocating the destruction of everything we hold sacred in this country.  As a famous actor once said  ”America is advanced citizenship.   You’ve got to want it bad, because it’s going to put up a fight.”   If you want to call yourself an American, then you MUST acknowledge the dignity and right of the OWS protesters to voice their grievances and let the rest of the American people decide if what they say is credible.

  This is not negotiable, nor is it a quaint civics lesson from long ago.  This is not some white-bearded elderly man telling stories about four guys and a drum, nor is it a legal theory.  It’s the law.  And until we, as Americans, start recognizing that our own selfishness stands between us and what we all have in common, we risk losing what these pointless million-dollar spasms of “safety enforcement” claim to defend.

  • [Dave Pekarcik]

    Except that the Constitution also upholds the right to life and property. As such, the government can take reasonable actions against anyone who physically attempts to stop someone from going to their job. If another citizen tries to take away the right to property (i.e. attending a job or going into a privately owned building), that is a violation of the other person’s Constitutional rights as upheld by the interpretation of the Constitution by SCOTUS… If protesters wish to assemble and air grievances, that is wholly acceptable (in fact, encouraged). However, an attempt to physically “shut down” the stock exchange by violating the property rights of the workers of Wall Street is a violation of Constitutional law and the police can legally prevent that from happening…. FYI.

    • [MythicalMe]

      Take a page from the labor movements. You can protest and discourage people from entering the NYSE, but you can’t stop them. Set up a picket line and encourage those who work there to honor your picket line and take the day off.

      Perhaps you won’t stop the NYSE from opening, but you might slow it down a little.

    • [shanob]

      What do you think Wall Street has done to us in America and in the world?  They shut us all down, with impunity, and were rewarded for doing so.

  • [gmcc]

    i don’t think anyone is saying people can’t protest. they are only saying where people can protest. and no camping, which is against the law anyway.

  • [NuShrike]

    All good and nice, but the reality is it’s a police-state. Bloomberg/NYPD can do whatever they want and ask for forgiveness later. That’s the real law.

    They have the years of connections to powerful, rich, well-connected people, and well-funded NYPD with the best tactical training and equipment tax-dollars could have paid for.

    OWS has … PR, “petitions”, phone-calls, and pictures/movies of brutality.

    It’s like ants trying to disturb a giant’s party.  The ants have zero perspective on what the giants can do. Of course, with enough ants the giants have to change course, but it’s still a huge wall to scale, and that’s with the giants being “nice” and not crushing any ants.

    Just saying, it’ll be a big feat. I’ll believe it when OWS can affect the Super Committee, and SOPA.

    • [shanob]

      People complain about civil disobedience, but people all over the world have been too obedient.  How do you think they created a police state?  And will you be out marching tomorrow, where ever you are in solidarity?

• [ahwoo]

  This should be interesting….

• [Stefan Jones]

  OWS should start off easy and occupy NASDAQ.

• [anzastan]

  I know that tomorrow will not be an ordinary day, but a milestone. It is the day the people bring thier voices to the halls of power, to the public square, and to the collective consciousness of all citizens of this country, I pray for peace, non-violence, and for change. Unfortunately the 1% will send in their mercenaries to be violent, and to try to strike fear into those who dare question their greed and lawlessness. Remember, that the people and truth will prevail.

• [Peter Symon Nganga]

  Take America back to “we the people”

• [Finnagain]

  Everyone bring your cameras!

• [Andrew Davies]

  I support the people marching peacefully in the streets.  Always, as a matter of principle.  Even the Tea Party, even though I think they’re pretty far wrong.  For Occupy Wall Street, I not only support the protesters, I’m proud of them and wish I was there.

• [Tom Frost]

  OWS is a grass roots movement as shown by the lack of specifics that they can agree on other then being against corporate greed. The endurance of the movement without a charismatic leader or cohesive and workable plan shows that people are fed up with the notion that the goal of business is always more profit then last year. This goal is to blame for having jobs shipped to less expensive countries and always looking for cheaper and/or faster ways of producing goods. Too many execs are going for belt tightning and not looking to do things better. The pendulum swing from boom to bust is very prevalent in economics and in public opinion in what is admirable in work ethics also. During the beginning of industrialism workers were used as an renewable resource that could be exploited, then came unions and that resource had to be managed fairly. Then unions get too strong and Companies that treat workers well without the inability to get rid of unproductive workers because of seniority became more popular to employees.  Something will emerge to fix this profit is goal number 1,2,3,4 etc. and Wall Street looking at bottom line, and size as the only indications of  viability in business. Whether it is a movement or people investing in companies with an eye to long term viability instead of what have you done today remains to be seen. If this does not change the economy and government will fall apart.