Occupy Philly - Day 40

Brandywine Peace Community
Brandywine Peace Community came down to Occupy Philadelphia to perform their weekly Tuesday vigil from 4:00pm to 5:30pm (I joined them once I'd taken a few pictures around the area). We were all very distressed to hear about the 1:00am police raid on the original Occupy encampment, the Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti (Liberty) Park.  we were all pretty nervous that the same would happen to us.

sign
This fellow asks "Stop exploiting Black and Latino workers." Near the end of our vigil, we saw a number of high-ranking police officers show up and stroll through the Occupy Philly encampment. I left to get dinner, came back later and saw a young woman smiling and holding up a sign saying "We're okay!"

long view
Fox News was of course quite pleased at the trashing of OWS. Police destroyed personal and communal property of the New York Occupiers. Photos of the breaking-up of OWS from the National Post.
Slowly, but surely though, OWS and all of its associated Occupations are changing tha national conversation from budget deficits to citizen needs.

library
The Ocupation Library.

Some folks though, refuse to get the message and are still pushing the absurd Cat Food Commision II solution to a problem that very few agree is actually a problem to begin with. What's far worse is that Democrats appear to be ready to agree to a completely one-sided deal. For Republicans to say "No new taxes, period" is entirely understandable, but why Democrats don't simply say "Okay, well then, there's no deal and it's all your fault" and then push for a bill to cancel the whole deal just absolutely baffles me. It's not like President Obama came out of the debt-limit cave-in looking like anything other than a complete chump.

long view
Very interesting to see how much federal presence there is in the various Occupy crackdowns all across the country. Why was the Mayor of Oakland, CA on a conference call with 18 other mayors who are all dealing with Occupations?

long view
We'll see what happens next. The plan for Occupy Philadelphia if the encampment is broken up, is to "come to city hall ASAP; bring friends, signs, & support; spread the word. Then meet the following day at 4 p.m. at Rittenhouse Park (19th & Walnut in center city Philadelphia)."