"American Spring" was launched yesterday at Liberty Park

Occupy Wall Street launched American Spring on St. Patrick's Day at Zuccotti Liberty Park. I watch the police incident last evening life at TimCast, webcasting via Upstream. Tim Pool (@timcast) is an independent journalist with a press card, so police left him more or less alone. Footage will be up at his site and on YouTube. Here is an interview with him by Reuters.

This is definitely the media of the future. It's free and he also has a donation button. There is a running chat on the side, with a great deal of participation last evening as events unfolded more violently, with all the violence on the side of the police. What is Mayor Bloomberg thinking of? This is the message that he and Commissioner Kelly want to send to world youth about the NYPD? At least they held the riot gear and gas this time around, so I suppose they are learning — but pretty slowly.

David Graeber was there live tweeting, as was Rortybomb's Mike Konczal. These are the ones whom I follow, so there may have been others, too.

My assessment of the global movement is now shifting away from seeing this as a more or less short term phenomenon to a long term one that will be with us for at least a generation or more as the world confronts huge issues arising from globalization on a neoliberal model. It is doubtful that ruling elite are going to abandon power without a fight, and a protracted fight is brewing with global youth that is going to be ongoing as long as many if not most them see a bleak future for themselves and their compatriots, now global due the the Internet and social media.

There is already an cadre developing that is building on similar factors in the past, including public intellectuals and intelligentsia as well as activists. Now scientists and technologists are also getting on board. there is a powerful undercurrent that has been building up and it now seems ready to rise into surface waves that are not generated merely by temporary winds, which only creates white caps rather than the power of the wave rising from the deep. Get ready for some tsunamis as undersea tectonic plates start shifting too. Global collective consciousness is on the move.