"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.

4 Signs the American Spring May Be Coming to Chicago

Here are four signs that the American Spring is coming to Chicago:

1) Political Provocation [by the Elite]2) Climate of Repression3.) Elite-Driven Hysteria4) Dynamic Political Organizing Capacity

Read it at AlterNet

4 Signs the American Spring May Be [Is] Coming to Chicago

by Matt Reichel

This has already been worked out by movement leaders from around the world at the anti-Davos in Brazil. There is huge global solidarity growing that the neoliberal approach to globalization is a dangerous threat to democracy other than in name only. It is viewed as a global power grab for world hegemony under the leadership of Western elites, especially finance capital, the  ideal of which is unfettered rent-seeking rather than development with a view to distributed prosperity. It is seen as merely the next step in neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism, as set forth in the works of people like Michael Hudson and Noam Chomsky in the US.

We are at the outset of a battle that will determine the course of the 21st century. It is a battle between those that believe late stage (monopoly) capitalism, whose goal is global growth through the aegis and under the control of the elite, is the future and those who hold that the future belongs to those willing to struggle for participatory democracy, distributed prosperity, and solidarity. 

The question is one of freedom:  Will there be freedom for the few that make it to the top, or freedom and prosperity for all.

UPDATE: Here comes the protest music. Bruce Springsteen on board with Occupy.

Read it at The Huffington Post
Bruce Springsteen Talks Occupy Movement, New Album

Bruce Springsteen said this week that his new album Wrecking Ball was inspired by an "angry patriotism" that drew fuel from the Occupy movement. 

Speaking to a group of journalists at the Theatre Marigny in Paris, Springsteen described how the financial crisis, income inequality, and other hot-button political issues informed Wrecking Ball, which paints a picture of an America that has failed the working class. 

"My work has always been about judging the distance between American reality and the American Dream--how far is that at any given moment," Springsteen said. Judging by the album's tenor, he believes the gap has only become wider in recent years.