North America

The often violent response to the Occupy Wall Street campaign that is growing in the United States and elsewhere is affecting the freedom to inform. Reporters Without Borders [campaigning for press freedom] condemns the arrests of reporters in recent weeks, especially in New York where the police assume the right to decide who are journalists.

In 1967, a year before his assessination, Martin Luther King gave a speech called “Beyond Vietnam” in which he proclaimed: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.”

I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I said had to be repeated by hundreds of people so others could hear (a.k.a. “the human microphone”), what I actually said at Liberty Plaza had to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.

This October 17th-20th, representatives from over 70 countries come together for the
International Forum on the Social and Solidarity Economy (FIESS) in Montreal. With
Quebec being seen as an experimental hub for the Social Economy, it not surprising that activists
have gathered here. Today, first day of the Forum, the enthusiasm among participants
could be felt in the air.

Organizers estimate that 15,000 people converged in Times
Square on Saturday afternoon, the culmination of a day of
marches and protests that covered much of lower
Manhattan. Actions from New York to Madrid, Rome,
London, Jakarta, Tokyo and Sydney were part of a
global day of action called for by the Indignados
movement in Spain and later joined by Occupy Wall Street.

The often violent response to the Occupy Wall Street campaign that is growing in the United States and elsewhere is affecting the freedom to inform. Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrests of reporters in recent weeks, especially in New York where the police assume the right to decide who are journalists.

Occupy Wall Street, now in its fourth week in Liberty Plaza is
inspiring others across the U.S.A. and the world. As of this writing,
there are occupations in more than 1550 cities worldwide, with
more than one hundred in the U.S. alone, despite the fact that
the movement is much more recent in the U.S. than in Europe.

New York–Daily protests and an ongoing park occupation in the financial district of New York City are gaining growing national attention as an expression of anger against Wall Street greed–and now the brutality of police against demonstrators, after the NYPD savagely attacked a march rom the encampment to Union Square on September 24.

New York, October 3, 2011– The stakes went up for the Occupy Wall Street protest movement this weekend after police escalated their repression with the arrest of over 700 peaceful protesters during a march across the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1.

Around 4 PM, people started to gather at Foley Square, just a few blocks from City Hall. Their goal: to march to Liberty Plaza (Zuccotti Park). The Unions took the initiative to organize the rally in support of Occupy Wall Street, after last week’s police brutality. They had arrested over 800 people, had violently tackled many, and used pepper spray on the protesters.