The Occupy Wall Street Anniversary Coloring Contest

Oh look!  Occupy Wall Street made an invitation for their Anniversary Action and forgot to color it in!

They were probably busy putting the finishing touches on plans for nine days of actions and events starting Saturday, September 15th.

Let’s do our part by coloring the invites and sending them out to our friends!

Be sure to share your version with the social network(s) of your choice and here in the comments for a chance at a free Ape Con Myth something or other!

Meanwhile, find out everything you need to know for the anniversary at #S17 , including actions in your area and this handy pdf breaking down what’s happening in NYC.

Giddy up!

Untitled Occupy Wall Street Plug

The Occupy movement spontaneously created something that doesn’t really exist in the country: communities of mutual support, cooperation, open spaces for discussion … just people doing things and helping each other.  -  Noam Chomsky

Perhaps what also didn’t exist was an entity of sufficient complexity to compete with the corporate and political structures at work in this country.  Compared with yesterday’s conglomerate chart, it looks like Occupy Wall Street‘s NYC General Assembly is starting to hold its own when it comes to tentacles…

(click to enlarge)

(And what is it they say about the side that isn’t getting paid?)

Wish you were in NYC?  Be there online.

[Chart by Jack Smith via Mapping the Movement]

11 Ways To Occupy If You Have to Work on May Day

Not everyone who supports the Occupy Movement is going to be able to skip work or school for the General Strike on Tuesday.  Some might not be able to avoid shopping.  Others are going to need to use an ATM or wash the dishes.  Life isn’t stopping on May Day, but the key to a successful action is avoiding an all-or-nothing attitude.  Anything you can not do on May Day counts, so don’t let working get in the way of your strike.

Here’s some ideas on how worker bees can make the most of the day…

1. GO AFTER WORK – The simplest solution to not being able to get out of work for the General Strike is to join the action as soon as you can after work, or before if you work nights.  Same goes for school.  Check the schedule in your town and in most cases you’ll find that events are going on all day long.  No need to explain your absence during the day for you are better later than never.

2. SPREAD THE WORD – Know someone with the day off?  Make sure they know what’s going on.  Post it on Facebook.  Text it, tweet it, reddit it, digg it, pin it, whatever.  Scream it out the window.  Work the word ‘occupy’ into any conversation you can and then speaking of ask, “Did you hear about the General Strike today?”

3. INVITE YOUR CO-WORKERS – If you detect any interest as you spread the word, let them know you are dropping by after work and invite them along.  Not everyone knows what going to a march or rally is like and might be interested but anxious.  More will make it merrier.

4. OCCUPY YOUR CUBE – Print out a few posters from Occuprint, crank up a live stream and your striking day can begin at 9am.  Looks like you’ve got eight hours to brainstorm the perfect sign and a captive audience to test them out on.  Hello, supply closet!

5. OCCUPY THE WATER COOLER - Everyone loves a good office joke and it’s the perfect cover for turning your office into the next encampment.  Start with a funny little sign for your water cooler or coffee machine.  If it’s well received, spend the day seeing how far you can go with it.  You know, for fun.

6. INTER-OFFICE MARCH – Go big with signs, chants and a consensus-established parade route or orchestrate a coincidental moment in time where everyone just happened to want coffee at once.

7. LUNCH HOUR OCCUPATION – If you work close to the action, get yourself and your crew out into it for a long lunch.  If you don’t, eat outside the nearest bank.  Bring lunch from home for bonus points.

8. THE IT’S OCCUPIED – For all those whose workplaces won’t tolerate monkey business nor talk of strikes, you’ve still got options.  The bathroom is humanity’s most tried-and-true refuge.  You could go old school and write something on the wall or just hang out for a while with the paper.  Oh yeah, it’s occupied.

9. OCCUPY THE COPIER – To add a little mystery to the day, take your favorite poster from Occuprint and leave it in the copy machine for someone else to find.  Also good for printers though be mindful if everyone on the network will know it was you.

10. THE PRE-OCCUPY – If you really had your heart set on striking and can’t let it go, try distracting yourself and your colleagues with links to the most draining websites you’ve ever found.  Nothing torpedoes a work day like addictive games such as Desktop Tower Defense or cool Tumblrs like AwesomePeopleHangingOutTogether.

11. DONATE – Since you’re spending the day earning, consider giving a bit to your local Occupy or any Occupy you hear about having trouble with the police. Legal funds are being raised to help folks who get arrested and you’ll sleep like a champ at night knowing you helped someone get out of a holding cell quicker.

Got other ideas?  Please share your own in the comments.
Got something going in your office?  Please share that too.

Still got questions about May Day?  Check out Every Thing You Need To Know About May Day * But Were Afraid To Ask.

Every Thing You Need To Know About May Day*

By next Tuesday you are going to stop asking questions about whether or not the Occupy Movement really made it through the winter and the coordinated crackdowns of the camps around the world.  Why?  Because by next Tuesday, Earth is going to feel very Occupied.

What’s going on?  That’s what the Every Thing You Need To Know About May Day * But Were Afraid To Ask chart is here to answer…

(click to enlarge)

Join the world in a much needed day off on a Tuesday and SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT MAY 1ST!

Making Lemonade from an Old and Somewhat Flawed Chart

Yesterday it was a map, today it’s a chart.

The point of this one is to say that, to be part of the world’s richest 1%, all you have to do is make $34,900 a year, after taxes.

That’s per person by household, of course, so if you’ve got a significant other, double it, and if you’ve got a couple of kids, quadruple it.  It raises the bar a bit, but the big shocker is: 29 million, or almost half, of the world’s richest 1% are Americans, just like you!

Then there’s some other countries, take a look…

Now, this chart was part of an article on CNNMoney only a month ago, but we are told the data is from 2005.  Then you count the little chart people, find only 60, and rightly exclaim, “Hey, we hit 6 billion in 1999.”  For 2005, this chart would need four or five more people depending on which way you round it.  It might not seem like much or that long of a time, but world GDP went from $40B to $60B in the same period.  The question is, how would it change our $34,900 number?

But say you do top that number, then look around your surroundings and rightly exclaim, “Hey, I’m not rich.”  Just read the end of the article, silly.  We’re talking about the entire world here.  The world in which the global median income is $1,225/year. “In the grand scheme of things, even the poorest 5% of Americans are better off financially than two thirds of the entire world.”  …  That’s where the record skips.  If you want to hear some reactions to this conclusion, check out the 1,000+ comments that have piled up.  They range from pointing out the differences in cost of living around the world to accusing the writer of trying to take the heat off America’s 1%.

The disconnect is from measuring richness by income, as opposed to wealth.  Yes, remember wealth.  That’s what you’re missing.  Assets.  Your life should make sense again as soon as you hear that it takes $500,000 of assets to put you into the richest 1% worldwide.

How many little chart people would the U.S. get in this scenario?  37%, or 22 people.  The chart above was only off by 11%, but it completely missed the boat on Japan, which should have 16 people.  Anyway, what about the American 1%?  How much yearly income does it take to get in that club?  Well if you believe CNNMoney, they say it was $343, 927 in 2009, a measly 10 times what they were selling last month.

And before you think they might be trying to show both sides, note that this second article starts out by baiting you with the idea that it would take a million dollar income to be in the top 1%.  Surprise, you only need a third of a million!   Or, 37 times what the poorest 20% of Americans make on average, 14 times the next, 7.7 times the middle, and 4 times the fourth quintile.

As ThinkProgress would love to explain further, the American 1% owns 40% of the nation’s wealth, including 50% of all U.S. stocks, bonds and mutual funds, and takes home 24% of the nation’s income.

When it comes to world wealth, it looks a lot like yesterday’s map.

And back where we started, the crowd walks away wondering what it was all about anyhow.

[Map from World Institute for Development Economics Research via Gizmag]

To the Ends of the Earth and Back

Occupy Wall Street might have started in Zuccotti Park on September 17th, 2011, but it is streaming into 2012 attached to no particular stretch of land, except for those on Earth.  Stories from the 99% are still pouring in from around the globe and the word ‘Occupy’ has been seen on signs from the Arctic tundra to Antarctica.

What’s next?

What isn’t next?

[Pics via Neatorama, Collage via OWS]

RE-OCCUPY

The Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park was dismantled last night and this afternoon a judge ruled that the protestors could no longer camp on the site, but the trumpets have been sounded and all parties are being called back to Re-Occupy.

Here’s your live stream of the action:

It might be a long night.  If that stream fails, check out OccupyStreams.org for more.

Meanwhile, this Thursday will mark the two month anniversary of OWS and the recent round of raids is only going to redouble sentiment for November 17th’s International Day of Action.

Find out what’s happening in your neck of the woods and join in before you’ve really got nothing to lose.

The Greatest Show Currently on Earth

This weekend you can go see a movie or go watch a little bit of history play out right in front of your eyes. Actually, there’s plenty of time to do both. You know where the movie theaters are, so here’s a directory of all the places currently being Occupied.  Somewhere in your town, there’s a good chance some people are out camping in tents to protest… the way of the world.

If you’re still wondering what Occupy Wall Street is all about, here’s an incredible cheat sheet…

(click image to get in close)

We work for the economics of scarcity despite living in a time of plenty.  At this point in history, competing for the necessities is unnecessary and, as such, barbaric.  It’s time for corporations to evolve from cyclops with an eye for money to creatures with the depth perception and humanity implied by their personhood.  We can’t all be the 1%, but there’s no reason their profit motive should dictate or endanger the lives and livelihoods of everyone else.

While you might take issue with any or all of OWS, there’s a 99% chance you’re in the same boat.  Go meet some fellow passengers.

[Chart by Rachel Schragis via Hyperallergic]

“Growth” in “Real” After-Tax Income

The Economist gave a nod to the 99% by way of some numbers from the Congressional Budget Office that make you go, “Ouch.”  Those are some tough percentages to defend.


But how do you stop it from being easier to make a lot of money when you have a lot of money?

[graph from the CBO’s Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007 (PDF)]

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