Friday, October 7, 2011

DERRICK BELL, 1930-2011: Author, Law Professor, Legal Scholar, Innovative Social Theorist, and Political Activist


Derrick A. Bell: 1930-2011

Steve Liss/Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images
Derrick Bell walking with a group of Harvard law students after taking a voluntary unpaid leave of absence to protest the lack of tenured minority women professors.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/us/derrick-bell-pioneering-harvard-law-professor-dies-at-80.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

All,

The world has just lost another GIANT of great ethical, moral, and political courage and integrity and that rarest and most profound example of the contemporary academic as a committed social activist--a genuine 'public intellectual' in every important and compelling sense of that often greatly misunderstood and distorted phrase. Dr. Bell was also an inspiring intellectual hero of mine whose extraordinary theoretical and practical contributions to legal and historical scholarship and social activism were a major guiding force and influence in the lives of two generations of American college students and legal scholars throughout not only this country but the world. Dr. Bell never wavered in his always highly principled commitment to real democracy, justice, freedom, and equality in the academic and legal worlds as well as the general society and always put his own sterling reputation and actual body on the line for the uniquely radical and innovative ideas, principles, and values that animated all of his tireless work and truly exemplary life. To say that the passing of this African American visionary leader and teacher who embodied the advanced DuBoisian tradition of meticulously fusing the very best in scholarship, critical theory, and political/cultural activism is a tremendous loss is a great understatement. However Dr. Bell's immense legacy will live on in the many students and professional workers in the U.S., Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America who were and continue to be deeply affected and transformed by his work and life. Thank you Dr. Bell for the glorious sacrifices rooted in love and discipline that you always insisted on making in spite of the insidious racism and endlessly patronizing tokenism that you so often found among your professional colleagues and adversaries alike. RIP brother...

 
Kofi 

 
Derrick Bell, Law Professor and Rights Advocate, Dies at 80 by FRED A. BERNSTEIN
October 6, 2011
New York Times

 
Derrick Bell, a legal scholar who saw persistent racism in America and sought to expose it through books, articles and provocative career moves — he gave up a Harvard Law School professorship to protest the school’s hiring practices — died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 80 and lived on the Upper West Side.

The cause was carcinoid cancer, his wife, Janet Dewart Bell, said.

Mr. Bell was the first tenured black professor at Harvard Law School and later one of the first black deans of a law school that was not historically black. But he was perhaps better known for resigning from prestigious jobs than for accepting them.

While he was working at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department in his 20s, his superiors told him to give up his membership in the N.A.A.C.P., believing it posed a conflict of interest. Instead he quit the department, ignoring the advice of friends to try to change it from within.

Thirty years later, when he left Harvard Law School, he rejected similar advice. At the time, he said, his first wife, Jewel Hairston Bell, had asked him, “Why does it always have to be you?” The question trailed him afterward, he wrote in a 2002 memoir, “Ethical Ambition,” as did another posed by unsympathetic colleagues:

“Who do you think you are?”

Professor Bell, soft-spoken and erudite, was “not confrontational by nature,” he wrote. But he attacked both conservative and liberal beliefs. In 1992, he told The New York Times that black Americans were more subjugated than at any time since slavery. And he wrote that in light of the often  violent struggle that resulted from the Supreme Court’s 1954 desegregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education, things might have worked out better if the court had instead ordered that both races be provided with truly equivalent schools.

He was a pioneer of critical race theory — a body of legal scholarship that explored how racism is embedded in laws and legal institutions, even many of those intended to redress past injustices. His 1973 book, “Race, Racism and American Law,” became a staple in law schools and is now in its sixth edition.

Mr. Bell “set the agenda in many ways for scholarship on race in the academy, not just the legal academy,” said Lani Guinier, the first black woman hired to join Harvard Law School’s tenured faculty, in an interview on Wednesday.

At a rally while a student at Harvard Law, Barack Obama compared Professor Bell to the civil rights hero Rosa Parks.

Professor Bell’s core beliefs included what he called “the interest convergence dilemma” — the idea that whites would not support efforts to improve the position of blacks unless it was in their interest. Asked how the status of blacks could be improved, he said he generally supported civil rights litigation, but cautioned that even favorable rulings would probably yield disappointing results and that it was best to be prepared for that.

Much of Professor Bell’s scholarship rejected dry legal analysis in favor of stories. In books and law review articles, he presented parables and allegories about race relations, then debated their meaning with a fictional alter ego, a professor named Geneva Crenshaw, who forced him to confront the truth about racism in America.

One of his best-known parables is “The Space Traders,” which appeared in his 1992 book, “Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism.” In the story, as Professor Bell later described it, creatures from another planet offer the United States “enough gold to retire the national debt, a magic chemical that will cleanse America’s polluted skies and waters, and a limitless source of safe energy to replace our dwindling reserves.” In exchange, the creatures ask for only one thing: America’s black population, which would be sent to outer space. The white population accepts the offer by an overwhelming margin. (In 1994 the story was adapted as one of three segments in a television movie titled “Cosmic Slop.”)

Not everyone welcomed the move to storytelling in legal scholarship. In 1997 Richard Posner, the conservative law professor and appeals court judge, wrote in The New Republic that “by repudiating reasoned argumentation,” scholars like Professor Bell “reinforce stereotypes about the intellectual capacities of nonwhites.”Professor Bell’s narrative technique nonetheless became an accepted mode of legal scholarship, giving female, Latino and gay scholars a new way to introduce their experiences into legal discourse. Reviewing “Faces at the Bottom of the Well” in The New York Times, the Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse wrote: “The stories challenge old assumptions and then linger in the mind in a way that a more conventionally scholarly treatment of the same themes would be unlikely to do.”

Derrick Albert Bell Jr. was born on Nov. 6, 1930, in Pittsburgh, to Derrick Albert and Ada Elizabeth Childress Bell. After graduating from Schenley High School near Pittsburgh’s Hill District, he became the first member of his family to go to college, attending Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1952.

A member of the R.O.T.C. at Duquesne, he was later an Air Force officer for two years, one of them in Korea. Afterward he attended the University of Pittsburgh Law School, where he was the only black student, earning his degree in 1957.

After his stint at the Justice Department, he headed the Pittsburgh office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, leading efforts to integrate a public swimming pool and a skating rink. Later, assigned to Mississippi, he supervised more than 300 school desegregation cases.

In 1969, after teaching briefly at the University of Southern California, he was recruited and hired by Harvard Law School, where students were pressuring the administration to appoint a black professor. Mr. Bell conceded that he did not have the usual qualifications for a Harvard professorship, like a federal court clerkship or a degree from a top law school.

In 1980 he left Harvard to become dean of the University of Oregon School of Law, but he resigned in 1985 when the school did not offer a position to an Asian-American woman. After returning to Harvard in 1986, he staged a five-day sit-in in his office to protest the school’s failure to grant tenure to two professors whose work involved critical race theory.

In 1990 he took an unpaid leave of absence, vowing not to return until the school hired, for the first time, a black woman to join its tenured faculty. His employment effectively ended when the school refused to extend his leave. By then, he was teaching at New York University School of Law, where he remained a visiting professor until his death. Harvard Law School hired Professor Guinier in 1998.

Mr. Bell said his personal decisions took a toll on his first wife, Jewel, who had cancer when he left Harvard in 1990 and died that year. In 1992 he began a correspondence with Janet Dewart, who was the communications director of the National Urban League. Ms. Dewart proposed marriage before the couple even met. A few months later, Mr. Bell accepted.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by three sons from his first marriage, Derrick A. Bell III and Douglas Dubois Bell, both of Pittsburgh, and Carter Robeson Bell of New York; two sisters, Janet Bell of Pittsburgh and Constance Bell of Akron, Ohio; and a brother, Charles, of New York.

In “Ethical Ambition,” Mr. Bell expressed doubts about his legacy: “It is not easy to look back over a long career and recognize with some pain that my efforts may have benefited my career more clearly than they helped those for whom I have worked.”

But Professor Guinier, who continues to teach at Harvard, differed with that view. “Most people think of iconoclasts as lone rangers,” she said on Wednesday. “But Derrick was both an iconoclast and a community builder. When he was opening up this path, it was not just for him. It was for all those who he knew would follow into the legal academy.”





http://madamenoire.com/…/derrick-bell-esteemed-professor-a…/


Derrick Bell, Esteemed Professor and Civil Rights Advocate, Dies at 80 

OCTOBER 06, 2011  
by Cynthia Wright
Madame Noire

Derrick Bell, a legal scholar who continuously worked to expose the racism that exists within society has passed away. Mr. Bell, 80 died early this morning at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital with his wife, Janet Dewart by his side. Mr. Bell was born on November 6, 1930 in Pittsburgh, where he eventually ended up attending the University of Pittsburgh Law School. At that time, he was the only black student. He also served in the Air Force for two years, with one taking place in Korea.

Afterward, he briefly joined the Justice Department, soon after he went to work for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund. In 1968, he moved out west to teach at the University of Southern California, where he was courted by Harvard Law but turned them down. During the early 80′s he worked as the dean at the University of Oregon but left when an Asian woman was denied tenure there. He eventually returned to Harvard in 1986, where he stayed until the law school refused to tenure a black female. Bell, then decided to take a position at New York University Law School, where he remained until his death.

Not afraid of being seen as a controversial figure, even though he described himself as not “confrontational by nature”, he always led by example and on his own terms. While in his 20′s, when working at the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, he was told to relinquish his ties with the N.A.A.C.P., instead of holding on to his Justice Department position, he opted to quit.

A pioneer of “critical race theory,” in which the law is examined to see how race benefits or hinders those that come into contact with the law or legal institutions. Mr. Bell also believed that whites were not quick to assist with the issues surrounding blacks, unless they had something to gain from the interaction.

Mr. Bell was the first tenured black professor at Harvard Law School and the first black dean of a law school that was not historically black. Yet, even with obtaining such prestigious jobs throughout his career, which never stopped him from stepping away from any position – if he felt that what they were doing was unjust. I cannot continue to urge students to take risks for what they believe if I do not practice my own precepts, he often stated.

That line of thinking led him to leave his tenured position at Harvard Law School, 30 years after accepting their offer, due to the school not being willing to tenure any of other black professors.Ms. Dewart and three sons survive him from his first marriage, Derrick Albert Bell III and Douglas Dubois Bell, both of Pittsburgh, and Carter Robeson Bell of New York; two sisters, Janet Bell of Pittsburgh and Constance Bell of Akron, Ohio; and a brother, Charles Bell of New York.Cynthia Wright is an avid lover of all things geeky. When she isn’t freelancing, she can be found on her blog BGA Life and on Twitter at @cynisright.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0djo2awGsAc&feature=player_embedded#!


"The Space Traders" adapted screenplay by Trey Ellis from an original short story by Derrick Bell. Television film of story was aired on the science fiction omnibus series "Cosmic Slop" on HBO in 1994:









Derrick Bell
Born Derrick A. Bell, Jr.
November 6, 1930
Hill District of Pittsburgh
Died October 5, 2011
Manhattan Island, New York, New York
Nationality American
Education A.B. from Duquesne University
LL.B. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law
Occupation University Professor, Author
Employer New York University School of Law
Known for Critical Race Theory

Derrick A. Bell, Jr. (Nov. 6, 1930 - Oct. 5, 2011) was the first tenured African-American professor of Law at Harvard University, and largely credited as the originator of Critical Race Theory.

Born in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Bell received an A.B. from Duquesne University in 1952 and an LL.B. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1957. After graduation, and after a recommendation from then United States Associate Attorney General William Rogers, Bell took a position with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. He was the only Black person working for the Justice Department at the time. In 1959, the government asked him to resign his membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) because it was thought that his objectivity, and that of the department, might be compromised or called into question. Bell quit rather than give up his NAACP membership.

Soon afterwards, Bell took a position as an assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), crafting legal strategies at the forefront of the battle to undo racist laws and segregation in schools. At the LDF, he worked alongside other prominent civil rights attorneys such as Thurgood Marshall, Robert L. Carter and Constance Baker Motley. Bell was assigned to Mississippi, the cradle of the deep South, where racism was at its most virulent and entrenched. While working at the LDF, Bell supervised more than 300 school desegregation cases and spearheaded the fight of James Meredith to secure admission to the University of Mississippi over the protests of Governor Ross Barnett. [1]

"I learned a lot about evasiveness, and how racists could use a system to forestall equality," Bell was quoted as saying in the Boston Globe. "I also learned a lot riding those dusty roads and walking into those sullen hostile courts in Jackson, Mississippi. It just seems that unless something's pushed, unless you litigate, nothing happens."[2]

In the mid-1960s Bell took a short term position with the University of Southern California. In 1969, with the help of protests from black students for a minority faculty member, Bell was hired to teach at Harvard Law School. At Harvard, Bell established a new course in civil rights law, published a celebrated case book, Race, Racism and American Law, and produced a steady stream of law review articles. As a teacher, Bell became a mentor and role model to a generation of students of color, but he played a delicate balancing act at the university. Bell became the first black tenured professor in Harvard Law School's history and called on the university to improve its minority hiring record. But shortly after his tenure in 1971, a white university vice-president tried to purchase a house that Bell had been previously offered through university; Bell saw this as a case of discrimination. This was the first case in which Bell's charges of racism would mobilize his supporters, who championed his efforts to stand up for principle, and anger his detractors, who accused him of being too quick with his allegations of bigotry.[2]

Protests over faculty diversity

In 1980 Bell became the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law, becoming the first African American to ever head a non-black law school. He resigned several years later over a dispute about faculty diversity. Bell then taught at Stanford University for a year.

Returning to Harvard in 1986, Bell staged a five-day sit-in in his office to protest the school's failure to grant tenure to two legal scholars on staff, both of whom adhered to a movement in legal philosophy that claims legal institutions play a role in the maintenance of the ruling class' position. The administration, not giving an inch, claimed substandard scholarship and teaching on the part of the professors as the reason for the denial of tenure, but Bell called it an unambiguous attack on ideology. Bell's sit-in galvanized student support but sharply divided the faculty.[2]
Bell reentered the debate over hiring practices at Harvard in 1990, when he vowed to take an unpaid leave of absence until the school appointed a female of color to its tenured faculty. At the time, of the law school's 60 tenured professors, only three were black and five were women. The school had never had a black woman on the tenured staff.[2]

Students held vigils and protests in solidarity with Bell with the support of some faculty. Critics, including some faculty members, called Bell's methods counterproductive, and Harvard administration officials insisted they had already made enormous inroads in hiring.[2] The story of his protest is detailed in his book Confronting Authority.

To some observers, Bell's lament about Harvard amounted to a call for the school to lower its academic qualifications in the quest to mold a diversified faculty on the campus. But Bell argued that academically able faculty were being ignored and that critics of diversity invariably underplay the value of a faculty that is broadly reflective of society, and, more importantly, that the credentials demanded by institutions like Harvard perpetuate the domination of white, well-off, middle-aged men. As he commented in the Boston Globe, "Let's look at a few qualifications--say civil rights experience ... that might allow [a chance at a tenured teaching position for] more folks here who, like me, maybe didn't go to the best law school but instead have made a real difference in the world."[2]

Visiting professorship

In 1992, Bell, who had taken a visiting professorship at New York University, was formally removed from the Harvard faculty. In a speech to Harvard students quoted in the Boston Globe, Bell urged the future scholars and activists to continue the moral fights that he had championed, saying: "Your faith in what you believe must be a living, working faith that draws you away from comfort and security, and toward risk through confrontation."[2]

Harvard ultimately hired civil rights attorney and U.S. Assistant Attorney General nominee Lani Guinier shortly after Bell left. Since resigning from Harvard, he remained at NYU Law where he continued to write and lecture on issues of race and civil rights.

Academic contributions

Bell is arguably the most influential source of thought critical of traditional civil rights discourse. Bell’s critique represented a challenge on the dominant liberal and conservative position on civil rights, race and the law. He employed three major arguments in his analyses of racial patterns in American law: constitutional contradiction, the interest convergence principle, and the price of racial remedies.
Bell continued writing about critical race theory even after accepting a teaching position at Harvard University. Much of his legal scholarship was influenced by his experience both as a black man and as a civil rights attorney. Writing in a narrative style, Bell contributed to the intellectual discussions on race. According to Bell, his purpose in writing was to examine the racial issues within the context of their economic and social and political dimensions from a legal standpoint.

For instance, in The Constitutional Contradiction, Bell argued that the framers of the Constitution chose the rewards of property over justice. With regard to the interest convergence, he maintains that "whites will promote racial advances for blacks only when they also promote white self-interest." Finally, in The Price of Racial Remedies, Bell argues that whites will not support civil rights policies that may threaten white social status.

Bell is also the author of a number of books and short stories, including "Ethical Ambition" and "The Space Traders".

Derrick Bell is a supporter of animal rights.[3]

On October 5th, 2011, Derrick Bell succumbed to Carcinoid Cancer at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, at the age of 80. [4]

In popular media

His short story The Space Traders was adapted in 1994 by director Reginald Hudlin and writer Trey Ellis. It aired as the leading segment of a three part television anthology entitled "Cosmic Slop" which focused on minority centric Science Fiction.[5]

References

^ Legal History Blog: New Archive: The Derrick Bell Papers
^ a b c d e f g Isaac Rosen. "Black Biography: Derrick Bell". Retrieved 2008-05-23.
^ Kentucky Fried Cruelty :: Celebrity Support :: Derrick Bell
^ Derrick Bell, Law Professor and Rights Advocate, Dies at 80
^ Cosmic Slop (1994) entry on IMDB.com

External links

NYU Law Faculty Profile
Derrick Bell's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project
The HistoryMakers Biography
Rules Of Racial Standing

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Chris Hedges On the Meaning of the 'Occupy Wall Street' Protests

http://www.truth-out.org/best-among-us/1317389455


The Best Among Us
30 September 2011
by Chris Hedges
Truthdig | Op-Ed


There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal. Ask Tim DeChristopher [5].

Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you. They are terrified this will spread. They have their long phalanxes of police on motorcycles, their rows of white paddy wagons, their foot soldiers hunting for you on the streets with pepper spray and orange plastic nets. They have their metal barricades set up on every single street leading into the New York financial district, where the mandarins in Brooks Brothers suits use your money, money they stole from you, to gamble and speculate and gorge themselves while one in four children outside those barricades depend on food stamps to eat. Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets. They disseminate the lies that pollute our airwaves. They know, even better than you, how pervasive the corruption and theft have become, how gamed the system is against you, how corporations have cemented into place a thin oligarchic class and an obsequious cadre of politicians, judges and journalists who live in their little gated Versailles while 6 million Americans are thrown out of their homes, a number soon to rise to 10 million, where a million people a year go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills and 45,000 die from lack of proper care, where real joblessness is spiraling to over 20 percent, where the citizens, including students, spend lives toiling in debt peonage, working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, a world devoid of hope, a world of masters and serfs.

The only word these corporations know is more. They are disemboweling every last social service program funded by the taxpayers, from education to Social Security, because they want that money themselves. Let the sick die. Let the poor go hungry. Let families be tossed in the street. Let the unemployed rot. Let children in the inner city or rural wastelands learn nothing and live in misery and fear. Let the students finish school with no jobs and no prospects of jobs. Let the prison system, the largest in the industrial world, expand to swallow up all potential dissenters. Let torture continue. Let teachers, police, firefighters, postal employees and social workers join the ranks of the unemployed. Let the roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grids, rail lines, subways, bus services, schools and libraries crumble or close. Let the rising temperatures of the planet, the freak weather patterns, the hurricanes, the droughts, the flooding, the tornadoes, the melting polar ice caps, the poisoned water systems, the polluted air increase until the species dies.

Who the hell cares? If the stocks of ExxonMobil or the coal industry or Goldman Sachs are high, life is good. Profit. Profit. Profit. That is what they chant behind those metal barricades. They have their fangs deep into your necks. If you do not shake them off very, very soon they will kill you. And they will kill the ecosystem, dooming your children and your children’s children. They are too stupid and too blind to see that they will perish with the rest of us. So either you rise up and supplant them, either you dismantle the corporate state, for a world of sanity, a world where we no longer kneel before the absurd idea that the demands of financial markets should govern human behavior, or we are frog-marched toward self-annihilation.

Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope. They know that hope has a cost, that it is not easy or comfortable, that it requires self-sacrifice and discomfort and finally faith. They sleep on concrete every night. Their clothes are soiled. They have eaten more bagels and peanut butter than they ever thought possible. They have tasted fear, been beaten, gone to jail, been blinded by pepper spray, cried, hugged each other, laughed, sung, talked too long in general assemblies, seen their chants drift upward to the office towers above them, wondered if it is worth it, if anyone cares, if they will win. But as long as they remain steadfast they point the way out of the corporate labyrinth. This is what it means to be alive. They are the best among us.



Links:

[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/6981
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/6981
[3] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_best_among_us_20110929/
[4] http://www.flickr.com/photos/brecav/6182267869/
[5] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/this_hero_didnt_stand_a_chance_20110620/
[6] http://occupytogether.org/
[7] http://www.truth-out.org/chris-hedges-occupy-wall-street/1317044672
[8] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[9] http://www.truth-out.org/content/chris-hedges
[10] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[11] https://members.truth-out.org/donate
[12] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=lawrence-odonnell-police-brutality-occupy-wall-street/1317150171
[13] http://www.truth-out.org/?q=occupywallstreet-more-hashtag-its-revolution-formation/1316784846




SAN FRANCISCO PROTEST AGAINST WALL STREET


COMMENTARY AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHULEENAN

On Thursday, September 29, hundreds of people were on Market Street near the Financial District in San Francisco to protest against Wall Street. They were there as part of OccupySF, marching in solidarity with New York's Occupy Wall Street, and chanting "Who bailed the banks
out? We bailed the banks out!"

The people marching were of all ages and races. The Occupy Wall Street site says:
"The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."
(Click on the "We Are The 99%" link above for the Tumblr page where scores of people have posted photos of themselves describing financial situation.)

The protestors turned on to Kearny Street where Charles Schwab is located. Plenty of SF police officers on foot, on motorcycles, and in cars were accompanying the marchers. The police mostly seemed to be directing traffic as the demonstrators were marching in the street, blocking traffic. But when some people swarmed Charles Schwab - other protestors kept marching - the police on motorcycles drove right up to them and started herding them. I left at that point so I don't know what happened.

About 20 minutes later, I saw that the demonstrators turned down Post Street and headed back to Market St.

The last images were taken on October 4 near the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank at 101 Market Street, where OccupySF folks are camping out 24/7.
















Below are photos of the OccupySF encampment on Market Street. These photos are taken from the opposite side of the street. Cars and buses going by see these signs.






Cornel West On The Revolutionary Potential of the 'Occupy Wall Street' Protests

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/9/29/cornel_west_on_occupy_wall_street_its_the_makings_of_a_us_autumn_responding_to_the_arab_spring





Cornel West on Occupy Wall Street: It’s the Makings of a U.S. Autumn Responding to the Arab Spring

"It’s impossible to translate the issue of the greed of Wall Street into one demand, or two demands. We’re talking about a democratic awakening," said Dr. Cornel West when he spoke with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman during a visit Tuesday night to the Occupy Wall Street encampment. Some critics have expressed frustration at the protest’s lack of a clear and unified message. But the Princeton University professor emphasized that "you’re talking about raising political consciousness so it spills over all parts of the country, so people can begin to see what’s going on through a set of different lens, and then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be. Because in the end we’re really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution: A transfer of power from oligarchs to everyday people of all colors. And that is a step by step process." Dr. West also called on President Obama to apologize for calling on members of the Congressional Black Caucus to “stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying” when unemployment among African Americans has reached record highs and two of five Black children live in poverty. This video features Amy Goodman’s interview with Dr. West, along with his address to Occupy Wall Street protesters.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you say to people about what’s happening with Occupy Wall Street, and what you feel, talking to people here, are the key issues here?

CORNEL WEST: Well, I think we’ve got to keep the momentum going because it’s impossible to translate the issue of the greed of Wall Street into one demand, or two demands. We’re talking about a democratic awakening. We’re talking about raising political consciousness, so it spills over; all parts of the country so people can begin to see what’s going on through a different set of lens. And then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be, because in the end we’re really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution; a transfer of power from oligarchs to every day people of all colors, and that is a step-by-step process. It’s a democratic process, it’s a non-violent process, but it is a revolution, because these oligarchs have been transferring wealth from poor and working people at a very intense rate in the last 30 years, and getting away with it, and then still smiling in our faces and telling us it’s our fault. That’s a lie, and this beautiful group is a testimony to that being a lie. When you get the makings of a U.S. autumn responding to the Arab Spring, and is growing and growing—-I hope it spills over to San Francisco and Chicago and Miami and Phoenix, Arizona, with our brown brothers and sisters, hits our poor white brothers and sisters in Appalachia—-so. it begins to coalesce. And I tell you, it is sublime to see all the different colors, all the different genders, all the different sexual orientations and different cultures, all together here in Liberty Plaza; there’s no doubt about it.

AMY GOODMAN: Does it surprise you, what you’re seeing right now?

CORNEL WEST: Well, not really. I knew there would be some moral outrage as a two party system begins to decay, and the mean-spiritedness of the Republicans moving more toward reactionary and quasi-fascist politics and the relative spinelessness of the Democratic Party, tied to oligarchs as well, but centrists, trying to hold off against the viscous right-wing politics of the Republican Party, but refusing to, in any way be progressive. And you heard broth Barack’s speech to the Black Caucus the other day. March with me, condescending, insulting—-

AMY GOODMAN: Take off your bedroom slippers.

CORNEL WEST: Disrespecting, stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. I tell my brother; he got to understand the genius about Marley. He called his group the Wailers, not the whiners. The Wailers were persons who cry for help but against the context of catastrophe. When Wall Street cried out for help, they got billions of dollars. Working people, poor people are crying for help. Whining is a cry of self pity, of a sentimental disposition. That’s not what’s happening in poor America. That’s not what’s happening in working class America and that’s, certainly, not what’s happening in black America. It’s high unemployment rates, two out of five black kids in poverty, that’s not whining, that’s not complaining, that’s legitimate critiques and legitimate grievances out of a genuine grief. So that I ask the president to apologize. He needs to ask for forgiveness. You don’t talk to people that way; I don’t care what color they are when they’re suffering, not at all, you see. But, most importantly, here, people are straightening their backs up.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Mike check.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Mike check.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Mike check.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Mike check.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Mike check.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Mike check.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: We are going to be starting...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: We are going to be starting...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Our general assembly...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Our general assembly...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: We would like to...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: We would like to...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: Start...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Start...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: With some words...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: With some words...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY LEADER: From Cornel West...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: From Cornel West...

[CHEERING]

CORNEL WEST: There is a sweet spirit in this place.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: There is a sweet spirit in this place.

CORNEL WEST: I hope you can feel the love and inspiration...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: I hope you can feel the love and inspiration...

CORNEL WEST: Of those Sly Stone called every day people...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Of those Sly Stone called every day people...

CORNEL WEST: Who take a stand with great courage...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Who take a stand with great courage...

CORNEL WEST: And compassion...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And compassion...

CORNEL WEST: Because we oppose...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Because we oppose...

CORNEL WEST: The greed of Wall Street oligarchs...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: The greed of Wall Street oligarchs...

CORNEL WEST: And corporate plutocrats...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And corporate plutocrats...

CORNEL WEST: Who squeeze the democratic juices...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Who squeeze the democratic juices...

CORNEL WEST: Out of this country...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Out of this country...

CORNEL WEST: And other places around the world...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And other places around the world...

CORNEL WEST: I am so blessed to be here...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: I am so blessed to be here...

CORNEL WEST: You got me spiritually break-dancing on the way here...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: You got me spiritually break-dancing on the way here...

CORNEL WEST: Because when you bring folks together...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Because when you bring folks together...

CORNEL WEST: Of all colors...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Of all colors...

CORNEL WEST: And all cultures...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And all cultures...

CORNEL WEST: And all Genders...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And all Genders...

CORNEL WEST: And all sexual orientations...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And all sexual orientations...

CORNEL WEST: The elite will tremble in their boots...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: The elite will tremble in their boots...

CORNEL WEST: Yeah...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Yeah...

CORNEL WEST: And we will send a message...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And we will send a message...

CORNEL WEST: That this is the U.S. fall...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: That this is the U.S. Fall...

CORNEL WEST: Responding to the Arab Spring...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Responding to the Arab Spring...

CORNEL WEST: And it’s going to hit Chicago...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And it’s going to hit Chicago...

CORNEL WEST: And Los Angeles...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And Los Angeles...

CORNEL WEST: And Phoenix, Arizona...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And Phoenix, Arizona...

CORNEL WEST: And A-Town, itself...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And A-Town, itself...

CORNEL WEST: Moving on to Detroit...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Moving on to Detroit...

CORNEL WEST: We going to hit Appalachia...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: We going to hit Appalachia...

CORNEL WEST: We going to hit the reservations with our red brothers and sisters...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: We going to hit the reservations with our red brothers and sisters...

CORNEL WEST: And Martin Luther King Jr. will smile from the grave...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And Martin Luther King Jr. will smile from the grave...

CORNEL WEST: And say, we moving step by step...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And say, we moving step by step...

CORNEL WEST: For what he called a revolution...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: For what he called a revolution...

CORNEL WEST: And don’t be afraid to say revolution...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And don’t be afraid to say revolution...

CORNEL WEST: Because we want a transfer of power...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: We want a transfer of power...

CORNEL WEST: From the oligarchs...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: From the oligarchs...

CORNEL WEST: To ordinary citizens...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: To ordinary citizens...

CORNEL WEST: Beginning with the poor children of all colors...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Beginning with the poor children of all colors...

CORNEL WEST: And the orphans and the widows...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And the orphans and the widows...

CORNEL WEST: And the elderly...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And the elderly...

CORNEL WEST: And the working folk...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And the working folk...

CORNEL WEST: That we connect the prison-industrial complex...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: That we connect the prison-industrial complex...

CORNEL WEST: With the military-industrial complex...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: With the military-industrial complex...

CORNEL WEST: With the Wall Street oligarchy complex...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: With the Wall Street oligarchy complex...

CORNEL WEST: And the corporate-media complex...

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And the corporate-media complex...

CORNEL WEST: And the corporate-media multiplex.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: And the corporate-media multiplex.

CORNEL WEST: So, I want to thank you and it’s a blessing to be a small part of this magnificent gathering.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: So, I want to thank you and it’s a blessing to be a small part of this magnificent gathering.

CORNEL WEST: This is the general assembly, consecrated by your witness and your body and your mind.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY: This is the general assembly, consecrated by your witness and your body and your mind.

CORNEL WEST: Yeah. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.

[CHEERING]



Cornel West, professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton University and the author of numerous books on race.


Michael Moore On the Importance of The 'Occupy Wall Street' Protests

http://www.truth-out.org/something-has-started-michael-moore-occupy-wall-st-protests-could-spark-movement/1317230238



"Something Has Started": Michael Moore on the Occupy Wall St. Protests That Could Spark a Movement

Oscar-winning filmmaker, best-selling author,and provocateur laureate Michael Moore joins us for the hour. One of the world’s most acclaimed — and notorious — independent filmmakers and rabble-rousers, his documentary films include Roger and Me; Bowling for Columbine for which he won the Academy Award, Fahrenheit 9/11, SICKO; and Capitalism: A Love Story. In the first part of our interview, Moore talks about the growing "Occupy Wall Street" protests in Lower Manhattan, which he visited on Monday night. "This is literally an uprising of people who have had it," Moore says. "It has already started to spread across the country in other cities. It will continue to spread. ... It will be tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people ... Their work ahead is not as difficult as other movements in the past ... The majority of Americans are really upset at Wall Street ... So you have already got an army of Americans who are just waiting for somebody to do something, and something has started." [includes rush transcript]

Michael Moore, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and activist. His new book is a memoir titled, "Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life."

AMY GOODMAN: Today we spend the hour with one of the most famous independent filmmakers in the world, Michael Moore. For more than two decades, Michael’s been one of the most politically active, provocative and successful documentary filmmakers in the business. His films include Roger and me, Bowling for Columbine, for which he won the Academy Award, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and Capitalism: A Love Story." Today, we speak with Michael Moore about his new book that just came out, it’s called, Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life. It comprises 20 vignettes from his life that illustrate how his political and sociological view points developed. As far back as 20 years ago, when Michael Moore made his award winning debut documentary, Roger and Me, he knew he was anything but an average child.

MICHAEL MOORE: I was kind of a strange child. My parents knew early on something must be wrong with me. I crawled backwards until I was years old, but I had Kennedy’s inaugural address memorized by the time I was six. It all began when my mother didn’t show up with my first birthday party because she was having my sister. My dad tried to cheer me up by letting me eat the whole cake. I knew then there had been warned to life than this.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Michael Moore in his award winning 1989 documentary, Roger & Me. Well, today he’s one of the world’s most acclaimed and notorious independant film-makers and rabble-rousers. On Monday night, Michael visited the Occupy Wall Street protest in lower Manhattan. Police have barred the protesters from using any form of public address system at the encampment, so the crowd amplified Michael’s comments by repeating them in unison.

MICHAEL MOORE: Whatever you do, don’t despair because this is the hard part. You are in the hard part right now.

CROWD: Whatever you do, don’t despair because this is the hard part. You are in the hard part right now.

MICHAEL MOORE: But, everyone will remember,

CROWD: But, everyone will remember,

MICHAEL MOORE: three months from now,

CROWD: three months from now,

MICHAEL MOORE: six months from now,

CROWD: six months from now,

MICHAEL MOORE: 100 years from now,

CROWD: 100 years from now,

MICHAEL MOORE: that you came down to this Plaza,

CROWD: that you came down to this Plaza,

MICHAEL MOORE: and you started this movement.

CROWD: and you started this movement.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Michael Moore addressing the Occupy Wall Street protesters in Lower Manhattan. Well, for the remainder of the hour, we’re delighted to have him here in studio and we won’t be repeating everything you say, Michael, although it is ingenious when you’re not allowed to use a microphone.

MICHAEL MOORE: It’s a little weird at first because it sounds either like your reciting the Rosary and church or that seen in, Life of Brian, where the whole crowd just repeats everything that Brian says. But, the reason they do it is because the police have not allowed them to have an amplification. So, in order for the people to hear in the back, everyone around you just shouts out what you just said so everybody can hear it. I thought it was, actually, kind of an interesting and a workable idea.

AMY GOODMAN: Well we’ve put out to the world that you’re coming in today. Of course, the questions came in on Facebook. We tweeted this and people can tweet back right now. But, when we posted the question on Facebook, "What you want to ask Michael Moore?", Tausif Khan wrote, "What do you think is the next step the protesters need to take to get Washington and Wall Street to listen and to make real change?"

MICHAEL MOORE: They don’t need to worry about a next step. It’s already happening. This is something that has, sort of, sprung up. There’s no group, organized group, no dues-paying, members only organization behind this. This is literally an uprising of people who have had it. And It has already started to spread across the country in other cities. It will continue to spread. It has to start somewhere. It started here with a few hundred. It will grow, and really already has grown here to a few thousand. And will be tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of people because, what I was in them other night, the great thing about what they are doing, and great in the sense that their work ahead is not as difficult as other movements in the past; when the Women’s Liberation Movement began, when people began protesting against the Vietnam War, civil-rights movement. At the beginning of those movements, the majority of the country was not with them, did not believe the basic principles of any of those philosophies. That’s not true right now. The majority of Americans are really upset at Wall Street. Millions of Americans have lost their homes or are facing foreclosure right now. Fifty Million do not have health insurance. Fourteen Million officially are unemployed, and it’s probably well up into the 20 million-plus people that are actually unemployed. So you’ve already got an army of Americans who are just waiting for somebody to do something, and the something has started.

AMY GOODMAN: And it is so interesting, if you had 2000 people, as the first weekend, whatever, 12 days ago, 2000 Tea Party activists down on Wall Street, you probably have double the number of reporters there. But, at the beginning of this, very little coverage. This is day 12. And, I wanted to talk about what happened this past weekend; the New York Police Department’s handling of the arrest of 80 protesters over the weekend that’s come under fire as a number of videos have emerged showing officers using heavy handed tactics to say the least. Protesters captured some of the attacks on video, including the arrest of a 21-year-old Bronx resident named, Hero Vincent. He was trying to calm the crowd and organize people to leave. This is a clip from after he was released from jail.

HERO VINCENT: That’s when the police charged at me, and just started, you know, swinging at me, and another policeman pushed me, and I’m backing up, and as I’m backing up I hit the barricade. And then I look at them and they come at me. I go over and then four policeman just started beating on me, yelling at me, "Stop resisting arrest," while I’m just laying there, I’m not fighting back. They kick me in my stomach, knock the breath out me. Hit me with their baton. They put their knees into my face, not into my head, into my face, into the ground, and just laughing.

AMY GOODMAN: While other demonstrators were charged with blocking traffic and resisting arrest, Vincent faces the most serious charge of assaulting a police officer. The NYPD says they acted appropriately, but Vincent said he’s confident the videos of the attack will exonerate him and has vowed to continue to participating in the Occupy Wall Street protest.

HERO VINCENT: If there’s anything called the epitome of a struggle, me and my family lived it. We were foreclosed on. My father had trouble finding a job, still hasn’t found one. I had trouble finding a job, still haven’t found one. My sister is in college, the tuition is doubling. They’re trying to fight for her financial aid. We struggle with food. I even slept on a bench for a few nights before this occasion. So, I’m here for everybody in my family, not just myself, and everybody who goes through the same struggles, that I can empathize with.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael, your comments on Hero Vincent and all that are down there?

MICHAEL MOORE: Well, it’s highly ironic that now over 100 of the protesters have been arrested and not a single banker, a CEO from Wall Street, anyone from corporate America — nobody, not one arrest of any of these people who brought down the economy in 2008. Who created schemes, financial schemes that not only destroyed the economy, but took away the future of this generation, of this young man and his children in the future. They have completely ruined it for people while they have become filthy rich. Not one of them arrested, but 100 of these people who have stood up non-violently against this madness, and they’re arrested? This just boggles the mind. I want to say something, too, because, Amy, you’ve lived here, in this area, in the city for probably most of your life. I have been here for many years. By and large, the New York City cops are actually pretty good as police forces go. I can tell you from filming around the country, you know...

AMY GOODMAN: I think it depends where we live.

MICHAEL MOORE: Well, this is what I was going to say; yes, what’s rough here, is that when you have the bad apples, they are really bad here, and it’s not just one or two. I think it’s very important, also, when you look at this videotape and the other video that was shot that day of the people—-especially the one individual who was pepper spraying women in their eyes when they were standing there doing nothing—-those were the white-shirted management types. They were not just the street officers. These were the guys that were supposed to be in charge of them. They were the ones going up there. It’s one thing if you’ve got a rogue cop behaving violently, but when you have management, when have the white shirts there of the NYPD doing this, that’s not rogue, that’s policy. That’s coming from somewhere else. They’ve been told by those in charge to corral this thing, end this thing, stop this thing. Somebody should inform them that everybody is a filmmaker now. Everybody has a camera. You cannot just treat people like this and get away with it, and I hope they don’t get away with it.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Michael Moore, and when we come back, we’ve got an interesting Twitter question that has to do with comparing protests here to, well, what was happening around GM a while ago. Michael Moore is our guest for the hour. He has a new book called, Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life, Stay with us.