Occupy L.A. Guide - Who, What And Why
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>>THE TIMELINE.
Track the movement in Los Angeles since it began July 1.
>>THE INDIVIDUALS.
David Velasquez , who admitted, unprompted, to attending school only through the ninth grade, was preaching about the need to educate children with truth so they do not spread lies to our society.
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Benjamin Ahdoot is a businessman at what has been portrayed as an essentially anti-business protest movement
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“I worked at 7-Eleven and Safeway as a teenager and built up my management skills," Gary Boatwright said. "Now, even though I have prior work experience and a college degree, I can’t even get a job. Are you kidding me? How do I pay my student loans? American exceptionalism is history!”
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Quincy Clemons calls on the U.S. to radically shift its foreign policy approach and to solve issues of poverty and hunger in the country.
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Lucy Horwitz sat in a wheelchair outside city hall, clutching a sign that read, “The Beginning Is Near.” While the 79-year-old may look out of place in a sea of mostly young and bearded Occupy LA protesters, she’s been participating in protests since the Vietnam War.
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Rudy Rodriguez’s time at Occupy L.A. is not spent yelling into megaphones or picketing on the street, but instead medically attending to those who do.
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Rick Matthews fantasizes about 10 million surrounding Washington, Wall Street, every federal building and every police station, telling them all, “It’s over now.”
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Despite her fortunate position, Malina Lobel-Karimi drove more than 120 miles from Palm Desert to stand among the crowd in front of downtown L.A.’s City Hall and protest bank bailouts, corporate greed and the role of money in politics. Although she has not personally suffered, she said, plenty have and it needs to change.
>>THE PHOTOS.
>>THE VIDEOS.
>>HOW IT STARTED.
A Candian magazine known as Adbusters proposed the idea in an issue this summer, and some random people and the hacker group Anonymous decided it was a good idea. They agreed to meet in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan on Sept. 17. Slowly, it gained more attention and then grew nationwide during the last week of September and the first week of October. The paper has termed the movement American Autumn, borrowing from the term "Arab Spring" in regard to revolutions across the Midddle East this year.
>>WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID.
"I think people are frustrated and, you know, the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works," said the president.
Vice President Joe Biden compared Occupy Wall Street protesters to Tea Party members , arguing both groups are driven by middle-class discontent.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor calls them dangerous "mobs."
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks they can't have both ways.
Ann Coulter compared the protestors at Occupy Wall Street to Nazis.
>>UNIONS IN SUPPORT.
“Union support brings resources,” says David Meyer, a sociology professor at the University of California at Irvine who studies protest movements. “They have money, experienced organizers, membership lists, and coherent agendas.”
Service Employees International Union.
Laborers' International Union of America.
New York Transit Workers Union.
>>OTHER RESOURCES.
