Occupy Philadelphia Day 34

Yesterday's Occupy Philadelphia direct action was a die-in the at the offices of PNC bank in downtown Philadelphia. The huge bank is involved in financing mountaintop destruction mining and fracking.

PNC is the #1 investor in all of America in companies that practice 'mountaintop removal' (MTR) coal mining - companies who have dynamited over 500 mountains and are responsible for thousands of toxic Clean Water Act violations across the nearby Appalachian region, one of the poorest parts of America. Meanwhile, coal from those mines is burning in Philadelphia power plants right now, giving our kids asthma while PNC invests in natural gas hydrofracking right in our own backyard! If we're not united, what has happened in Appalachia can happen here in Pennsylvania.

A Fine Performance!

Congratulations to our friend Rob Cox for his great cabaret show this past weekend. Rob sang a mix of not often heard songs and standards from the Broadway songbook 1950-present.

Filming The Police Can Be Risky!

Occupy Philadelphia Day 33: Two-Tiered Justice In The U.S.

Police arrest occupiers, or worse, beat them, spray them with pepper spray, or use tear gas on them. At the same time, no one who is responsible for Wall Street excesses that led to the Great Recession has gone to jail or even been arrested and charged. It's no wonder why occupiers protest police excesses. Glenn Greenwald:

The police force - the instrument of law enforcement - is being used to protect powerful criminals who have suffered no consequences for their crimes. It is simultaneously used to coerce and punish the powerless: those who are protesting and who have done nothing wrong, yet are subjected to an array of punishment ranging from arrest to pepper spray and other forms of abuse. That's what the two-tiered justice system is: elites are immunized for egregious crimes while ordinary Americans are subjected to merciless punishment for trivial transgressions.

Occupy Philadelphia Day 31

Friday afternoon we marched from the occupation to Rittenhouse Square where Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was slated to collect big bucks at a fundraiser held at the posh Rittenhouse Hotel. The hotel has three access entriy points on three different streets, so we were unable to intercept Romney and he slipped into the hotel. Romney is a notorious flip-flopper. First he signed off on a fairly progressive health care scheme in Massachusetts but now he wants to repeal the Obama hellth care law. He was in favor of gay rights but now he's against us. He's without principles except what he thinks will do him god in the short term with the rabid Republican right.

Occupy Philadelphia Day 30: Inequality in the U.S.

Paul Krugman in the New York Times:

We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.

Why OccupyPhilly Is Targeting Comcast

Corporate greed: THIRD QUARTER REVENUE 2011: $14.3 billion THIRD QUARTER PROFITS 2011: $908 million THIRD QUARTER OPERATING CASH FLOW: 4.6 billion TOTAL OPERATING CASH FLOW FIRST NINE MONTHS OF 2011: $13.4 billion TOTAL REVENUE FIRST NINE MONTHS OF 2011: $40.8 billion TOTAL PROPERTY & BUSINESS TAXES PAID TO CITY OF PHILADELPHIA 2011: 0

Occupy Philadelphia Day 29

Yesterday, in solidarity with OccupyOakland, OccupyPhiladelphia marched through Philadelphia stopping at Republican U.S. Senator Toomey;s office to protest before continuing on to the Comcast building. Comcast is a poster child for coprpoate greed, mnaking huge profits and paying no taxes. At Comcast nine OP members engaged in non-violent civil disobedience with a sit-in and were arrested. There was significant media converage, the message of the protest was ddelivered, so it was a successful action.

Occupy Philadelphia Day 28

These ohotos were taken along the banks of the Schuylkill River in the AM. Today is day 28 of Occupy Philadelphia. There is a nationwide general strike called for today in solidarity with OccupyOakland, and the brutal police attack there that sent 24 year old Scott Olsen a U.S. veteran, to the hospital with a fractured skull. In Philadelphia there will be a rally at noon at the occupation site (Dilworth Plaza) followed by a march to the office of Republican Senator Toomey, who stands for the 1 percent.

Fall On Boathouse Row

Early November is about the peak for autumn colors in Philadelphia. On our morning walks Bradley and I pass by Philadelphia's historic Schuylkill Navy boathouses. They are extra pretty surounded by the colors of Fall.