Occupy Seattle swoops in around JPMorgan Chase executive - latimes.com

I would beg to differ with Dimon's assessment below that it will get better, yes it will but it's going to take 16 years at the current rate for all the jobs that were lost to come back. Something MUST DRASTICALLY change if any of us are to have a chance at a decent life any time in the foreseeable future. This just in from Turthout.org:

"Over the last three months, overall job growth has averaged 143,000. It takes roughly 90,000 jobs to keep even with the growth of the labor force. At this rate, it will take close to 200 months, or 16 years, to make up for the 10-million-job deficit in the economy." http://www.2012theawakening.org/2011/12/trends-show-women-losing-access-to-jobs.html

November 3, 2011 | 12:43 am

How to light a match under what has been a mainly low-key Occupy Seattle protest? Try bringing the guy protesters like to think of as Darth Vader to town.
Leaders of the University of Washington's Foster School of Business say it was a year ago that they booked JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as the keynote speaker at their business leadership dinner, enthusiastic about his stated belief that "the constant creation of good leaders" is the key to companies passing "the true test of greatness."
But by Wednesday, when Dimon arrived, the story line had changed somewhat.
Activists camped out in cities across the country have for weeks singled out Chase and other big banks as enemies of good government and popular prosperity. In Seattle, Chase has been the target of particular ire as a result of its acquisition of former hometown bank Washington Mutual, a buyout that put 3,400 WaMu employees out of work and left much of the former bank's downtown real estate suddenly empty.
As it ended up, Dimon's speech was a big draw on all counts: It was a sellout to the MBA crowd inside, and Occupy Seattle activists outside moved in like X-wing starfighters to the Death Star.
Protesters marched through downtown to the hotel where Dimon was speaking, locking arms in an attempt to barricade hotel entrances and waving signs: "Prosecute the Real Thieves -- Chase CEO" and "What are profits if you lose your soul?"
In another part of town earlier in the day, activists surrounded a Chase bank branch and a few briefly got inside before police pulled them out, prompting running clashes between protesters and police and arrests on trespassing charges of five people who had been in the bank.
Police said in their report that at least 10 officers were physically assaulted while removing activists from the scene of the bank protest, with two suffering minor injuries.
Pepper spray was deployed to push back protesters at the bank and later when police cleared entrances to the hotel where Dimon was speaking.
"We are hoping that by our presence at an event where he is a keynote speaker, we will let him and the larger community know that the public is no longer tolerating the misdeeds of the big banks," an Occupy Seattle spokeswoman, who would identify herself only as Ellen, said in an interview.
The Seattle Times and other local reporters talked to the Chase CEO before his speech, and he said he understood protesters' frustration with Wall Street. "They're right. In general, these big institutions of America let them down. That's not the same thing as to say that every bank was bad, every politician was bad. That's where I would disagree," he said, according to the Times.
"America has become more inequitable in the last 10 or 20 years. That's a fact," he said. "I don't personally think that's a good thing. I've been a big supporter of progressive taxes."
But Dimon also predicted that the current economic downturn would eventually reverse, and that young people looking for jobs would eventually find them. "Keep the faith," he said. "I wish we hadn't put them in this position. Remember those fundamentals always when you wake up: You are in the best country, and it will come back."
On Thursday, Dimon is scheduled to head to Portland, Ore., for a Business Alliance lunch. Occupy Portland is ready: Activists there say on their "Occupy Jamie Dimon" Facebook page that they're planning "a little guerrilla theater."
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-- Kim Murphy in Seattle
Photo: Protesters try to barricade the Sheraton Hotel in Seattle, where JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon was speaking. Credit: Elaine Thompson / Associated Press

Occupy Seattle swoops in around JPMorgan Chase executive - latimes.com

Pregnant Seattle protester miscarries after being kicked, pepper sprayed

Topics: Jennifer Fox ♦ pepper spray

 

By David Edwards Tuesday, November 22, 2011

A woman who was pepper sprayed during during a raid on Occupy Seattle last week is blaming police after she miscarried Sunday.
Jennifer Fox, 19, told The Stranger that she had been with the Occupy protests since they started in Westlake Park. She said she was homeless and three months pregnant, but felt the need to join activists during their march last Tuesday.
“I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” Fox recalled. “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.’”

 

She claimed that police hit her in the stomach twice before pepper spraying her. One officer struck her with his foot and another pushed his bicycle into her. It wasn’t clear if either of those incidents were intentional.

“Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut,” Fox said.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Joshua Trujillo snapped a picture of Fox in apparent agony as another activist carried her to an ambulance.
Seattle fire department spokesman Kyle Moore told The Washington Post that a 19-year-old pregnant woman was among those that were examined by paramedics.
While doctors at Harborview Medical Center didn’t see any problems at the time, things took a turn for the worst Sunday.
“Everything was going okay until yesterday, when I started getting sick, cramps started, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” she explained.
When Fox arrived at the hospital, doctors told her that the baby had no heartbeat.
“They diagnosed that I was having a miscarriage. They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too,” she said.
“I was worried about it [when I joined the protests], but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know that a cop would murder a baby that’s not born yet… I am trying to get lawyers.”
The Scoville heat chart indicates that U.S. grade pepper spray is ten times more painful than the blistering hot habanero pepper, according to Scientific American. While law enforcement officials regulary claim that the spray is safe, researchers at the University of North Carolina and Duke University found that it could “produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurologic effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death.”
Watch this video from IowaBoyDave, uploaded to YouTube Nov. 21, 2011.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/22/pregnant-seattle-protester-miscarries-after-being-kicked-pepper-sprayed/?utm_source=Raw+Story+Daily+Update&utm_campaign=bb1b72025b-11_22_1111_22_2011&utm_medium=email

Note: What's it going to take before public outcry about this police brutality? Now that a baby's been murdered, are we waiting for another Kent State? It's obvious someone is making the calls for violence as a tactic to scare people away from the movement, when the violence is having the opposite affect by galvanizing our resolve to fight even harder. Just like Jennifer, people join the movement because they have skin in the game - they're angry and hurting, no one EVER expects to get hurt or to lose their baby at the hands of those who are hired to serve and protect.

PHOTOS: Elderly woman, pregnant woman hit with pepper spray at Occupy Seattle

Seattle activist Dorli Rainey, 84, reacts after being hit with pepper spray during an Occupy Seattle protest on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at Westlake Park. Bottom right, Seattle Police officers spray to disperse the crowd gathered in the intersection of Pine Street and 5th Avenue. A woman who gave her name as Jennifer and said she was two months pregnant is rushed to a waiting ambulance after being hit with pepper spray at Occupy Seattle Tuesday night. (Photos by Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com)

Posted by Joshua Trujillo on November 16, 2011

Dozens of people were hit with pepper spray by Seattle police officers Tuesday night as a group of protesters refused to leave a downtown intersection. (Story here.)
Shoving matches with police and arrests of Occupy Seattle protesters were reporter earlier in the afternoon in the Belltown neighborhood.
But tensions escalated Tuesday night when protesters saw that local activist Dorli Rainey, 84, had been hit directly in the face by pepper spray (photo above). Moments later a woman who identified herself as Jennifer, a regular at the protests, was also sprayed. Frantic people gathered around the woman who said she was two months pregnant. They called an ambulance when breathing became difficult for the woman, she started to vomit and complained of cramping.
Officers seemed to spray indiscriminately as people moved slowly from the street to the sidewalk. They had been warned multiple times by officers to not block traffic in the intersection.
SPD spokesperson Jeff Kappel wrote on the department’s blog that “Pepper spray was deployed only against subjects who were either refusing a lawful order to disperse or engaging in assaultive behavior toward officers.”
The Occupy Seattle protests have tested the patience of police in what has mostly been a cordial back and forth between protesters and officers. Shoving matches have erupted, notably one in the Capitol Hill neighborhood on November, 3rd. But unlike other cities unwillingly hosting Occupy encampments, police have mostly stood on the sidelines in Seattle.
In an email to The Stranger, Dorli Rainey, who is known as a local activist and once ran for mayor of Seattle, said she was on her way to a transportation meeting when she stopped to check out the Occupy Seattle protest.
She said she was interested after the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a resolution in Support of the Occupy Seattle movement.
“Well free speech does have its limits as I found out as the cops shoved their bicycles into the crowd and simultaneously pepper sprayed the so captured protesters,” she told The Stranger.
She credited Iraq war veteran Caleb with keeping her from being trampled by the crowd.
Rainey, who has a blog titled Old Lady in Combat Boots, describes herself on the site as a “political activist and all-around troublemaker.”

Here is a gallery of photos from Tuesday night’s protest.

Here is a video of officers pushing protesters onto the sidewalk from Youtube user mediahacker. Note, explicit language in video.



Visit seattlepi.com’s home page for more Seattle news. Contact Joshua Trujillo at joshuatrujillo@seattlepi.com or on Twitter as @joshtrujillo. 

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2011/11/16/photos-elderly-woman-pregnant-woman-hit-with-pepper-spray-at-occupy-seattle/