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#Anonymous joins @Adbusters: Operation ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Begins #TakeWallStreet #OccupyWallStreet

#OccupyWallStreet

This weekend Anonymous joined Adbusters in Operation “Occupy Wall Street,” an ongoing nonviolent demonstration opposing corporate influence over U.S. politics. Inspired by the Arab Spring, the aim of the demonstration is to begin a sustained occupation of Wall Street and the financial district of New York City.

Occupy Wall Street was originally organized by Adbusters, a Canadian anti-consumerist magazine, and subsequently endorsed and promoted by the international Internet hacktivist collective known as Anonymous. The Operation began on Saturday, September 17.

#TakeWallStreet

Saturday, approximately 5,000 people joined Operation Occupy Wall Street. Since Saturday the number has dwindled, however those remaining claim to be in it for the long haul. According to tweets sent out by Occupy Wall Street, the group has blankets, food, and space heaters available for protesters

TPM Reports that Saturday’s protest was “a rowdy, circus-like atmosphere with people conducting yoga lessons in the park, and a choir singing behind a protest sign. The sound of police sirens blared in the background, against chants of ‘All day, all week, occupy Wall Street!’”

On Sunday hundreds of demonstrators marched through the Financial District chanting “We got sold out, banks got bailed out!” Demonstrators had hoped to enter Wall Street but were blocked by the  New York Police Department (NYPD). Nevertheless, the NYPD reports that even though the demonstrators don’t have a permit for the protest, they have no plans to remove protesters.

The following is an excerpt from a statement explaining Operation Occupy Wall Street:

A Modest Call to Action

We need to retake the freedom that has been stolen from the people, altogether.

1. If you agree that freedom is the right to communicate, to live, to be, to go, to love, to do what you will without the impositions of others, then you might be one of us.
2. If you agree that a person is entitled to the sweat of their brows, that being talented at management should not entitle others to act like overseers and overlords, that all workers should have the right to engage in decisions, democratically, then you might be one of us.
3. If you agree that freedom for some is not the same as freedom for all, and that freedom for all is the only true freedom, then you might be one of us.
4. If you agree that power is not right, that life trumps property, then you might be one of us.
5. If you agree that state and corporation are merely two sides of the same oppressive power structure, if you realize how media distorts things to preserve it, how it pits the people against the people to remain in power, then you might be one of us.

And so we call on people to act

1. We call for protests to remain active in the cities. Those already there, to grow, to organize, to raise consciousnesses, for those cities where there are no protests, for protests to organize and disrupt the system.
2. We call for workers to not only strike, but seize their workplaces collectively, and to organize them democratically. We call for students and teachers to act together, to teach democracy, not merely the teachers to the students, but the students to the teachers. To seize the classrooms and free minds together.
3. We call for the unemployed to volunteer, to learn, to teach, to use what skills they have to support themselves as part of the revolting people as a community.
4. We call for the organization of people’s assemblies in every city, every public square, every township.
5. We call for the seizure and use of abandoned buildings, of abandoned land, of every property seized and abandoned by speculators, for the people, for every group that will organize them.

We call for a revolution of the mind as well as the body politic.

Adbusters is a not-for-profit, anti-consumerist organization that describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.”

While right wing bloggers promoted Saturday as a “Day of Rage,” the weekend protest was in fact one of peace, with only two related arrests reported.

In addition to Adbusters and Anonymous, Ron Paul supporters, supporters of Bradley Manning, members of the Socialist Party, self-described anarchists, and Lyndon LaRouche supporters are all being represented in the on-going demonstrations.