Occupy DC

Just got the following email:
We who occupied K Street and Freedom Plaza, and you who have supported us, aspire to a world governed by compassion and consent, not by greed and exploitation. From Saturday, September 29 to Sunday, October 7, we invite you to join us for a week of teach-ins, assemblies, festivities and direct actions in order to educate, entertain, and exercise our freedom to purge destructive self-interest and create mutually beneficial community. Want to figure out how to get involved? Offer ideas for things we should be working on? Leak us some classified documents? Come on out!

On October 1st, 2012, it’ll be a year to the day since our friends bravely began sleeping at McPherson Square. Over the ensuing months, more of us joined them, inspired to try to create a community along the lines of what we’d like to see in the world – a politically conscious society that rejects greed and celebrates mutual aid. We have been successful in some ways and unsuccessful in others, and we continue to develop as a growing activist community.

We’re no longer occupying K Street, but the war hawks, debt profiteers, bailout pirates and other corporate-government door revolvers continue to use it as their base from which to occupy much of the planet. These agencies, lobbyist firms, and assorted multinationals are collectively responsible for both exploiting and drowning out the voices of the global 99%, forcing governments around the world to adopt policies that starve the common person and enrich the elite. As the concurrent global uprisings of the past year demonstrate, popular patience wears thin for these profit-hungry puppet-masters and their government enforcers.

On the morning of October 1, the one-year anniversary of the McPherson Square occupation, join us as we storm K Street and the offices of its many corporate profiteers. You know who they are. They know who they are. Their time pulling strings from the shadows is over.

(Disclaimer: Our goal is not to disrupt the day of the working class by inhibiting their commute. As long as we have a corporatist system of government, there will be civil unrest – and traffic delays will be the least of our problems.)

See our full schedule of events here:

ROCCUPY Festival / Shut Down K Street Schedule
Saturday, 9/29 – Freedom Plaza (14th St NW & Pennsylvania Ave NW)
10:30 AM – 1:30 PM – Criminal (In)justice Committee teach-in at All Souls Unitarian Church (16th St NW & Harvard St NW; all other Saturday activities are in Freedom Plaza), workshops, education, and strategizing on the Wells Fargo boycott, mass incarceration, systematic racism, and more.
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM – Tent of Dreams, an Occuplay
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM – Discussion: Where has the Occupy Movement been, and where is it going? An open, facilitated discussion about the movement of our time.
2:30 PM – 4:30 PM – Games, booths, and being together
4:30 PM – 5:30 PM – Spokescouncil: Planning for Shut Down K Street, future actions
5:30 PM – 6:00 PM – DINNER served at Freedom Plaza
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM – People’s Assembly

MUSIC
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Radio Rahim
8:00 PM – 8:30 PM – Uptown XO
8:30 PM – 9:00 PM – Shahid Buttar, Guerilla Poetry Insurgency
9:00 PM – 9:30 PM – Gogo
9:30 PM – 10:00 PM – Beasts of No Nation
10:00 PM – Open mic

Sunday, 9/30 – McPherson Square (15th St NW & K St NW)

12:30 – 2:00 PM – Discussion: Occupy the Vote, or Vote for Nobody? An open, facilitated discussion about how the Occupy Movement should or shouldn’t relate to the election.

(2:00 PM – 4:30 PM – Please check the schedule board for a full list of workshops, discussions, affinity group meetups, and so on. Groups and individuals are encouraged to hold your own discussions or meetups. Write your topic on the schedule board. Below are the discussions already planned.)

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM: The First Hour
A) Environment and Occupy – A discussion with local environmental activists on climate change, mountaintop removal coal mining, DC’s energy utility company Pepco, fracking, the Keystone XL tarsands pipeline, and what all of this means for the Occupy Movement.
B) What Consensus Means to Me – A discussion on what consensus really means, anarchist and horizontal models of organizing, and decision-making in an environment of egalitarianism.
C) Citizen Journalism – A discussion on being your own press with the media activists of DC Mic Check, a project that emerged out of Occupy DC.
D) Foreclosure Crisis – A discussion on the bad and the worse on the foreclosure crisis, what has been done here in DC to resist foreclosures, and why the housing crisis has disproportionately impacted communities of color.

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM: The Second Hour
A) Global Crises, Global Movements – What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership and how will it destroy humanity and the environment? What are the IMF and World Bank and why should people protest them? What are all of those protesters in Greece rioting? Answers to all of these questions in a discussion with resident Occupy DC experts.
B) Anarchism 101 – A discussion with individuals in the Anarchist Alliance of DC Network on anarchism, anarchists in history, and other topics related to anarchist resistance.

4:30 PM – 5:30 PM – Spokescouncil: Planning for Shut Down K Street, future actions
5:30 PM – 6:00 PM – DINNER served at Freedom Plaza
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM – People’s Assembly
7:30 PM – Starting Line of Occupy DC Scavenger Hunt

SHUT DOWN K STREET – Mon, 10/1
7AM Meet at Farragut Sq.

STORM K STREET
– Two Marches will leave there and disrupt the morning for a list of some 100 secondary targets. The two marches will multiply, because we can never die.
10AM
– All Marches will end and reconverge at Freedom Plaza for breakfast and an Action spokes.
1030AM
-There will be a Direct Action Teach-in.
11AM
– There will be a teach-in on Anarchist Theory by AADC
1130AM – 2PM
SHUT DOWN K STREET

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OCCUPY DC STRIKES BACK – WEEK OF RESISTANCE – Tues 10/2 – Sun 10/7
These are themed days of action in resistance to the system and in solidarity with the 99%. Individual, autonomous affinity groups are welcome to plan whatever inspires them.

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10/1 – SHUT DOWN K STREET day of action. (Please see above.)
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10/2 – Crush The Corporatocracy. A day to stick it to the notorious lobbyists, one-percenters, and Citizens-United Super PAC campaign donors who are undermining democracy and imperiling our system.

Sleepful Protest 10pm at Bank of America, Pennsylvania & 15th St NW
FB Event: http://on.fb.me/QoO9Il
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10/3 – Break The Banks. 7am – 11am, foreclose on the mortgage branch of Bank of America. 11:30 – 12:30, lunch at McPherson Square. 12:45 – 3:00, simultaneous actions targeting several DC banks using a diversity of tactics, from sits-ins and street theater to other tactical shenanigans.
FB Event: http://on.fb.me/P7g6kH
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10/4 – Election Day. 12:30pm – 2:30pm, McPherson Square. Cast your ballot and rally for DC voting rights and fair representation! Join us as we announce the winners and losers of our highly scientific election, and take a hard look at who makes DC great. Celebrate solidarity in the Occupy DC and Washington, DC, communities. Request a ballot on this page, or from Kelly Canavan or Eli Greer. Make your voice heard!
FB Event: http://on.fb.me/QA7HGD
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10/5 – Earth, sustainability, and energy day of action. A day of opposing industrial agriculture, GMOs, hydro-fracking, pollution, oil, coal, and other dirty energy, and working toward a healthy, sustainable planet.
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10/6 – OCCUPY DC FREEDOM PLAZA ANNIVERSARY, a day for calling for an end to wars and militarism. The Occupy DC Freedom Plaza location began on the anniversary of our invasion of Afghanistan on October 6, 2001. This October 6, join Occupy DC to oppose war and militarism, and call for US troops out of Afghanistan now!
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10/7 – Occupy Democracy day of action. A day for calling for a true democracy, one month prior to Election Day. Meet 5 PM in McPherson Square for a general assembly to display what a real, egalitarian, horizontal democracy might look like!
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A year ago, on October 1, 2011, ecstatic that the 99% had begun occupying Wall Street, brave activists here in Washington DC began occupying McPherson Square on K Street, the corridor where corporate lobbyists, bankers, and the 1% come to wield their power. On October 6, more fearless members of the 99% began occupying Freedom Plaza in downtown DC, about ten blocks to the south. Two active camps were established with several hundred occupiers between the two of them. They survived the snow and rain of winter and persecution from the police, until the police violently raided the camps in the first week of February 2012.

There are more reasons than ever to occupy — to dwell in the places where the 1% do their corrupt dealings, and refuse to leave. Join the 99% as we reclaim our democracy, our future, our world.