What Dr. King Can Teach Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Tacoma

Did you know that Martin Luther King was trying to organize an Occupy Washington DC in 1967? He didn’t call it that. It was called “The Poor People’s Campaign.”

1. What did Rev King say about corporations, about capitalism, about the 99%?
2. And what advice would he give Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Tacoma?

These are some of the topics I cover in this tribute to Rev King in my video, “What Dr. King Can Teach Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Tacoma.”

Memo to Misbehaving Police: Little Brother Is Watching You

Disclaimer and Fair Disclosure: The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent Occupy Tacoma or Occupy Wall Street. I am not an authorized spokesperson for Occupy Tacoma. ~AOS

Disclaimer 2: These remarks are not meant to criticize the Tacoma Police Department. To my knowledge, so far, Tacoma Police Department has respected the rights of Occupy Tacoma and has limited activities to legitimate public safety and law enforcement.

You can also read this article at Occupy Tacoma website

If, as Justice Brandeis famously said in 1914

“Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

Then millions of tiny video recorders cast the disinfecting glare of publicity upon those cops too fond of beating up peaceful protestors. Every time police repress legal peaceful dissent, dozens, even hundreds of YouTube videos of the events tend to go viral on the Internet. And boy, how those misbehaving cops hate cameras!

Rogue cops always have hated DIY photographers, even before the advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In fact, misbehaving police and sympathetic old-boy crony networks have been trying to swat those pesky videographer gadflies with their tiny cameras-stingers for quite some time now.

Did you know that videographers who film police activity often find themselves charged with felony crimes, making said movie-makers eligible for prison terms of many years? See below for more details.

A Blogger With Reservations Visits Occupy Tacoma

Fair disclosure: The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent Occupy Tacoma supporters. I am a resident of Tacoma, a supporter of Occupy Tacoma, but I’m not an authorized spokesperson for Occupy Tacoma participants. ~AOS

A fellow named Scott, who runs a personal website called A Dad First, had posted several criticisms on his blog explaining his opposition to the Occupy Tacoma and the whole national Occupy Wall Street movement from a conservative point of view. So I posted some responses to these criticisms on A Dad First, which Scott was gracious enough to allow to remain.

For Those Who Are Curious About Why We Occupy

A fellow who calls himself OccupyAnimator has produced an outstanding video. This video is simple, and by being simple, it’s clarity is compelling.

Kudos to OccupyAnimator. He’s only produced this one video, at least under the name OccupyAnimator. He is certainly talented, an asset to the Occupy Movement. I urge everyone to see it, pass it on, study it. Here’s his explanation for his video:

If you’re having trouble understanding what is at stake in the "Occupy" protests, here are some numbers that help explain the problem.

Regards,

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living — Socrates
My Web Site

Address to Occupy Tacoma Youth, Lincoln Park, Oct 29, 2011

On Saturday, October 29, 2011, I had the honor of addressing a gathering Occupy Tacoma supporters in Lincoln Park, Tacoma. My remarks were a part of a longer statement. Several people asked me to post the entire statement here. Above is a video of the speech as it was presented on Saturday. Following is a full statement, including the parts I left out when speaking, slightly edited to make it suitable for posting purposes. This article was originally published on the Occupy Tacoma Website.

Hello all!

My name is Alan OldStudent, and I love what I am seeing here today. You are great! You are amazing!

In my long life, I have seen many amazing things. I saw how a mass nonviolent movement ended the infamous Jim Crow laws, — laws that legalized racial segregation, — laws that made it a crime to marry outside of your race. And now, I am seeing a how a mass nonviolent movement is ending laws against marrying the person you truly love, even if that person is the same sex as you.

Rest In Peace, Sweet Margaret

It has been around a year since my last post to this blog, and to my readers I must offer my apologies.

My wife Margaret, whom I was with for the better part of 3 decades, recently died, around the middle of April 2011. I was her full-time caretaker for many months previous to her death, working at home nearly full time, leaving me little opportunity to blog. Although most called her “Miss Margaret,” I called her “Sweet Margaret,” because she had the sweetness of spirit common in young girls.

In the year or so before she died, she required a great deal of care.  I sometimes had to carry her to bed or to a chair or the couch. I sometimes had hand feed her, help her dress, help her with personal hygiene, and supervise her medications. She nearly died around September of 2010, temporarily lost mental clarity, occasionally hallucinating, all because of strong pain medication. While this was going on, I was trying to recover from joint replacement surgery on my hand for an arthritic thumb joint, which made caring for her more of a challenge.

Mark Twain’s War Prayer (Videos)

Mark Twain wrote a scathing antiwar poem/story called “The War Prayer,” which he feared to have published during his lifetime. Decades after his death, this work was published.

I first ran into “The War Prayer” when a young woman sold me a copy at an antiwar demonstration during the Vietnam war. I was struck by the power of its language, as well as by the sentiments.

Several years ago, I found a a very effective YouTube animated version. This version is a bit long, which is why it is split into 2 videos. But it is well worth watching.

Then, just a few days ago while searching for this 2-part video presentation, I discovered a 1981 PBS adaptation of “The War Prayer“ which was part of a larger program on another of Mark Twain’s antiwar stories.

The actor who delivers the actual prayer of God’s emissary puts an experienced hell-fire preacher’s delivery into a decidedly antiwar statement.

The two-video version, which follows Twain’s text pretty much as he wrote it, appears below:

Memorial Day Landmark and the Cost of War

According to The National Priorities Project, The United States passed a landmark on May 30, 2010. On that day, the United States will have spent 1 trillion dollars on the Iraq and Afghan wars, and on June 7, 2010, the Afghan war will become the longest war the United States has waged.

Moreover, the cost of the war in Afghanistan is currently 1 million dollars per soldier per year, according to this November 14, 2009 New York Times article.

One million dollars is a large number, but one trillion dollars is an unimaginably larger number. It’s easy to gloss over when the politicians and pundits toss around these numbers.

The thickness of a dollar bill is 0.0043 inches. So a stack of a million dollar bills would be about 109.22 meters or 358 feet tall. That’s as high as an office building 30 stories tall, counting a story as being approximately 11.9 feet tall (about 3.6 meters).

But a stack of a trillion dollars would be 63,516.5633 miles (109220 km) tall. That’s 2.5 times the circumference of the earth. That’s what American taxpayers pay for the Iraq/Afghan war. And the champions of small government say nothing about this.

Did you know that the United States just by itself has a military budget greater than the rest of the world’s countries combined? Or did you know the US military budget is more than 10 times  greater than that of either Russia or China’s? (Click here for the documentation of those figures).

Scooby’s Sensible Advice On Diets

This article is part of a series on physical fitness and physical culture that I’m working on. To see a convenient summary and listing of my previous articles, please click here.

The bodybuilder and fitness guru Scooby is an impressive man whom I have covered elsewhere on this site. What I like about him is the way he cuts through a lot of hype about instant results.

Because I do lots of research on-line about medical procedures for my professional activities, and because I do lots of research on fitness and exercise for my blogging, I get more than my share of targeted ads, aimed at either enhancing parts of my body, like biceps, chest, and of course, sex organs. I also get lots of ads aimed at reducing belly fat, love handles, gray hair, and so on.

Some Inspiringly Fit Women

This article is part of a series on physical fitness and physical culture that I’m working on. To see a convenient summary and listing of my previous articles, please click here.

Several videos have come to my attention recently. One is of a clip from the Ross Sisters, a trio of singers and dancers from the 1940s. Not only were they extremely good musicians, but they were in extremely good condition. Check out this video.

The first part is their very tight 3-part harmony 1940s-show style pop singing, and then the acrobatics begins. Each stunt is even more impressive than the former, and I know you’ll be as inspired as I was by these beautiful  young ladies.

 

The next one is of a 72-year-old Ernestine Shepherd, who bench presses 150 pounds and runs marathons. She leads a fitness class at a local church for other seniors.

Anyone who is that accomplished at half her age is impressive. And to look at her leading her class, one gets the feeling that she inspires all her students to do as well as they can.

Watch her interaction with the class members. She really tries to get each person to understand where they are and how to take small steps joyfully towards greater fitness.

Often, there is too much one-upsmanship in so many fitness classes, and Ms. Shepherd seems to delight in helping her class members feel good about the progress each of them makes individually without destructive comparisons to others.

She looks to me to be a truly inspiring teacher.

 

Regards,

 

Alan OldStudent
The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living – Socrates