A group of protesters plans to infiltrate the Calvin Klein show at 2 p.m. today by persuading attendees to wear makeup that gives the illusion of eyes dripping blood. The look is designed to show solidarity with protesters who have been pepper-sprayed and to draw attention to the conditions of the 99 percent — certainly a demographic that isn’t often considered in Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week…protesters will march to the Calvin Klein show from Zuccotti Park, and will set up a tent for applying the eye makeup. They hope to persuade 99 attendees to wear the makeup, but if they do not reach that quota, they plan to “close down” the 3 p.m. show, also Calvin Klein. [WaPo]
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy protesters, taking aim at what they dubbed Wall Street West, were arrested after converging on Wells Fargo & Co.’s headquarters in San Francisco today in a bid to shut down the city’s Financial District. Demonstrators shouting “Give Us Our Money Back” and saying they wanted the bank to stop foreclosures chained themselves to entrances of the bank. Seven people were arrested, according to police Lieutenant Liam Frost. The arrests were made at the request of a Wells Fargo representative, Frost said. [BW, related]
Occupy Wall Street Assignment Forces NYU Undergrad To Lose Her Shit Via Open Letter To School President, Demand Professor’s Resignation OR SHE GOES PUBLIC
By Bess LevinLast semester, NYU undergraduate Sara Ackerman was given an assignment by to visit Occupy Wall Street and turn in an ethnography of what was going on down in Zuccotti Park. This did not sit right with Sara. Mingle with “criminals, drug addicts, mentally ill people, rapist, and paranoid schizophrenics”? The fuck she would, and Ackerman told her professor, Caitlin Zaloom, as much, expressing serious “discomfort with the assignment for legal, academic, ethical, moral, and safety reasons” and asking for “an alternative via her private office hours, in-class requests and emails to her NYU email account.” When Zaloom denied the request, Ackerman had no choice but to head down to OWS, not just because it was required for the class, but to prove a point. She went, she says, with “two other young girls, who are quite attractive and don’t look particularly fit enough to take on a potential predator, rapist, paranoid schizophrenic, etc, just to see if I was being as melodramtic as Professor Zaloom made me feel I was.” She wasn’t.
In fact, she left the park “feeling as though I had escaped an extremely dangerous– and even, life-threatening, situation.” Ackerman never ended up turning in the assignment, she was, she claims, treated poorly by a graduate assistant and Professor Zaloom for the rest of the semester and earlier this week, she decided people needed to be held accountable.
On Wednesday, she waited at the library in “a last-ditch effort to convince [NYU President John Sexton] to deal with Professor Zaloom via forcing her to resign, or firing her” and instead of coming to meet her, Sexton had mental health services deal with Sara, via a forced psych evaluation. Wrong move, NYU. Like Ackerman “told Sergeant Weitzman– the NYU officer who filled out [her] report– if NYU tried to pull the mental health card again, [she] would go very public.” Nobody calls Sara Ackerman crazy, ya hear? Just so everyone knew she meant business, later that night, Ackerman tapped out a series of tremendous emails, 90 percent of which she underlined and bolded, blasting them out to Sexton, Zaloom, her peers at NYU. She also CC’ed the rude graduate student, but lest there be any confusion, doesn’t give a shit what that bitch thinks. They should be read in full, but some of our favorite parts include:
“(note: I am 5’1 and 105 pounds)”
“I was immediately cleared by a social worker at NYU Wellness Exchange after I was evaluated. I have the social worker’s card and she recommended that I call her if NYU ever tries to pull that again.”
“I have an above average GPA, impressive extracurricular activities, an amazing resume with great recommendations/references, and 3 post-graduation offers.”
“Alas, it seems you are not taking me seriously.“
“Other times, I kept my hand up for about 75 seconds– a long time to keep one’s arm raised, by the way.”
“I would like to remind you that I have 2 classmates who are willing to testify…please think carefully…as this may very well go to court.”
And the pièce de résistance: Continue reading »
As fans of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit know, many episodes of the drama are often loosely based on crimes that have been “ripped from the headlines.” Over the summer, SVU shot its Dominique Strauss-Kahn show and last Friday, it attempted to roll the tape on an Occupy Wall Street ep. Unfortunately, a crucial scene that was to take place in Zuccotti Park, OWS’s old stomping grounds, was interrupted by real protestors, angry at being made into a storyline (which, according to the writers, was going to “portray OWS in a sympathetic light”). The show’s filming permit was revoked and the shoot was scrapped. Yesterday, the Writers Guild of America, East issued an open letter expressing its disappointment at the turn of events, especially given WGAE and the SVU team’s public support of OWS. Continue reading »
Several weeks back, emboldened with a thesaurus and having decided they’d had enough, the Harvard Crimson staff ran an impassioned editorial urging Occupy Wall Street protestors on campus to leave Goldman Sachs, and those hoping to gain employment with the firm, alone. It’d been a “group of Occupy Harvard Protesters who attempted to disrupt a Goldman Sachs recruiting event” that set them off and no longer could they hold their tongues. The newspaper took occupiers to task for “presenting a facile and trivializing interpretation of the root causes of the economic catastrophe and debases our national conversation on the issue,” for failing to comprehend that Goldman Sachs is going to hire employees regardless– and, god damn, it, they ought to be Harvard students–, and for just generally embarrassing themselves by “pitching a simplistic conception of the financial crisis and targeting fellow students [which] is not the way to have a successful movement.” Moving forward, the Crimsonians cautioned, “Occupy ought to refrain from such ill-conceived protests in the future.” But the die had already been cast. Continue reading »
Former Occupy Wall Street Protester Can Sleep At Night Knowing Few People Would Recognize Her New Employer As Being On Wall Street
By Bess Levin
Other than when writing Penthouse forum entries or relaying tales of experimentation with barnyard animals, it’s not often that people tell stories which include the words “I never thought I’d be doing this.” On that note, remember John Thomas Financial? To recap, it’s a four year-old brokerage best known for being run by a guy (Thomas Belesis) who 1) last year took it upon himself to organize a “rally” to “bring back the pride of Wall Street” (which marked the first time anyone that worked on Wall Street had heard of the place) and 2) May have wanted to bring back not only pride but the sort of corporate culture that accepted, nay, encouraged “lesbian strippers on the trading floor,” a lack of judgement re: “virtual hailstorms of sexual harassment,” and a can-do attitude from junior employees when “assigned to mop up the whipped cream and bodily fluids resulting from an exec’s midday frolic with his secretary,” as was the case as his former firm. Anyway, JTF is back in the news on account of trolling Occupy Wall Street for employees and finding one in Tracy Postert, who apparently wouldn’t have accepted the offer unless she were really, really desperate which, lucky for Belesis, she was. Continue reading »
What does Adam Carolla think of the Occupy Wall Street movement? Glad you asked. According the former Loveline co-host, who expounded on the topic on his podcast yesterday, we are dealing with “the first wave of self-entitled pricks who think the world owes them a living.” You know what it reminds him of? If you “extrapolate this, it’s essentially what the terrorists did with us,” Carolla said. “They see us with our hot tubs, driving our big cars around, having our parties…chicks looking hot…fake boobs all around…and say fuck it, Allah’s gonna take care of these guys and then Allah doesn’t take care of shit and they come down and blow our buildings up. It’s one culture can’t live next to another culture that’s thriving.” How did we get here? The way Carolla sees it, we can thank a new phenomenon called “envy” which is “a big issue that didn’t used to exist in this country.” Continue reading »
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