Occupy Houston And Occupy Wall Street Moving Ahead—Please Consider Taking Part In An Occupy Effort Near You

Thank you to the Occupy Houston protestors to marched yesterday in Downtown Houston. Regretfully, I was not able to attend this march which was held in part to mark two months since the beginning of the Occupy effort in New York city.

(Both photos in this post are from the Occupy Houston Facebook page. Above are folks in Market Square Park getting set to march yesterday afternoon. Below are non-violent protestors engaging in civil disobedience on a Downtown Houston street.)

There were up to 12 arrests at the end of this peaceful march.

It was important to make clear that Occupy is not at all over after the police raid of the first Occupy encampment in New York City. In many ways, Occupy will be better off not having to use resources to maintain the camps. With issues of income inequality and more fair taxation having been put back on the national agenda, it may be time for Occupy to move into a new phase.

Along these lines, Occupy Houston will be having a meeting on Saturday afternoon at the main Houston Public Library to discuss the next steps. This meeting will be at 2 PM in the fourth floor conference room.

Occupy Galveston will also be active this upcoming Saturday with a protest at 11 AM at 28th and Seawall.

There is now also an Occupy College Station.  Occupy College Station took part in demonstrations marking two months Occupy Wall Street.  There is a great video of this event  in the Bryan-College Station Eagle. The video can be found under where it says The Eagle Videos.

My friend Teddy Wilson has written about Occupy College Station in his Left of College Station blog.

There are Occupy efforts all over Texas and all over the nation . Find one near you.

Occupy Wall Street had a crowd of over 30,000 in New York yesterday to tell Mayor Bloomberg that you can’t evict an idea. The event was for the most part peaceful. There will always be police who are more aggressive than they need to be, and there will always be protestors who make poor decisions about provoking people when peaceful actions would work better. The best option is to take every police officer as an individual, and to view that person from a starting point of respect. All we can control are our own actions.

The facts of gets arrested and who does not get arrested are clear enough. The bank executives and the executives from the finance houses who did so much to cause this recession do not go to jail. The people who engage in wage theft from working people as alleged this morning in a Houston Chronicle story do not go to jail.

There will always be the criticisms of people and interests who would not in any case be on the side of everyday working people. Many of these folks are people who have gone on and on about small government in recent years, but who now have nothing to say when First Amendment  rights of free assembly and free speech are put under stress by the overreaction of public officials.

I don’t know the direction of the movement in the weeks and months to come. But I am very hopeful. New networks of committed activists are being formed. New people are being brought into activism. People who had long been frustrated that issues of economic fair play were not part of the national debate are now finding a home. Working people and the unemployed seeking work are seeing that they are not without allies. Democratic politicians are feeling more confident in more aggressively defending the 99%.

When you work hard, when you work for the benefit of others, and when you work to help guide your own future and the future of you nation—Then you won’t be anything other than hopeful about a better day ahead.

Here is the Occupy Houston website.

Here is the Occupy Galveston website.

Here is the Occupy Wall Street website.

Matt Tabbi at Rolling Stone has been doing a great job blogging about the reasons behind Occupy Wall Street. 

Every person has the ability to fight back and to make progress. While circumstance matters in life, we can all act for what we believe.