Occupy Groups Get Funding
By JESSICA FIRGER
A group of business leaders—including Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry's ice cream and former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg—are planning to pour substantial funds into the Occupy Wall Street movement in hopes of sustaining the protests and fostering political change.
Their goal is to provide some ballast to an amorphous movement that captured the world's attention with nonstop, overnight protests in dozens of cities but has had trouble regaining momentum since most of those encampments were broken up by police in the past few months.
The latest Occupy supporters call themselves the Movement Resource Group and have raised about $300,000 so far to parcel out in grants to protesters, said Mr. Cohen. Their goal is to raise $1.8 million.
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Of the money raised so far, $150,000 will pay for rent and equipment for an office in New York for the national Occupy movement. An additional $100,000 has been set aside for individual project proposals, and a small portion of the money has been set aside to provide stipends for people Mr. Cohen describes as "core activists."
More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203833004577249811049566178.html?KEYWORDS=occupy
What do you make of this? I see pluses and minuses - plus is donations - negative is the attachment of strings. I think it also provides more fuel to the fire for the anti-Occupy noise
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They will force us to eat their ice cream while occupying! To spare my brothers and sisters this humiliation, I will take it upon myself to be Ben and Jerrys Occupy poster boy. I will start with a quart of Americone Dream, followed by Karmel Sutra, and then perhaps Cherry Garcia... after this I will switch to their frozen yougurts to promote healthy eating... it's for the cause, ya know... 
They should send us a frozen sampler package with the mini sizes of every one of their flavors. I will be more than happy to share with you. Which brings us to the real question - what will be the ingredients in 99% ice cream? 
Who said occupiers were against capitalism? So long as it's regulated? 
99% ice cream ingredients. Good question, are they going to make a new flavor? And what, if they do, is the 1% ingredient going to be?
Or is it 'ice-cream for the 99%' and none for the 1%'? A complex issue, but what better punishment for the 1% than to deprive them of Ben & Jerry's? Lol!
Equal parts vanilla, chocolate, yellow caramel, cherry red to represent every color and creed on earth. Walnut crumblies to represent Wall Street. Perhaps the tiniest splash of tabasco sauce for pepper spray. And maybe proportionate malted milk balls to represent the courage of those like you who risk their lives to get up in the face of oppression.
Last edited Wed Feb 29, 2012, 03:53 AM - Edit history (1)
Lol, I like it.
Thank you for your confidence in all of those who have and will be 'on the front lines'. I am in awe of all of them myself. I am in CA temporarily so have not been part of that yet, but hopefully will be returning to NY sometime during the next year.
I remember though in the Fall, being upset that I might not have a chance because who knew in Oct, eg, that it would be so successful that it would still be here, stronger than ever, and looking like it is going nowhere, in the Spring? I am so thrilled about that and hope to participate more on the actual 'front lines' when I do return to NY. No apologies needed from anyone who cannot be out there, everyone has a role, and if everyone was on the streets, who would be doing all the rest that needs to be done? I think for every one on the streets, there must be hundreds at least who are rooting for and supporting them in any way they can. 
Mixed with pistachios? 
Blue and White blueberry and vanilla ice cream with cinnamon red hots mixed in! It comes in a container shaped like a riot helmet with a visor lid you flip up to eat it. O.k., perhaps you can take this too far...
when times were leaner, was less delicious but greatly appreciated. We left much more in donation then we were able to eat.
We were there right before the eviction. The kitchen seemed to have some trouble getting funds. We had a group of chefs trainees come in to cook for us, and all we had for them to cook was tuna salad. It was probably a little below their ability. lol
The kitchen worked the hardest and should have gotten easier funding. They did well with what they had at the time. It was not easy for them to feed the occupiers as well as all of the homeless.
we saw none of the "gourmet" meals we read about. The gourmet meals were probably food prepared by same chefs but with a wider selection of donated foods and funds.
we really liked the guy that came around late at night with coffee or hot chocolate.
Live on Ustream. I believe the reporter was a woman named "Freedom". One of the few light moments came when, just before the police charged into the camp, a cook handed her something to eat. "Oh, this is delicious"! ...as cops go flying past her, one nearly knocking her over.
Things got tense toward the end, with sheriffs from Riverside and Temecula and officers from another agency getting pretty aggressive (you could see Freedom's camera stream shaking from her hands trembling).
Occupy medics treated some protesters for bruises and contusions from baton strikes, and one or two protesters were arrested. But the protest succeeded in shutting down 2 W-M distribution centers (including the world's largest) for the day.
That kind of funding goes a long way but only if it is distributed fairly... if this were a disaster relief scenario we'd be right to have similar concerns.
Also, I am wondering what the Wall Street Journal means by a national office in New York for the Occupy movement.
Who determines who is in charge of the "national office"?
At least if we had an online spokescouncil model like the guy (who was at odds with the 99D lawyer) was suggesting,
We might have some way of handling these funds.
On the other hand, a national office would make a tar baby for attracting parasprites. We could set it up as a Potemkin HQ for planning fake actions... Nah, the problem is even if it's the media office you're looking at spending money to create a monitoring point for officials, like in Egypt. Not sure how to resolve this.