New York City Manila Berlin Chicago Milwaukee Madrid

The statement below was issued by the ANSWER Coalition and is followed by an official statement from the Occupy Wall Street movement on the Oct. 15 Global Day of Action. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is a member organization of ANSWER.

Political apathy has been swept
away once again by a surge of political activism. In the course of nine months,
a global movement premised on grassroots political activism has spread throughout the Middle East, Europe and
now the United States.

People are in the streets. They
are moving. They are both angry and hopeful.

Yesterday, more than 1,500
cities organized coordinated actions against a global economic system that
rewards the rich and powerful (the 1%) while hundreds of millions are
unemployed and the already poor, as well as the the urban and
rural working classes and middle class, have seen their living standards plummet.

The central and unifying
reality that has spawned this movement is the financial meltdown of the largest
capitalist-owned banks on Wall Street.

The U.S. government rushed to bail out
the elites and allowed millions to become unemployed. The government was
exposed as a servant of the 1%.

Other national governments
followed suit—saving the elites who caused the crisis and shifting the burden
of the economic fallout to the rest of society. Especially hard hit have been
young people. From Cairo
to Athens and Rome to New York City, a new generation of
young people have initiated the global uprising.

The bankers, corporate tycoons
and politicians are nervous. They hope the movement subsides or fractures, or that
it can be co-opted. But the bottom line is that the 1% has no intention of
giving up their economic and political power.

The ANSWER Coalition believes
that there must be a new political system that provides every person certain
inalienable rights that are certainly realizable in a $15 trillion annual
economy: The right to a job, the right to free health care, the right to free
education, the right to affordable child care, the right to affordable housing,
the right to nutritious food, the right to live in peace. That would require
liberating society’s wealth from its tyrannical control by the 1%.

The time is now.

We encourage people to read the official statement from Occupy
Wall Street on yesterday’s demonstrations (see below). It is an
excellent statement. Please share it with friends, family and
co-workers.

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The statement below was issued by the Occupy Wall Street movement on Oct. 16.

October 16, 2011

Tens of Thousands in Streets of Times Square, NY

Tens of Thousands Flood the Streets of Global Financial Centers,
Capitol Cities and Small Towns to “Occupy Together” Against Wall Street
Mid-Town Manhattan Jammed as Marches Converge in Times Square

New York, NY — After triumphing in a standoff with the city over the
continued protest of Wall Street at Liberty Square in Manhattan’s
financial district, the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread world
wide today with demonstrations in over 1,500 cities globally and over
100 US cities from coast to coast. In New York, thousands marched in
various protests by trade unions, students, environmentalists, and
community groups. As occupiers flocked to Washington Square Park, two
dozen participants were arrested at a nearby Citibank while attempting
to withdraw their accounts from the global banking giant.

“I am occupying Wall Street because it is my future, my generations’
future, that is at stake,” said Linnea Palmer Paton, 23, a student at
New York University. “Inspired by the peaceful occupation of Tahrir
Square in Cairo, tonight we are are coming together in Times Square to
show the world that the power of the people is an unstoppable force of
global change. Today, we are fighting back against the dictators of our
country – the Wall Street banks – and we are winning.”

New Yorkers congregated in assemblies organized by borough, and then
flooded the subway system en mass to join the movement in Manhattan. A
group calling itself Todo Boricua Para Wall Street marched as a Puerto
Rican contingent of several hundred playing traditional music and waving
the Lares flag, a symbol of resistance to colonial Spain. “Puerto
Ricans are the 99% and we will continue to join our brothers and sisters
in occupying Wall Street,” said David Galarza Santa, a trade unionist
from Sunset Park, Brooklyn. “We are here to stand with all Latinos, who
are being scapegoated by the 1%, while it is the bankers who have caused
this crisis and the banks who are breaking the law.”

While the spotlight is on New York, “occupy” actions are also
happening all across the Midwestern and the Southern United States, from
Ashland, Kentucky to Dallas, Texas to Ketchum, Idaho. Four hundred
Iowans marched in Des Moines, Iowa Saturday as part of the day of
action:

“People are suffering here in Iowa. Family farmers are struggling,
students face mounting debt and fewer good jobs, and household incomes
are plummeting,” said Judy Lonning a 69-year-old retired public school
teacher. “We’re not willing to keep suffering for Wall Street’s sins.
People here are waking up and realizing that we can’t just go to the
ballot box. We’re building a movement to make our leaders listen.”

Protests filled streets of financial districts from Berlin, to
Athens, Auckland to Mumbai, Tokyo to Seoul. In the UK over 3,000 people
attempted to occupy the London Stock Exchange. “The financial system
benefits a handful of banks at the expense of everyday people,” said
Spyro Van Leemnen, a 27-year old public relations agent in London and a
core member of the demonstrators. “The same people who are responsible
for the recession are getting away with massive bonuses. This is
fundamentally unfair and undemocratic.”

In South Africa, about 80 people gathered at the Johannesburg
Securities Exchange, Talk Radio 702 reported. Protests continued despite
police efforts to declare the gathering illegal. In Taiwan, organizers
drew several hundred demonstrators, who mostly sat quietly outside the
Taipei World Financial Center, known as Taipei 101.

600 people have begun an occupation of Confederation Park in Ottawa,
Canada today to join the global day of action. “I am here today to stand
with Indigenous Peoples around the world who are resisting this corrupt
global banking system that puts profits before human rights,” said Ben
Powless, Mohawk citizen and indigenous youth leader. “Native Peoples are
the 99%, and we’ve been resisting the 1% since 1492. We’re marching
today for self- determination and dignity against a system that has
robbed our lands, poisoned our waters, and oppressed our people for
generations. Today we join with those in New York and around the world
to say, No More!”

In Australia, about 800 people gathered in Sydney’s central business
district, carrying cardboard banners and chanting “Human need, not
corporate greed.” Protesters will camp indefinitely “to organize,
discuss and build a movement for a different world, not run by the
super-rich 1%,” according to a statement on the Occupy Sydney website.

The movement’s success is due in part to the use of online
technologies and international social networking. The rapid spread of
the protests is a grassroots response to the overwhelming inequalities
perpetuated by the global financial system and transnational banks. More
actions are expected in the coming weeks, and the Occupation of Liberty
Square in Manhattan will continue indefinitely.

Occupy Wall Street is a people powered movement that began on
September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District,
and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in
over 1,500 cities globally. #OWS is fighting back against the corrosive
power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic
process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse
that has caused the greatest recession in generations.The movement is
inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy
and the UK, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people who are
writing the rules of the global economy are imposing an agenda of
neoliberalism and economic inequality that is foreclosing our future.