The People’s Bailout

itswalky:

An important message from this guy:

howtosharpenpencils:

This is a long post but it’s about something pretty interesting so I hope you’ll indulge …

Like many folks, Occupy Wall Street has been some doing good work in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, helping people on the ground.

Now OWS is launching the ROLLING JUBILEE, a program that has been in development for months. OWS is going to start buying distressed debt (medical bills, student loans, etc.) in order to forgive it. As a test run, we spent $500, which bought $14,000 of distressed debt. We then ERASED THAT DEBT. (If you’re a debt broker, once you own someone’s debt you can do whatever you want with it — traditionally, you hound debtors to their grave trying to collect. We’re playing a different game. A MORE AWESOME GAME.)

This is a simple, powerful way to help folks in need — to free them from heavy debt loads so they can focus on being productive, happy and healthy. As you can see from our test run, the return on investment approaches 30:1. That’s a crazy bargain!

Now, after many consultations with attorneys, the IRS, and our moles in the debt-brokerage world, we are ready to take the Rolling Jubilee program LIVE and NATIONWIDE, buying debt in communities that have been struggling during the recession.

We’re kicking things off with a show called THE PEOPLE’S BAILOUT at Le Poisson Rouge on Thursday, November 15. It will also stream online, like a good ol’-fashioned telethon!


Friends, the line-up is insane. Performers include:

- JEFF MANGUM (Neutral Milk Hotel)

- JANEANE GAROFALO

- GUY PICCIOTTO (Fugazi)

- LIZZ WINSTEAD

- HARI KONDABOLU

- TUNDE ADEBIMPE and KYP MALONE (TV on the Radio)

- members of DAS RACIST

and other great talents including a group of radical nuns! I’ll be playing the role of JERRY LEWIS, emceeing in my tuxedo from MEN’S WEARHOUSE.

This will be a joyful, positive night about people banding together and subverting a predatory financial system in order to help each other. BOOM! That’s a movie pitch right there, goddamn why am I not a Hollywood mogul?!

Anyway, HERE IS THE INFORMATION about THE PEOPLE’S BAILOUT:

- The LIVE SHOW is at Le Poisson Rouge on THURSDAY 11/15, 8 - 11 PM. Tickets are $25 (each ticket buys $500 of distressed debt).

- The LIVE STREAM will be at http://rollingjubilee.org (you’ll be able to donate online)

- Here’s the FACEBOOK PAGE

- The HASHTAG is #peoplesbailout

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

- Spread the word! Share this info with your friends, family, and followers
- Donate money via http://rollingjubilee.org

$25 abolishes an estimated $500 worth of debt
$50 abolishes an estimated $1000 worth of debt
$100 abolishes an estimated $2000 worth of debt
$250 abolishes an estimated $5000 worth of debt

- Host a live-stream party! Get together with folks in your town and watch the show online and donate money and maybe even drink a beer if you’re feeling crazy.

- If you are Jerry Seinfeld or Bill Cosby: Call me about doing a set at the live show! We’ll fit you in.

Okay, that was a really long tumblr post. I feel very vulnerable right now. Thanks for reading.

Bye!
—David Rees

This is RIDICULOUS and CRAZY and WONDERFUL and HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. I can’t wait to hear how successful this ends up being, but the fact that it was put into action in the first place is so inspiring I can’t even stand it.

Source: howtosharpenpencils

The unhappy Scrooge McDucks of the world no longer have to rely on their butlers, congressmen, yacht bartenders, or car-elevator repair men to help them deal with the challenges of immense wealth. Big banks are now standing ready to help the super-rich cope, with psychological “wealth counseling” services galore.

Annals of the 1 percent: MoJo intern Erika Eichelberger introduces us to two jobs we’d never heard of—”wealth psychologist” and “Senior Wealth Dynamics Coach.” We assume they pay well. (via motherjones)

RICH PEOPLE: If being rich bums you out, feel free to not be rich anymore!

thepoliticalnotebook: “Capitalism is Crisis.” These are a collection of photos of some inventive and interesting protest signs from Occupy London near St. Paul’s Cathedral this past October. Occupy Londoners were evicted from that area just recently. These were taken by Tahlia Hein on a visit to London, and according to her, protest signs like these absolutely covered the place. Her personal favorite is the one that reads “Canary Whorf is Mordor.” Follow Tahlia’s (highly recommended) Tumblr here! You can view the rest of The Political Notebook’s project to gather photography, documentation and experiences from the OWS movements nationwide. (I love photos of protest signs…) Check out the Call for Submissions page and email your photos to me at torierosedeghett@gmail.com! British people: even better than we are at protesting???
Zoom Info
thepoliticalnotebook: “Capitalism is Crisis.” These are a collection of photos of some inventive and interesting protest signs from Occupy London near St. Paul’s Cathedral this past October. Occupy Londoners were evicted from that area just recently. These were taken by Tahlia Hein on a visit to London, and according to her, protest signs like these absolutely covered the place. Her personal favorite is the one that reads “Canary Whorf is Mordor.” Follow Tahlia’s (highly recommended) Tumblr here! You can view the rest of The Political Notebook’s project to gather photography, documentation and experiences from the OWS movements nationwide. (I love photos of protest signs…) Check out the Call for Submissions page and email your photos to me at torierosedeghett@gmail.com! British people: even better than we are at protesting???
Zoom Info
thepoliticalnotebook: “Capitalism is Crisis.” These are a collection of photos of some inventive and interesting protest signs from Occupy London near St. Paul’s Cathedral this past October. Occupy Londoners were evicted from that area just recently. These were taken by Tahlia Hein on a visit to London, and according to her, protest signs like these absolutely covered the place. Her personal favorite is the one that reads “Canary Whorf is Mordor.” Follow Tahlia’s (highly recommended) Tumblr here! You can view the rest of The Political Notebook’s project to gather photography, documentation and experiences from the OWS movements nationwide. (I love photos of protest signs…) Check out the Call for Submissions page and email your photos to me at torierosedeghett@gmail.com! British people: even better than we are at protesting???
Zoom Info
thepoliticalnotebook: “Capitalism is Crisis.” These are a collection of photos of some inventive and interesting protest signs from Occupy London near St. Paul’s Cathedral this past October. Occupy Londoners were evicted from that area just recently. These were taken by Tahlia Hein on a visit to London, and according to her, protest signs like these absolutely covered the place. Her personal favorite is the one that reads “Canary Whorf is Mordor.” Follow Tahlia’s (highly recommended) Tumblr here! You can view the rest of The Political Notebook’s project to gather photography, documentation and experiences from the OWS movements nationwide. (I love photos of protest signs…) Check out the Call for Submissions page and email your photos to me at torierosedeghett@gmail.com! British people: even better than we are at protesting???
Zoom Info
thepoliticalnotebook: “Capitalism is Crisis.” These are a collection of photos of some inventive and interesting protest signs from Occupy London near St. Paul’s Cathedral this past October. Occupy Londoners were evicted from that area just recently. These were taken by Tahlia Hein on a visit to London, and according to her, protest signs like these absolutely covered the place. Her personal favorite is the one that reads “Canary Whorf is Mordor.” Follow Tahlia’s (highly recommended) Tumblr here! You can view the rest of The Political Notebook’s project to gather photography, documentation and experiences from the OWS movements nationwide. (I love photos of protest signs…) Check out the Call for Submissions page and email your photos to me at torierosedeghett@gmail.com! British people: even better than we are at protesting???
Zoom Info

thepoliticalnotebook:

“Capitalism is Crisis.” These are a collection of photos of some inventive and interesting protest signs from Occupy London near St. Paul’s Cathedral this past October. Occupy Londoners were evicted from that area just recently. These were taken by Tahlia Hein on a visit to London, and according to her, protest signs like these absolutely covered the place. Her personal favorite is the one that reads “Canary Whorf is Mordor.”

Follow Tahlia’s (highly recommended) Tumblr here!

You can view the rest of The Political Notebook’s project to gather photography, documentation and experiences from the OWS movements nationwide. (I love photos of protest signs…) Check out the Call for Submissions page and email your photos to me at torierosedeghett@gmail.com!

British people: even better than we are at protesting???

(via thepoliticalnotebook)

Left My People Go: MoMa was only two years old when Diego Rivera occupied it for the first time. It was the fall of 1931, during the Depression, and the museum brought the artist from Mexico to New York six weeks before his solo show to create what we now might describe as semi-site-specific works. On blocks of frescoed plaster, slaked lime, and wood, he painted five “portable murals”—some of on themes from Mexican history (his famous Agrarian Leader Zapata); others on class inequity, and revolution. After the opening, RIvera added three more murals about social injustice in New York—or, as we might say now, the 99 percent.  That’s the theme of Frozen Assets, shown here, which looks awfully fresh for a 1931 painting. MoMA is reuniting it It with other works from the original exhibition in “Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art,” opening November 13. Also featured are designs for Rivera’s Rockefeller Center murals, which were destroyed in 1934 after a scandal over the artist’s “unauthorized” depiction of Lenin.    ”Diego Rivera” is but one amazing show on art and politics at an institution built on oil money this fall. At the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, “Greetings from L.A.: Artists and Publics, 1950–1980” chronicles how artists took to the streets—and exploited the mass media— to support social and political movements advocating for feminism, peace, and more. The website documents works like The Peace Tower, a massive 1966 protest against the Vietnam War featuring hundreds of paintings sent from artists from around the world, and the elegiac performance In Mourning and Rage, staged by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus in 1978.  How this might impress the Occupy Museums protestors who’ve branched off from Occupy Wall Street to picket MoMA and other museums isn’t clear, since their message seems to have morphed from a critique of cultural elitism to a collective sharing of information and empowerment. In which case they should do a field trip inside the museums too, where they will find (in addition to more Communist art) evidence of the cultural elitism they rightly detect—as well as many programs offering information and empowerment. Sometimes the radicals are on the inside. Which is to say, there are a lot of ways to occupy museums. At MoMA, Tony Shafrazi spray-painted Picasso’s Guernica in 1974 to get his protest against the Vietnam War on front pages around the world; that was a bad way. Occupy Museums has been deeply controversial in the art world regarding its targets and intentions. But initiating conversations with people outside the museum about cultural elitism, underpaid art handlers, and issues that keep people out of museums? Funny thing—that sounds just like the art inside the museum.  Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, Mexico © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Left My People Go:

MoMa was only two years old when Diego Rivera occupied it for the first time. It was the fall of 1931, during the Depression, and the museum brought the artist from Mexico to New York six weeks before his solo show to create what we now might describe as semi-site-specific works. On blocks of frescoed plaster, slaked lime, and wood, he painted five “portable murals”—some of on themes from Mexican history (his famous Agrarian Leader Zapata); others on class inequity, and revolution. After the opening, RIvera added three more murals about social injustice in New York—or, as we might say now, the 99 percent. 

That’s the theme of Frozen Assets, shown here, which looks awfully fresh for a 1931 painting. MoMA is reuniting it It with other works from the original exhibition in “Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art,” opening November 13. Also featured are designs for Rivera’s Rockefeller Center murals, which were destroyed in 1934 after a scandal over the artist’s “unauthorized” depiction of Lenin.  

 ”Diego Rivera” is but one amazing show on art and politics at an institution built on oil money this fall. At the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, “Greetings from L.A.: Artists and Publics, 1950–1980” chronicles how artists took to the streets—and exploited the mass media— to support social and political movements advocating for feminism, peace, and more. The website documents works like The Peace Tower, a massive 1966 protest against the Vietnam War featuring hundreds of paintings sent from artists from around the world, and the elegiac performance In Mourning and Rage, staged by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus in 1978. 

How this might impress the Occupy Museums protestors who’ve branched off from Occupy Wall Street to picket MoMA and other museums isn’t clear, since their message seems to have morphed from a critique of cultural elitism to a collective sharing of information and empowerment. In which case they should do a field trip inside the museums too, where they will find (in addition to more Communist art) evidence of the cultural elitism they rightly detect—as well as many programs offering information and empowerment. Sometimes the radicals are on the inside.

Which is to say, there are a lot of ways to occupy museums. At MoMA, Tony Shafrazi spray-painted Picasso’s Guernica in 1974 to get his protest against the Vietnam War on front pages around the world; that was a bad way. Occupy Museums has been deeply controversial in the art world regarding its targets and intentions. But initiating conversations with people outside the museum about cultural elitism, underpaid art handlers, and issues that keep people out of museums? Funny thing—that sounds just like the art inside the museum. 

Museo Dolores Olmedo, Xochimilco, Mexico
© 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

(via theatlantic)

Source: letmypeopleshow

npr: gq: Hipster Cop Would Prefer If You Called Him “The Gentleman Officer” We tracked down the fashionable detective who’s essentially neutering more important media coverage of Occupy Wall Street with his meticulously disheveled locks and wry smile. He’s just too damn fun to resist. GQ: How would you describe your style? Rick Lee: I describe it as “traditional English country.” I love traditional English country clothes. GQ: It’s funny because you’ve been anointed “Hipster Cop” now, but looking at all your pictures—I’m not sure that’s the right descriptor. Rick Lee: I agree! I don’t have a beard. I don’t live in Williamsburg. Though off-duty I may look a little bit more hipster. I’m thin, so when I’m off-duty I like skinny jeans. And, well, I have about five pairs of Converse sneakers, but I’ve been wearing Converse sneakers since I was in junior high school. I’ve always worn Converse sneakers, they’re not just a fashion trend with me. I’ve always liked them. So off duty, I throw on skinny jeans, a T-shirt, and a cardigan. I guess you could say I look more hipster on the weekend. Or in the summer, I’ll wear my jeans cuffed, with wingtip shoes and a t-shirt and a vest. Unfortunately, I can’t wear jeans to work. GQ: So there’s a detective dress code? That is not what cop shows would have me believe. Rick Lee: Yes, unfortunately. The police commissioner might get mad if I wear jeans. GQ: If “Hipster Cop” is inaccurate, what new fun cop moniker should we use? Rick Lee: Uh…”Country Gentleman.” Or the “Gentleman Police Officer.” Who knew this “story” could go any further? Here’s NPR’s take on it from the other day. —Wright Despite following developments in the Hipster Cop Identification Saga religiously, I don’t believe I’ve yet reblogged anything to indicate my interest. This has been that reblog. If you are unfamiliar with Hipster Cop…well, now you are not.
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npr:

gq:

Hipster Cop Would Prefer If You Called Him “The Gentleman Officer”

We tracked down the fashionable detective who’s essentially neutering more important media coverage of Occupy Wall Street with his meticulously disheveled locks and wry smile. He’s just too damn fun to resist.

GQ: How would you describe your style?
Rick Lee: I describe it as “traditional English country.” I love traditional English country clothes.

GQ: It’s funny because you’ve been anointed “Hipster Cop” now, but looking at all your pictures—I’m not sure that’s the right descriptor.
Rick Lee: I agree! I don’t have a beard. I don’t live in Williamsburg. Though off-duty I may look a little bit more hipster. I’m thin, so when I’m off-duty I like skinny jeans. And, well, I have about five pairs of Converse sneakers, but I’ve been wearing Converse sneakers since I was in junior high school. I’ve always worn Converse sneakers, they’re not just a fashion trend with me. I’ve always liked them. So off duty, I throw on skinny jeans, a T-shirt, and a cardigan. I guess you could say I look more hipster on the weekend. Or in the summer, I’ll wear my jeans cuffed, with wingtip shoes and a t-shirt and a vest. Unfortunately, I can’t wear jeans to work.

GQ: So there’s a detective dress code? That is not what cop shows would have me believe.
Rick Lee: Yes, unfortunately. The police commissioner might get mad if I wear jeans.

GQ: If “Hipster Cop” is inaccurate, what new fun cop moniker should we use?
Rick Lee: Uh…”Country Gentleman.” Or the “Gentleman Police Officer.”



Who knew this “story” could go any further? Here’s NPR’s take on it from the other day. —Wright

Despite following developments in the Hipster Cop Identification Saga religiously, I don’t believe I’ve yet reblogged anything to indicate my interest. This has been that reblog. If you are unfamiliar with Hipster Cop…well, now you are not.

Source: gq