Last year, it took Occupy less than three weeks to reallocate $2 million in government-funded aid to working men and women in New York City, in the form of overtime pay to the city's police department. This year, some in the movement hope to achieve this goal sooner — and judging from the police turnout on Occupy's one year anniversary, they stand a good chance of meeting their goal!
It's always nice when the dominant partner in a very hetero-normative relationship goes "all out" for an anniversary, and this year the police did not disappoint. "As usual, they brought Occupy some pretty police horses and cute police dogs." Commissioner Ray Kelly's NYPD is rumored to have splurged on a secret signal jammer to cut into Occupy's livestream feed. The Associated Press is reporting that the police have arrested somewhere around 180 people (the NYT is saying 185), including about five journalists, wheelchair-bound Americans, one goth girl, and a fucking legal observer from The National Lawyers' Guild: an act of puckish over-exuberance tantamount to capturing a Red Cross nurse as a POW. The police also gave a 99% bro a ride in a shopping cart.
And this to say nothing of the piles of hunky, eye candy in uniform, (see video above) all of whom will be injecting their excess overtime wages into the first small business they find.
As you all know, working and lower-middle-class households are among the most likely to spend any additional income (like that TIME-AND-A-HALF OVERTIME, BABY!) immediately and locally on necessity goods. In New York, rookie cops makeroughly $42k annually — with a chance to incrementally reach the maximum salary of $76,488 over five-and-a-half years — placing them squarely in this category (particularly, if they are the primary earner of a large household). Their spending then cascades through the local economy, enacting what Keynesian economists call a "money multiplier effect."
With #S17, the Occupy movement is once again doing what President Obama and Congress can not or will not do: providing the extra economic stimulus Americans need to get our country running again!
Welcome back, oh ye faithful, delusional idealists! Live Free or Die Hard!
Don't stand, don't stand too close to me, or I'll hit you with this baton.
Be a shame if something happened to it.