NEW YORK (AP) — A protest against embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh outside a luxury hotel in New York got heated Sunday when demonstrators saw him leave the building, with one charging toward him and another throwing a shoe.
"Everybody is living in fear of this guy at home, but here, he's getting good treatment!" said Yemeni immigrant Nasser Almroot, a Brooklyn grocer.
The dozen angry protesters were kept behind police barricades across the street from the Ritz-Carlton hotel, which was teeming with security guards, both inside and on the sidewalk where Saleh passed.
The 69-year-old leader is visiting the United States for medical treatment.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh waves to people protesting his presence in the United States as he exits his hotel in New York, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012. Saleh arrived in the United States on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012, for treatment of burns he suffered during an assassination attempt in June. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights organization says it has documented the deaths of hundreds of anti-government protesters in confrontations with Saleh's security forces, and while they are not opposed to Saleh receiving care in the United States, the organization wants assurances that concerned governments will insist on prosecution for those responsible for last year's attacks. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
He exited the hotel on Central Park South on Sunday afternoon and waved and smiled sardonically toward the yelling protesters — even blowing them a kiss. Suddenly, one of them tried to charge across the street but was restrained by police, who wrestled him to the ground.
"He can't help it, the killer is here," Almroot said.
As the man bolted out, a shoe flew in Saleh's direction. Showing the sole of a shoe is an insult in Arab culture, because it is on the lowest part of the body, the foot. To hit someone with a shoe is seen as even worse.
Saleh got into his car and his motorcade left for an unknown destination.
Since he arrived in New York about a week ago, the Yemeni president has kept a low profile.
His presence, however, has been controversial.
On Sunday, the protesters hoisted placards bearing photos of Yemenis badly bloodied and brutally killed during his government's yearlong crackdown on anti-Saleh demonstrations.
Saleh signed a deal in November to transfer power to his vice president in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
An election is scheduled for Feb. 21 to select his successor in a nation mired in poverty and divided among powerful tribes and political factions.
While Saleh has been an anti-terrorism ally of Washington, the United States has not officially welcomed a leader accused of killing hundreds of people during an uprising against his 33-year rule.
Saleh traveled to the United States with permission for a private visit.
In June, he was badly injured in an attack on his presidential palace — an assassination attempt after which he spent months in Saudi Arabia being treated for massive burns from the explosion that ripped through his palace mosque as he prayed.
A world-renowned burn center is in Manhattan, at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Hospital officials have not confirmed whether Saleh was a patient there.
TIME magazine names you who've joined Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, etc. – "The Protester" – as PERSON OF THE YEAR! Each one of you who've gone to an #OWS demonstration, camped out illegally, spoken out against corporate greed, switched to a credit union ... Every one of you who've told your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors -- "THAT'S IT, I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF GREED"
LOS ANGELES (AP) — More than 1,400 police officers, some in riot gear, cleared the Occupy Los Angeles camp early Wednesday, driving protesters from a park around City Hall and arresting more than 200 who defied orders to leave. Similar raids in Philadelphia led to 52 arrests, but the scene in both cities was relatively peaceful.
Police arrest a member of Occupy Philly, Wednesday Nov. 30, 2011, in Philadelphia, after a small group refused to clear a street while police cleared the encampment at Dilworth Plaza. Police began pulling down tents early Wednesday after telling demonstrators they had to leave. (AP Photo/ Joseph Kaczmarek)
Police in Los Angeles and Philadelphia moved in on Occupy Wall Street encampments under darkness in an effort to clear out some of the longest-lasting protest sites since crackdowns ended similar occupations across the country.
Beanbags fired from shotguns were used to subdue the final three protesters in a makeshift tree house outside Los Angeles City Hall, police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said, describing it as a minor use of force incident. No serious injuries were reported.
Police Chief Charlie Beck praised the officers and the protesters for their restraint and the peaceful way the eviction was carried out.
Officers flooded down the steps of City Hall just after midnight and started dismantling the two-month-old camp two days after a deadline passed for campers to leave the park. Officers in helmets and wielding batons and guns with rubber bullets converged on the park from all directions with military precision and began making arrests after several orders were given to leave.
There were no injuries and no drugs or weapons were found during a search of the emptied camp, which was strewn with trash after the raid. City workers put up concrete barriers to wall off the park while it is restored. As of 5:10 a.m. PST, the park was clear of protesters, said LAPD officer Cleon Joseph.
The raid in Los Angeles came after demonstrators with the movement in Philadelphia marched through the streets after being evicted from their site. Over 40 protesters were arrested after refusing to clear a street several blocks northeast of City Hall, said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. They were lined up in cuffs and loaded on to buses by officers. Six others were arrested earlier after remaining on a street that police tried to clear.
"The police officers who were involved in this operation were hand-picked for this assignment," Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said. "They're highly trained and disciplined and showed a tremendous amount of restraint and professionalism in carrying out this morning's operation."
Nutter said the eviction had been planned for several weeks and went off without largely without problems.
Ramsey said he would have preferred to evict the protesters without making arrests, but some refused orders to clear the street and had to be taken into custody. Three officers had minor injuries. One protester was injured when a police horse stepped on her foot, Nutter said.
The Philadelphia protesters were ordered to clear their encampment in part because a $50 million renovation project was due to start at the City Hall plaza this fall.
"Dilworth Plaza was designated as a construction site," Ramsey said. "They had to vacate. They knew that from the very beginning."
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa raised public safety and health concerns in announcing plans for the eviction last week, while Philadelphia officials said protesters must clear their site to make room for a $50 million renovation project.
By dawn in Los Angeles, trash, flattened tents and the stench of urine were the Occupy LA legacy.
City crews were installing chain link fence and concrete barricades around once-lush lawns that are now patches of dirt strewn with tons of debris, including clothing, tents, bedding shoes, trash and two months of human flotsam. Under a tree was a guitar, a bullhorn, CDs and a black bandanna.
Defiant Los Angeles campers who were chanting slogans as the officers surrounded the park, booed when an unlawful assembly was declared, paving the way for officers to begin arresting those who didn't leave.
In the first moments of the raid, officers tore down a tent and tackled a tattooed man with a camera on City Hall steps and wrestled him to the ground. Someone yelled "police brutality."
Teams of four or five officers moved through the crowd making arrests one at a time, cuffing the hands of protesters with white plastic zip-ties. A circle of protesters sat with arms locked, many looking calm and smiling.
Opamago Cascini, 29, said the night had been a blast and he was willing to get arrested.
"It's easy to talk the talk, but you gotta walk the walk," Cascini said.
Police used a cherry picker to pluck five men from trees. Two others were in a tree house — one wore a crown and another taunted police with an American flag.
In Philadelphia, police began pulling down tents at about 1:20 a.m. EST after giving demonstrators three warnings that they would have to leave, which nearly all of the protesters followed. Dozens of demonstrators then began marching through the streets and continued through the night.
Ramsey said breaking up the camp in the early-morning hours helped minimize any disruption to businesses and traffic.
"We acknowledge the fact that we are going to have to leave this space .... but in another sense this has been our home for almost two months and no one wants to see their home taken away from them," Philadelphia protester Bri Barton, 22, said before police began clearing out the camp.
"Whether or not we have this space or work in the city is nowhere near done," she said.
The eviction overall appeared to have been carried out without any significant scuffles or violence.
Later Wednesday morning, workers used front-end loaders to scoop up tents, trash and other debris and dump it into trucks to be hauled away, while others swept the plaza clean.
Demonstrators and city officials in both Los Angeles and Philadelphia were hoping any confrontation would be nonviolent, unlike evictions at similar camps around the country that sometimes involved pepper spray and tear gas. The movement against economic disparity and perceived corporate greed began with Occupy Wall Street in Manhattan two months ago.
The Los Angeles officers staged for hours outside Dodger Stadium before the raid. They were warned that demonstrators might throw everything from concrete and gravel to human feces at them.
"Please put your face masks down and watch each other's back," a supervisor told them. "Now go to work."
The officers came from a wide range of specialized units within the force, including the bomb squad, and the arson unit. Scores of officers in hazmat suits also were sent in to deal with potentially unsanitary conditions in the park.
Before police arrived in large numbers, protesters were upbeat and the mood was almost festive. A protester in a Santa Claus hat danced in the street. A woman showed off the reindeer antlers she had mounted on her gas mask.
On Friday 18th of November, 2011, Lt. John Pike unwittingly kick-started an Internet phenomenon, when he was filmed pepper-spraying peaceful protesters at a campus at the University of California (UC).
The campus police had apparently been instructed by the UC Davis Chancellor, Linda Katehi, to remove tents from the campus, but she said she hadn’t given any directions on forcibly removing the protesters, who were sitting in as part of theOccupy Movement, a global protest aimed at social and economic inequality.
Whilst the campus police chief, Annette Spicuzza, has been placed on ‘administrative leave’, two policemen (including Lt. Pike) have already been placed on leave too following the pepper-spraying incident at UC.
The many wrongs of the incident speak for themselves, and everyone will have their own opinions on what happened at UC last week. But what has followed on from this is really quite remarkable. The whole Internet has been talking about the pepper-spraying cop – but why?
The footage that emerged from UC last Friday showed a string of protesters sitting, arms interlocked refusing to move, and then ‘wham!’, Pike unleashed his orange spray directly in their faces, as nonchalant as you like. Yes, it was absolutely shocking, but the manner in which he did it, it was only a matter of time before the parodies started.
A myriad of mock-ups then emerged online, portraying a maniacal pepper-spraying cop, hell-bent on attacking everyone and everything in sight. There was the Pepper Spraying Cop on Twitter, for starters, dishing out comedic nuggets such as: “After spending all my time in parents’ basement, being around that many women led to premature pepper spray release.” And then there’s the most recent one:
There’s this WordPress blog, called Pikes Corner, which has its own ‘humourous’ pepper-spraying-cop offering to share with the world.
But probably the best example of how one gung-ho cop has been transformed into a bona-fide Internet meme, is the plethora of Photoshopped (actually, maybe best not using that word as you’ll see here) images placing Pike in a range of famous scenes, the best of which can be found on this Tumblr blog. So Neil Armstrong thinks he’s safe from Pike’s pepper-spraying ways, 400,000km away on the moon’s surface? Think again:
As everyone will agree, there’s nothing funny about what happened at UC. But the manner in which Pike so casually pepper-sprayed the protesters as though he was cleaning his car lends itself to being parodied. It was that ridiculous.
Some may question whether it’s correct to lampoon what would’ve been a horrific situation for those involved. But satire, since the beginning of time, has always been closely intertwined with tragedy and unpleasant events. And laughter is what people use to counteract the bad guys with – especially when the crime in question is so blatant and can’t be disputed.
The vision of Pike ambling along a line of protesters, perhaps even whistling thetheme-tune to MASH in his head, is iconic. It’s something that has entered folklore and we’ll likely see popping up in countless comedy situations in the future.
A woman who was pepper sprayed during during a raid on Occupy Seattle last week is blaming police after she miscarried Sunday.
Jennifer Fox, 19, told The Stranger that she had been with the Occupy protests since they started in Westlake Park. She said she was homeless and three months pregnant, but felt the need to join activists during their march last Tuesday.
“I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in,” Fox recalled. “I was screaming, ‘I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.’”
She claimed that police hit her in the stomach twice before pepper spraying her. One officer struck her with his foot and another pushed his bicycle into her. It wasn’t clear if either of those incidents were intentional.
“Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut,” Fox said.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer Joshua Trujillo snapped a picture of Fox in apparent agony as another activist carried her to an ambulance.
Seattle fire department spokesman Kyle Moore told The Washington Post that a 19-year-old pregnant woman was among those that were examined by paramedics.
While doctors at Harborview Medical Center didn’t see any problems at the time, things took a turn for the worst Sunday.
“Everything was going okay until yesterday, when I started getting sick, cramps started, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” she explained.
When Fox arrived at the hospital, doctors told her that the baby had no heartbeat.
“They diagnosed that I was having a miscarriage. They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too,” she said.
“I was worried about it [when I joined the protests], but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know that a cop would murder a baby that’s not born yet… I am trying to get lawyers.”
The Scoville heat chart indicates that U.S. grade pepper spray is ten times more painful than the blistering hot habanero pepper, according toScientific American. While law enforcement officials regulary claim that the spray is safe,researchers at the University of North Carolina and Duke University found that it could “produce adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurologic effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death.”
Watch this video from IowaBoyDave, uploaded to YouTube Nov. 21, 2011.
The memo indicates that CLGC would research who has contributed financial backing to OWS, noting that, “Media reports have speculated about associations with George Soros and others.”
"It will be vital,” the memo says, “to understand who is funding it and what their backgrounds and motives are. If we can show that they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent it will undermine their credibility in a profound way.”
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Anti-Wall Street protesters and their supporters flooded a city park area in Portland early Sunday in defiance of an eviction order while authorities elsewhere stepped up pressure against demonstrators, arresting dozens of people.
Hundreds of protesters and supporters gather hours before a mandate from the city to vacate the Occupy Portland Camp in Portland, Ore., Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011.(AP Photo/Don Ryan)
Crowds converged on two adjacent downtown Portland parks where protesters are camped after city officials set a midnight Saturday deadline to disperse. Hours later protesters remained, though the crowd had thinned and obeyed police orders to clear the street and take down two makeshift barricades.
At one point overnight, the crowd swelled to thousands.
As dawn arrived, riot police had retreated and most of the crowds had gone home, but protesters who have been at the two parks since Oct. 6 were still there.
One of the organizers, Jim Oliver, said the night had been a victory for Occupy Portland.
"We stood up to state power," Oliver told The Associated Press, standing on a corner opposite the camp.
Still, the camp is a shadow of what it was before Saturday. A large segment of the campers consisted of homeless people who had been drawn to the free food and shelter offered by Occupy Portland. They are gone, after outreach workers went through the camp to help them find shelter elsewhere.
And as the Saturday midnight eviction deadline neared, protesters themselves began dismantling tents.
There were once 300 or so tents at the camp, and early Sunday morning a fraction of them remained.
As the Saturday night deadline neared, about 200 protesters were at the camp. Organizers said they hoped enough people would join them to make it difficult if not impossible for police to carry out on the eviction.
Supporters streamed in, filling first the camp and ultimately occupying a street between the camp and the federal courthouse.
"Occupy the street," one organizer said through a bull horn. "Remain peaceful and aware. We have strength in holding the streets."
Around 4 a.m., dozens of police formed a line across from demonstrators who had poured into the street. Protesters facing them appeared to be in festive spirits with some banging on drums and plastic pails, another clanging a cowbell while others danced in the streets as a man juggled nearby.
Other demonstrators used pallets and old furniture, wood debris and even a bicycle to set up two makeshift barricades on a street that runs through the encampment, apparently in an attempt to block traffic.
Protesters ultimately got off the street after the police asked them to and also cleared away the barricades.
Mayor Sam Adams had ordered the camp shut down, citing unhealthy conditions and the encampment's attraction of drug users and thieves.
On Sunday at an impromptu news conference, he defended his order, saying it is his job to enforce the law and keep the peace. "This is not a game," he said.
He also noted that implementing the eviction order may require more patience.
"Giving the order that the parks will be closed to the public is putting my foot down. Enforcing will take time," he said.
Officials said that one officer suffered minor injuries when he was hit by some kind of projectile in the leg. Police had prepared for a possible clash, warning that dozens of anarchists may be planning a confrontation with authorities. Officers seized pieces of cement blocks Friday, saying they were told some demonstrators had plans to use them as weapons against police. They said they believe some demonstrators were building shields and trying to collect gas masks.
In the hours leading up to midnight, protesters held general assembly meetings where they talked about what to do when the deadline came. The also repeated the main message of Occupy Wall Street movement of peaceful resistance to income inequality and what they see as corporate greed.
As those speeches were going on, some snacked on coffee and burritos as others sang protest songs.
About 60 bicycle riders circled the camp repeatedly to show support.
"We are a peaceful resistance," said rider Chico Tallman, a 63-year-old accountant. "But we're fed up with the direction the country is going. It's all about profit."
For the second time in as many days, Oakland city officials warned protesters Saturday that they do not have the right to camp in the plaza in front of City Hall and face immediate arrest.
The eviction notices come as officials across the country urged an end to similar gatherings in the wake of three deaths in different cities, including two by gunfire.
Demands for Oakland protesters to pack up increased after a man was shot and killed Thursday near the encampment site.
"Your activities are injurious to health, obstruct the free use of property, interfering with the comfortable enjoyment of (Frank Ogawa Plaza), and unlawfully obstruct the free passage or use of a public park or square," the notice read.
Oakland officials first issued the eviction notice Friday after first pleading with protesters to leave the encampment.
Police officials have said a preliminary investigation suggested the shooting resulted from a fight between two groups of men at or near the encampment. Investigators do not know if the men in the fight were associated with Occupy Oakland, but protesters said there was no connection between the shooting and the camp.
The shooting occurred the same day a 35-year-old military veteran apparently committed suicide in a tent at a Burlington, Vt., Occupy encampment. Police said a preliminary investigation showed the veteran fatally shot himself in the head. They said the death raised questions about whether the protest would be allowed to continue.
In other cities:
— In Salt Lake City, police arrested 19 people Saturday when protesters refused to leave a park a day after a man as found dead inside his tent at the encampment. The arrests came after police moved into the park early in the evening where protesters had been ordered to leave by the end of the day. About 150 people had been living in the camp there for weeks.
— In Albany, N.Y., police arrested 24 Occupy Albany protesters after they defied an 11 p.m. curfew in a state-owned park. State police officials hauled away the protesters after warning them with megaphones that they were breaking the law in Lafayette Park. They were charged with trespassing.
— In Denver, authorities forced protesters to leave a downtown encampment and arrested four people for interfering with officers who removed illegally pitched tents, said police spokesman Sonny Jackson.
— In San Francisco, violence marked the protest Saturday where police said two demonstrators attacked two police officers in separate incidents during a march. Police spokesman Carlos Manfredi said a protester slashed an officer's hand with a pen knife while another protester shoved an officer, causing facial cuts. He said neither officer was seriously hurt, and the assailants couldn't be located.
NEW YORK (AP) — The sound of insistent drumming bounces off the sides of nearby office towers announcing the location of the Occupy Wall Street home base long before its inhabitants are otherwise seen or heard.
David Crosby, left, and Graham Nash perform at the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011 in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Turn a corner in Zuccotti Park and you're likely to run into a drum circle or find someone strumming a guitar. Maybe it's an amateur trying to keep spirits up, or it could be the real deal — recording artists such as David Crosby and Graham Nash.
Music and musicians are woven into the fabric of the Occupy Wall Street protest, much as they were in movements, confrontations and protests of the past, from the American Revolution to slavery to the Civil War, suffrage movement, labor movement, civil rights movement and Vietnam War. But no defining anthem such as "We Shall Overcome" or "Which Side Are You On" has yet emerged for the protesters who have taken on corporate America.
"Every successful progressive social movement has a great soundtrack. The soundtrack (for Occupy Wall Street) is just as democratic and grass roots as the movement," said singer Tom Morello, who was given an MTV online music award for his performance of "The Fabled City" at Zuccotti Park last month. A clip of the performance has spread widely online.
Morello, who performs solo as The Nightwatchman and was a member of Rage Against the Machine, has also brought his guitar and sung at Occupy demonstrations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, British Columbia, and Nottingham and Newcastle, England. Just before midnight Wednesday, he performed near a darkened kitchen area at a demonstration in London.
He has also volunteered to contribute to an album of protest songs that Occupy Wall Street is putting together as a fundraiser this winter.
If Occupy Wall Street has no anthem yet, it's partly due to how a new generation experiences music: through personalized iPod playlists streaming through headphones instead of communal singalongs.
True to a movement that claims to speak for the 99 percent of Americans who aren't super-rich, Occupy Wall Street embraces many forms of expression. Musicians across several generations and styles have given their support.
"The more the merrier as long as you're going to bring in positive vibrations for the movement," said Kanaska Carter, a singer-songwriter who traveled from her home in Canada to camp out at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan near Wall Street. She helped arrange Morello's appearance and is shown in the video clip of his performance, standing near him holding a guitar.
Crosby and Nash's manager sent an email to Occupy Wall Street's website asking if the musicians could perform. Crosby quietly came a few days earlier to check out the scene, worried that cold weather would make it difficult for him to play guitar, said Beth Bogart, who helped show him around. The day of their visit was warm, however. Because police don't allow amplification, the performance was decidedly old school. The audience heard only as far as the singers' voices could project.
Bogart couldn't hear Crosby and Nash, but "you could just see the energy," she said. "When the whole audience started singing you could see their spirit lifted. It really was a good vibe."
Among the first New York performers was Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, an indie rock cult favorite who played a long set. Rapper Talib Kweli performed and so did Michael Franti. A 92-year-old Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, veterans of the labor, peace and civil rights movements, sang "We Shall Overcome." Sean Lennon and Rufus Wainwright offered an irony-drenched version of Madonna's "Material Girl."
Kanye West and Katy Perry walked through Zuccotti, but didn't perform.
Then there are those drums, beaten steadily by about a dozen people who call themselves Pulse. Police and protesters have limited the hours of drumming to help neighbors work and occupiers sleep.
An Internet-connected, do-it-yourself culture allows people beyond those at Occupy demonstrations to join in. They can write their own songs and spread them on Twitter or YouTube. The band Atari Teenage Riot has made a new video for its song "Black Flag" that includes clips from Occupy demonstrations sent in by fans, said Shannon Connolly, vice president for digital music strategies at MTV. While she's staying in Zuccotti Park, Carter has written movement-inspired songs "Stand Up to Wall Street" and "Game of Chess" that she's put on her websites.
"The movement is not waiting for superstars to grace it with their presence," Morello said. "It's not waiting for a Diane Warren-penned anthem featuring Rihanna and Drake."
Occupy Wall Street's nature as a sometimes unfocused expression of dissatisfaction plays into the diversity, too, said Amy Wlodarski, a music professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.
"There's no centralized musical figure because there isn't a coherent value that is going to be communally expressed in song," she said.
Yet from the earliest days of America, music has been a cornerstone of protests and conflicts and movements. Music provided a voice for the disenfranchised and stirred people to fight injustice. The Revolutionary War produced "The Liberty Song." ''Follow the Drinking Gourd," with its escape directions for fleeing slaves, was the anthem of the underground railroad, while "Battle Hymn of the Republic" gave support to Union soldiers during the Civil War. Women fighting for the right to vote in the early 1900s had "Suffrage Song." There was even a protest song about lynching, the jazz-infused "Strange Fruit."
The labor and peace movements created some of the more enduring music, with such artists as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. "We Shall Overcome" was born during a strike in 1945. Based on an early 20th century gospel song, it became the theme of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Meanwhile, anti-war sentiments flared in such songs as "All Along the Watchtower," ''Blowin' in the Wind," "Give Peace a Chance" and "What's Going On?"
Socially conscious music never went away. Such artists as Bruce Springsteen, OutKast and Bonnie Raitt continue to take on injustice. Others also give voice to social issues from the economy to anti-war to the environment to abuse. "We Are the World" galvanized anti-hunger efforts. Rappers such as Public Enemy and N.W.A. offered messages from the streets. Steve Earle puts a string of progressive causes to music and Neil Young recorded a disc of opposition to the Iraq War.
The more current protest music is not noticed as much as the music of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s because music is increasingly a more individualized experience. People rarely gather at each other's homes and pump up the volume on their stereos for a shared listen of a hot album. Instead, friends might burn a CD for a buddy or share a download of a tune.
But if Occupy Wall Street needs a song to call its own, Texas songwriter James McMurtry's seething "We Can't Make it Here," written in 2004, is a virtual blueprint for the movement. It tumbles with images about damage done to the country through corporate greed and political neglect. McMurtry knew he had something the first time he played a version of the song, then unreleased, during a visit to an Austin radio station.
"I had some really nasty emails on my website before I had even gotten home," he said.
Hopeful that things might change, McMurtry stopped performing what is probably his best-known song when Barack Obama was elected. He has since started playing it again. McMurtry said he's going to make "We Can't Make it Here" available for free on his website in a gesture of solidarity, and is encouraging fans to make their own videos to accompany it.
"I'd be glad to let them use that song," he said. "Whatever helps."
Morello, who has done what amounts to a tour of Occupy demonstration sites, considers it his job as a musician to "keep steel in the backbone and wind in the sails of people who are standing up for economic justice."
"I've been down there a couple of times," said MTV's Connolly. "There's always music. It's sort of a thread that runs through it."
