Occupy L.A. protesters, joined by others, have announced plans to hold an Occupy protest at the annual Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, which precedes the Rose Bowl on January 2, 2012. As this recent video indicates, Occupy L.A. spokesman Pete Thottam says he’s calling on protesters to:
- Gather on the sidewalk at the main intersection of the parade (Orange Grove Blvd. and Colorado Blvd.), with banners, so that the banners are visible to the television cameras covering the parade. Suggested ideas for the banners are “corporate banking-focused messages” such as "Corporate Money Out of Politics" and "Corporations are Not People", as well as the generic "OCCUPY".
- Form a “human float” at the very end of the parade and march to Pasadena City Hall to hold a press conference.
According to the video, the Occupy protesters are:
asking for corporate money to be taken out of the political process, especially the Legislative and Executive Branch, [and] to stop the revolving door between Citibank and Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Washington, D.C…. What’s upside down here is that banks and the corporations run the Congress. They dictate what’s legislated, how the media covers things….
Thottam also said that the Tournament of Roses Parade itself has become “militarized and corporatized,” specifying that “we have five banking floats and banks that have underwritten nine of the floats …. You’re going to have B-52 bombers and jets flying over the Rose Parade.” Thottam lists key demands of the Occupy movement as:
- Mortgage foreclosure relief;
- Taxing the top 1 percent (i.e., the wealthiest Americans);
- Increasing the capital gains tax (which is the principal tax applied to investment income of many millionaires and billionaires, and which, over the past several decades, has been reduced to 15 percent);
- Taking corporate money out of politics; and
- Reversing the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which has allowed a tremendous increase of corporate money into political campaigns with little or no disclosure or oversight.
According to their website, “Occupy The Rose Parade actions will be peaceful, entirely non-violent and non-disruptive.”
Year of the Protester
The planned Occupy protest at the Tournament of Roses Parade occurs just as Time Magazine has named The Protester (including the Occupy protesters in the United States) its Person of the Year. Additionally, the Occupy movement's "We are the 99 percent" slogan has been chosen as the best quote of the year by the writers of the annual Yale Book of Quotations.
© 2011 Matthew Emmer -- All Rights Reserved
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