Occupy 2011: What do they want?

Ask the Los Angeles City Council
Local cops and city officials have been less than supportive of the consciousness-raising efforts of OccupyLA. Unlike police in Boston and New York City, say, who helpfully club, mace, arrest and otherwise harass demonstrators on a daily basis, the LAPD, county sheriffs and municipal leaders have gone out of their way to clear the path for protestors in front of Los Angeles' city hall. The city council went so far as to pass by a vote of 11-0 a resolution, written by councilmember Richard Alarcon, that is a model response to efforts by citizens to air grievances. The gist:

...Angelenos, like citizens across the United States, are reeling from a continuing economic crisis that threatens our fiscal stability and our quality of life...."Occupy Wall Street"['s]  first official Resolution on September so", 2011, available at http://occupywallst.org/forum/first-official-release-from-occupywall-street/, provid[es] an overview of the goals and unifying principles of the "Occupy" movement....[T]he "Occupy" demonstrations are a rapidly growing movement with the shared goal of urging U.S. citizens to peaceably assemble and occupy public space in order to create a shared dialogue by which to address the problems and generate solutions for economically distressed Americans....[T]he causes and consequences of the economic crisis are eroding the very social contract upon which the Constitution that the United States of America was founded; namely,...allowing every American to strive for and share in the prosperity of our nation through cooperation and hard work...[T]oday corporations hold undue influence and power in our country....[O]ur economic system can only be called broken when one considers that currently, over 25 million Americans who seek work are unemployed; more than 50 million Americans are forced to live without health insurance; and, even using our current poverty measure that is widely recognized to be inadequate and outdated, more than 1 in 5 American children are growing up poor in households that lack access to resources that provide basic survival needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter....[T]he U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a "CDC Health Disparities & Inequalities Report - United States, 2011" revealing that income inequality in the United States is the highest in the world among any advanced industrialized nation, with wide-spread inequities in U.S. health outcomes by income, race, and gender....[O]ver the past 30 years, both the average and the median wage in America has remained almost stagnant while the average individual worker contribution to GDP has soared to 59% and the economy has doubled, all after adjusting for inflation; and highest in the world among any advanced industrialized nation, with wide-spread inequities in U.S. health outcomes by income, race, and gender....[A]lmost all the gains to the economy have accrued to the very top income earners-largely the top 1%, who now control 40% of the wealth in the United States, in great part as a result of policy changes that are reversible such as taxation; and...the Institute for Policy Studies indicates that the top 1 percent of Americans own half of the country's stocks, bonds and mutual funds; and...the 400 richest Americans at the top control more wealth than the 180 million Americans at the bottom....[T]he Los Angeles County Federation of Labor has officially endorsed "Occupy Los Angeles" and "Occupy Wall Street" in a statement of support saying: "The Los Angeles labor movement stands with its sisters and brothers occupying Wall Street, downtown Los Angeles, and cities and towns across the country who are fed up with an unfair economy that works for 1% of Americans while the vast majority of people struggle to pay the bills, get an education and raise their families...The Occupy Wall Street movement is mobilizing for a fair economy across the country including in Los Angeles. This movement is taking a stand against the corporate bullies, banks and investment firms that not only created our economic collapse in 2008, but continue to take advantage of it today, making billions in profits while demanding further wage and benefit cuts from American workers."...Americans must resolve some of the divisive economic and social realities facing our nation in a peaceful way to avoid the further deterioration of our greatest asset -- our human capital....[O]ne of the factors spurring recent violent revolutionary protests in the Middle East is high income inequality, though the sobering reality is that income inequality in the United States is even higher than that of some of the countries torn asunder by violent revolution; for instance, according to the C.I.A. World Fact Book, the United States Gini coefficient, which is used to measure inequality, is higher than that of Egypt's pre-Revolution....[T]he fiscal impact of the continuing economic crisis is disastrous to education, public services, infrastructure and essential safety-net services that have historically made America successful, with school class sizes growing while teachers are laid off and forcing Cities and States to make sobering choices that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable, such as how to cut hours and services from public safety provision, delaying or neglecting to maintain essential physical infrastructure including roads, sewers, and water and power delivery; and cutting services provided by our libraries, recreation, and park facilities....[O]ne of the largest problems causing our economy to continue to flounder is the foreclosure crisis, with some banks continuing the use of flawed, and in some cases fraudulent, procedures to flood the housing market with foreclosures, such as the recent revelations of widespread foreclosure mismanagement by mortgage servicers who fail to properly document the seizure and sale of homes, in some cases foreclosing without the legal authority to do so, prompting the 50-state Attorney General investigation of foreclosure practices....California has been particularly hard-hit by the foreclosure crisis, with: • 1 in 5 U.S. foreclosures in California; and • 1.2 million foreclosures in California since 2008, with a projection of a total of 2 million California foreclosures by the end of 2012; and • More than a third of California homeowners locked in an underwater mortgage, with few banks offering any type of principal reduction modification, even given Federal, State and City programs offering to split the balance of a modification with the bank....[T]he costs of the foreclosure crisis to California taxpayers includes: • Property tax revenue losses estimated at $4 billion; and • Local, county and state government losses to respond to foreclosure-related costs estimated at $17 billion --including costs such as the maintenance of blighted properties, sheriff evictions, inspections, public safety, trash removal, and other costs at $19,229 for every foreclosure....[W]ith the concurrence of the Mayor,...the City of Los Angeles hereby stands in support for the continuation of the peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment Rights carried out by "Occupy Los Angeles"....

You could slap Michael Bloomberg and Boston mayor Thomas Menino upside the head with this declaration without much hope they'd get the message. (Totally parenthetically, it's worth pointing out that L.A.'s response demonstrates the superiority of legislative government over the executive model: it is difficult to imagine a group of citizens arranging a face-to-face with the mayor of a big eastern city the way the organizers of OccupyLA were able to with their council representative. Like members of state assemblies and Congress, councilors are more likely to be responsive to voters than are mayors -- or governors or presidents). It is also worth noting that Los Angeles is practically the only locale being occupied that has suffered no major confrontations between police and protesters.

The Los Angeles city council resolution
The OccupyUSA Blog by Greg Mitchell (The Nation)
City Council Unanimously Passes Occupy L.A. Resolution -- Protesters Struggle to Distance Themselves From Democrats, Unions by Simone Wilson (LA Weekly 2011-10-12)
Occupy Los Angeles
OccupyLA
Occupy Wall Street
OccupyBoston
Police, protesters adjust as occupations expand (Associated Press 2011-10-15)