let. me. from the arab spring to organize labor movements it's up to the people to bring about change at least so says rapper and activist boots riley he'll break it all down. main street moves to wall street as protesters make lower manhattan their new home but it's not just wall street being occupy protests are now spreading all across the country from new york to l.a. but will their voices be heard. and will average joe's struggle to put food on the table the u.s. continues to fork over billions amounting to trillions of dollars for defense spending and wars so even as the country is hemorrhaging jobs how does the u.s. continue to send so much cash overseas for occupation we'll speak with professor

andrew bass of it. that's the culture that you're the obama he was brought in as a symbol of hope for the world or is that all just people and against racism but is actually the poles in the fold of traditional polls is a big business and a tradition obama is heating up with raising a record amount of money for his campaign this despite growing unemployment poverty and housing prices so where are these thirty five thousand dollar a dinner donations coming from exactly. good evening it's tuesday september twenty seventh seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster and you're watching r.t. now as occupy wall street protesters camped out in new york city voicing grievance over inequality in this country poverty and inequality extends far beyond lower manhattan twenty percent of households that received food stamps had no cash income

last year at all fourteen million people are unemployed forty three percent of those are long term unemployed meaning they have been unemployed a long time yet the richest one percent of the country have seen their share of the wealth grow over the years musician activist boots riley spoke to me earlier to talk about what he sees as the solution. well because the culture of protests and the various movements that have sprung up in the last forty years in the united states have been crushed by f.b.i. programs such as cointelpro and have you know met with physical and psychological attacks by the f.b.i. this is documented his book called the cointelpro papers it talks about what they did to organizations in the sixty's and seventy's but also i would say this.

that the movements themselves have also taken a shift in which. that they're not necessarily organizing around the issues that people deal with on a day to day basis of inequality and. so on the union movements have been left to only be run by people that are not radical do you think that you think if you mention cointelpro which is you know while back do you think that politicians and media and other elite in this country have a vested interest against the formation of a kind of movement you're talking about of course i mean they're making the people that run this government are working for the folks that make money off of the huge gaps in wealth i mean that's the gaps in wealth are because they're paying

us a little and taking the lion's share of whatever profit it is and that's what's going on all around the world again i think that every area has its own history of movements and i think we're coming up with people my age and younger haven't seen. you know an affective militant movement going on and we're all trying to create new. visions of there but i think what we were not focusing on is that wealth gap. and how to make people see that there is power in numbers and how. in changing. dynamics so. how do you think it supposed to change how do you get that you know those employees that need that job at wal-mart and are scared to get fired how do

you get them to organize how do you allow that to happen that's the heart that's that's the hard work and that question has been the question. that every organizer of any union that was ever created had to deal with. and that's what that's hard organizing that's hard work and i think that that is one of the reasons that it's easier to just talk about the large problems and protest that the g eight conference or you know it would have or big conference there is that's a lot easier to do then the everyday work of building actual unions actual glocks and by unions but when people hear that word it makes them think of the corporate unions that are kind of you know that have been known to work with you know the factions of the ruling class that they're

supposed to be organizing unions i'm not talking about that i'm talking about just the sense of workers getting together and using their power to negotiate a change and by negotiate not just by petitioning but by threatening the profits of a company so that's one thing how do you get people at wal-mart and mcdonald's to do it i bet you there are some people with some stories some success stories of that that you could get on here i'm not the one that would be qualified to. talk about that but it is done with it happens everywhere with all of the challenges that you just named and we're almost out of time so just a short answer do you have any confidence they kind of major change your life or is going to happen any time in the near future yeah i have a lot of confidence and one of the signs there that we that we were. one of the signs of hope that people point to for instance through when obama

got elected was that you know if white rhythmix in the south voted in a black man. which they did to the president it's because they wanted some sort of radical change to just like all the black folks that voted for him just like all the progressive and even the radicals that voted for they were hoping that this would symbolize some sort of radical change we see that it is just more of the same and even worse when more work no that's not the subject to think my point is that all those folks voted him in because everybody wants the system a change people we have to show folks a way to change they are saying that haven't happened yet you think you're seeing any signs of it on a street and where here you are now and now. i see signs of

people organizing our see there's occupy wall street this summer i was in syntagma square in athens i was in barcelona all the over the world in new york down and they're doing october twentieth eleven down in d.c. people are coming up and trying to voicing the need for change. what we need to do now is hone it to the point where we're actually talking to the folks that. can leverage that power can leverage the power of the people. and talk about what we actually will change and what those power numbers which is so i'm very hopeful that music that i make you know is not doom and gloom i'm not talking about just the terrible things that are happening in your world i am talking about this but i'm talking about it with the idea that we can change it and

that you the listener the watcher you're the only one that's going to do it those musician activist boots riley now while boots calls on americans to make the change they want to see people across the country are stepping up in some ways to get their voices heard in new york where the occupy wall street movement began eleven days ago protestors are holding strong even after being beaten down by police some women even pepper sprayed and from there the protests have spread westward in chicago this amateur video shows a group of protesters in front of the federal reserve bank there this is day eleven of their protest and the protesters are actually sleeping outside to get their message heard and from the windy city to the mile high city in colorado protesters took to the streets of downtown denver they rallied around the denver post newspaper and eventually ended up outside of the capitol building finally on the west coast in los angeles once again there is sam signs and protests this time the

protesters took their message to an overpass to yell as passing cars when i underneath so all part of this what started as occupy wall street movement is moving on unifying to fight wall street but what is the ultimate goal of these protesters earlier i spoke with independent journalist luke redoubt skeet who was at the protest in new york and is then covering them on day one and on yesterday i asked him to describe the movement as he's seen it. i mean i think it's a lot of people from all different spectrums there is socialist or communist there's not eleven truth there's there's and the fetters there's that first responders there there's military vets there's former bankers there and they have such a huge collective of people it's very hard to create a message but i can't speak for them but one message i see there is that america is in trouble and we all need to come together to try to do something and china to change the course that america's on how would you characterize the number and the

amount of people that are out there well a lot more people have actually come out after the n.y.p.d. crackdown on the protesters beat them up and pepper sprayed them so there's been a lot of people in the hundreds actually dedicating putting their bodies on the line sleeping out there day and night in rain situations as well and being out there for a while so there's a lot of people and it's actually crazy to see more police officers they're surrounding them and sort of going on them listening to them videotaping them and making sure they don't do anything illegal i put up a tarp over the video equipment when it rains so you're there there's still a huge police presence out there even if we even this week i mean i was out there last night the police presence has died down ever since the brutality which is a good sign what's happened also in spain after the police beat everybody up the videos came out on line more people came out which happened here and the police presence actually back down which we've seen which i've actually seen last night which is a good thing ok now you say that there is you know people that are have different

beliefs and they're talking and they're sharing food and all of that but as far as acting chains. what are they trying to do right now i think what they're trying to do is bring into one can he save message just like the tea party did see party has one message this this thing doesn't have a message and i think if they get that message they set a demand i think they'll be able to accomplish what they what people did in spain is is they will have a demand in this a little evil in our demands are met and i hope that happens that i hope they are about nies i can't speak for them it's a whole lot of there's no leaders there it's it's insane to run a general assemblies when you have so many people bringing up so many different issues but it took a lot for spain to get organized it took a lot for everything in egypt to get organized so they're in it for the long haul they're going to be out there and y.p. is going to be looking for a way to kick them out some way or another so they don't have a cohesive message yet that's what i'm getting from you they're working towards one is what you believe just being at the general assembly meetings hearing everybody talking they're all trying to get something accomplished they don't just want to

sleep there and live in a cab i mean it's true up there it's not easy sleeping on concrete it's not easy living out there with the police presence constantly watching you constantly listening to your conversations with police informant sold over the crowds it's not an easy thing to do but these kids are doing it these people are doing it because they believe in a better future they have hope that they can get something accomplished and personally i do too oh look i know you spoke to michael moore out there yeah it is getting power station i asked him where he stood on ending the private federal reserve banking system he actually told me that's really not important and that we need to end capitalism which i disagree with him on but he's he has a right to opinion and it's it's it's a good example of that you just said that you know michael moore is out there thing we need to end capitalism someone else is out there saying we need to end the fed these are very big big huge this demick things how do you get to a point where actual changes main i think we all need to come together and

communicate more and to calve one conceives of the message that we can all agree on and i think we can all agree we're in trouble we need. makes things and i hope it happens i don't know i can't speak for them we can only see in the coming days what happens but i definitely recommend people to come out there if you're unemployed if you're if you if you're out of a job come on there and try to help do something and one of the things that to what i was interesting you mentioned there are nine eleven first responders out there there are bankers out there the media coverage a lot of it you read to the people that they quote are kind of characterized as defeat organized or is it the they're just you know young people that are acting crazy how as a journalist when you come on there it's very hard to get one conies of message because there's so many people there so it's not an easy task to see who's i mean i've been i've been out there so like five o'clock in the morning talking to as many people as i can that's why i'm able to see all these different people there and be able to present that representation when a journalist comes in and is on a deadline he's going to speak the first version was in the speak to them and that

usually is somebody that is out there so you're saying they're bankers out there there's former expenditures there's unemployed people out there there's people who worked on wall street that are living out there is rob so what they're going to see their complaint is this is the same same complaint as a lot of the people there were screwed we're in trouble we need to do something right now america is heading for a downfall and we all need to come together and try to fix it and when they say we're screwed you know our hope we're not hopeful it does it all boil down to economic issues most mostly economic issues with everything that has been happening with the downfall of the american economy and a lot of people are not optimistic where this country is going a lot of people out there are unemployed and don't have job opportunities you know you can only go to mcdonald's army now for a lot of these are ok and mcdonald's is actually a really tough place to get a job these days they see a lot of people show up in fear people get in and get into harvard and one of their big days they're hiring what do you make of the media coverage so far because

there's been a lot of criticism by independent journalists that the mainstream media is not getting at all i mean it was. that it's a people getting tear gassed it's a people getting beat down legally for the media to actually cover this they haven't been on this from day one which is sad i mean they cover the tea party very extensively but when they have so many different people come together this is a historic event and they should have been covering it from the beginning and sadly it's a bleeds it leads and this is a perfect example of that case but even with the arrests and the violence that was the coverage that i saw in the mainstream it wasn't talking about why these people are occupying wall street you see those questions asked in foreign media covering us but i haven't really seen it by the mainstream media do you think that that undermines the movement it may scare people away when they see all the brutality which is a negative effect of it of course so i've been you know i'm doing what i'm doing as an infinite journalist because the mainstream media is not doing their job so that's why we're out there and that's why we're doing interviews with

a fiasco out there in roseanne barr and trying to get you know real perspective of what's really happening there and i'm doing other projects i've got other videos in line to show exactly what the people out there are really want so people can check out on other you to show and of course you can stay right here to argue because we will continue to cover it and that was independent journalist to quit asking so as frustration grows during a time of record economic inequality and poverty and persistent high unemployment as we just talked a lot about the u.s. continues to pour billions of dollars into wars abroad adding up to estimates of trillions of dollars in iraq and afghanistan according to some economists but the payoff isn't always very clear to talk about how this is possible earlier i spoke with andrew basij he's international relations professor it's often university also the author of this book washington rules i asked him having written extensively about president obama the continuing bush era foreign policy i asked in his view

how obama has been able to do the physically with the war on terror despite his past promises not to mention the economic struggles that america is facing now at home take a listen. the fact of the matter is that the american people continue to be fairly passive and deferential to washington and this is particularly the case with regard to anything to be late to military policy the mantra of supporting the troops takes precedent over asking the most fundamental questions such as what are we getting for our money and what about the president's role the president of the united states has a lot of authority over foreign policy we saw obama pretty much single handedly greenlight a new war in libya and you describe his foreign policy as in some ways connected at the hip with bush what do you mean by that. well what i mean is that if you take a broad view of u.s. policy the continuity between administrations tend to be much greater than the

discontinuities even when there is a change in the party in power and i think that's true in spades with president obama but it's not simply obama it was true when clinton replaced the elder bush it was it was been consistently true. and i think that one needs to be very careful about overstating how much authority the president his you know people fell into this notion that the president of the united states is the most powerful man in the world and back in two thousand and eight many americans believe that if we just got the right guy in the oval office would be well know well we didn't get the right guy i mean in a sense. president obama is an exceedingly able and talented individual but the reality is we're his authority his ability to do things are far more limited than some people seem to believe well then how is it that you have to say it's not about

obama then what is it that allows you now if we give the example of libya an expansion of obama how is it that when fifteen trillion dollars of debt now half of discretionary spending going on defense and a president that promised to wind down u.s. wars how is it possible that these military solution are still the u.s. response to a lot of the foreign policy issues the country has so i think i take issue with your premise i mean the president didn't this president did not promise to wind down wars he promised to wind down the iraq war if you remember when he was running he actually promised to expand the afghanistan war and that's exactly that's exactly what he's done a lot right why do we keep doing the things we do well partially out of habit partially because the things that we do serve. powerful interests and institutions president eisenhower some considerable time ago now referred to the military

industrial complex that certainly exists and also i think we do we do in part because of our exaggerated sense as a people and there's a nation of somehow we are called upon to accomplish in history americans going back to the founding of this country to somehow believe that we are the chosen people well we're not and the sooner we give up on that notion that we are chosen to transform the world in our own image the better it will be for us and the better it will be for the rest of the world one final question and i don't have a lot of time but just to defend my honor a little bit would you say that with the fifty thousand troops that are an iraq and with the state department ramping up the people and the staff that it will spend there in the contractors do you see that as a complete winding down of the war in iraq that obama promised i don't know what i said that obama's winding down i mean it is a winding down in terms of a very substantial reduction in the size of the u.s.

presence but you're correct it doesn't follow that the united states is about to walk away from iraq and we will have a very substantial presence there and it's going to be a closet i military presence even if the the quote unquote soldiers are private contractors but we will be involved in in a security role in iraq for some time to come i believe as at your base of us professor at enter national relations at boston university and author of the book washington rolls now despite the record breaking inequality in poverty in this country that we've been talking about you wouldn't know it exists when you look at the free flow of cash and let's whoring into politics take a look at the donors going to a fundraiser for prez. and obama in l.a. it was last night now despite the tough economy supporters of still shelled out for recent obama events from seattle to san diego upward of five million bucks in two

days with supporters paying up to the legal limit of close to thirty six grand to hear obama speak or eat dinner with them or whatever they do in there now it's a sum that many americans right at the fundraisers doorsteps could never even envision affording here's something that someone had to say out there you see that restaurant he's charging twenty five thousand dollars for people to. be part of the . community you can make do you talk thousand dollars a year. and it's not just the communities of those protesters a new report shows city budgets are getting crushed forcing them to cut more workers and services at the same time corporate chiefs are saying china is more business friendly than the u.s. peter schiff i spoke to earlier and he told me how this is all possible. there are obviously some people that are able to make money off of the system unfortunately

not nearly enough but that's that's the problem and there are you know there are people with money in the country to you know don't understand what's going on and so they believe that obama is actually going to help the country where all the people that know that he's not that they're they have a vested interest in the programs that he's perpetuating many of those programs are responsible for impoverishing the majority of americans but they and rich is that the triggers like what give me one example that you think is the best example of what you're saying auditors a lot of policies that are perpetuating the financial bubble that are perpetuating a wall street and so i think a lot of finance fears are benefiting from the reckless policies certainly a lot of the industries that government drives money towards education health care those those sectors are bloated and there's a lot of money that's being spent there in a very wasteful matter but obviously there are people who benefit from that

wasteful spending because that that is the source of of their income so there is it is higher constituency that is speeding up the public trough and that you know barack obama is there to fill it up and so there are plenty of people that benefit from it and they helped reelect them in the course you know you've got. the drug companies i think pharmaceutical companies benefit large programs for arms of benefit there are a number of companies that i think are direct beneficiaries of a lot of these government programs a lot of regulations that stifle competition benefit the companies that are being protected by competition but i think the higher quality suffers from these big government policies so if you run for office do you think that this is why obama's campaign election after it's had not been as impacted by the economy added one would believe and that they're talking about. i think there are in fact i think a lot of people are becoming disillusioned with the president that's why his

support is solid and i expect his supporters they continue to fall but that's not a good image is ability to raise money he's still going to raise money from the people who profit from the status quo in a as bad as both is undermining the strength of the u.s. economy and of course you know as the government is able to help through the economy and create and in seeing people who become dependent on government checks are now more likely to vote for the people who are signing those checks they don't connect the dots they don't understand that the government is responsible for their plight but they buy into the rhetoric that the government will solve the problem which is why now the government wants a perpetuate poverty because it's easy to get the votes of the impoverished when you're the one that is providing them with others thinking of poverty peter say finances are just getting totally crushed id economic downturn is just a new report that came out from the national league of cities today says that

cities ended their two thousand and ten fiscal year with the largest year over year reductions in revenues and spending in the history of the survey why are cities getting creamed now. why are they what why are they getting cranes now why are they getting by their finances getting so cross right now but all countries get across them and cities aren't going to be a uniform that member decisions are drawing the revenues from their caste base and your tax base is being eroded property values are falling people are paying property taxes even comes are diminished you're getting less of sales tax revenue ah there's all sorts of ways that cities and states are going to get squeezed from this recession the real problem is going to be when interest rates start to rise there's a lot of these that is out of your states are surviving by borrowing from the cost of borrowing goes up it hasn't happened yet but eventually it is going to happen and then you're going to have a double whammy because it's going to cost the cities a lot more to borrow money but they're also going to have to borrow

a lot more because higher interest rates are also going to at least in the short run further undermine this consumer debt base the bubble economy that we're living so i mean right now the end that they have of the economy on the city's means that they're continuing to cut personnel they can't invest in infrastructure they're cutting services so are you saying that this is just going to get worse if interest rates go up. it is going to get worse i mean interest rates need to go up but not for the reason that they're going to go up the real reason they're going to go up now is because inflation drives a lot because the government is destroying our my savings i mean it would be better if we could have higher real interest rates where the fed gets ahead of it for and we can have more savings in investment but still that is going to pressure the debtors and to the extent that too much debt higher interest rates are going to be problematic that is why the cure is going to be so painful for service segments of

the economy but ultimately if we can cure the economy we can have much more robust economic growth which ultimately will benefit the states even if in the short run they are negatively impacted by the increased cost of services or debt which is also why some of these businesses are say sort of end up the faulting on some of that that in order for it to be manageable i mean if it doesn't seem like everybody how much worse could it get about ready for bad i mean what you're calling for can get a lot if you get a lot worse i mean we really see not that ye be yeah big things are bad people are having a hard time getting jobs but the people that still have jobs i mean yeah they are getting squeezed a little bit but not feel like it's going to be i think it's going to get a lot worse when you really see a pursuit of this the climate by the dollar that's cool you know kick it in because that's going to lead to big big increases in consumer prices on basic necessities which are really again across american families and when you see a big increase in interest rates.