lead. the. city. 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. so will their voices be heard. and it's not just those protesting at wall street that are voicing concerns over inequality people all over the world are putting their boots on the ground organizing movements and protests as a way to fight for their rights we'll talk to rapper an activist who's rightly so break it all down. and while average joe's struggles to put food on the table the

u.s. continues to fork over billions mounting to trillions of dollars for defense spending and war so even as the country is hemorrhaging jobs how does the u.s. continue to spend so much cash overseas for occupation we'll speak with professor andrew bass of it. that's been the federal election of obama he was brought in as a symbol of hope for workers in the first peoples and against racism but it's largely the policies that sold the traditional poses of big business and a tradition obama is keeping up with raising a record amount of money for his campaign this despite growing unemployment poverty and a housing crisis so where are these thirty five thousand dollar a dinner donations coming from exactly. good evening it's tuesday september twenty seventh it's eight pm here in washington d.c. i. lauren lyster and you're watching r.t.

now as the occupy wall street protesters gain steam and momentum people across the country are stepping up to get their voices heard to its writing so when to york where the occupy wall street movement began eleven days ago protesters are holding strong even after being beaten down by police even when women were 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 are the protesters are actually sleeping outside to get their message heard as well as 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 and finally on the west coast in los angeles once again signs and protests you see them there this time the protesters took their message to an overpass to yell as cars passed by anyone in l.a.

knows that people in their cars are where you can find them now despite all of this it's taken a rush to get the mainstream media to pay attention to occupy wall street and independent journalists say that the major media is still getting it all wrong earlier i spoke with luke ridout who has been covering it he's an independent journalist to get his description of the movement. i mean i think it's a lot of people from all different spectrums there's socialist there's communist there's not a lot of truth there is there's an the fetters there's first responders there there's military vets there's former bankers there and you have such a huge collective of people would say 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 try to change the course that america's on how would you characterize the number is 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 themselves 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 encircled them listening to them videotaping them and making sure they don't do anything illegal like put up a car over the video equipment when it rains so you're so they're still a huge place presence out there even italy 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 which happened also in spain after the police beat everybody. the videos came out online more people came out which happened here and the police presence actually back down which we've seen which are actually seen last night which is a good thing ok now you say that there is you know people that are they have different beliefs and they're talking and they're sharing food and all of this but as far as enacting change. what are they trying to do right now i think what

they're trying to do is bring into one can he sort of message just like the tea party the tea party has one message this this thing doesn't have a message and i think if they get that message they sort of demand i think they'll be able to accomplish what they what people didn't spain is the demand in there so we'll leave when our demands are met and i hope that happens and i hope they have been eyes i can't speak for them it's a whole lot of there's no leaders there it's insane during the general assembly when you have so many people bringing up so many different issues but it took a while for spain to get organized that circle law 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 us being at the general assembly meetings hearing everybody talk and they're all trying to get something accomplished they don't just want to sleep there and live in a camp i mean it's grew up there it's not easy to sleep on concrete it's not easy

living out there with the police presence constantly watching you constantly listening into your conversations with police informants all 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 could get something accomplished and personally i do well look here i know you spoke to michael moore out there yeah it is safe and 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 on this because this is just a good example of that you just said that you know michael moore is out there saying we need to end capitalism someone else is out there saying we need to end that that these are very big big huge systemic thing how do you get to a point where actual change is made i think we all need to come together and communicate more and take have one can he's of message that we could all agree on and i think we could all agree we're in trouble we need. to fix things and i hope

that happens i don't know i can't speak for them but we can only see in the coming days what happens but i definitely recommend people 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 i thought 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 of the people that they quote are kind of characterized as disorganized or is it just you know young people that are acting crazy how as a journalist when you come there it's very hard to get one can use 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 it's 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 and is out of the bar and he discovers the first person who's going to speak to him and that's usually is somebody that's you know is out there so you're saying there's bankers out there there's former expanders there's are

employed people out there there's people who work on wall street that are living out there as well so i want to get you to see their complaint is this is the 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 are you 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 mostly mostly economic issues with everything that has been happening with the downfall of the american economy and a lot of people who are not optimistic to where this country is going a lot of people out there are unemployed and don't have job opportunities you could only go to mcdonald's on the army for a lot of these are ok and mcdonald's is actually a really tough place to get a job these days they see lots of people show up in fear people get in and get into harvard a lot of their big days of 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 us at all i mean it was. it to people getting tear gassed people are

getting beat down legally for the media to actually cover this they haven't been on this from day one which is 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 if it 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 this but i haven't really seen it by the mainstream media do you think that that undermines the movement 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 i'm kind of a 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 the interviews with who paid for us go out there and roseanne barr and try to get you know a real perspective what's really happening there and i'm doing other projects i've

got other videos and learn to show exactly what the people want that really more so people can check out our you tube channel and keep checking out our teeth as we are covering it that was independent journalist liquid asking now as the occupy wall street protesters camped out in new york city voicing grievance over inequality poverty and inequality extend far beyond lower manhattan twenty percent of households that receive food stamps had literally no cash income last year fourteen million americans are unemployed forty three percent of them are long term unemployed they've been out of work for a long time yet the richest one percent of the country have seen their share of the wealth grow over the years new vision and activist boots riley earlier i spoke to him and asked him 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 this 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 mess organizing around. that people deal with on a day to day basis of inequality and and and need so the union movements have been left to only be run by people that are not radical and the radicals are not are handling issues that are on the

macro economic scale instead of handling the day to day wage and housing issues that people need to deal with you're talking about meeting and under labor mismanagement country for unions not only stronger because stronger is really big but radical labor movement movement that is not only organizing for these. for for these. little wage jobs but also that sees the need for changing the whole system so yes i think we need a radical militant labor movement one that doesn't only deal with. you know manufacturing or textile but wonder do we need a radical militant labor movement at wal-mart a radical militant labor movement at mcdonald's we need those things 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 effective military movement going on and we're all trying to create new visions of that but i think what we were not focusing on is that wealth gap and and how to make people see that there is power in numbers and how. in changing that. dynamic so. how do you think it proposed again how do you get that you know those employees that need that are that wal-mart and are scared to get hired 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 would ever created had to deal with. right 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 problem the protests 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 blocks and then and by unions 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 against 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 vive negotiate not just by partitioning but by threatening the

profits of the 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 and i'm not the one that would be qualified to talk about that but it is done 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 that the kind of major change you're calling are is going to happen any time and in your future. i have a lot of confidence you know one of the. signs that we that we were. one of the signs of hope that people pointed to for instance during when obama got elected was that you know if like red nixon the self 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 have voted for him just like all the progresses and even the radicals that voted for him 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 we're more war no that's not the subject a good thing my point is it's there all those folks voted him in because everybody wants the system to change people that we have to show folks a way to change they are saying not have it happen get to take your thing any find it on a street anywhere near where you are now and now. see signs of people organizing or 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 in down and they do in october twentieth eleven down in d.c.

people are coming up and trying to and 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 their power can leverage the power of the people. and talk about what we actually will change and what those power numbers which are so i'm very hopeful the music that i make you know is not doom and gloom i'm not talking about just the terrible things that are happening all over the world i am talking about that i'm talking about it with the idea that we can change it and that you have the listener the watcher you're the only one that's going to do it. and you can go to our website tomorrow and see a longer version of that interview at r.t. dot com usa that was musician and activist. so as frustrating grows

whether it's on wall street or any other cities where we're seeing these protests in a time of economic inequality and poverty in the u.s. the u.s. continues to pour billions of dollars at the same time into wars abroad adding up to estimates of trillions of dollars for iraq and afghanistan according to some economists but the payoff that is very unclear so talk about how this is possible earlier i spoke with andrew bates a bitch international relations professor at boston university is also author of this book washington rules now having written extensively about president obama and bracing bush era foreign policy i asked him in his view how is obama been able to do that extend the war on terror expand upon it despite his past promises as well as the economic struggles america now faces at home here's what he said the surge to the matter is that the american people continue to be certainly deferential

to washington and this is particularly the case with regard to anything to believes to military policy the montreal supporting the troops takes precedent over asking the most fundamental questions such as what are we getting for our money 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 if they have with bush what do you mean by that. well what i mean is that if you take a broader view of u.s. policy the continuity is between it ministrations tend to be much greater than the discontinuity yes even when there is a change in the party in power i think that's true in spades with president obama but it's not simply obama it was true when clinton replaced the older bush it was it was has been consistently true. and i think that one needs to be very careful

about overstating how much authority the president hears 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 your whole office all would be well well we did get the right guy i mean in the sense that president obama is an exceedingly able and talented individual but the reality is that his power his authority his ability to do things are far more limited than some people seem to believe well then how is it that they have if they have thought about obama and what is it that allows you know now if we give the example of libya an expansion of obama's wars how is it that with fifteen trillion dollars of debt now half of discretionary spending going on defense and a president has promised to wind down u.s. wars how is it possible that these nyla terry solutions are still the u.s.

response to a lot of the foreign policy issues the country has but i think i could take issue with your premises 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 but why 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 a 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 some how we are called upon to accomplish in history

americans going back to the founding of this country have 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 we don't have a lot of time but just to defend my honor a little bit would you say that with the pick a thousand troops that are any iraq and with the state department ramping up the people and the staff that it will send there in the contractors do you think that as a complete winding down of the war in iraq that obama promised no what i said the obama's winding down i mean it is a winding down in terms of 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 in it's going to be a closet a 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 i've indicated how are they under both of it professor of international relations at boston university and author of the book washington rules now with the tough economic times it's hard to imagine who's got a lot of dough to spend i don't know every base of it says maybe some of it has to do with the military industrial complex but despite the tough times people are still poor. in a lot of cash into politics i want to show you some video from an obama fundraiser last night look at that people poured tons of cash into this fundraiser in l.a. now despite the tough economy supporters still shelled out for recent obama events from seattle to san diego over two days that likely raised upward of five million dollars with supporters paying up to the legal limit of close to thirty six grand

to hear obama speak to some many americans right at the fundraisers doorstep could never envision affording take a listen. he's just turned you five thousand dollars for people who can be part of a. community you can make do you talk to dollars a year. to the community. and it's not just the community of those protesters you saw there a new report shows city budgets are getting crushed forcing them to cut more workers as well as services and at the same time corporate chiefs are saying that china is more business friendly than the u.s. earlier i spoke with peter schiff president of euro pacific capital and i asked him who's got all this cash for this obama fundraiser. there are obviously some people that are able to make money off of the system unfortunately not nearly enough and

that's that's the problem and there are you know there are people with money in the country do you know don't understand what's going on and so they believe that obama is actually going to help the country or other people that know that he's not that they're they have a vested interest in the programs that he's perpetuated many of those programs are responsible for impoverishing the majority of americans but they had rich ideas that contributors 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 years are benefiting from the records 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's the source of a very big job so there is

a tire constituency that is feeding off the public trough and you know brock obama is there to fill it up and so there are plenty of people that benefit from it and they helped reelect them and of course you know you guys are in the bottom drug companies by fake pharmaceutical companies benefit large brokerage firms the 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 pirate obvious suffers from this big government policy so if you run for office do you think that this is why obama's campaign election apparatus have not been as impacted by the economy as one would believe and that they're talking about now. i think they are in fact i think a lot of people are becoming disillusioned with the president that's why his support is stalling and i expect it supports it continue to fall but that's not

a good image his ability to raise money he's still going to raise money from the people who profit from the status quo even at the status quo is undermining the strength of the u.s. economy and of course you know as the government is able to help ruin the economy and create it and see people who become dependent on government checks are now more likely to vote the people who are signing those checks they don't connect the dots they don't understand that government is responsible for their plight but they buy into the rhetoric and the government will solve the problem which is why you know the government wants a perpetuate poverty because it's easy to get the votes of the impoverished when you're the one that is by the dollars thinking of poverty peter say finances are just getting totally crushed by the economy turn it just a new report that 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 creamed now why are they getting why their finances get across right now all the countries get across them in the cities aren't going to be in the uniform that members of the cities are drawing the revenues from their tax base and their tax base is being eroded property values are falling people aren't paying property taxes and incomes are diminished you're getting less sales tax revenue 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 about as are states are surviving by borrowing and when 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 city 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 in so i mean right now the impact of the economy on the cities means that they're continuing to cut personnel they can invest in infrastructure they're putting services so are you saying that this is just going to get worse if and 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 the law up because the government is destroying our money saving it would be better if we can have higher real interest rates where the fed gets ahead of the keeper and we can have more savings investment but still that is going to pressure the debtors and to the extent that to suck 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 of the economy but ultimately if we can cure the economy we can have a budget.