hello i'm tom are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture it started as a camp out of diehard young activists in manhattan has now evolved into not just a nationwide protest but a global one too and with major labor unions on board well street may have met its match. united steelworkers joins didn't talk about what to expect when occupy wall street joins up with organized labor and a growing protest against transnational corporations love affair with reed resembles another historic protest the boston tea party so will the same

revolutionary reforms spring out of today's backlash against progress power. you need to know this for the first time yesterday the white house was asked to weigh in on the occupy wall street movement the sweeping the nation with demonstrations underway now in boston chicago memphis minneapolis los angeles and washington d.c. as well as solidarity demonstrations in other parts of the world like canada europe and japan when asked by reporters at yesterday's white house press briefing if the president sympathizes with demonstrators press secretary jay carney said this. i haven't discussed it with him i'm sure he's aware of it because he follows the news the i mean i would simply say that to send the people are frustrated with.

economic situation we understand and that's why we're so urgently the fact of the occupy wall street movement is now gaining attention in the white house is a sign that this movement is strengthening each and every day and sooner or later the president himself may be forced to weigh in on the occupy wall street movement as the demonstrators will get a whole lot stronger now thanks to the support of he labor unions yesterday the new york transit workers union which last week pledged support for the occupy wall street movement went to court for the block in new york city and the n.y.p.d. from foreseen bus drivers to transport arrested wall street protesters after police rounded up and arrested seven hundred peaceful demonstrators or brooklyn bridge over the weekend n.y.p.d. ordered unionized bus drivers to haul off the demonstrations demonstrators say now the transport workers union going to court to make sure that doesn't happen again this week other unions are expected to join the occupy wall street movement swelling the number of demonstrators in athens a cut in part to its highest numbers yet so it looks like with the support of major

major labor unions the occupy wall street movement has some teeth joining me now to talk more about this is leo gerard international president outed steelworkers union leader welcome good to be here with you great great to have you with us what what effect do you think that the involvement of major unions with the occupy wall street will be or is the support whether it's. just rhetorical or physical is going to have it all so i think it's going to have the the effect of helping the spread it's a grassroots movement we issued a press statement last week when we saw them being arrested and it is spread all over in fact through the events no planned all over the country and the fact that they have been accused of not having any real agenda is the issue this is the ninety nine percent of the population that's been left behind and so i think this movement is going to spread and people are just saying look we're fed up the one percent has gotten all the benefit the ninety nine percent of it left behind the thing that i saw that really struck me as i saw

a young man being interviewed. he said why are you here he said because i've got two master's degrees i've got college loans they came in afford to pay the interest on and i can't find a job because they caused this mess and i'm here to hold them accountable the bankers the banks are and that to me that said it all and we're all feeling the same thing we've got people who've lost jobs we've got people lost homes we've got students that can't go to school because their parents haven't got jobs we've got kids that are actually living in their cars because their parents lost their house this is not the america that we should have we have the most inequality in the last seventy five years that we should have at this time in our history so i think it's going to spread because people have a chance to voice their concern and their anger it has still workers gene correct me if i'm wrong is the largest industrial union in the united states private sector and us private sector. what it what specifically are you going to be doing or have you been doing in support of these movements beyond issuing a statement what we're going to join with and it's very clear this movement doesn't

need a leadership because role leaders in the movement everyone's got their own concerns and so we're not going to do anything but join with them when they have events we're going to make sure that we have people there and if they need people to deliver pizzas to them we're going to deliver pizzas to them and where they get things like are being done with them by putting money buses we're going to support the bus drivers they would want and i think we're going to have an organic grassroots movement this is the real grassroots not the astroturf that the tea party was this is not funded by rich folks these are ordinary folks who are saying like that movie set up enough and i'm not going to take it anymore howard the howard beale moment this is our howard beale moment it seems like it's also a crisis in the way that we've been doing business in the united states we you know for from for certainly from the thirty's until the eighty's so reagan came along and stopped in force in the sherman antitrust act in eighty two we had regulated

capitalism and it worked quite well our banks were regulated we had three decades. seventy eight sixty seventy s. and eighty's with the highest g.d.p. growth in the history the nation only three decades where it's been over three percent every single decade. and then it kind of all went to hell over the last thirty years in large part because of this deregulation mania is it time for us to be looking at alternatives to the traditional way of doing business i know you've you've formed an alliance of some sort with monitoring these were on cooperate is this something that we should be thinking look i think the kind of. sort of the kind of capitalism that has evolved since the reagan years has undemocratic capitalism and i think we need to find a form of democratic capitalism and we need to find a way to rebuild the social contract if we can't do it in the circumstances we're in now then we have to find new circumstances and so what we've done is we've sort of research work and we work and find something new we made alliance with them

under a good commander going is the largest worker cooperative in the world started in the basque region of spain they have one hundred thousand members and they're co-operative they make all kinds of things from auto parts to washing machines they have their own stores they have their own university where they train people in the one hundred or so we've made an alliance we're working with them we're looking at projects and what we've agreed is that the local union would be the social committee. of the mind bryggen worker cooperative in that facility and our people would get trained in mandarin philosophies this is not a nice upper well tree branch in goebbels up the east this is true worker democracy in the workplace and developing where we go developing the training developing the expert you know i had a session with recently with an undergrad leadership people actually got plants in china yeah i know but what they're doing is they're feeding china from their plants in spain so they're not losing jobs in speed to be in china they're actually putting plants in the in china to assemble what they're sending from spain we have

to think about how we could do that instead of what we've got now a g.e. sending our technology it over to china so that in ten years we won't be making planes and not just china i've got to explain every we're going to earlier country . so this is interesting i've spent a week in order going to was the last chapter of my last book threshold was about it's called in the jet of the dragon and and if it's it works and they've gone international as you point out do you think that we've reached a tipping point with this kind of capitalism in the united states that there is or is this simply going to be one of the options look at i actually think that it's at a point in time where there's i think a number of forks in the road and the. the events that are going on on wall street and that are going to go on to other cities is the ninety nine percent of us that have been left behind saying we don't like the way things are going we've had enough we've got to find new ways so we're going to challenge the

dominance of wall street want to challenge the way that capitalism works in this country i'm a and p. corporation i want corporation to be successful i want them to make good profits so that we can share in that i just don't want them to make those profits in china or bangladesh play explored exporting our jobs with exploiting the workers over there so i think read a tipping point where people are searching for new and better ways to do things so that as president kennedy used to say a rising tide lifts all boats right now the rising tide to lift the yachts and sank the degrees you know very well said thank you so my pleasure and the great work you to us are to do thank you very much and now i want to turn to what's going on on the ground in new york joining me from our studios there in new york city is jane meyers contributor at alter net has been keeping us up to date on the latest coming out of the occupy wall street movement and christine kristen when a freelance writer and editorial assistant alter net who was arrested over the weekend on the brooklyn bridge jay and kristen walker thanks for being with us

thanks for joining us kristin you were on the brooklyn bridge saturday more arrested can you describe what happened. it started out really peaceful and orderly we were all instructed before we marched on our on our senses keep the pace not cross past the person in the front with the back and there we had a pocket full of recommendations for how to stay safe and avoid arrest and we all thought everything would be fine. there was so much emotion it was really exciting walking in there so knowing that we were about to take the brooklyn bridge and then when we got on it and took over all the lanes it was just incredible such a great feeling of accomplishment and teamwork that we had on something together and then all of a sudden people were pushing and started getting chaotic it was scary some people were saying they couldn't breathe people were having panic attacks there were children and animals and then eventually it cleared out as people started getting

arrested it went from peaceful and happy to extremely chaotic very quickly but i'm actually very proud of the demonstrators and how calm they stayed in the situation was there a point. when you all who were going across the bridge real was the police that actually did you into a dead end and you know with the intention of taking you out or were and i am i wrong in that assumption that that's actually what happened that's what happened and there was a point when we realized that because we couldn't move forward and we saw people getting arrested in the front and we couldn't push back people were trying to get out that's when people started climbing up the side. onto the walkway because they didn't want to get arrested and what people around me actually did was we hoisted up a star on our hands like she was a cheerleader to a lot of the crowd and she said in the back there was in that and a bag and they were arresting people there too and then more cops came we realized they were just going to talk us out one by one and so they were none of us and then we would just waited for hours and so we were going to be arrested because when the

navigable remarkable. what's next what's going on right now and what's next. well the next is tomorrow there's going to be a huge mass mobilization of all of the groups that are there declare their solidarity with the occupy wall street march so there's going to be a march from foley square down to the plaza park for thirty tomorrow go to their rallies gather it for and it's going to be huge i i predict something twenty thousand people all of the labor unions the community organizations that have come out and said this is the great hope that we have to restructure the american economy so that it tends to the needs of people rather than to the whims of wealth they're all going to be out and showing their support for the projects that we've undertaken and we're all very very excited about it so that's where it goes next which is going to be visibility and hopefully increase our turnout and give hope to the many occupiers across the country kristen given the many employers first

question is have you ever been arrested. long and forms and. college forms do you think that the do you think that the people who were arrested now feel feel intimidated about future activism now and i think that they realize that in the tactic that the police use to do that and that they're not going to let that slave them into not participating in activities and that's why they're out there because they're not submitting to the government to tell them what to do and of course that will lead a certain way so that now i don't think that's good news can you describe a typical day in the life of someone who's been camped out as a christian. now because everybody is different i've talked to several people during the march i talked to a girl who was sixteen or seventeen and she was from connecticut there because her

parents were homeless she was staying with a friend i talked to a vietnam war bat who was also homeless and shaking the entire time i was talking to him and he was saying you know these people are so cool they're the only people who help me i don't know what to do i just want to go home and crying. into people who are in there that's not going to people who are in their sixty's i've talked to a six year old girl there's black people white people gay people you canadians it's really everybody and i think that's the one common thread would be that they're aware of what's happening and they're not going to accept it. glenn beck's web site it's all over some guy saying on t.v. yesterday that many of the people in the occupy wall street movement were anarchists and revolutionaries police in the u.k. have been pretty provocative the same strategy that was used in seattle back in ninety nine you worried that this would be how it all plays out in the u.s. . you know maybe who knows it's tough to see how to play out

god forbid there should be anarchists and radicals there i mean the system that we have is going so well i mean all glenn beck does is complain about how horrible government is and how it's way too big and how we should abolish all of the government agencies there's very little distinction between a libertarian and an arco syndicalist that's that's his people and artists it's just that his people are engaged in real activism look the the right wing is going to try and smear this to the extent that they can because the right wing. is essentially an entity that's paid for shill for wall street and not just the right wing but certainly the right wing and and so that's how they're going to spin this and they're going to make it out to be a bunch of hippies and radicals but tomorrow at this huge mass mobilization you're going to see that these are regular working people who have been robbed of their efficacy who have no voice who are not listened to wall street doesn't care about

congress doesn't attend to and they're going to be standing up for their rights and they're going to be demanding that the system change in order to address the problems that are really going on in the united states and not glenn beck's paranoid fantasies about creeping sharia law or you know president obama being a secret marxist and all of this nonsense it's it's it's a complete. thank you kirsten g eight thank you both for being with us tonight. cheers thanks to him coming up the motivation and drive of the occupy wall street protests embody the same principles of the tea party you know another one composed of tea baggers and bachmann supporters the original tea party back in the seventeen hundreds the game changers from boston. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through a bit if you may who can you trust no one who is human view with

a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more.

there's pressure mounting on the young people in manhattan many of whom refer to themselves as the ninety nine percent or was there the ninety nine percenters or the ninety nine er's to lay out some clear reasons as to why they're occupying wall street in fact the mainstream media has turned to ridicule in a movement because there isn't a gender or clearly defined goal even though the real reason why the mainstream media is ridiculing the movement is frankly because it doesn't fit within their corporate friendly narrative and should all be talking about later on tonight my daily take but first in case there are still any doubts as to why the ninety nine percent of us should be upset about how the top one percent have hijacked our economy and by people are now taking to the streets to do something about it and sort of these facts first of all our top executives the money the money the top executives make this period this is the one nine hundred sixty s. one hundred sixty nine hundred seventy one nine hundred eighty ronald reagan gets

a like that and guess what happens right here the reagan tax cuts on millionaires and billionaires basically the top tax rate goes from seventy four percent out of twenty eight percent and what happens the pay of the very top this is just the top one percent the pay the very top with the exception of two little recessions here pretty much knows the. and will probably continue going on forever unless we repeal the reagan tax cuts because what this has done what these tax because did is they gave that top one percent incentive to dig basically take everything they could out of the companies well the average pay of working people by the way has flattened out in fact it's fallen off next year. here is take it let's take a look at how that wealth is distributed the united states first of all the top one percent of americans own forty two percent of all the wealth in this country that's the top one percent if you add the next four percent so we're looking at the top

five percent of americans it's three quarters of the pie if you had the next five percent so now we're looking at the top ten percent of americans that's it and then you take the next ten percent that's right here so now this is the top this from here all the way down all the way around all the way to here this is the top twenty percent of americans the other eighty percent of us is right here eighty percent have seven percent of all the wealth in the united states take a look at the next one here this is the distribution of u.s. stock bond and mutual fund ownership you know conservatives love to say oh it's a it's an ownership society that was doing which is that everybody own something ronald reagan brought in iras and when then we have four hundred one k.'s it's like a ways of driving people out of pensions and into the stock market so you can say everybody says the stock market is not great well actually this is the top one percent own half of all the stock in america that's the top one percent and when

you add the other nine percent to make the top ten percent. there you go it's almost throw i don't know what the number is exactly we could do the math the rest of us with fifty fifty to the ninety to the ninetieth percentile have nine point three percent and the bottom half of americans right let me just clear this the point is of this is so incredible the bottom half of americans own this much stock that's the bottom fifty percent and then our last year here this is this is fascinating this is nine hundred twenty three nine hundred twenty nine down here the blue is the bottom ninety percent the income of the bottom ninety percent of americans and the pink is the income of the top one percent of americans you can see in one nine hundred twenty nine just before the stock market crash the top one percent of americans were doing really well sixty percent of the wealth in this country was going to the top one percent right sixty percent and then in the one

nine hundred sixty s. actually it was the fifty's of forty's the fifty's and the sixty's in the one nine hundred sixty s. the top one percent didn't do so well there really were they were increasing but most of the money was going to the bottom ninety percent in the seventy's still they weren't taken so much then ronald reagan came in with his massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires in all of a sudden the top one percent are making more making more and now we're in a situation where if you compare this right here is the top one percent. with this right here the top one percent this is nine hundred twenty nine this is today this is the bottom ninety percent of this is the bottom ninety percent one hundred twenty nine today sure looks to me like if this kind of inequality creates a crash we're on the edge of one but we're seeing here essentially is a revolt against the corporate takeover of this country because of the numbers that

i just shared with you and it's not the first time this has happened in fact our nation was founded as a result of the people saying anough is enough to corporate power for more of what i'm talking about i'm joined by lee falk investigative reporter and blogger at the think progress lee welcome a time to see you great to see you too i was reviewing some old reagan speeches today for a little bit that we're going to do later on and one in one nine hundred eighty nine he was he said he was rolling out his his exceeding one hundred eighty six he was rolling out the dropping the top tax rate to twenty eight percent and he said that this isn't a verbatim quote but it's close he said that america was birthed in a revolution against high taxes that you know the boston tea party how was reagan wrong. well that's the great american myth and it hasn't just been reagan who said and i mean that's taught in a lot of k. through twelve classrooms across the country that the boston tea party was simply a revolt against taxation well the truth couldn't be farther away from that in fact

. the massachusetts bay colony increased taxes regularly and that the colonists led by samuel adams had no problem with that their big issue was a law passed by parliament in faraway england i called the ts and it teac actually was a corporate tax cut for the east india trading company a massive conglomerate that counted aristocracy as shareholders and they weren't doing so well so to help bail out the east india trading company. was actually a special tax cut so they didn't have to pay their import or export taxed to parliament which lowered the price of tea and undercut american shippers out of the market furthermore it teac allowed the east india trading company to directly ship their tea from warehouses in england to the colonies again shutting off american

small businesses and different companies so i mean the actual historical event was very complicated there were many reasons that people dressed up as native americans and rated east any a trading company ships and dump a teat but it certainly wasn't just because of quote higher taxation or something like that if anything this was a revolt against a giant tax corporate tax cut as we were about as i've written about it what was the biggest concern of the original tea partiers. underlying issue and we can talk about there are different market forces involved there is this this is about competitive trade land but the underlying issue was democracy. this was an. act was one of many laws that the comic con the saw as unfair and lacks legitimacy because they were written and passed by parliament that was far

away and didn't actually represent and if any of the colonists of the college didn't have the ability to vote for. members of parliament so they had they didn't see those laws as legitimate the internet and they rightly style them as handed handouts to a big corporation that was exploiting the colonies. so you can go back through and as you've done and an amazing job of and i've watched your segments and i've read your writings you can look back at george hughes who spy agra feet lays out some of the demands of commerce you can read. different pamphlets that were passed through the colonies and you can read the writings the same items and others really outlined that the fundamental issue now is a stronger american democracy rather than a stronger corporate. and city and they used in your company who. to paraphrase the old you know who's going to tell the children who's going to tell

the people here this. well you know hopefully they watch this segment and you know that the post that we put up guest today just outlining kind of the big reasons why this occupy wall street movement actually better embodies the values of the original boston tea party has been quite controversial you know we've got lots of comments on that on that post and people are already arguing the finer points of history the new york times re tweeted our our posts and now rupert murdoch's news corp is condemning. the new york times for promoting our article and so and then and there and rupert murdoch's block. the wall street journal it said that they needed my article show the new york. to be part of oh no this is actually shows that grassroots americans supporting pataki pie wall street movement and supporting other pro-democracy movements are embracing the tea party it's

a cheap party truly cares about history and our founding narrative they would talk about this and frankly i think a lot of the grass at the grassroots level probably the tea partiers have more in common with the ninety the other ninety nine percent folks in new york than and they do an opposition leader out of time but. would you would you would you agree with that point. just in the a train company has a lot of similarities to goldman sachs from the bailouts the corruption that we're seeing in congress today there you go thank you so much lee great to have you on. again more on the occupy wall street movement later tonight my daily take. it's the good the bad and the very much kyra donnelly ugly the good senator dick durbin after news broke the bank of america plans to charge their customers

a monthly five dollars debit card fee senator durbin lashed out at the banks saying bank of america customers vote with their feet get the heck out of that bank binders of our bankers credit you know one gallons you for five dollars a month and still will give you a debit card that you can use every single day a bank of america has done is an outrage senator durbin's frustration is understandable he knows firsthand how the u.s. government courtesy of you and me the taxpayer hand over forty five billion dollars to bank of america it's a very long to go to keep them from going bankrupt and how does that bank thank us with more fees let's listen to the senator and find a new bank bad syrup failing it's hard to find anyone outside of fox so-called news who gives a damn about the gubernatorial quarter anymore first the movie the canonize are oddly entitled the undefeated was a complete flop in the box office now another movie's out titled sarah palin you better.