it is a clash of warfare from pepper sprayed of beatings to hundreds of arrests the biggest us march in years ending up with some of the worst police brutality so as all compile wall street spreads thousands joining the fight against corruption will we finally see some change in america. and from the money machine into the war machine thousands of protesters occupy freedom plaza right here in washington d.c. to fight against wars in afghanistan and iraq so can the masses make a difference when it comes to cutting military spending. and as americans finally

wake up and take to the streets will politicians and steal the message as a way to promote and justify their own ideals will speak with andrew gavin marshall of the people's book project dot com to explore whether elites are trying to co-opt these. it's thursday october sixth five pm in washington d.c. and christine you're watching r t well let's start off with the latest from the movement that is now a swelling in strength and numbers occupy wall street tens of thousands of people are now part of this yesterday of course the unions joined in and more and more people are heading to various locations around the country new york city's lower manhattan still by far the largest go to the pictures that.

incredible pictures of what is happening down there as people gather in their demands for it and to corporate corruption what was for most of the day peaceful yesterday turned violent as the sun went down protesters who tried to cross police very years were sprayed with pepper spray and several beatings as you can see using their nightsticks to try to keep those crowds back videos like this are surfacing all over the web and according to many protesters who are actually helping them gain support for their movement now there are so many pictures out there but of course we also want to hear from the people who are actually on the ground on the front lines with speaking out and witnessing these firsthand events as they unfold our next guest was there last night and had his camera rolling and to watch some of what he captured.

this video was shot by luke rebel scheme he's been on the ground off and on since occupy wall street protest began back on september seventeenth this video taken last night illustrates the contentious and it times violent nature of what we're witnessing down in lower manhattan and i just spoke to luke king and asked him to outline for us how this movement has changed since it started nearly three weeks ago. well this movement started very organically very grassroots with the mainstream media not even paying any attention to them in the first week it was yahoo and twitter who censored hashtags and words like you by wall street when people were trying to promote this so this is a very organic movement that started with people from all different audience all of us coming together yesterday we had the largest rally with thousands and thousands of people in new york city and the police actually took it into their heads to kind of. abuse people down there after the second more step to place and i have actually

video that i'm on our youtube dot com port slash we are change channel that people could see the police over reacting again beating people with petards pepper spraying people and thrown people around everywhere and arresting people who are nonviolent peaceful resisters who just want to make a change and you know legal we showed some of your video and it looks pretty crazy pretty chaotic down there especially in terms of police definitely using their betimes i want to play something that is kind of big on you tube right now in terms of that and then i'll have you react to it. so we just had a police officer saying my little nightstick is going to get a workout tonight based on what we saw in your video and several others a lot of the police officers one thinks did get some work what is your take on what's going on with the police here i mean do you think they're overreacting. i mean the police did receive what is it four point three million dollars from j.p.

morgan chase just a couple days ago to help secure downtown manhattan so i think the police or bikes i mean i do my best to say they're overreacting people just have to look at the videos and see a police officer spearing me with a nice steak and also the fox news reporters that were next to me and we're just journalists trying to capture this and they're definitely overreacting but this is only going to be detrimental to their cause because every person that's beat every person that's arrested two more people will come out to occupy wall street two more people will be there in solidarity with us they're really hurting themselves and their image and they're showing what oppressive force there is to people who are just trying to peacefully walk down wall street i mean all these people want to do is they want to walk down the iconic new york stock exchange they want to walk down wall street and they're treating it they're treating us like we're dangerous terrorists meanwhile we always say we have respect for the police we will never hurt the police we want to be the police and that the police are that ninety nine percent of the people who are being screwed over by the elites so i do see the

police being manipulated by these elites they're given the money and of course they're using tactics to try to squash us but that's only going to build us and make us a lot stronger yeah some of the protesters that i've been interviewing throughout the last few weeks i mean one of them said just before she was tupper sprayed she said i'm here for you fighting for your pensions fighting for you to get their wages i thought that was really interesting that you know she's tough restraint does moment later and that you were there luke on the first day and it was much smaller and so you think that one of the reasons that this just continues to grow so much larger is because people are seeing this police brutality and saying you know something's wrong here. not only that but you are seeing that this is a real movement from people from all different political spectrum who are sick of the elites we're sick of the corporations dominating our world our lives and they want to make a difference this is an outlet of people coming together and working with inside

with each other and ghandi once said i just want to bring up to the previous point that you know once they hit you let them hit you harder but once you're peaceful you're going to win over the public you're going to win over the people and that's what's happening right now people are being peaceful people are being nonviolent and they're winning the public over and there's nothing else to say i mean all you have to do it again is just look at the videos it's insane what's happening p. some people are just trying to get their message across and they're being beat beat by criminals thrown in jail for trying to express a genuine message certainly yesterday that the movement grew significantly with that addition of the unions what did you see i mean to what extent did that change what's going on with the union sort of joining on board. will occupy wall street is a very open movement it allows anybody to come down whether you're republican or democrat or socialist or end the fed or to come down to discuss political ideas political solution social solutions and to have that conversation and dialogue so

they're more than willing to allow anybody to come in with numbers to stand in solidarity with them there's a lot of union people out there but there's actually even more people who walked out of their schools more young kids who have to pay these crazy two issues who are out there in the streets who walked out of their classrooms because they want to stand in solidarity which was also a great sight to see just last question for you luke wondering not sure how much time you actually have to watch t.v. to watch some of these cable networks is there anything that the media is missing in terms of the message it's taking from these protests. i think that mainstream media is trying to make this the tea party of the left which is not i mean i was down there i would do it a live broadcast and he was trying to say that this is these are obama supporters this is the tea party of the left obama's going to use this for his political gain so i see them trying to co-opt this movement for the left meanwhile the people who were there were screaming no we're not for obama we're not for the left we are we

are the ninety nine percent which includes people from the left and right so they're trying to divide and conquer us on that political spectrum and people are not falling for it they're not fall for it at wall street they're not fall for it anywhere else they're occupied it's not going to work they could live but yet again we're all out there if you want to find out what's really happening go down there get involved and be a part of this movement and that was independent journalist. and anger toward wall street is of course nothing new but the way it's being expressed is changing with this movement now occupy wall street officially kicked off september seventeenth but for the first time today we heard from president obama so yes i think people are frustrated and you know the protesters are giving voice to a more broad based frustration about our financial system works now earlier i spoke to leslie opponent author of this book alluding of america how long streets game of

fantasy finance destroyed our jobs pensions and prosperity and what we can do about it now less gave me his thoughts on the president's reaction. well better late than never. that kind of reaction comes because of the populist pressure i've been saying this from the day he was elected the progressive forces the antiwar street forces have to get together and put pressure on him because all the pressure is going to come from the other direction. look at how much he had that he was pushed to the middle and many people just sat back and said gee isn't that a shame he's not as progressive as we thought he would be he doesn't have as much a back on the scene thought he would. we wanted him to have but look roosevelt had backbone but he also had a gigantic labor movement there was emerging in a rocking all over the streets pushing the agenda forward we didn't have that instead we had

a tea party and now we finally have happened in place it's up to us to the populous to make our case then the politicians will follow i'm glad he's saying these things but i want to go back to the agenda point because you know this thing is called occupy wall street it's not called something else so that becomes the focus that's the single theme that's the theme of populism and i'm glad to have just one phrase like that that encompasses the whole thing because you know what most of america the ninety nine percent actually think that we're street has screwed them so this is a perfect slogan and i think it has that has some potential but the flow going left but you know as the days pass and as more i mean stream media attention does start to fall on these people i mean for the first week or so i mean there really was very very little coverage of this now it's pretty hard to ignore as the number of people grows in terms of these demands that people are being interviewed and

they're being asked you know how long are you going to be down here what needs to change for you to be satisfied or for at least for you to to be a little happier i mean you can occupy. wall street called accounts come on but you know whether you think they're going to start calling for specific names of people to be held accountable and this isn't you know i've been compared to egypt but we're not calling for you know the people down there are not calling for a president to resign they're calling for massive changes on wall street what do you suggest in terms of specific things that they need to ask for to have some demands met. i would stay away from this specific i would continue focusing on the ninety nine percent versus the one percent and the way that can evolve is as follows there are about twenty nine million people right now who don't have full time jobs or are being forced into part time jobs eight million people lost their jobs in a matter of months because of the financial crash that was caused by wall street

gambling and nothing else this brings the focus on the cause so the obvious next step is wall street should pay for the damage it created it should be pain and the wealthy should be paying for real job creation programs until you put america back to work this problem isn't going to go away all the technical issues of a platform don't matter if america is not put back to work i hope they stay there until we have full employment frankly i hope the rest of us begin to join them on a regular basis and that was economist and author leslie of old. and from wall street to freedom plaza right here in washington d.c. a new movement with a similar message start today and this protest has been in the making for months now and launched today to mark the tenth anniversary of the invasion of afghanistan thousands are rallying to demonstrate against the seemingly never ending wars abroad and like occupy wall street they're speaking out against corporate greed and corruption and the government they say allows it all to happen r.t.

correspondent liz wahl was there to capture it are. thousands unite after you know demanding that politicians take notice our demands our tax their billionaires tax the corporations stop talking sixty five percent of discretionary spending into the war machine protesters come from throughout the nation not the old and the young some with very personal reasons for exam and stringing my sons about to be deployed for the fifth time in. you know we just so sick and tired of this war you know those of us that have loved ones in the military my family is one of those who have fallen out of the upper middle class and you know and my college prospects are low because makeshift cardboard homes symbolize the countless homes foreclosed during the economic downturn this is just represent the millions and millions of homeowners around the united states who are

now homeless and this protester says he represents millions of young graduates now jobless and shackled by college debt the next generation of our greatest youngest most passionate minds are graduating and facing a lifetime of in general servitude they say their message is clear stop reckless spending on wars abroad and stop corporate corruption which they say profits at the expense i'm ninety nine percent of the population just fed up i'm fed up with the inaction of our government to prosecute wall street crooks. fed up with the banks stores that made their wealth here that are taking their wealth i'll sure i'm fine you'll do nothing in the. congregation yet. and what the occupy wall street protests sweeping across the nation this protest could help to make their voice louder and clearer want these these this national

freak out of occupations demonstrations which are reaching out consciously to each other for solidarity. with the protesters here say this is just the beginning and their plans occupy d.c. and definitely aren't all politicians unless enough and stop flirting on war is over see is pretty that's a corporate corruption right here. in washington and let's start. well a lot of those people got here today they got here in town for october two thousand and eleven and we want to show you one of the videos as was mentioned this has been in the making for a long time and a piece of this video that was sent down to try to recruit as many people as possible to come. this october as the u.s. war in afghanistan enters its second decade in a federal austerity budget slashes social programs a once in

a generation protest movement begin people from all over the country will begin a prolonged occupation of freedom plaza in washington d.c. and like madison wisconsin like to hear square or not leaving. and earlier i spoke to one of those people who says he is not leaving editorial cartoonist columnist and author ted rall asked him to tell me a little bit more about this october two thousand and eleven movement and what those who are part of it hope to achieve. well the american left has been essentially asleep for the last forty years and since nine eleven we've been waiting for the for the reawakening well the the financial crisis that began in two thousand and eight has weak has woken people up and now the question is how things are going to unreliable in terms of the system politically militarily economically so true americans are looking for a new future a lot of people are scared but a lot of people see an opportunity to take our country in a new direction so the occupy wall street movement the october two thousand and

eleven movement they're part of a whole new approach demonstrating in the past what we would do is we would show up at ten o'clock in the morning get a parade permit and march around and chant slogans and hold signs and then at five o'clock in the afternoon we politely went home and the media clapped because there were no arrests and there was hardly even the litter left on the street yes a lot i understand there's permits being given this time around for tents people are going to be sleeping down there is that right that's right we are not leaving until our demands are met and our primary demand is immediate withdrawal from afghanistan of all american soldiers and mercenaries so people are going to be sleeping right down the street from our studios in freedom plaza that's where i'm going to be sleeping there tonight was our intel troops and others a plan for troops to withdraw from afghanistan another plan we want withdrawal in other words we need to see the troops leaving wow. to my knowledge today there's

not even a plan in place from the white house to remove it so you could be down there for a long time it could take a while i don't live in new york and i do not have a return ticket can't talk a little bit about sort of those loud voices that i think a lot of people in the progressive side say have been sort of dominating the discussion of the tea party and how you see this or if you see this as a rebuttal or an answer well i think everybody's got a different point of view the tea party phenomenon among those of us on the left personally last year i wrote a book called the anti-american manifesto that discussed the tea. party phenomenon and i tried to explain that those of us on the left should be reaching out to the core group of tea party people who understand that something is wrong but they're blaming the wrong people and they blame the poor they blame illegal immigrants but illegal immigrants and the poor are being exploited as are the rest of us ninety nine percent of americans so we need to join forces with them and fight the real system which is the politicians who belong to the corporations it's interesting i

was talking to van jones the other day on who's just started this rebuild the dream organization he was at the take back the american dream conference and he said you know i'm not mad at the tea party for being so loud and at us for being so quiet and wondering how us and others planned on being heard and what you plan to do i mean certainly camping out for a long time is a statement but what else is in the works here well a revolution cannot be copied it cannot be cut and pasted so originally when the october two thousand and eleven coalition came together the idea was we're going to not leave this is not going to be polite we're not going to ask permission and we're going to try to replicate what happened until we are square but of course even that's problematic because look at what happened in egypt they haven't closed the deal they still have the military to contend with so it shows the difficulty of trying to overthrow a corrupt regime here in the united states the regimes infinitely more corrupt and more dangerous and certainly more powerful than the mubarak regime was in egypt so

we're taking on a lot so basically the occupy wall street people. sort of got there first and at first there was kind of this reaction among us older people i'm forty eight years old who are these kids you know they don't have demands they just want to show up and vote on their merits but they're doing exactly what we have to do there is no left that organized in the united states there is no up to the left to move on dot org and michael michael moore's the all these groups are immense and people are the lead. but the work within the democratic party and the approach has to be outside of the democratic party we have to reject obama and the democrats because they are just theater and that was editorial cartoonist columnist and author ted rall and as far as these various movements taking place there is a lot of energy but also growing concern that of the new people who join some that may come with the intention of controlling the movement co-opting it to fit into

their idea of how it should be going to tell people what they should be saying now among those concerns and gavin marshall project manager for the people's booked book project out com he's in montreal canada and joins us now. and there andrew you wrote an entire piece on this concern that the occupy wall street movement could it potentially be co-opted you more and that when those who have power offer you a hand in your struggle there are other hand holds a dagger talk about what you mean by this. well the best example of this is support coming from foundations from matthew because n.g.o.s and the like they offer financial support to social movements and what they do through the. financial support is that they organize and they elevate certain leaders promote certain issues if you put out demands be taken this is the danger of putting out demands they take the reformists to make the leaderless stick demands promote those

promote particular leaders particular discours professionalize leaders create organizations bring the leaders and those organizations within the system integrate them with political parties with politicians bring them to international conferences to speak for the people but through their professionalization their allocation of status and personal well those leaders and the movement itself becomes the painted upon the system so they only will ever promote reforms of the system rearranging the deck chairs on the tape painting but never revolution the origins of these foundations the origins of this philanthropic ideology lie in revolutionary times were people were rising up where these foundations were created to engineer consent to the system because all you have to do is look at the boards of directors of these foundations rockefeller foundation carnegie

corporation ford and soros and cetera and they are the one percent they are the bankers the industrialists the heads of universities the heads of intense the aim of the lancer be used to engineer consent the system but on top of which they sit by and you know it's you know you yourself acknowledge that in order to survive as a movement you know money will be necessary and that you know you say that in order it's or may remain independent that money has to come from the people but i guess my question to you i mean these are people who are struggling to make money that's why they're out there protesting some of them are broke so how do you get money to come into this movement without allowing in organizations a larger groups that have the money. we're if you want to see the revolution you have to be the revolution you can't just protest against spain so you have to start creating new things and so there is for example at the wall street protests there is an effort to create a newspaper or the wall street protesters they use kickstarter dot com which

promoted the idea and people just gave money and they raised twelve thousand dollars within a few hours and now they have a newspaper it kept out the foundations it kept out the ngos are kept out of this finding but i agree there is the fundamental issue that these people just don't have money and so this it's not the. impetus to protest but to create we have to create new systems new currency systems communal currencies these type of things remove these absurd ideas of debt interest inflation if we have to if we really want freedom we have to understand all the systems and structures which are process because it's not whether you're left or right socialist libertarian the struggle is against the institution itself rather that institution is the state the corporations wall street the banks the media etc it's the institutional structure itself which must be resisted against so the only way to do

that is that people have to come together to discredit no system and simultaneously create a new system and at the top of this is some that were resisting and so you have the monetary system the central banks the banks money itself inflation interest gets slavery so we have to resist against this create new monetary systems controlled by the people for the people but answer a lot of these people and this is a major criticism of this movement a lot of these people come from so many different kinds of places and they're fighting for so many different kinds of things so many issues is this is occupy wall street simply about making noise or is this about sparking real change because if it is it's things like those desired chains it changes that need to be affected effectively communicated. i agree i mean time will tell whether or not this is about making noise or starting for real change but i think fundamentally what we're

seeing here whether you're in egypt in the occupied territories in palestine in one durham us or in america the struggle is the same as for liberation and until people realize that until people realize that freedom for one requires freedom for all then we won't be moving forward in any true direction for true liberation so it's the beginning of a struggle i mean we saw the rise of the arab spring. last december last january and just think of how far how much has happened in this one year so whether or not i don't think that we're walking by wall street will be the beginning and end of this struggle this is just the stock this is where we're seeing the growth and development of something new and this new society is true liberation it'll be a long struggle we're in it for the long haul but if not now when victor hugo once said nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come but the time is now so

we may as well act on that we man's must start to move the movements forward and not criticize it not dismiss it because you fear the cooptation because you see soros and move on and out or i mean into the fray don't dismiss it you you know you're part of it expressed these concerns so they did me of boyhood cooperation so that it may be a boy being controlled and steered into a reformist leaderless state and systemically safe avenues and there a lot of people are calling this that a leftist movement there are a lot of groups who are i want to being split by this not exactly knowing how to react i lost her but a lot of people down there say you know this is simply a movement to help president obama in the twenty's while the election and some people are wary of that some people think it's a good thing what do you think about this being sort of named given a political side i guess. well if i felt that its only purpose or possibility was to support obama i would not be supporting the movement. obama is prepackaged wall

street products bought and paid for always has been and always will be there is no hope for change in obama if you want hope or change you have to look yourself and you can't. list demands for politicians or others to be here to the only one you can be demanding anything of is yourself and you have to act on that and i support the movement not because you there are people who support obama now because there are like this now because there are diverse elements within it. but i support it because there's the potential for growth because instead of simply dismissing those elements that you don't agree with and thereby accelerating divisions and segregation i would rather have infuse it with new ideas so that you will become more connected how has your dad.