oh oh oh oh oh. they put their lives on the front lines to help protect americans and now they're banding together once again but this time for a different cause taking down the main i'll take you to the picket line to show you their weapons are strong voices. and in oakland occupy oakland protesters have had enough with brutality and corporate corruption this after police used excessive force to try to shut down the occupy oakland encampments but these protesters are standing strong out of a place historically known for sticking it to the man and being on the forefront of

the apex of american change. as the world lies in global unrest leaders are meeting in france for the annual g. twenty summit with so many issues to solve and so little time what can really be accomplished to report from camp. and from one call for a systematic change to another is it time for the u.s. to drop an age old tradition we'll debate the relevance of the electoral college. it's wednesday november second seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for example you're watching our t.v. . starting off this hour a look at the occupy wall street movement in new york and it changed to it now once coined as a protest filled with dirty hippies a new group of people is joining up and mass military veterans and here's something

interesting i want to show you a poster this is smedley darlington butler a major general in the u.s. marine corps born in one thousand nine hundred one died in one nine hundred forty he was an outspoken critic of u.s. military and wrote this you see on the poster i spent thirty three years in the marines working as a high class muscle man for big business wall street and the bankers in short i was a racketeer for capitalism on the poster also you see there at the bottom it says wall street hasn't changed and at the time of his death he was the most decorated marine in u.s. history complaining about the very same things so many are angry and frustrated about today seventy years later so let's take a look at how that plight is manifesting itself on occupy wall street r.t. correspondent on the south korea churkin shows us what has changed today. i think. a marine outraged with police treatment of occupy wall street protesters you like to get it. has inspired

a movement america's war veterans have come out on to the streets of new york to publicly support the occupy wall street movement let's find out what has led them out here to our constitutional rights are being critical and we'll search for them . another catalyst for anger former iraqi war veteran scott olsen unconscious after being injured in an occupy oakland protest last week but you know what you. hear with a moment of silence the veterans show this for tallaght he just will fly with them what do you think about veterans joining occupy wall street do you think it's a strong message after scott olsen veterans one hundred zero zero veterans of all ages who have served their country at war are now fighting for change at home veterans definitely do represent many of the struggles that all americans are going through we have extremely high unemployment rates. these veterans also see

themselves as the ninety nine percent the very wealthy are not paying their fair share and so forth so i believe that and i think most people do here to support that traditionally these veterans have been standing up against america's wars but today passed the stock exchange calling for a complete revamp of america's financial system what makes you angry about the system right now if you like corporations and banks and wall street currently have a disproportionately large voice in our government as compared to the citizens i feel like citizens of america deserve a government that will listen to them you countable to them and be transparent and right now we don't have that. iraq veterans against the were marching through the streets of new york city's gets is a comedy part the biggest occupy wall street encampment in the u.s. . were veterans are greeted at the occupy wall street you are gambling with cheers people here believe that veterans joining the crowds will get more credibility to the management. the fact that they're ready now to really open their voice and let

it be heard. because it credible and i think it's really going to help with the movement in huge way and as a world trade center first responder i'm right up there with them as a matter of fact it's like them i myself got literally spit on by the system even those not active in the protests are supportive you know to be a veteran and i was so. surprised that they would do that since. they're very conscious of what's happening in this country right now so i didn't know they were joint even very happy to hear that tens of thousands of soldiers are supposed to return from iraq come winter and the people here say this is what we are fighting number one outreach veterans in the united states see they have been fired but yes it's the first time americans given by the two thousand and eight meltdown have reacted and you can just feel that small was the still medium it's large enough

it's supported by the warmest percent of americans to some degree or another i think it's a real change of mood in american constitutional a change of mood increasingly difficult to ignore those who fought for the us abroad now forced to fight for the us at home. r.t. new york we're also keeping our eyes on oakland california tonight where it is getting mighty intense there protesters with the occupy oakland movement have organized a general strike and we are now getting reports of protesters breaking windows of banks and other businesses i know one whole foods there has graffiti spray painted on the front of it after a rumor surface that whole foods employees were told if they went on strike today they would lose their jobs the management there has denied those claims but really there are signals. everywhere at this hour that protesters have had enough the biggest strike out of oakland is scheduled to take place in a little less than an hour and we will bring you the latest it's soon as it comes

in but first i do want to underscore the importance of everything that happened today it has the potential to be a dramatic escalation of the occupy wall street movements around the country another forty seventh day so essentially what protesters there are doing they're using a tactic that has not been used for sixty five years a general strike was last used after world war two by workers many of whom world war two veterans who wanted more jobs and higher wages are going to some historians will fans of it was interesting it was about working class anger high inflation and outsized corporate profits sound familiar right in oakland in particular all it took was a few store managers asking for police to help them get goods delivered while retail clerks were striking hundreds of police with tear gas and riot gear showed up to help those trucks push through the picket lines in response more than one hundred thousand workers walked off their jobs this ended when the city vowed to

stop spending on union trucks to cross picket lines. at the port of oakland also the site of violent clashes between police and antiwar activists back in two thousand and three they were protesting shipping companies they believed were profiting from the war when protesters failed to clear the street police fired non-lethal projectiles into the crowd the injuring at least a dozen demonstrators as well as nine longshoreman were standing nearby. so in oakland fast forward a few more years to two thousand and ten this was the scene people here protesting the ruling in the case of an officer who shot an unarmed black man named oscar grant an officer one hundred smells really was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and not guilty of second degree murder or voluntary manslaughter the ruling caused riots and people complaining of a broken system of justice that is

a little history for you but now let's get back to the scene in oakland today earlier i was able to speak to our own lucy cavanaugh she's on the ground there and told me what it was like earlier today. it well i'm standing in the what's been renamed us our grandsons lost the art you're the center of the occupy wall street occupy oakland movement here in california as you can see behind me it's empty right now and that is because nearly eight thousand or so protesters that have gathered this morning are nothing more blessings one up there what you just saw are all marches that. today after essentially holding several of our route to city to shut down various banks to raise their voice protests and on today a general strike just today and all kinds. of protests against the port au prince this is east or in. the country and back again but the significance of this is exposed answers aren't able to successfully shut

down the court i'd first really feel. that wall street movement as they call. their power their ability to actually act on commerce here in the u.s. and i expect just copied in other occupations across the country on a shooting i should notice as we're walking down here. and many businesses weren't shuttered salt a lot of science saying we are closed today november second all in sort of solid areas like to call it with me a general strike that's been scheduled for today and i know lucy you went straight from occupy wall street in new york where you i know you spent weeks in zuccotti park and now you're in oakland come to me a little bit about the different i feel like it's safe to say today all eyes are on oakland but a lot of this movement the heart beat of this movement still very much in new york talk a little bit about the differences of what you've been seen. that's just from the

weather freezing cold to california but i. think they're really struck on just. bark. ah. but they're. asking questions like how. the testers. saying it will not happen. it just. starts here. much more practical much more ability. to launch. a. rocket. as they are not afraid to say it just right help a lot more militant action stirred her way to the approach. and lucy certainly we i think it's fair to say they really see this. thing

a little bit trouble with here with your audio there but let me just ask you i know that part of the reason you say people in oakland people in oakland are a little more militant than we've seen i know certainly part of that stems from what we saw that incident last week where police were told to come in and clear protesters out of the where they had been staying that resulted in one of the protesters iraq war veteran scott olsen being severely injured critically injured with a fractured skull all i want to put up really quick a picture that you took this is a photo a memorial for scott olsen who continues to recover in the hospital i believe this was made there in oakland where you are just wanted to put that photo up for viewers to see but talk a little bit about how that incident sort of propelled this movement really much faster and farther in oakland just over the last few days. i mean it has the everyone cares very much aware of the incident that went out.

just. going out. that was our senior producer lucy catherine are now lucy has been given up to the minute tweets complete with photos and quotes she is in the thick of things so if you want to know what's going on on the front lines of oakland you should follow her on twitter she's at lucy catherine of we want to talk now about the g. twenty meeting set to kick off tomorrow in france as world leaders gather to discuss the global economy many people around the world are facing economic hardship and feel their leaders are disconnected perhaps this is one reason ten thousand protesters are there as well but guess what the protesters may be the least of the problems at the g. twenty summit this year one of the biggest issues is greece where leaders have been told essentially to make up their mind immediately as to whether they want to remain part of the euro zone this follows the shock decision by greece to follow

referendum on a one hundred thirty billion euro bailout this caused major panic in the markets around the world earlier i spoke to coast is planning to talk if he is an associate professor episodes of sociology at the city university of new york he's also the author of this book remaking scarcity from capitalist inefficiency to economic democracy i asked him about some of the key things that the u.s. should keep its eye on in terms of what will happen here. well i think part of what will happen is that will be a lot of pressure on the greek prime minister perhaps to reconsider his decision he has been not invited he said greece is not part of the g twenty but he was invited because of these crisis the reason he's calling there are for under is because there is growing resistance increase against these austerity measures that are taking a great ball on ordinary creaks with addressing now the crisis in fact basically

making the crisis deeper and deeper making it harder for greece to repay its that so the speciousness in greece by the way is part of a growing movement of resistance around the world in the united states and of course in france itself thirty's of the world demonstrations big demonstrations against trying to make the point that we need to prioritize people over the profits of the few of the of the fuel and the interests of the financial sector yeah i think i found out ten thousand people protesting there let me ask you something from paul and tell me whatever you think probably an opinion question is the european union is health and if it can't. well. perhaps the larger one of perhaps the largest market in the world i believe it's

a larger market than the united states but the way it has been money. basically. undermined the socialist model. of the european social model cars in the past been based on word first and. the project is being used to undermine basic. and we see that in these in these crises were them to deal with this crisis through the measures disproving counterproductive and these deepening the crisis and spreading the crisis around the continent because as you know with the occupy wall street movement taking place we've been talking a lot about the inequality gap here in the united states that growing space between the rich and poor in this country this country of course not alone in that regard i want to show you something that we found i want to put up a map of lorissa greece this is

a modest city the capital of the agricultural i grew cultural reason region of this only about two hundred fifty thousand people live here and guess what there are more porsche cayenne here of per capita than in london or new york in fact there are more porous and it registered in grief and then there are tax payers declaring an income of fifty thousand euros or more that is according to a recent economic study there so here's a question how does greece convince a company or a country rather like germany for example where people take paying taxes very seriously how do they convince germany to continue to bail out greece when so many people are still living so large. well basically inequality in greece is very high it's probably higher than in the united states and even though inequality here is very high itself so the people who have these luxury cars are not the ordinary critics these are people who are carbon been

paying taxes the governments have not been willing to tax them or have not been able to but you see these thirty mazur's that are happening taking place right now they're not rescuing i mean saying that. greece is is a little too very mean. measures are making how the life of ordinary greeks in pool into hell and we have the same kind of power going where the people of a lot of income and wealth are not contribute b. and this is why most of the recent boxes and spending projects are for ordinary greeks have not benefited from our subsequent only growth as has existed in the past that most white people people are angry and that was caused the panning out thirty a professor of sociology at the university of new york he also wrote the book remaking

scarcity from capital of the ne for the economic democracy well believe it or not we are just about one year away from the presidential election and there is a growing movement in this country to have this system in which people are elected change there's a gallup poll from a few weeks ago that shows sixty two percent of people now support a constitutional amendment that would make a presidential race contingent on who won the popular vote with only thirty five percent in favor of keeping the current system the electoral college we found a three pretty interesting well we found our other animals that are out to talk to regular people here on the streets of washington to hear what they think. as the twenty twelve campaign season continues full steam ahead it seems sixty two percent of americans are in favor of doing away with one election staple the electoral college so are the trustee mike hit the streets of d.c. to ask what you think it didn't surprise me i think

a lot of people also don't know what the electoral college is i think that's which is a bit of a problem that is sort of i think there needs to be change that the popular vote needs to be i think more important than the electoral college i think it should but and go by the populous fellow electoral college causes problems and i'm a believer in the popular vote so it's always itself makes no sense because electors themselves are more or less useless the electoral college was you know an idea from the eighteenth century very different demographics communication transportation everything has changed so i think it's now dated model for the first time since the two thousand election republicans were in favor of also polishing that but does that say to you. well i agree with them because i am a republican so here we go it's great there's bipartisan support for that i'm not sure what their solution if they want to get a popular vote which i don't think is the way to go if this is jim is it you know it's not broken so why. isn't it work twice the popular vote didn't seem to prevail

two thousand is an early indication of the trouble that's might come in future as time goes on there will be several more cases in which it will join the people will let the president that won't take office and i think that's problematic and if you know we're a country that brags about being the world's greatest democracy and i don't think that's accurate at all there's no reason to have the electoral college vote but the people decide i think we have to find out where the loopholes surgically change the things that are not working rather than just abolishing everything and starting all over we really need to look at what is the point what is it serving us is it certainly country is it for the betterment of our electoral process or not well there you have it these americans can agree on one thing when it comes to getting a government elected they want to make sure their voices are heard reporting from washington and. i think so should the united states of america become an electoral

college dropout earlier i posed that question to conservative political commentator and strategist heather sara and executive director for fair vote rob richie here's what they found out. well it's interesting that you brought that poll because the response was that sixty two percent of americans believe there should be a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college that's something that perhaps we consider again the reality is a thousand different bills that would have done something like that have been considered by congress and it hasn't made any. any. and i dress think you are looking for the word so you know and i think there needs to be a lot of education on the history of electoral college and why the founding fathers actually established it in the first place when you compare the record though person like her college vote like you would say well that sounds antiquated but when you get right down into the nitty gritty details and they're complicated and while we have literal college i think a lot of people would say it's worth preserving and certainly a lot of i think it's a good point

a lot of people don't quite understand it that one lesson in history class that a lot of people are confused about what about you do you think that the electoral college is necessary or should there be changes those two answers to the question what is the policy but national popular vote versus having this current state by state system where whoever wins and states gets i was state's electoral votes which we assume means the electoral college but in fact is just based on current state laws governing the cars. the voters and i should say that about sixty two percent includes majorities of both major parties and this is something that really is a bipartisan issue in congress wanted to come up as a remember back in the sixty's it got eighty one percent of the house to vote for it and gerald ford in george herbert walker bush and a lot of. republicans voted toward a lot of democrats there too today the problem with the current system and we're seeing it in each election is getting more and more severe is that with the sort of the partisan breakdown only

a few states are seen as competitive. activity the candidates might change who wins the state so all these other states are safe states. in the red and blue in the because of this winner take all rule there's no need to campaign in place in forty to fifty i want to talk about that especially as we are if you can believe it just about one year away from the twenty twelve presidential election a lot of other elections going on too of course but there is a common perception and that is that many of the early voting states iowa new hampshire. are every election cycle showered with tons of money because of where they fall in primary voting and like you said so many the majority of other states are in their issues as well are kind of ignored that is one perception how they're what do you think about that perception i mean is that accurate i actually don't think it's accurate i think the whole reason that we have the electoral college and why do you keep it is to have this balance of power to have this federalist doctrine. we don't want you know california and texas and these other big states

to have more of a claim because they they definitely would if we had a whole lot of our you know like montana and wyoming and other small states i mean it seems like iowa and their issues are certainly given so much more can i clarify what you are so we have the primary process the nomination process with we're all following right now on the republican side and that's where whichever state gets to go first like i was right after gets a lot more attention because the general election we're talking about a different dynamic but it's not a matter of going first because we all vote in every state at the same time it's whether your state is competitive ok and that's where almost every small state is not competitive right so wyoming. delaware actually twelve of thirteen smaller states get no presidential tension whatsoever you know popular vote elections and we're quite familiar with them because we use them for everything we know that it's a free market voters and any candidate that ignores potential consumers of the voters is making

a mistake right so you go out and you get votes. wherever you can and that's why the reform proposal of the day it's really moving is actually a state bass player. and it's one that would establish a popular vote for president to action in the states and it's passed in a whole mix of states so far small and big west and east and so on and it's something that's had bills in all fifty states and that's where the reform energy is focused which is because it turns out you don't need to get rid of the electoral college in fact states can use their powers under the law for a college to establish what almost all of their voters like don't you think and how they're all for the present you i mean if some states passed this national and decided that you know they would implement a change in other states didn't i mean we are still the united states of america is exactly the major criticism that's been leveled against this national measure because they are lobbying mostly in the states that are highly populated and that would just give them the two hundred seventy electoral votes they need so they are in essence ignoring the smaller states because they don't really need to focus

their attention on that and the reality is this would definitely not withstand any sort of constitutional challenge because we need to have a constitutional amendment if the gallup poll is accurate and sixty percent of americans actually do want to go and change like for a college or get rid of it all altogether than let's go through the proper process and we only have about a minute i want to say so i'm sure so simply say one of those bills in all fifty states it's passed in several small states so it's not like there's any focus on big big big population states is wherever those legislators who are going to move this and it moves. but. it also we currently have a system where states can change how we allocate a look or votes state by state right so you have pennsylvania debating right now changing its rules from winner take all state wide to whoever wins each congressional district the brassica already does that right so we don't have a uniform system there's no system that's mandated by the founding fathers what they did was give states the authority to make this decision and that's what the national public plan is based on and it goes into play only when the number of

states that have passed it can guarantee the national public program so it's really a bright line choice between the current system and a national level. heather what do you think about the criticism that having the electoral college makes it so that you know no third party could ever stand a chance that having this electoral college you know really supports and enforces a two party system because only the democrat republican party can afford to compete in the us well i don't think that the electoral college necessarily prohibits a third party candidate from actually having a viable option or opportunity to win i think actually opening it up provides too many people to be in the race and you could actually have somebody who has only twenty percent of the popular vote win and that's not showing unity behind a certain person and the criticism of the m.p.v. movement is that if you go state would have to get all of their electoral votes to the winner the popular vote nationally so it's really not reflective of the state

it's really actually you have to get over your your votes to the national winner it is rather nonsense it was an argument that is reflective of what voters the majority of voters in every state want which is to have a master proper person all right executive director for fair vote rob richie as well as conservative political commentator and strategist have their summer always an interesting discussion i think you and that is going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered we got our t. dot com slash usa or tech our you tube page youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter at razzie i'm christine for that and i will see you back here and a half hour. what drives the world would be great news by politicians who made decisions to create through get through and it made who can you trust no one who is you know you with the global machinery to see where we had a state controlled capitalism.