[-empyre-] from 5th Avenue New York City

[Renate Ferro]

It is raining here in New York City.  Tim Murray and I just joined
hundreds of protestors who marched down 5th Avenue, one of the most
tourist, commodified streets in the world.  Past the Rockefeller
Center Christmas tree decorated in lights galore hundreds of tourists
stood in line to watch on one side the lit tree and the other side a
light/video show on the facade of Saks Fifth Avenue.  Loud speakers
filled the block and adjacent streets with holiday music.  Disrupting
that scene hundreds of what I noted as young activists marched
directly down the side walks of this holiday scene shouting "Hands Up,
Don't Shoot,"  "I can't breathe," and other chants to stop shoppers in
their tracks.  Shoppers had two choices:  to clear out of the way for
protestors or to join.

Right now in Macy's protestors move into the inside of the shopping
season, lay down and conduct a "die in."

I find it stunning (has to be another word) that reflects the
confusion of the  junta-postion between a commodity driven season and
a politically driven movement that collides head to head.  How crazy
is it that just moments before when I opened my email via the smart
phone I was using to video the moment, the White House sent out this
message:

"We've been watching the economy steadily improve for years, but today
there's new reason to really zoom in on that progress. Consider this:
Last month, American businesses created 314,000 jobs, extending the
longest streak of job growth on record. That's 10.9 million jobs added
over the last 57 straight months.
Let's put that in perspective: With 2.6 million jobs created in the
first 11 months of the year, we've already added more jobs in 2014
than in any entire year since the late 1990s.
It's been a long road to recovery since the Great Recession. And while
there's more work to do, America is outpacing much of the world in
putting people back to work.
Take a look at how far our economy has come since President Obama took
office -- then share the facts with everyone who needs to know:"

HELLO?  What about the thousands of young and dis-engranchised who for
the past three nights around the US  have been shouting out to be
heard about the injustices that have manifested themselves over the
past several weeks.

World-wide ordinary people from Hong Kong to Mexico to the US are
shouting out as well about other injustices.  Can we take a moment to
reflect on how these movements may be organically generating?  How
does social media, list serves, networked media enable movements such
as these? What else may be inspiring these gestures of resistance.  I
am looking forward to speaking to all of you now but for now I have to
run.

Renate Ferro (and Tim Murray from NYC)