#OccupyWallStreet "POWER TO THE PEOPLE" (Day 120) Remembering Why We Occupy! 1/29/12

This video is my love letter to the #Occupy Wall Street movement now 4 months old. It was inspired when I filmed Rex Fowler's amazing group The Nutopians http://thenutopians.com performing John's "Power To The People" during their John Lennon Imagined show @ The City Winery 1/22/12 .

We all know that John would have been on the front lines of OWS, Yoko recently tweeted:

"I love 'Occupy Wall Street'! John is sending his smile to 'Occupy Wall Street'. I am sending my love to 'Occupy Wall Street'. We are all working together. You are letting the world know that American activists are doing this. That gives them inspiration and encouragement. That is very important now for the United States and the world. As John said, "One hero cannot do it. Each one of us have to be heroes." And you are. Thank you," she wrote.

In this video, Jackson Browne, Russell Simmons, Joan Baez, Crosby & Nash, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, David Amram, Tom Chapin, my OccuPals Gil and Gaby and THOUSANDS of occupiers and a particular thanks to the 50,000 who sang me happy birthday in Times Square on October 15! Power to the People!

Blog in Daily Kos "Power To The People" Remembering Why We Occupy
http://tinyurl.com/7x8xnas

This is my second revolution! I grew up in the 60s, we protested, and ended the Vietnam War doing exactly what the occupiers are doing. I came to Zuccotti Park a skeptic and left one of the "99%".

I've been documenting OWS since the first week but there seemed to be a shift after the raid in the park on November 15. What they did that night was so awful. They destroyed 5,500 books in the People's Library. They destroyed the beautiful blue tent with the colored letters that Patti Smith had anonymously donated. They took ID's making it impossible for people to retrieve their belongings. They smashed instruments. Why did they have to smash the instruments?

I watched the OccupyLA raid on Live Stream at 4am and it was like the flight of the Valkyries, so terrifying. They swooped down like the Wizard of Oz wearing black and coming from all directions. I have been on the wrong side of the barricades when they started charging the crowds and using barricades as spatulas pushing mountains of people. And i got caught in the tsunami surge of the crowd and can truly see how you could be trampled to death, unintentionally.

I'm a senior citizen and it's pretty scary I tell you. But i have learned to wear sensible shoes, both times I wound up in the ER I was wearing cowboy boots.

In the beginning there were the provocateurs and instigators almost taunting to be arrested, but on #D17 the escalation of violence by the police was evident...I wound up in the ER twice in one week with OWS injuries. The arrests, pepper spray and violence on New Year's Eve was so dark and ugly I didn't want it to color my recollections of the previous 3 months...so I made this video.

It seems as though for me, there was life before Occupy and life after, it reminds me of that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where Richard Dreyfus is making mashed potato mountains in his living room...and then he meets all these other folks doing the same thing.

Patti Smith writes..."and the people have the power to redeem the work of fools"

The movement is too big to fail, it's global and it's hashtags. People think because they shut down the camps they are killing the movement but it's only making it stronger!

Power to the people! See you in the spring.

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[JimmieHiggins]

I love your videos! They show our love, our hopes and even our warts. You tell the truth. I send my love from the USA’s west coast.