On Friday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was scheduled to make a speech on income inequality at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Yet after learning that the event would be taking place in a forum open to the public and that hundreds of protesters from Occupy Philly and other allied groups planned to protest his presence, Cantor canceled his appearance. Cantor’s retreat from his speech in Philadelphia was a watershed moment for the 99 Percent Movement...
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CHANGING THE NARRATIVE: Many of the movement’s early critics complained that it lacked a clear focus or set of goals or that it wasn’t accomplishing anything. Yet the movement has already scored one major victory: completely changing the mainstream corporate media narrative. In the last week of July, the three major cable networks — CNN, MSNBC, and Fox — mentioned the word “debt” 7,583 times and the word “unemployed” only 75 times. Yet with the debt ceiling debates behind us and the protests gearing up across the country, news coverage between Oct. 10 and Oct. 16 was completely different. The word “debt” was only mentioned 398 times on those networks, while the word “jobs” got 2,738 mentions with the words “Occupy” and “Wall Street” trailing slightly behind. Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released an analysis of 52 different major media outlets and found that coverage of Occupy Wall Street dominated news coverage the week of Oct. 10, as stories related to the 99 Percent Movement filled 10 percent of the total “newshole.”
HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED: There are a number of ways that Americans can get involved with the 99 Percent Movement. One way is to donate to the various occupations to help them continue to provide food, shelter, and other necessary equipment. See Occupy Wall Street’s donation page here. Another way is to join the occupations and protest yourself. Occupation groups are using Meetup.com to map out protests and there are currently 2,262 groups on the sub-site, which is being dubbed “Occupy Together.” Lastly, you can simply tell your story of how the economy has failed to work for you or your family.
More at:
http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/