WATERVILLE, Maine — About eight weeks after Occupy Augusta protesters picketed at Colby College, they were back with more support to voice their message — get rid of Bob Diamond.
A group of more than 20 protesters, which is about double the number from July’s protest, stood outside the Diamond Building along Mayflower Hill Drive with picket signs and handing out flyers that denounced Colby’s support for its board of trustees Chairman Bob Diamond.
Diamond resigned as chief executive of Barclays on July 3 in the midst of a scandal regarding interest rate reports of its interbank borrowing rates that were falsified. That data goes into the calculation of a key market index, the London interbank offered rate, according to the Associated Press.
Barclays was fined $453 million by U.S. and British agencies for its submission of those false reports.
During a discussion in executive session last month, the board of trustees decided its position regarding its board of trustees Chairman Diamond.
“At the conclusion of the [two-hour] discussion, the board strongly affirmed its support of Mr. Diamond as chair,” said Sally Baker in a statement released Aug. 14. Baker spoke on behalf of the board of trustees. “Its review was informed by several fundamental values of the college and of the liberal arts tradition, including the paramount importance of seeking truth, an overarching obligation to fairness, and the absolute necessity of deep, critical and patient consideration of complex issues.”
Colby College spokesman Michael Kiser referred to Baker’s statement when asked about Occupy Augusta’s protest Wednesday.
“I’m really appalled. They’re giving him a vote of confidence,” said Jody Spear of Brooksville, who was protesting outside the Diamond Building. “I don’t understand how they can declare confidence in him and to hold him up as an example. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin, who teaches journalism and sociology, was a speaker at Colby College on Wednesday evening. He stood by the protesters on the sidewalk.
“I support what they’re doing. It’s an exemplary act of citizenship,” said Gitlin of the Occupy Augusta protesters. Gitlin recently released a book entitled “Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, the Promise of Occupy Wall Street.” He also spoke at Bates College in Lewiston on Tuesday.
Gitlin also was critical of the college board’s stance of backing Diamond.
“I don’t think that’s an appropriate remark for a university official. A university official is committed to liberal, in a small ‘L’ sense, values in the educational process and has a moral commitment to truth and should stand behind that principle,” said Gitlin.
Diamond, a 1973 graduate of Colby, donated $6 million toward a building that would be named after him, the Diamond Building. Construction began on the building in April 2005 and it opened in February 2007. It houses eight departments, including economics and government, along with the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs.
What is taught in that building is worrisome to Hillary Lister, who works in the library at the college.
“Since the Diamond Building got going, this whole investment banking program has really been a dominate program on campus,” said Lister. “I’m just really concerned that this is a pattern of a way this institution has been focusing a lot on these really unstable economic policies and moving away on the focus of the community.”
Lister said other college workers support the Occupy Augusta demonstration, but were afraid to attend because of potential reprisal from the college.
Ah, the have-nots and losers are once again showing their hatred of success. It must be hard to live as a failure, but why advertise it?
Please point out which are the “have nots” and “losers” in the crowd. I’d like to see what one looks like jdtex. They look like fairly affluent and not unintelligent people to me. Go figure. I’m missing something here. Help me out.
The three in the front holding the signs look like losers to me.
Speaking out against corruption makes you a looser?
Wingnuts have a very warped sense of reality.
Yes, wingnuts do have a warped sense of reality, so warped that some can’t even spell loser.
Take off your DNC issued rose-colored glasses and you will see them. They are the three in the picture!
You mean the BluBlocker’s from 1992 that woman is wearing?
*sigh*
Aaaaaaand here begins the deluge of mindless Occupy-bashing comments.
Soliciting comments on the mindless Occupiers is why whey do it, isn’t it?
Which, it appears, are in the majority. Cannot argue with success.
Diamond has more on the ball than any twelve of these losers combined.
Jealousy combined with work ethic equals success.
Jealosy with out ambition equals ….. occupiers.
If he resigned he must be at least partially responsible for the false reports. Wonder how much of a bonus and severance he got. Some work ethic (or lack of ethics). What price “success”?
He got priority seating for UME men’s hockey games at a senior discount rate. What could be better?
So true, so false, so right, so wrong, the gold and silver, the words and assurances, the new suit, the new job, the contacts, the contracts, a dinner party, a golf meet, we want what he can bring at any cost. Those who sense an inate knowledge of a smell in the air, the worthy sensing a miscreant, the the true storming the gate, behind the gates they peer out, hoping to let the storm fade. Will it??
Good luck to you, brave protesters. You are up against the biggest wall of stubborn illogic–the ultra right wing Tea Party GOP –that I have seen in all my long life.
And yet they keep doing it, expecting a different result! Sounds like the definition of a psychological term to me!
Insanity……..
Insanity = spruce dweller
Exacdtly! Just glad YOU said it!
That’s exactattackedly.
Occupiers make me smile. They remind me of my childhood watching the crazy antics of Wile E. Coyote and roadrunner.
Protests are not convenient…
As I understand it, Mr. Diamond, the head of the Board of Trustees, is “persona non grata” and for, as the evidence indicates, some pretty good reasons. The so-called Diamond building was likely funded with ill-gotten booty he apparently “earned” while at Barclay’s, which has only recently been exposed as one of the corporations admittedly involved in the world’s biggest financial crime, and he was at the head of that, too. We now know he defines “investment banking” in the same way the law defines “falsifying interbank borrowing rates reports” and “market manipulation / price fixing / and fraud”. His name should be struck from that and all buildings, and from the rolls, Plain and simple. Anything else is harboring. Furthermore, his degree, with all it’s honors and privileges should be REVOKED. And for damages to the reputations of all affiliated with the College, including past and future alumni, not a red cent should be returned to him…… Sally Baker is a shill and an obvious stooge. Thanks BDN for providing something newsworthy to read about.
Occupy Augusta? Looks like pretty soon they will be occupying a nursing home.
Just another episode of the “Smug and the Self-Righteous.”
“Hey BDN! Look! Look! Look! Look! OK, now take our picture!”
Wow, he must have been really good at stealing if he had an extra $6 million to give to Colby for a tombstone. Guys like this are the reason that I hide my wallet when ever I see a suit headed my way.
Occupy Augusta. Funny stuff right here. LOL I guess the only one who can make money and not be a crook, is our very own King.
“This is a movement that only pretends to be sympathetic to the victims of America’s current economic problems. Actually, the Occupy gang is thankful for the opportunity these problems offer–an opportunity to bash America once again and everything it stands for. Never mind the 1% and the 99%: that’s all window dressing for a movement that is and always has been 100% anti-American. I say “always has been” because the occupiers are umbilically connected to the Communist Party of the 1930s and the radical New Left of the 1960s. We have seen these people before. They come not to make America better, but to destroy it and to substitute their deformed totalitarian ideas for a system of government and an engine of economic power that have been the envy of the world. And the worst thing about the Occupy movement that trashed our cities is that it has been given the tacit go ahead by the White House. Barack Obama has winked at the occupiers and let them know he’s with them. His administration and the Democratic Party own the Occupy movement. The occupiers are moving the President’s agenda in the streets with their calls for class warfare and a transformation of America, as the hardcore left has always said, by any means necessary. In “Occcupy Wall Street: The Communist Movement Reborn,” my colleague John Perazzo and I have exposed how today’s occupiers share the twisted DNA of the communist organizers of two generations ago and the apologists for communism that attacked America so viciously in the 1960s. These are the people who used to be on the outside, propely the objects of suspicion and contempt. But in the 1970s, using the McGovern movement as their Trojan Horse, they were able to occupy the Democratic Party and take it over. That is why today the agenda of the Occupy Movement is indistinguishable from that of the Democrats (and vice versa.) That is why the President can’t bring himself to condemn the nihilists now bringing destruction and chaos to our cities. know how the communist movement works. I was born into it and learned its strategies of deceit before finally seeing the light as a result of the radical Sixties. And I know that the Occupy Movement is an imposture. It has no intention of improving America or making it a fairer and more prosperous place. It just wants to make it different, VERY different. It’s a neo communist movement that poses danger to America.” David Horowitz
the Occupy movement in all of its sordid HD color — the cursing of our military, our flag and the police; rants against Jews and Israel; calls to overthrow capitalism, banks; and a positively insane idea that Islam stands for social justice! The media is desperate to have you believe that The Occupy movement is all about average citizens protesting.. In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth! The truth the Obama- controlled media doesn’t want you to know regarding the seedy, Soros-backed, socialist underbelly of the Occupy Movement. So much for the MSM protecting and promoting this farce. ACORN was nationwide and they still are. Silent backers and organizers Some serious investigative journalism is in order. But then again they’re part of the agenda.NO? OK see it on video just taken the end of last monthFormer Amalgamated Transit Union local 689 president Mike Golash, now an “Occupy” movement organizer, was caught on tape Sunday revealing his political goals: overthrowing capitalism in the United States and instituting a communist government.“Progressive labor is a revolutionary communist organization,” Golash said during an Occupy DC “People’s Assembly” on August 19. (An organizing meeting.) “Its objective,” he added, “is to make revolution in the United States, overthrow the capitalist system and build communism.” Golash said he and his comrades are “trying to learn something from the historical revolutions of the past: the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution, the revolutions in Cuba and Eastern Europe.” “What can we learn from them so we can build a more successful movement to transform capitalist society?”“An organization has to be built which can bring down capitalism,” Golash said.
A clip of dingbat Pelosi introduces the video with ignorant praiseClick here: God Bless The Occupy Movement? – YouTube or copy and paste to browser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sBVT6JhWGfQ
Yes, yes, yes. The naysayers continue to lob untrue and unfounded accusations of a “violent Tea Party” and refuse to accept the truth about Occupy. There is no evidence of violence at Tea Party events but thousands of examples connected to the Occupiers including murder, rape and countless examples of vandalism. Why any decent human being would align themselves with this “movement” is a mystery.
Ah, the key phrase being “decent human being”, of which none of their numbers can lay claim to.
“We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.” – Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” One has always to take care not to get drawn into those fantasies.
Outstanding!
And I’ll bet that you can’t wait to run down to the Dollar Store, Dollar Tree or Walmart store before closing time to buy their communist Chinese made goodies with your American money… can ya?
You betcha!
Take a good look at the picture. These people, male and female, are not your run-of-the-mill “commies”. They’re Americans … just like you and me, presumably. They are properly calling media attention to what, in their minds, is a very important situation and issue. They’re relying on the media to shed it’s light on it for the rest of us to become aware of it. That’s how it works, SPAlumni. This a proper use of both freedom of speech and freedom of the press rights expressed in our community rules (i.e. The United States Constitution).
They have a right to do this and you have your right to respond with your opinions, which you have, as have I, and the Bangor Daily News is doing their duty to facilitate this, as it is their duty to do. This is all working.
God Bless America! I love it!
Oh, and incidentally, how can the “nihilists” destroy our cities when there was almost nothing left after the Bushites, Cheney’s, Rumsfeld’s, Feith’s, Yoo’s, Rice’s and their stooge, Colin Powerless skulked out of Washington in 2009 leaving the national treasure looted by their bankrolled military industrial, oil and insurance ponzi scheme complex.
I am a republican. I can see these things. Why can’t you. Fortunately denial and rage are short lived. You come to acceptance about the horrible truth of what really happened with the Bush / Isreali engineered 9/11, false flag, oil theft sheme sooner than you think. I did.
Only a Board with a corporate thief like Diamond at the helm would invite war criminal Tony Blair to address the students at their graduation ceremony. Birds of a feather.
Yawn. Yea, whatever.
Just like Obama and Ayers.
The caption should read; ‘If you are a loser brainwashed imbecile with no life, hold up your sign.’
Or as Bill Engvall would say……”Here’s your sign.”
Occupy Augusta?Is this all that is left of the thirty year occupation of the state house.Hopefully!
apples and oranges.
As I mentioned before, it’s one thing for Colby alumni/alumnae or current students/faculty/staff to demand this and quite another for outsiders to do so. Once again I ask: how many of these folks have ever protested Sens. Collins and Snowe at their UMaine and other System campus commencement speeches? Our taxes to pay for the Iraq war came from the voters they both made over the years. They are our elected officials? And both our of Senators supported Pres. George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the richest Americans. I’d be more impressed with (civil) protests about them than about former PM Tony Blair or Robert Diamond. Unless Diamond is convicted of a crime, his role is determined by the Colby Trustees as is appropriate in a private college. One doesn’t have to like him to accept this fact of life.
i agree with most of the occupy movement’s positions but i don’t like their style. instead of posturing (badly) and preaching to the choir the should do something practical, like helping to get out the vote. the republicans are doing their best to suppress it.
The Occupy Augusta people need to change their message if they have any hope of making a difference. Attacking private individuals or corporations is futile. They need to be putting pressure on the politicians to get the minimum wage up into this century. This will cause other wages to go up as well and start to address the inequity of wealth in this country. This is not a Robin Hood approach, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. This is an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. Something the working men and women of America haven’t seen in 20 years. We should also eliminate the income tax and institute a consumer tax of 20%. 10% would go towards funding a government that would be required to live within it’s means and 10% would go towards paying down the national debt until it was retired. No loopholes, no tax shelters, and no offshore havens, period. Each according to their ability.
“Each according to their ability.”?
There is the rub. The people who spent their education years stoned or knocked up and are now parasites on the welfare system, would still be getting a free ride and not contributing. They aren’t going to pay a consumer tax when everything is given to them.
How about we make it really equal, get rid of the percentages, and divide what it takes to operate this country equally between every single American. Wouldn’t that be “equal” since 47% of Americans pay nothing at all?
Let’s say $2500 for every man, woman, and child. Parents are responsible for their children’s taxes until they turn 18 years old. Then the people using all the social services (schools) are paying for them.
A very large percentage of those 47% of Americans who don’t pay any taxes go to work everyday. They just work for “public assistance” wages and do not earn enough to be liable for income taxes. Want to trade places with them? You make it sound like living below the poverty level is all sunshine and lollipops. Some sort of holiday that you and you alone have to pay for. If someone is working 35 hours a week for minimum wage at ChinaMart, I certainly do not want the government taking a chunk of an already pathetic little pay check just to satisfy a few tea partyers sense of right and wrong. Like I said, each according to their ability is fair and just. 20% consumer tax, 10% going to operate a government within it’s means, 10% going to retire the national debt. Would you feel a sense of things being more right if someone pays $100,000 for a handbag and then ponies up another $20,000 to fund our government and retire our debt? Or do you think that it is more right that they use a credit card from a bank in the Cayman Islands and pay nothing at all? The way it is now.