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In the midst of raidson Occupy camps acrossthe country, occupiers arelooking for new ways tokeep their momentum go-ing. One group has decidedto take their occupation onthe road.“Occupy The High- way” began as a group of 23 Wall Street occupiers whodecided to put on their bestpair of hiking shoes and setout for the nation’s capital. The group planned tocomplete the 240-mile jour-ney in two weeks, at a paceof 20 miles a day, in orderto reach Washington, D.C.in time for the Congressio-nal Supercommittee’s Nov.23 deadline. The 12 membercommittee, composed of six members from each po-litical party, will be deciding how $1.2 trillion should becut from a mix of defenseand social welfare programsin order to decrease the
decit.
“I didn’t have a person-al goal when I started,” said John Aldous, who started with the march in New York City on Nov. 8. “It symboli-cally represented the deepties between D.C. and WallStreet.”Organizers also hopeto raise the visibility of theOccupy movement outsideof large cities, and “bring the message of Occupy torural areas,” he said. As of this writing,the marchers have passedthrough New Jersey andPennsylvania and are ap-proaching Baltimore, camp-ing and staying in whateveraccommodations they can
nd on the way.
Personal contact withsmall town America has giv-en the journey meaning for Aldous. “People who can’tgo on an occupation or amarch are really counting onus to do this,” he said.Elizabeth, N.J. residentKen Londono, who housedthe group after receiving an
email via Couchsurng.org,
 was one of those people. “Ialways wanted to do some-thing when [Occupy WallStreet] started,” he said.“But being stuck in the ratrace, I couldn’t get aroundto it.” When Londono, anemployee at the Prudential
Center sports arena, rst re
-ceived an email from orga-nizers explaining that Eliza-beth police had said they’dbe arrested if they campedin a parking lot, the grouphad about half a dozenplanned marchers.
Inside
Congressional“Supercommittee”a magnet for specialinterest money
By Karina Stenquist
  W  e   t  h  e   9  9  %
McPherson SQ. • Washington, D.C. Vol 1 • Issue 1 • Year 2011
 
THE OCCUPIED
Washington Times
3
 
Tax BurdenBlame Game
Who pays what, and wherethe heaviest burden lies.
2
 
Banking on
Transacons
The case for instung anancial transacon tax.
And why it would help us all.
3
 
Leers to theEditors
The community asks
quesons, and the OWT
Editorial board answers.
4
 
HomelessOccupiers
McPherson Square’s
longme residents speakabout taking up the cause.
2
 
Occupy the
Road
Marchers trek from NYCto DC to raise awareness.
Story connues on A2.
continues on A2
A D.C. occupier waves the American ag during a Nov. 15 protestmarch in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. Protesters marchedfrom McPherson Sq., through Washington’s Chinatown neighbor
-
hood, to an acon protesng extreme right-wing policies heldoutside the D.C. Convenon Center. (Photo by Craig Hudson)
 Washington D.C.’s HIV crisis transcends the virusitself. One in twenty adultsliving in the District is HIV positive, and half of the peo-ple infected with the virus areunaware of it.Over three-quarters of D.C. residents with HIV are African American and 4.7%of Washington’s African- American population is living  with the infection. In correla-tion with the city’s HIV rates,
one in ve D.C. residents live
below the Federal Poverty Line ($22,314 for a family of four). Although Washingtonhas some of the highest healthinsurance rates in the country,D.C. has the highest HIV ratein the country at 3.2%. Thesystem is not working forthose who need it most. The groups with thehighest rate of infection in thecity are African-Americans,Latinos, intravenous drug us-ers, and men who have sex with men. Barriers to health-care for these communitiesinclude income inequality,concerns about immigrationstatus, discrimination, and so-cial stigma. In 2008, accord-ing to the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, African-Americanshouseholds had a median an-nual income of $39,200 com-pared to $107,600 for whitehouseholds. The explosion of theHIV epidemic over the lastthree decades has coincided with the largest widening of the class gap in our nation’shistory. The top one per-cent of Americans now ownover a third of the wealth inthis country. The Centers forDisease Control and Preven-tion reported that “the socio-economic circumstances of 
persons … strongly inuence
their health.” The crisis in Washington is both cause andeffect of poverty and inequality.
City ofcials face obsta
-cles in local governing, as D.C.laws and budget need to beapproved by Congress. “D.C.’slack of self-determination iscentral to any understanding of why social issues in DC areso bad,” said Dany Sigwalt of the Washington Peace Center.In the 1980’s, when the
epidemic was rst hitting ma
-jor urban centers, many cities were able to institute needleexchange programs to reducethe spread of infection by pro- viding safe needles to drug us-ers in exchange for used ones.
InequalityfuelsD.C. HIV epidemic
By Ben Zucker Continues on A4
First Occupy supporters march toward D.C.
 After Congress failed to
reach compromise on decit-
reduction measures last sum-mer, legislators and PresidentObama agreed to give a com-mittee of 12 of Congress’ 535elected members the power tomake fundamental decisionsabout who to tax and how much to cut from programslike Medicare, Social Security,and the Pentagon. The task of this “Supercommittee” isto reduce the country’s $15
trillion decit by $1.2 trillion
though revenue increases andspending cuts over the nextten years. Any bill the Supercom-mittee recommends will bepresented to both the Senateand the House for a simpleup-or-down vote without thepossibility of further amend-ment – making its six Dem-ocratic and six Republicanmembers immediate targetsfor intensive campaign contri-butions and lobbying efforts. A Sunlight Foundation
nancial disclosure analysis
found that some 200 groupsspent nearly $40 million to
directly inuence the Super
-committee in the six weeksfollowing its creation. These groups are not re-
quired to report the specic
recipients of the contribu-tions, and congressional dis-closures will not occur untilafter the Supercommittee’sNovember 23 deadline. Ad-ditionally, there is no require-ment for the committee’smembers to disclose meetings
By Benjamin DanielsContinues on A4
Occupy DC stages a solidarity march with Occupy Wall Street aer their encampment at Zuco Park was raided and cleared out early the morn
-
ing of Nov. 15. Occupy DC protested at the D.C. headquarters of Brookeld Properes, the “owner” of the park. (Photo by Craig Hudson)
OccupyDC in Photos
 
 Vol 1 • Issue 2 • Year 2011
Funding
The OccupiedWashington Times isfunded enrely throughindividual donaons.
We recieve no money
from the Occupy DCgeneral assembly.
Please help sustain our
publishing eorts byvising...
www.OccupyDC.org/
Newspaper
DONATE ONLINE AT
 
By the time they gotto his house a couple dayslater, there were 25.“Some way, somehow, we found space,” saidLondono, who shares hishouse with his mother and acousin. After the encounter,Londono said, the housefeels a bit empty; “The nextday we started missing themalready.” He makes sureto call at least one of themarchers every day to check in.In Bristol, Pa. themarchers were welcomedby the local Quakers, whoput them up for the nightin their meeting house. PaulShaffer, a member of theBristol Friends community and an old hand at politicalaction said he was delightedby the different procedureslike the General Assem-bly, and even the simplePeople’s Mic, in which thespeaker’s words are repeatedby those around her in or-der to amplify her voice inan engaging way.“I did a mic check totell them breakfast washere,” he said. “It was won-
derful. For the rst time in
my life I had this feeling of being so richly involved atsuch a broad level. And forsomething so simple.”Marchers say they areconnecting with a forgot-ten, even neglected partof America. “We were be-ing told not to walk cer-tain routes, that they weredangerous,” said Santiago.“But they were the warmestplaces we were welcomed. When we told them we weremarching to the capital forthe betterment of all they  were like ‘Wow! Someonecares about me here in thisghetto?” Aldous agreed that thepersonal encounters makethe trip worthwhile.“There’s one I’ll re-member, probably for therest of my life,” he said of a lunchtime stop on a busy street on the walk from New Brunswick to Trenton, N.J.“All of a sudden this woman approaches us, shecomes up to one of themarchers and gives her a big hug, for like, a minute, withtears in her eyes.” Accord-ing to Aldous the womansaid she had been feeling hopeless after coming out
of a doctor’s ofce, after
having been diagnosed withcancer for the second time.“But she said she’d walked
out of the ofce and seen us
and said she’d be okay and
had the strength to ght it.”
“Regardless of whatcomes out of this,” said Al-dous, “that alone is worththe whole two weeks.” The encounter thatsticks with Santiago is meet-ing a woman who was wait-ing for the marchers on astreet corner in Delaware with a $40 donation. The woman told her that all herfriends were 65 and overand still working, and that
their husbands couldn’t nd
jobs. When hecklers yell,“Get a job!” Santiago said,she keeps that woman inmind.“I don’t see anyone onCapitol Hill working thishard, with blisters on their
feet and bleeding.” •
With reporting by Darwin Manning.
 When you go to thestore to buy something, youpay a tax. When a bankertrades a stock, bond, option,future or any derivative in-strument, he or she pays notax.
 As decits soar and
government slashes socialprograms, those in the top1 percent — with access tothe capital and tools to makefrequent trades — are ex-empt from a tax that eventhe poorest Washington,D.C., residents pay for life’snecessities.It wasn’t always this way. The United States had atax of 0.2 percent from 1914to 1966 on stock trades, buteven 0.2 percent is minute incomparison to the 10 per-cent a hungry man in D.C.pays for a cheeseburger.But Wall Street hasexpanded far beyond thatoriginal role by indulging intrades of risky derivatives,including the mortgage-backed securities that trig-gered the housing market
collapse. Many such nan
-cial tools even most tradersthemselves do not under-stand.Bankers are insulatedfrom the downsides of risky trades by contracts guar-anteeing high salaries andmassive bonuses regardlessof how their investmentsperform. The institutions them-selves are implicitly pro-tected by the federal gov-ernment, i.e., it is likely thefederal government will bail-out banks should trades gospectacularly wrong, as they did in 2008.“These trades have al-lowed many Wall Street typesto get enormously wealthy  while producing nothing of 
benet to, and quite possi
-bly harming, the productiveeconomy,” says Dean Baker,economist and co-founderof the Center for EconomicPolicy Research (CEPR). Wall Street’s share of the Gross Domestic Prod-uct—the value of every-thing produced within U.S.borders in a year—has qua-drupled between 1975 and2009, according to the U.S.Department of Commerce.Considering the volatility in housing and stock mar-
kets, the nation is not nan
-cially better off due to WallStreet’s growth. Wall Street is bloated,
but a tax on nancial trans
-actions would raise money that could be spent onhealth care, infrastructure oreducation while helping trim
the nancial sector down toefcient size.
Such a tax is more thanfeasible. England has hada tax of between 0.5 and 1percent on stock trades formore than 50 years. Accord-ing to CEPR, England raisesthe equivalent of about 0.2percent of its GDP fromthis tax without substantial-ly affecting the volume of speculative trades. The U.S. can do it too. A similar tax on a broadrange of assets would raiserevenue equivalent to almost1 percent of U.S. GDP, or$150 billion dollars a year — $1.5 trillion in the course of a decade, according to Bak-er’s estimates. This woulddwarf revenue lost fromformer President George W.Bush’s tax cuts.
Support for a nancial
speculative tax is growing around the world. It’s time
the U.S. got on board. •
 Transaction tax puts the brakes on banks
OWS marches south to D.C.
 A2
November 23, 2011
OPINION
By Prentice Delong
“The U.S. can do it too. A similartax would raise revenue equivalentto almost 1 percent of U.S. GDP, or$150 billion dollars a year.”
contined from A1
Occupiers and supporters of Occupy Wall Street march nearPhiladelphia, Pa. on day five of their journey. The group,which numbered over 40, marched from Zucotti Park in NewYork City to McPherson Square in Washington, D.C.--a nearly230-mile trek, which took them through five states and theDistrict of Columbia (Photo by Citizen Kepler)d from Zuico Park in New York City to McPherson Square in Washington, D.C. - a nearly 230-mi
-
ley which took them through ve states and the District of Columbia. (Photo by Kevin Londono)
 
I am a lot more laid backhere than I am in mainstreamsociety. I’ve had friends locallylook at me when somebody
said something out of the wayto me saying, “Bear, why aren’t
you on the way to the hospital
to have your foot extractedfrom out of your ass?” Usually
it’s survival to me. I can’t
put up with BS from people
otherwise they will walk all
over me. But here, I’ve beenable actually to relax. If this iswhat the new America is going
to be about I swear I’m all forit. I’m ready to roll. Stand up
America, let’s go.
Meet Your Neighbors
 There has been a lot of talk lately about who pays which taxes. Fifty-three per-cent of Americans pay fed-eral income taxes, and mostbear a state or local burden as well. One hundred percent of  American workers contributepayroll taxes to federal pro-grams, but even so, the 99%are being asked to carry aheavier load every day. According to Think-Progress, “If you look at stateand local taxes, the working poor actually pay a higherpercentage of their income inthese taxes in every state exceptfor Vermont. In Alabama, forexample, low-income families(who make less than $13,000annually) pay 11 percent of their income in state and lo-cal taxes, while those making more than $229,000 pay justfour percent.” The federal governmentemploys a progressive incometax structure, but the burdensof payroll taxes are actually regressive because they only apply to earned income upto $106,800. Earnings abovethat amount and capital gainsfrom private investments areexempt from these taxes. Warren Buffett, thesecond-richest person in theUnited States, wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times:“What I paid was only 17.4percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lowerpercentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in
our ofce. Their tax burdens
ranged from 33 percent to 41percent and averaged 36 per-cent.”“Over the past 50 years… the federal tax burden onthe nation’s 400 highest annualincomes has shrunk by two-thirds,” according to Wealthfor the Common Good, anetwork of business leaders,high-income households andpartners working together topromote shared prosperity and fair taxation. This groupof top earners understandsthat they are unfairly advan-taged by the tax system andrecently created a blog entitled“We are the 1 percent. Westand with the 99 percent.”
I grew up in this city. My fam
-ily has been here for a couple
of generations. For me it’slike a personally meaningfulthing that we have an Oc
-
cupy. I kind of helped get itoff the ground - starting theTwitter and all that. Lying inbed on October 1st wonder
-
ing if anyone would show up.
A little over a month later wehave a beautiful park we call
home. Right now we are in aspace where we are hearing
from everyone and we are
hearing everyone’s stories.We are hearing from a lot of 
people from different politi-
cal ideologies, cultural back
-
grounds and looking forwardto building up and figuringout a common ground.I have a history of acvism,
but I don’t want to push that
on people because the organicdirecon this is taking isbeyond anything I’ve seen orexperienced and the learningcurve is taking a beaufuldirecon and we’re all on thatlearning curve, whether is besomeone 60 years old who I
believe is on the press team,
up to the 80-year-old person,we’re all learning. And it’sworking. I think even though
we have such diversity, the
most incredible thing is thatpeople are willing to worktogether, people are willing to
listen to each other, like I’venever seen anywhere in my life,
never experienced anywhere
in my life. Makes me think.
Well so far my occupy experi
-ence has been phenomenal.I came here the second day
rolled right out of bed and madesure I marched my lile behindright over here. I’ve watchedit grow from eight people with22 dollars to; at least…we had
so many thousands of peopleon marches here at tent citywith thousands of dollars now.
It’s amazing. This is what truedemocracy looks like. It’s an ex
-perience and a chance to talk topeople who under normal cir-cumstances you wouldn’t speak
to about real legimate prob
-
lems that are going on today.
By Jim McBride
 To the OWT editors, As a local employee of the evil machine (but with asalary of 99%-er), I wouldlike to humbly request theuse of our park back. Isthere a particular reasonMcPherson Square was cho-sen? Is there a chance youcan have a temporary campthat moves between parksso all of DC knows whatyou’re doing? It’s just someof us feel you guys are pushy about it being “your” park that you “occupied” andironically enough we’re also99%ers who wish to use ourpark that we’re collectively subsidizing with taxpayerdollars. Also, can we ask that you refrain from putting down hay that seems to mi-raculously attract even morepigeons than previously ex-isted in the park? Together, we can be 100% in sharing apark that we all own.Sincerely, Your Friendly McPhersonSquare NeighborsDear Friendly McPhersonSquare Neighbors, Thank you for yourletter of concern. Situ-ated between K Street andthe White House, Occupy DC’s location in McPher-son Square was chosen
specically to highlight thenancial pipeline between
K Street, Wall Street and ourlawmakers’ pockets. Whilethe transgressions are plenti-ful, lobbyists on K Street areinvolved in private campaign
nancing, lawmaking andthe direct nancial courting 
of lawmakers themselves. While most of these actionsare currently legal, many of us believe they are corrosiveto a well-functioning de-mocracy.It should be clear thatthis park belongs to no oneperson or group, includ-ing occupiers. A tenet of the Occupy movement isinclusiveness and commu-nity participation. As such,you are always welcome, asbefore, to occupy McPher-son Square with the under-standing the space is shared.Media outlets such as the Washington Post and the Washington City Paper havecommended Occupy DC onsporting a “vibrant urban-ism” that has “activated theurban core.” Like the occu-piers, you have many opin-ions about the upkeep of the park and are invited toshare such opinions at Gen-eral Assembly meetings or inindividual committee meet-ings. We invite you to par-take in the re-imaginationof our city and our country,pigeons and all. Warm regards, The OWT Editorial Board
 A3
OPINION
Corryn
Freeman
McPherson Sq. Occupiers at a glance
Robert
 
Brune
Bear 
Caty 
Mc
Clure
Rose Jaffe
Dear OWT, OWT Responds
Got something to say? We want to hear it!Send all leers – with name and contactinfo – to Submissions@OccupyDC.org
100% pay taxes, while 1% get breaks
 Why McPherson Square?Location, location, location
I have a tracheotomy thatrenders me mute and I usea wheelchair, or I would bethere with you. My health
care and benets might goaway because of the 1% who
screw around with our moneylike it’s toilet paper.
Without economic juscethere’s no economic growth.
“”
– Message from a donor to Occupy DC 
 The unbalanced systemof capital gains and payrolltaxes moves America towarda greater burden on the 99%,and on New Year’s Day, theproblem could get worse. Dueto congressional inaction, the2% payroll tax cut American workers have received since2009 could expire just afterconsumers make their best an-nual attempt to stimulate theeconomy during the holiday season.For someone making $25,000 annually - such as astaffer on Capitol Hill or a ser- vice associate at a retail store- that means about $500 less intheir pocket for repaying stu-dent loans or going to a week-ly movie with friends. For amiddle-class worker earning the median household income- about $50,000 annually - thatmeans roughly $1,000 less tomake mortgage or car loanpayments. A failure by Congressto extend the payroll tax cut would further damage theeconomy and depress jobprospects. The exemptionsand evasions of the top 1%means that they contrib-ute less than ever, while themiddle class and the working poor are paying more despiteearning much less. It’s time forCongress to ask the 1% to pay their fair share and stand up
against tax hikes for the 99%. •
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