In many ways the story begins with James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon,” and the 1937 movie based on it. It was the first time many westerners had any kind of vision of Tibet. Of course it’s not really an accurate vision. Hilton conjures a land where mystical powers give people profound insight and unnaturally long lives.

“Lost Horizon” inspired a lot of the four dozen-or-so comic books on display at the exhibit. Beginning with the earliest comics, from the the 1940s, characters go traipsing into the Himalayas in search of the “Yeti,” or abominable snowman, and familiar figures like Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny encounter strange—often completely imagined—Tibetan customs.

Martin Brauen, the exhibit’s curator, says this is particularly true in “Mickey Mouse in High Tibet,” which shows Tibetans greeting people by showing their tongues. “Or when they pour tea, they have a pot of tea on their head and then they bend down the head and the tea goes into a cup in front of them. I mean, such funny things,” he adds, laughing.

In a 1940s American comic book series, a guy uses wisdom gained in Tibet to transform himself into a superhero called the “Green Lama.” In the first issue, the Green Lama uses his powers to unravel a criminal syndicate in New York.

Musical group One Ring Zero rehearsing their score for the Green Lama.

(Photo: Bruce Wallace)

As part of the exhibit, the musical group One Ring Zero composed a score to accompany a live projection of the comic book. The character becomes the Green Lama by chanting a Tibetan phrase “Om Mani Padme Hum.” That phrase becomes a reoccurring motif in One Ring Zero’s score.

Tenzin Dolker grew up in a Tibetan community in India. She’s studying at Columbia University. She says this is actually a real phrase that every Tibetan knows. “We just grew up saying that. Anything that comes to us that’s a challenge or a negative thing, or someone passes away, you hear of it—you’re like ‘Om mani padme hum.’ It’s instinctual now.” She’s not aware, though, of any other instance of the phrase transforming someone into a superhero.

Some of the comic books in the exhibit do seem to actually get Tibet. Tsering Lama, also at Columbia, grew up in a Tibetan community in Nepal. She was a huge fan of Western comic books like “Archie” and “Asterix,” and remembers the joy of discovering the comic “Tintin in Tibet,” where one of her favorite characters travels to a familiar landscape.

“He’s kind of walking around the streets where I grew up,” Lama says. “It’s humorous–he’s making fun of some of the clichés a little bit, like a Tibetan lama floating in the air, then there’s Nepali people drying peppers on the street, and there’s cows walking around, and stuff like that. But mostly it was like a visual thing—to see Tibet portrayed in a visual way by someone I love, like Tintin, walking around in Tibet and Nepal was really, really cool.”

Lama thinks that part of the west’s enduring fascination with Tibet, on clear display in these comic books, comes from the fact that the country has, for so much of its history, been closed off. It allows imagination to run wild.

And she says there really are some things to be fascinated by. “There are elements about it that are kind of strange—ideas of reincarnation, ideas of monks being able to dry an icy-cold sheet wrapped around them just because of their mental power. Things like that. Those are things my parents believe in, and those are things I wrestle with too.”

She finds it ironic that Westerners so often look to Tibet for peace and strength, when the current reality there can be pretty bleak.

“They still think that Tibet, or Tibetans, or Buddhism, can give them something that they can’t get somewhere else,” she says. “So you have a lot eccentric people who get attached to Tibet. But they don’t really ever look at what’s actually happening in Tibet, and what’s actually happening to Tibetans, and what’s happening to our religion, and our survival. And so the whole thing is such a bizarre—totally strange. Because of course now Tibetans, we look to the world to help us. We’re like we need help, we’re desperate for help from everybody.”

The exhibit at the Rubin has inspired Lama and others to start a comic book and graphic novel workshop. They’re hoping it might encourage more Tibetans to use this art form to tell their own stories.

Excerpt from One Ring Zero’s score for “Green Lama,” including Om Mani Padme Hum and main Green Lama themes.

(L-R) Carl Antoun, Todd Fine, and Joe Svehlak look at an old map of Washington Street. (Photo: Bruce Wallace)

It’s a funny mix of people leading the fight to preserve what remains of a once-bustling immigrant neighborhood on Washington Street in lower Manhattan.

Carl Antoun has this infectious, youthful excitement about New York City history. He’s third-generation Lebanese-American. “I remember when I was young going to the World Trade Center, just to see it like any tourist would. My grandma and aunts would point down the street and say “That’s where our history started in this country,” he says.

Todd Fine is a Harvard-trained historian who studied with Samuel Huntington–the guy who wrote the “Clash of Civilizations” book. It’s the neighborhood’s literary history that inspires him.

“This neighborhood was the birthplace of a very significant Arab literary movement,” says Fine. “A number of writers—some of them we know very well, like Khalil Gibran, who’s a phenomenon–but others like Ameen Rihani, Mikhail Naimy, are lesser known, but they’re still very well known in the Arab world.”

Joe Svehlak is a verbose New York City historian and tour guide whose Moravian ancestors immigrated to the neighborhood in 1912. “There is no other neighborhood in New York that mixed these various different ethnicities as well as this neighborhood mixed it,” Svehlak says.

That these three should find common cause in saving an old building says a lot about the neighborhood that used to be here.

Former St. George’s Syrian Catholic Church, built c. 1812, with a façade from the late 1920s. (Photo: Bruce Wallace)

By the 1880s, large numbers of immigrants from present-day Syria and Lebanon were also arriving. The neighborhood came to be known as “Little Syria.” To the immigrants coming from the Arab Middle East it was also called “The Mother Colony,” since so many of them started their lives in the US here.

Importing and textile stores lined the streets, along with tea shops and restaurants. A 1917 survey counted 27 nationalities living in the area. Joe Svehlak’s mother started school in the neighborhood around this time.

“She went to school the first day she was a girl of 7-years-old not speaking word of English and the only thing she recognized was her name being called. But she was in the class with of course the Irish, Lebanese, Syrians, with Italians, with Poles, with Ukrainians and as a result of that these young kids who were immigrants learned from each other and they became friends with each other.”

The vestiges of the immigrant neighborhood are nearly all gone—swept away first by the building of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel in the 1940s, then by the World Trade Center construction.

But one church established on Washington Street by Arab immigrants, who were mostly Christian, remains. It once housed St. George’s Syrian Catholic church, and is now an official city landmark. To its right is a construction site that will soon sprout a 50-story tower.

To its left is a six-story brick building which, in the 1920s, was a community center for the neighborhood. This is the building Todd Fine, Carl Antoun, Joe Svehlak, and their “Save Washington Street” group are trying to preserve. It’s currently owned by the same developers who are building the tower. They wouldn’t discuss their plans for the building. And New York City has declined to landmark it.

Former Washington Street community center, currently vacant and possibly soon to be demolished. (Photo: Bruce Wallace)

“The story in general is really quite moving to me in a lot of ways. I’m a third-generation Lebanese-American, my family came here to Detroit not New York. But just all that’s happened in New York. We see this exhibit and these buildings as a way of both healing and educating.” Akmon says.

A poignant reminder of this history turned up in the rubble of the World Trade Center site: In early 2002, workers there found remnants of another Arab-Christian landmark—the 100-year-old cornerstone of St. Joseph’s Maronite Church.

Bands like Yemen Blues and Debo Band will perform.

Adding its sounds to the mix will be M.A.K.U Sound System, a young band out of the thriving Colombian music scene across New York’s East River in Queens.

Bruce Wallace talked to band members Juan Ospina, Liliana Conde and Camilo Rodriguez.

Naga Pedale by M.A.K.U Sound System

Colombian Roots Rock in Queens

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Potato Jalapeño Latkes

12 pieces (2 per person)

Ingredients:
2 Large russet potatoes, peeled
1 Egg yolk
½ cup Matzo meal
1 Jalapeño, seeded and finely chopped
1 t Kosher salt
Olive oil for frying

To Make:

1) Using a box grater, coarsely grate the potatoes into a medium-size bowl. Add the egg yolk, jalapeño, salt, and matzo meal; mix well and let cool in the refrigerator for five minutes to allow ingredients to bind.
2) Remove bowl from refrigerator and drain off any excess liquid.

Julian Medina's potato jalapeno latkes in the pan

(Recipe courtesy Chef Julian Medina)

Audio extra: Rabbi Michael Sternfield discusses Jewish fusion food

At a rally to mark two months of protest, police blocked streets and protesters massed at junctions on the edge of the city’s financial district.

Scuffles broke out, with police dragging some protesters away.

Protests are planned for cities across the US, two days after police cleared a camp in Zuccotti Park, New York.

Marco Werman finds out how foreign correspondents based in the US have been covering the Occupy Wall Street movement for their home audiences.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Occupy Wall Street activists had promised a day of action in New York today and they kept their word. The day began with hundreds marching toward the New York Stock Exchange. There they clashed with police and many were arrested. More clashes followed at Zucati Park where protesters moved police barricades to reenter the space they’d been evicted from earlier this week. David Valenzuela is in New York for the Spanish news agency EFE or effay as it’s known. He’s been covering the Occupy protests since they started two months ago. Valenzuela says his readers see the origins of the occupy movement in Spain.

David Valenzuela: They are surprised because they haven’t read anything in the English media about the impact of the movement first in Spain, what we call ‘Indignatos’. Last May there were this huge amount of people in the streets of Madrid and Barcelona.

Werman: Right, tens of thousands.

Valenzuela: Yeah, and they believe that what’s happening now in New York has something to do with that and they are surprised maybe that people are not talking about that but at the same time many of them as I have seen and heard are really surprised that Americans, not only New Yorkers, but Americans all around the country are going to the streets to protest and to say something against the system. Maybe because sometimes some years ago they thought that this European way of living that all Americans are maybe they voted for Bush and they were happy with that so they are kind of surprised that people are in the streets.

Werman: Were there certain things in the Wall Street demonstrations that you’ve been reporting on in detail that really resonated with your European readers?

Valenzuela: They were really shocked to see the way people were detained here. This huge amounts of detentions in New York City in a way that we are not used to or the way the police has handled this.

Werman: You know, the Spaniards you mentioned who were part of the Indignatos in Madrid and Barcelona, they’re kind of surprised to see Americans going out in the streets but I’m wondering to what extent you think these protests in Madrid and New York, all over the world, in London, are actually feeding off of each other.

Valenzuela: Also the Arab Spring has something to do with this. I know it’s a very different situation but the way people have seen all the people all around the world going into the streets I think they get this feeling, this urgency to do something and go out. I don’t know. Things are very different, like in Spain it was more about protesting against the political parties and political system and the way our government is managed. I know this is part of what Occupy Wall Street is saying but I don’t think the banks were such a subject of the protests in Spain.

Werman: Have you ever met anybody from the Indignatos protests at Wall Street who connected?

Valenzuela: Yeah, I have. I know people that came here immediately, not many of them, but I met some Spanish people that really wanted to be here for awhile and support them. Some people are still here.

Werman: In the daily events of Occupy Wall Street, does that make news in Spain for you? I mean are you writing about what is going on there today?

Valenzuela: Totally. Like today for instance, we I think already filed four different stories and then all the detentions that have been happening again today, and now I can bet you that we will be writing maybe two or three more stories but I think it’s maybe the biggest news that we had to cover in New York, at least the biggest street story. You know, you walk down the street and you see these people I think our readers or the international audience is really paying more attention this week to the movement than maybe in the last few ones.

Werman: Interesting. Finally, David, is there anything about Occupy Wall Street that you really need to explain to your Spanish readers, something they just don’t understand?

Valenzuela: You will have always to explain the way the city works. For instance, Zucati Park, it’s not a public park, it’s a private park and that’s a very difficult thing to explain to a Spanish reader because we don’t understand that. Like for us streets are public and if there is a park open to the public it must be public so that was one of the things that we had to explain, that’s for sure.

Werman: David Valenzuela, a correspondent for the Spanish News Wire EFE. Thanks so much for your time.

Valenzuela: Thank you very much for having me.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read tweets about the ‘Occupy’ movement

Solidarity Protest at the US Embassy in London (Photo: Laura Lynch)

In New York, police cleared Zuccotti Park in a pre-dawn raid. The same thing happened Tuesday morning at a park in Zurich, Switzerland.

And in London, officials say they’re resuming legal action to evict protesters camped outside St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Some of those protesters headed over to the US Embassy to show their solidarity with their brethren in New York.

With notice that protesters were on their way to the embassy, groups of police moved to guard all the entrances to the grass square in front of the building.

And as soon as a handful of people showed up and hoisted a sign, an officer moved in.

“This with the sign now constitutes an assembly. An assembly of people,” he told the crowd. “I am going to ask you to just step inside the pen that’s all I want you to do and then your demonstrations your issues with your own countrymen or what have you, you can deal with them.”

Within minutes about two dozen chanting men and women did as they were told, placing themselves inside a fenced off area to voice their anger at what happened in New York.

“I wanted to ask my ambassador for an explanation as to why Secretary of State Clinton can condemn (Syrian President Bashar) Assad and (former Egyptian President Hosni) Mubarak for suppressing peaceful dissent in the tent cities in Cairo,” said Adam Fitzmorris, an American student who is part of the Occupy London protest. “And yet our government says nothing, in fact encourages brutality in New York, Denver, Oakland, Seattle, Boston.”

The small group that showed up in front of the American embassy lamented events in New York, but they are also keenly aware that the City of London has just announced it is going to court to evict people from the protest camp in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

City official Stuart Fraser admitted his admiration for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in an interview with the BBC.

“Do you have a sneaking regard for what Mayor Bloomberg’s done in New York?” the BBC host asked. Fraser laughed and said, “Yes is the answer to that. But the same principle in a way is to remove the protesters in their camp, clean up the park and say look, you can come back and protest but don’t bring your camping equipment. And in that sense it is the same.”

Despite the turnout at the embassy protest, Occupy London’s Naomi Colvin rejected any claim that the movement is losing momentum.

“We know we have substantial public support,” she said. “We have prominent politicians expressing sympathy with why we’re there if not support for us directly.”

Colvin also brushed aside any concern about the city’s legal action, saying both it and this morning’s events in New York don’t signal the beginning of the end for protesters.

“Possibly, some people would like it to be a turning point for the Occupy movement. I don’t think that’s the case at all,” Colvin said. “I am sure, I actually have no doubt at all after what we’ve seen in New York last night the movement – Occupy Wall Street will come back much bigger and stronger than it was before. I don’t think there can be any doubt of that whatsoever.”

There’s also no doubt that the standoff in London will play out very differently.

It may have taken just hours to clear the tents in New York.,but it will take months of legal wrangling before there is any chance that police will move in to evict the camp in front of St. Paul’s cathedral.

Read tweets about the ‘Occupy’ movement

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Ibrahim Abdallah, an Egyptian-born businessman who lives in New York City.

Abdallah spent three days on Tahrir square in Cairo last February during the Arab Spring protests.

He also visited the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York.

He says the movement’s lack of clear goals may be causing its demise.

EXTRA
Ibrahim Abdallah responds to a tweet comparing the evacuation of Occupy Wall Street to the attacks on protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir square last winter.
Comparing the Evacuation of Occupy Wall Street to the attacks on protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir square by The World

Read tweets about the ‘Occupy’ movement

In the United States, the attention of the ‘Occupy’ movement has shifted lately to Oakland, California.

There was violence there on Wednesday as demonstrators smashed windows and clashed with police.

Nothing like that in Toronto, Canada.

There are some tensions with authorities there, too but so far no violence.

One thing the protesters in Toronto are worried about is the cold. They’ve been camping out in a city park since mid-October.

The park is named after the Anglican Cathedral right next to it.

Can you name that park?

The answer is St. James Park. Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Toronto Star reporter Josh Tapper about the Central Asian style tent homes called gers or yurts that have popped up in St. James Park.

Read tweets about the ‘Occupy’ movement

Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s, told a British newspaper, he believed the cathedral authorities had set a course of action that could entail violence in the name of the church.

The church authorities have asked the protesters to leave.

Read tweets about the ‘Occupy’ movement

Olsen is a veteran of the Iraq War. Other veterans have been turning out for the Occupy Wall Street protests, too.

Joseph Carter is one: he’s been going to the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests in New York.

Both he and Olsen are also members of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Some in the group have raised the idea that veterans could advise the protesters on tactics to protect themselves from projectiles or tear-gas attacks.

Anchor Lisa Mullins talks with Joseph Carter.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: An Occupy Wall Street protestor who was earlier this week in California is still in the hospital today. Scott Olsen’s skull was fractured as protestors in Oakland clashed with police. Olsen is a veteran of the Iraq war. Other veterans have been turning out for the Occupy Wall Street protests too. Joseph Carter is one of them. He’s been going to the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York. Both he and Olsen are members of the group, Iraq Veterans Against the War, IVAW. A few in the group have raised the idea that veterans could advise the protestors on tactics to protect themselves from projectiles or tear gas attacks. Joseph Carter says that the veterans group doesn’t necessarily endorse that, but he says that there are things that protestors can learn from those with military experience and from people involved in protests in other countries.

Joseph Carter: One of the things I thought was really interesting from Egypt was that because of the rock throwing wars that had sort of broken out during the revolution there, there were folks who were wearing plastic bottles on their heads as sort of helmets, and there was a lot of really interesting images that came out of that. So yeah, if we can provide any sort of advice on that I think that most of us are willing to do so.

Mullins: Like what? I mean what kind of advice would you give?

Carter: One thing that, actually it’s funny that you brought this up. Last night I was at a solidarity rally for Oakland at Occupy Wall Street and I ran into somebody who was a Marine. And he and I were speaking about how some of his friends who are former marines had seen some of the techniques that had come out of Egypt and how to fashion homemade, homemade gas masks. And so they got really interested based on their training in the military to see how well these things work. So they took the models that they’d seen from Egypt and they fashioned their own masks, and they tested them out with tear gas themselves to see if they worked. And they turned out to work, so now they’re trying to share this information with other folks just in case folks get tear gassed.

Mullins: Joseph, you’ve been out at the Occupy Wall Street protests yourself. Do you feel as if veterans are kindred spirits with those people who are out protesting, and I wonder if you know if a lot of your members are out there?

Carter: Absolutely, I feel like veterans are very much kindred spirits with a lot of the protestors. And veterans for the most part are part of the 99%, we’re affected by the fact that our autonomy has been devastated by this recession. And you know, whenever I go onto the internet, when I check Facebook, when I check Twitter, when I check all sorts of different websites I see lots of veterans and people who are still in the military supporting this movement.

Mullins: Well, what resonates let’s say to you personally as you’re out there? What resonates with you and the message that’s widely being disseminated in the protests?

Carter: I would say what most widely resonates with me and what resonates with most veterans that I know is that right now our political system as it’s currently structured disproportionately favors money from corporations and money from people who sit really as the top 1% of this population. We’re asked to vote every four years and every six years for the senate, and it seems like every time we cast a ballot it doesn’t matter if it’s a Democrat or Republican that gets in, our voices really aren’t heard. But corporations’ voices are always heard. And I feel like for me, someone who was raised really in the concepts of freedom, and democracy and liberty, I really feel like the American people’s voices should be heard in our government.

Mullins: How old were you when you first entered the military?

Carter: I entered the military at 18.

Mullins: 18 years old and now you are 27 years old and some things have changed a lot in your life, not just because of your military service, but coming back now with many, many other veterans (certainly more people have been in active duty than when you were 18 years old), is there a perspective that you have that gives you more affinity in these protests than you might have had if you hadn’t served?

Carter: Absolutely. I feel like having served I have a much deeper emotional commitment to making sure that people here in America have the rights that are guaranteed to them under the constitution. Being that I spent five years in the military I feel a very deep commitment to the American people and to their safety. So when it comes to things like Occupy Wall Street and people are standing up and saying hey, I want more of a voice in my government, I want to get corporate money out of our government. I definitely feel like a strong affinity with those folks and I feel like I have a responsibility to stand up with them.

Mullins: Interesting you see that as a safety issue.

Carter: I feel like when it comes to the safety issue we’re talking about the fact that right now you’ve got folks who are standing up all across the country and they’re being met with a really strong police presence. And that’s not to say I am anti-police. I definitely am not. I feel like though that the various mayors of different cities and different politicians are asking that police be sent out to places like Zuccotti Park, they’re being asked to be sent out to places like Oakland, and there protestors are being hurt. And so I feel like the more numbers we have the less likely they are to use that kind of force.

Mullins: Thank you for speaking with us, Joseph Carter, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Joseph served two tours of duty in Iraq. He’s also a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Thanks a lot.

Carter: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Read tweets about the ‘Occupy’ movement

A few days ago, Emmanuelle Bitton added Zuccotti Park to her New York itinerary. It’s easy to fit in. It’s right near the Ground Zero and the 9/11 memorial. After a look around, the Parisian tourist says she’s a little surprised.

“Your rally is very, very quiet compared to France,” she says. “In France, we shout, there’s fighting at the end. Here it’s very quiet, very nice atmosphere, compared to Europe.”

Bitton, an architect, looks at the sprawl of blue tents and sleeping bags. It’s messy, but there’s order within: areas for recycling, teach-ins, even legal advice. Still, most tourists stay on the edges.

“There’s no organization,” says Bitton. “That’s bad and that’s good because maybe for the first time just the people say what he feels and that’s it.”

An Argentine couple also hangs back. Eduardo Nougués and his wife say the protest here pales in comparison to what they saw back home in 1999, when the economy collapsed.

“In Argentina, we had protests with many, many people – more people than this. A lot of people. This is nothing,” laughs Nougués.

One protester who won’t give his name hopes for more engagement with passersby: “Don’t just walk by. Occupy!”

He quotes his sign: “Protest in the Middle East, revolutionary. Protest in America, dirty hippies. And that’s a direct quote, I read it out of the newspaper. They labeled us dirty hippies.”

Whatever their opinions, visitors capture the moment. Tourists on the red doubledecker buses thrust up their cell phones in unison and click away.

“I have some friends at home, who is really left, and they are really, ‘wow, you were there!’ says Pir Lundin, from Sweden, visiting with his son. “And I don’t really care. I think, it would be fun to put a picture on the Facebook and say I was there.”

Also looking on is Franz Gruber, a rugged 48-year-old German software executive. He connects with the protesters’ concerns: “I think that it’s very important that the Americans have started to question a few things. Your country has spent $1.2 trillion dollars over the last 10 years for two wars – the money could have been better spent.”

But other tourists are less supportive. Martha Velasco is an insurance broker from Mexico City. She stopped by between Broadway’s Billy Elliot and shopping. She says she hopes the encampments don’t drag on like the ones that took over Mexico City’s main square for months in 2006, after a disputed presidential election.

“We’ve had major plazas in Mexico taken over by people who are trucked in and don’t even know why they are there,” says Velasco.

Protester Joe Vonpotic is clear on why he’s here: affordable health care, better job opportunities. And he says it was a visitor from Egypt who inspired him.

“The first night we were here, there was an old man who flew in from Egypt, very well spoken, eloquent man … he told us the key to win the hearts of everyone in the country and you do that by holding a place and being peaceful and doing exactly what we’re doing, pretty much.”

‘Occupy Wall Street’ Tweets

The city’s mayor says damage costing more than one million euros ($ 1.4 million) was caused when hooded protesters torched cars and attacked banks and a church.

Mayor Gianni Alemanno described those responsible as “animals”.

Saturday’s protests affected 950 cities in 80 countries. They began in New York as “Occupy Wall Street” a month ago.

Megan Williams reports from Rome.

Read tweets about the protests in Rome

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: The Occupy Wall Street protests are entering their second month, but student protests in Chile are on month five and counting. Katie Manning is a reporter for the Chilean online newspaper Mi Voz. She’s in Santiago.

Katie Manning: Hundreds and thousands of students have been on the streets. They’ve protesting, they’ve been sleeping in their schools and universities, they’ve been running laps around the presidential palace and they’re very upset because half of the students in Chile pay for education. They’re calling for the government basically to eliminate all private education. They want education to be 100% public. They want it to be much higher quality and they want it to be government funded.

Mullins: When you say half the students pay for education, what happens to the other half?

Manning: The other half go to public universities…or public high schools. The education system here, most of the better schools that are public are charter schools. And the charter schools, the students also pay to go to. They’re prohibitively expensive. The students are often in debt for years after graduating from university. So the students that can’t afford to go to the private schools, or the public charter schools, are basically left with a bad education according to them.

Mullins: So the students themselves who are protesting, you said they’re running laps around the presidential palace. Are they boycotting classes, occupying campuses, what other forms are the protests taking?

Manning: Yeah, they’re sleeping at their schools. They basically lost a year of school. So for about five months now all the schools that are in protest the students haven’t been going to class. And as far as running laps around the palace, they’ve run for 1,800 consecutive hours around the presidential palace. They’ve had 1,800 seconds long kiss-a-thons where they’ve kissed each other for 1,800 seconds. And the reason why they’re making 1,800 famous is because there were estimates saying that it would cost $1.8 billion in US dollars to give free education to the 25 traditional public universities for free for everyone.

Mullins: Okay, so how has the government been responding to this? I don’t know to what extent the government cares if they’re playing football, running laps or kissing for hours on end, but does it?

Manning: Well, the student protests have a really, really overwhelming majority of support in Chile. And President Sebastian Pinera’s approval rating is extremely low, under 30%. So they’re paying attention. They’re trying to meet with the students, but they say that to pay for the education of everyone in Chile would be too expensive. So the students have responded and said you should rethink the copper mining industry and make it a government subsidized industry in order to pay for the education.

Mullins: This is an economic issue for these students, not just an educational issue, but what gives it the staying power to continue for five months now, especially if there haven’t been tangible results?

Manning: The students are angry and they’re fed up. I think, what’s really surprising to me is that this is being lead by the kids. For them to be missing school for five months in protest is huge. And I don’t see this stopping anytime soon.

Mullins: All right, Katie Manning, a reporter for the Chilean news website, Mi Voz. She joined us from Santiago, Chile. Thank you, Katie.

Manning: Thank you.

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By Assia Boundaoui

The Palestinian leadership hopes this dramatic move would reenergize their quest for an independent homeland.

But in New York City, Palestinian-Americans are on the fence about whether a state of Palestine will ever exist and are worried about what statehood would actually mean.

At the Bayridge Café on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, Palestinian-American Yousef Jadallah sips his coffee as he watches experts on Al Jazeera discuss the statehood bid. And he did not look too optimistic.

“It’s a good step, but useless. It’s all politics,” he said. “We’re not gonna get full membership in the UN so what’s the use. My opinion: waste of time, it is 64 years past due.”

Down the street at Badran Halal meats, owner Mamoun Hammouri is equally pessimistic about the possibility that the UN will grant membership for Palestine.

“I hope, of course I hope,” he said, “but I don’t think it is going to happen or exist.”

Habib Joudeh runs the pharmacy next door to the butcher shop. He said what he wants to happen and what he believes is going to happen are two different issues. In fact, he said, the bid for a Palestinian state will be futile.

“Though I know it is not going to pass, though I know even if it passes what we are given is nothing,” he said. “But you know what, anything is better than having this conflict, anything that will bring peace to the region, to the world, that will be much better than what we are living now.”

While the lack of hope that the UN will ever recognize a Palestinian state is pervasive, some Palestinians in Bayridge are outright hostile to the bid for statehood. On Twitter, the hash-tag #fakestate has become a trending topic among Palestinian activists who think that the bid for statehood at the UN will do more harm than good.

A Palestinian neighborhood in New York. (Photo: Ali Abbas)

Kenazi has written about the Palestinian situation and the frustration many feel with stalled negotiations.

“If there are still these restrictions, if there’s still the cutting off from West Bank Palestinians to West Bank Palestinians, never mind East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, then you really have a structure of the status quo,” he said. “It’s just a formalized situation where you would have statehood but no real rights, no real autonomy, no control over your territory, no functioning body that could actually exercise the fundamental rights of Palestinian people.”

Some Palestinians say the division over whether to support or oppose the UN bid is generational: younger Palestinians are opposed to the move while the older generation is looking for something, anything to change.

Others say the divide is a geographical one, with Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza generally in support of full membership in the UN, and Palestinian refugees and those who live in Israel are opposed to a recognized state that would not include them.

Dr. Ahmed Jaber, a Palestnian-American who runs a gynecology practice in Brooklyn, says whether you are for, or against the UN statehood bid, the fact is that it has raised more questions than answers. Questions no one can answer now.

“Is it going to make problems on the street in the West Bank and Gaza? Will there be a third intifada? What is really the 1967 border, does that exclude the Palestinians who were inside the Green line in 1948 Palestine? What will happen to them? Are we abandoning them? How about the right of return?” Jaber asked. “Whether this step is good for the Palestinians or not, I don’t know, we have to wait and see.”

President Mahmoud Abbas says he is going to submit a formal request to the Security Council at the end of the week for full UN membership for the state of Palestine.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials back home are rallying their public to support the effort.

A small crowd of Palestinians rallied today in support of their president’s efforts in New York. The crowd unveiled a giant light blue chair as a symbol of what the Palestinian leadership is after.

“Palestine’s right,” a sign on the chair declared, “full membership in the United Nations.”

Looking on, store owner Hamdi al-Tahreefi said moving beyond the long-dead peace process toward something new is a good step for the Palestinians.

“These talks, they been more than around 20 years and nothing happen on the ground,” he said. “We will let the United Nations figure out the problems.”

On one hand, the effort is likely to be a non-starter. The United States plans to use its veto in the UN Security Council. But university student Shadiya Harfush said the Palestinian president is still doing the right thing.

“I think the fact that Abbas is in the UN trying to declare a state or get full membership is in itself a very great task,” Harfush said. “It is, in itself, something that gives us pride.”

Dr. Sabri Saidam - an advisor to the Palestinian president - speaks to a reporter during a rally in Ramallah on Tuesday in support of the Palestinian bid for UN membership. (Photo: Matthew Bell)

“It is time to end occupation,” Saidam said. “The misery of the Palestinian people should not be entertained anymore.”

“Democracy and occupation don’t go hand in hand, and they ought to be ended, ended in a way that Palestinians seek their freedom and their determination alongside the state of Israel.”

But about a mile down the road from the rally, in the Al-Amari refugee camp, some Palestinians said they have mixed feelings about their president’s quest for UN membership.

Yusuf al-Hajj, a 48-year-old butcher, said Palestinians deserve a state like everyone else in the world. “We want to be neighbors with Israel,” he said. “We don’t want any violence.”

But al-Hajj said he is disappointed that President Abbas has not talked more about the rights of Palestinian refugees.

“I don’t want compensation. I want to be able to return to the village in Israel where my family lived until 1948.”

This so-called right of return is a non-starter with Israel, because allowing the descendents of Palestinian refugees to move back to Israel itself would mean the end of the Jewish majority.

Another camp resident, 22-year-old Maram Omar said she dreams about the creation of a Palestinian state. But the Palestinian campaign at the United Nations could undermine what she is really hoping for.

“I prefer the one state solution – the State of Palestine,” she said. That state would include Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem and “the rest of historical Palestine.”

The sentiment helps explain why some Palestinians are reluctant to fully support what the Palestinian leadership is trying to do in New York. That is because UN membership would commit Palestinians to two states for two people.